My (mid-30s M) wife (mid-30s F) took a job that has rather extreme hours. She also has another time/location commitment as the direct consequence of some of her actions. These combined have left us with, at most, 1 hour each day during which we are both awake and under the same roof.
As you might imagine, it has put quite the strain (for me at least, she doesn’t talk about it) on our quality time, conversation, interaction, romance, and amorous activities, which have become, at best: difficult, forced, unenthusiastic, and incredibly rare. She mostly spends what little time there is playing games on her phone.
I put myself in her shoes and it becomes marginally understandable: After a long and challenging day, I could see the desire to sit quietly and do an activity with/for myself rather than attend to the needs of yet another person.
But I’ve been having a really hard time. I am being stoic and supportive and appreciative of all that she is doing, but, under the surface, I am lonely and miss my wife and long for connection. Should I stay the course or find some way to broach the issue, adding yet another burden to her already laborious time?
I’d really appreciate hearing from someone who’s dealt with/is currently in a similar situation, or anyone who has encouragement or advice, or just anything I could think about while I deal.
If she wants time for herself make sure to schedule it as well. Maybe she gets the time to herself a few days of the week. Even better help set up some better relaxing time for herself when she gets home. Make the house set up how she might want to better relax on those days such as making sure its clean, prepared with food, soft lighting, a bath, incense, silence or nice music ask her what she wants for those days. That way she can enjoy that time and really focus on you two together when that is scheduled. Stress is a major libido killer which are you trying to remove when she gets home.
I get her thoughts that this is just more work for her. You are trying to remove that work by taking on the mental load. You want your time together to be fulfilling and joyful. Part of that is when she comes home she shouldn’t have to do any of the planning or scheduling. At least in the beginning when you are both getting use to the system. For example on Tuesday you will have dinner ready without asking her thoughts on it. I used to always wanted to get my wife’s thoughts on food and activities when we were first married. I wanted to make sure she was included but I was just pushing off the final decision back onto her. I now mostly say “We’re going to have lasagna tonight. I will go shopping for it.” If she wants something else she will let me know which is better than saying “Would you rather have lasagna, or something else”. That way she doesn’t have to make a decision. Mental load for planning and deciding is usually placed on woman and most men don’t realize it until they start doing it. You are trying to anticipate what she wants to show that you care
I get the feeling of being wanted. For most men sex is the only time they feel wanted or sexy. It also fulfills a lot of different emotional and physical needs. It helps to figure out what you need both from sex and what you can get outside of sex. I highly recommend reading Hot and Unbothered to better understand everything both the sexual arousal systems as well as how to talk about and identify what sex emotionally does. I found that I get lots of emotional and physical needs met by giving back massages to my wife since I found that the physical touch and giving of pleasure really does like 70% of the emotional needs that sex gives.
Also take a look at the Dual Control Method of Sexual Response to understand how sexual response works in both removing those sexual inhibitory and increasing sexual excitatory aspects.