A picture of my husband's butt for attention.
My (39/F) husband (42/M) and I have been married for 7 and a half years and we have a 5 year old son together. Soon after our son was born our marriage was failing. I was (still am) a stay at home mom, I was depressed, exhausted , touched out. My husband was sexually deprived and resentful. We were cold and distant.
We saw our first marriage counselor another year later, but we really didn't like our therapist, we only attended a few sessions and then we stopped seeing them. Fast forward 4 years, we were getting along better, but we were still not connecting in the bedroom. Sometimes we would go a month without having sex.
I was fooling myself into believing that the reason I was never in the mood for sex was because I had gained a lot of weight and was too self conscious to get naked in front of my husband. This was only like 30% true, because if I'm horny enough I definitely want sex to happen. So, I used that excuse for a long time.
If we went too long without having sex, we became very distant and avoidant of each other, but then we would eventually be intimate which would restore our connection, for a little bit, until the next drought happened. What worried my husband the most was that we really only had sex on the weekends and if I didn't want to have sex one weekend, he knew it was going to be "a long time" until our next rendezvous.
It took a while, but I eventually realized that I am going through peri-menopause (this is not talked about enough), and in addition to taking an anti-depressant, anti-anxiety medication, and having a hormonal IUD implant, my libido was depleted. I'm talking nada. Zilch. Do Not Enter.
My husband researched and found a specialist one hour away from us who offered hormone replacement therapy (HRT). I started a prescription for a low dose of testosterone, which did actually help some. Okay, so I was getting a little bit of my libido back, but we knew things could be better.
We decided to start sex therapy. I found a "relationship institute" in my city and made an appointment with a specialized sex therapist, but there was a 2 month waitlist. In the meantime, we started with a different clinician in a private practice with a background in sex therapy.
We were finally able to get in at the relationship institute, and that's when we met our current sex therapist who has been a marriage saver! She started at the root of the problem by helping us talk about what was getting in the way of our sex life and what we needed from each other in and out of the bedroom. She discussed different types of desire, what leads us to that place of desire, and how to be intimate without intercourse. We learned new things about each other (like what we think about when we masturbate) Among many other things.
I should mention that a couple of months ago in the midst of therapy, I had my hormonal IUD taken out and I did not replace it with another one. Shortly after the removal, I felt my libido was coming back! I'm horny again… especially around the time I ovulate. I'm initiating sex, I'm enjoying sex, I want sex with my husband.
This, coupled with sex therapy, have been the two best decisions we've ever made for our marriage . I feel that we are in love again. We now have sex on a random Monday night and again on Thursday. Which, I think, has helped my husband lose his fear of us not having sex for long stretches of time. Now, even if we do go a couple of weeks without having sex, the connection is still there because we learned how to give the other person what they need.
TLDR; Sad married couple with mismatched libidos seek out sex therapy, learn stuff about each other and stuff about sex, wife has IUD implant removed which causes an increase in her libido, sad couple is now having lots more sex and are happier than they've been in a very long time.