I need some advice on whether women can tend to go off sex after childbirth.
I have taken a very long time to deal with this, and I will tell you why. I have been with a woman for 18 years and after 3 years we had a child. Before we had our son I would say we had a very regular, healthy sex life. Maybe a bit vanilla but certainly satisfying. After my son was born my partner went off sex almost completely. I can say that since then sex has only happened when I have initiated it and it has almost always been perfunctory and not satisfying. This has got worse in recent years. I don't know if this is unusual or not. Apart from that we get on well, although I have always been frustrated that she doesn't really take an interest in what I am feeling.
I would expect sex to become less frequent as relationships get older but it seems to me that the childbirth might have changed things. We have only had sex once in the last year and partly that is because I am aware she doesn't really want it - I don't want to 'demand' sex, that's no fun for me either.
Recently I've been sorting my head out with some Mindfulness therapy and one of the things that's come out of that is I need more (or at lease some) sex (and generally more intimacy of the emotiaonal kind too). We have a laugh but there is no spark and I feel she isn't very interested in me, although I am not sure she ever was exactly demonstrative.
I love my partner, but it feels more and more like we are just good friends. I don't want finish our relationship but I have normal needs to be satisfied. What can I do?