I Always Say Yes When My Husband Asks For Sex—Here’s Why

My husband actually only asks for sex when he thinks he’ll get a yes. And when my mood is…questionable? He works for it. I also sometimes say yes to him even when I’m not really in the mood. He either spends the evening priming me, or takes the time between the sheets to convince me that the lost sleep is in fact, a very, very good idea. 

And I bet that your husband also wants you to enjoy having sex with him. He wants to experience the joy and closeness it brings with you. It turns him on to see you pleased. 

But it seems impossible, right? There are so many excuses: I’m exhausted, it hurts, I have no desire, I hate the way I look, I feel so disconnected from my body, I’m emotionally drained. I could go on, but the point is there are tons of excuses, there always will be, and they’ll always be valid. They don't, however, change the fact that you and your husband should have a vibrant sex life. Sex (and dare I say, frequent sex) is a necessary part of marriage. So how do we bridge the gap between our very valid reasons for not wanting to have sex and having sex?

As women, we’re the most likely party to turn down sex. We are the sexually selective species because we carry the biological burden. And if our relationship with our husband isn’t on the rocks, we likely feel guilty for turning him down too. We want to please him, we want to say yes more often, but what is the middle ground between one person who wants to have sex and one person who doesn’t?

Lucky for you, I’ve got a handful of solutions, none of which require you to invite Christian fundamentalism, the red-pill movement, or feminism into your bedroom. Because believe me, they make very un-sexy bedmates. 

How Hard Could It Be?

After the birth of my firstborn, I was physically and psychologically broken. Delivering my daughter had left me with an episiotomy and multiple other tears (one of which went through my clitoris), and mentally, I had just finished a nine-month battle with a case of Hyperemesis Gravidarum so bad it landed me in the hospital with malnutrition. I was destroyed. Completely and utterly. The only solid thing in my life at that point was my husband, and after the six-week recovery period, I made it my goal to say yes to him as often as I possibly could. I made it my goal to say yes, 100% of the time.

I was repulsed by my own traitorous body. But he wasn’t. I couldn’t stand to look at myself in the mirror. But he couldn’t look away. I loathed my existence. But at night, he would pull my body close to his and bury his face in my shoulder. He would breathe me in, and his hands would wash over me like water. 

Eating, and the smells associated with cooking, scared me so much I’d cry. So after a long day of work for the US Navy, he’d come home, cook dinner, and serve it to me as I sat outside on the front porch.

I felt like I didn’t deserve his love. I felt like I had failed us both and our daughter in so many ways, but I let him love me anyway.

I won’t go into detail about how for the next several months, it felt like my female anatomy had been replaced with razor wire, but I will tell you about how my husband treated me more gently than I did myself. How patient he was, and how he held me as I cried tears of frustration over a body that could no longer feel pleasure. 

Through accepting his love, I learned, in turn, how to love myself again. 

And ever so slowly, pain gave way to numbness. And numbness to feeling. The music turned sweet once more, and I could feel the worry melt from his body as the inhibition evaporated from mine. Through accepting his love, I learned, in turn, how to love myself again. 

All of this is to say that you can indeed say yes to your husband, and it’ll be a blessing to you both. It’s all about your mindset. If you start prioritizing sex and view the word “no” as a last resort, you’ll automatically start having sex more often. It's literally that simple. So, let’s get into the details of how to actually make that happen.

How To Say Yes to Your Husband Every Time

One strategy that works really well for just starting out is scheduling sex. It sounds un-sexy and boring, I know, but this is all so that you can be spontaneous later. This is a good strategy to use if sex feels emotionally stressful due to body image issues or if it feels physically stressful due to pain or lack of sleep.

Scheduling sex takes away a lot of the performance anxiety you may be experiencing. It also makes things feel more reliable and safer in the sense that you know exactly what to expect and when to expect it. You can spend the day emotionally readying yourself if need be, but my favorite part about scheduling sex is how your husband can actually help you prepare.

If you need a lot of affection in order to feel emotionally ready for sex, then ask for it! The morning of your “sex date,” remind your husband that he’s in for a treat that evening, and if he wants dessert to be extra sweet, he can help by buttering you up throughout the day.

This strategy also helps ensure you get your beauty rest. Since you know what days you're going to have sex on, you can make sure the evening is centered around an early “bedtime.” Scheduling sex literally allows you to have your cake and eat it too. 

Another thing to put on your to-do list, besides the obvious, is talking with your husband. My goal of saying yes 100% of the time would not have been possible without understanding and empathy on his part. Letting my husband into my fragile little world and exposing the brokenness that was inside was excruciating and scary. It felt like walking on fine shards of glass, but the areas I was vulnerable in were the same areas where we grew closer together. 

Throughout the course of many open and vulnerable conversations with my husband, our sex life improved. Even though for those first several months, the only two sensations I was capable of feeling were pain and numbness, just getting to voice my frustrations over the brokenness of my own body, the fears that it would never heal correctly, the embarrassment I felt, and the conflict between desire and pain went a long way to aid my recovery. 

Additionally, the conversations helped my husband as well. In his own way, he had been traumatized too. He had been there for the hospitalization, the birth, the overly-long resuscitation of our daughter, and the stitches. He didn’t want to hurt me any more than I already had been. But he also desired me. Talking together in this way allowed us both to come together and generate the necessary empathy and understanding required for forging an entirely new sexual relationship.

Vulnerable communication is vital, so if you do turn your husband down, he’ll understand why and be able to sympathize.

Communication in this way is absolutely vital to a happy and healthy sex life for both you and your husband. Because even if you do turn him down on occasion, he’ll understand why, he’ll sympathize, and he’ll work to take care of you in order to help make sure you’re ready for next time.

