Question. What if wife is so tired from doing chores all day and also with the kids and then at night in the bedroom the husband asks for sex and the wife is not in the mood…Should she still do it just to give way to her husband to please him? Or what?

A. Why should sex be an obligation in a marriage? Some men might view it that way because they feel marriage carries certain commitment with it, especially sex. But sex has to be a two-way desire to work. Any relationship is about SHARING and if one person is too tired to give affection to the other, it says a lot about the actual state of the marriage. If that person got some help from her spouse with all the stuff she had to do, for example, perhaps she wouldn’t be so whacked at the end of each day. However, there are a few things happening here which need to be noted.

1. Tiredness relating to sex can often hide resentment behind it. Resentment of what the person has to do, the lack of help, the lack of attention or just feeling frustrated because expectations are not being fulfilled. Often many spouses use a denial of sex as a weapon because there is nothing else they can use to make their point about how they feel. If this carries on too many times it will lead to disaster, as the spouse might begin to play tit-for-tat, or look outwards for what he/she is not getting at home, and that is how affairs begin!

2. Marriage should be no different from dating, and if people really love one another they would want to make love and show affection to each other as often as possible, not just when they feel okay. Sex is not something that goes on the back burner once a couple take their vows. If anything, that’s the time most people should move even closer together in their feelings. So if one person is feeling too tired too often to reciprocate, she needs to discuss this with her partner, especially the reasons why, and how they can BOTH remedy the situation. He might even be able to offer some help she hadn’t thought about to ease the chores. Not to wait until the bedroom to then say NO to his advances.

3. Many couples carry their frustrations and resentments into the bedroom instead of discussing them and trying to sort them out, then wonder later on when their marriage goes pear-shaped why things went wrong. The tragedy in most relationships is that the minute people feel unwanted, unloved and rejected, they begin to look elsewhere to be affirmed, which is why there are so many divorces instead of longer marriages.

Sex should never be an obligation between a couple, but it shouldn’t be withheld too often either. Otherwise, it means no one is really enjoying it. Sex is always an act of love, otherwise what’s the point of freely getting married?

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