Sexual conflict
In 23 (74%) of the 31 couples we interviewed, both the husband and wife shared stories of sex as conflict ridden. In almost all instances, respondents construct conflict over sex as a problem of frequency of sexual intercourse. Moreover, this conflict is gendered in that husbands are far more likely than wives to report wanting to have more frequent sex (19 https://besthookupwebsites.org/local-hookup/minneapolis/ husbands compared to 4 wives). Louise (White, age 35, married 13 years) typifies descriptions of such conflict when she says, “We don’t have sex as often as he would like to have it and that is probably the most major issue between us. … Because he will feel sort of sad and lonely and want some affection from me and apparently I’m not there.”
Conflict over sexual frequency is often related to the reasons for one spouse’s erican, age 35, married 9 years) says that their arguments about sex mainly revolve around his wife’s “excuses” for not having sex:
We were talking about it just recently, and I expressed the fact that it always seems as though she doesn’t have time, or she is not in the mood, or whatever. Making up some excuse. And I mean one of the things that really bothers me is the fact that there are some times when she will spend time on the phone with her sister and she has a lot of energy then, but then when she finally gets off the phone and winds down, now she doesn’t have any energy and now she is sleepy.
Only four wives (13%) in this study say they have a stronger interest in sex than their husbands, but they too described conflict over frequency of sexual intercourse. Irene (White, age 51, married 32 years) says that most of the conflict she and Brian (White, age 55) have had over sex have to do with Brian’s lack of interest. About 10 years ago, Brian stopped wanting to have sex altogether. According to Irene, “We went through a little bit of a hard patch then, until I said, ‘You know, you need to go to the doctor and get yourself checked out and find out what’s going on’.”