In order for him to help you, however, you need to figure out what kind of assistance you need in the first place. What are some things that would reliably turn you on, every single time? For me, it’s physical touch and words of affirmation. Whenever my husband caresses my cheek and tells me how beautiful I am or hugs me and tells me how proud of me he is, I’m on cloud nine. I feel loved during those moments, and whenever I'm feeling loved, I also feel like I want to fulfill my husband's wildest dreams. I'd highly recommend taking the love language quiz with your husband in order to figure out how he can help you feel loved and how you can help him feel respected.

But maybe you're just too stressed out? Talk with your husband and see if there isn’t some way you could structure your day better so that you can work smarter instead of harder. And I say talk with your husband because sometimes when we’re stuck, we can't see the forest for the trees. An outside perspective can really help us make the necessary changes. 

Maybe instead of cooking from scratch for every single meal, every single day, you could meal prep. Freeze meals ahead of time so that when it's time to eat, all you have to do is stick them in the oven. Maybe you could buy a slow cooker so that all you have to do is a 10-minute prep, and by dinner, everything is cooked to perfection. Maybe you need a cleaning schedule… The point is, I don’t know what you need, but your husband most likely does.

Lastly, if sex is painful or just plain doesn't feel good to you for whatever reason, you should seek out a pelvic floor physical therapist. They can help with scar mobilization (making scars softer so the nerves they’re connected to calm down), incontinence (peeing when you sneeze ideally shouldn’t happen), difficulty with orgasm, tailbone pain, pelvic organ prolapse, and so much more. It's essentially physical therapy for your vagina, and yes, it's beneficial even for women who haven't had babies. A word of advice from someone who's been there, done that: Sometimes the only way out is through. Most women find sex difficult after having a baby. And when it comes to “re-training” your vagina, you’ve kind of only got two options: dilators or a penis. I’d recommend the latter. 

Not only will your husband most likely be eager to aid you in this endeavor, but your own biological arousal response will help you too. You can ask for a sensual massage to calm yourself down as a part of foreplay, or engage in something else that feels safe and good (like digital or oral stimulation) to prime your neurons to expect pleasure. Once you’re aroused enough, the vagina will naturally open and become wet (so much better than using lube), and then you can direct your husband on how slow to go. You can also climb on top and take charge yourself if that makes you feel more secure.

Healing is always painful and it's always tedious, but at least this way, you don't have to do the work alone, and you'll notice the progress you've made relatively quickly.

How To Get in the Mood When You’re Not in the Mood

I think sometimes, as women, we don't realize how important sex is to our husbands. We hear again and again how it’s a necessary part of marriage, but we tend to only think about this fact from our point of view. It’s only necessary when I’m feeling good, aroused, rested, etc. But think about this, men are designed to think about sex 24/7/365. Their biological imperative is to “sow their wild oats.” Now, obviously, they aren't beasts; they are capable of higher brain function, so most of them do not act out on these impulses. But they're there, nevertheless. And because he’s a healthy man with a 24-hour hormonal cycle, he’d have sex every single day if he could.

As wives, it's our duty to care for our husbands. We look after his physical appetite, so why is his sexual one any different? No, a man will not die without sex, but is mere survival really the standard we want to hold ourselves to? Additionally, regular sex actually improves a male's health. Studies show that men who have sex two or more times a week have a reduced risk of heart disease, improved immunity, lower blood pressure, lower stress markers, lowered cancer risk, improved sleep, less pain, and an increased lifespan. So, yes, while your man will not suddenly keel over and die without it, sex does appear necessary to his overall physical and psychological health.

Look at it this way: Your husband has chosen to spend his life with you, to only engage in sex with you, and when you turn him down you're essentially saying to him, "You can only have sex with me, but you can't even have sex with me." Getting rejected by the one woman he has chosen is not only bad for his ego, but his self-esteem as a whole. He can't go elsewhere, watching porn is off the table for a healthy relationship, so what is he to do aside from simply feeling like he's at a loss and can't get his needs met?

So what can we do? Women’s hormones typically afford us two weeks of increased libido. How can we make sure we're ready for sex even when it's not exactly at the forefront of our mind?

When I catch myself falling for the lie that what we have is ordinary, I start counting all the little things my husband does for me.

The method I’ve found most useful is gratitude. When we take our husbands for granted, it's easy to let our relationship with them get lost in the mundane. And when we do that, it's easy for us to stop desiring him. We fall into the trap of believing we have all the time in the world to love the people around us, to do the things that matter and make us feel alive. It’s an easy trick to fall for when we’re worn out and exhausted. We’re fooled into believing an hour’s less sleep is more detrimental to us than failing to connect with our one true love, provider, and protector.

I like to romanticize my husband. When I catch myself falling for the lie that what we have is ordinary, I start counting all the little things he does for me. I daydream about that one time he made me feel warm and fuzzy because he stood up for me, or bought me flowers “just because,” or became a rock I could cling to in the midst of drowning. I also like to fantasize about his body. The way his eyes look when he wants me, how strong his arms feel when they’re around me, and how good his hair smells when he’s kissing me.

Our husbands need us. As his wife, you’re the only person who can fulfill his desires. The only one who can take him in and give him shelter. Let him rely on you the way you rely on him. 

Closing Thoughts

Ultimately, if you’re the person in the relationship who turns down sex more often, you have complete control over the sexual frequency within the relationship. Because of that fact, if you want to have more sex, you’re the only one who can make the necessary changes. 

Yes, your husband can help, and any good, caring husband will, but the responsibility to increase sexual frequency rests with you. And that’s honestly part of what makes this all so exciting. You have the power to turn your sex life around. You have the ability to drive your husband absolutely wild. You can make him feel more loved than he’s ever felt before, and that’s all pretty incredible if you ask me.