This is the third part in the "How do you get an uninterested or unwilling wife to have more sex?" series.

This one tends get rejected by guys, but lack of a real relationship is a common killer of marital sex.  Because men are far better at separating sex and the rest of our lives, the wife can feel completely disconnected before the husband even has a hint that their relationship has been evaporating.

I suppose some woman has used "we don't spend enough time together" "or "we never talk" as a way of blame shifting, but if your bride has cited a lack of non-sexual contact as a reason for her not wanting or enjoying sex, the odds are she is telling you the truth.  Because relationships are so important to women, it is very uncommon for them to use relationship for leverage.

Loss of non-sexual intimacy is the norm for marriages, and if you have not both worked to avoid it, you can assume it has happened.  Early on, you have many things inside pushing you to be together, and to do things together.  You wanted to know and be known, and talking was probably frequent and deep.  As you spend more and more time together, there is a reduction in the hormones and brain chemicals that push you to be intimate.  In addition, most of us become busier as we age.  The result of less pushing you together, and less time to be together, is easy to calculate.

"Yeah," I can hear many of you saying "but that does not really reduce her sex drive, does it?  Isn't she just using sex to get what she wants?"  In a word, NO! Less non-sexual intimacy means less sex drive in women.  It's a hardwired cause and effect. Relationship is more important than sex for women, and what she feels you are withholding from her hurts her much as her withholding sex hurts you.

What makes all of this messy is that it's all gradual.  The intimacy in your relationship does not just stop - rather it gradually decreases over months and years.  Your bride is aware of it, but it's hard to define because there's no easy way to measure relationship intimacy.  If she tries to talk to you about it, you probably don't see or feel it, and she can't explain or prove it, so you likely ignore it.

The change in her desire to be sexual with you is also gradual, lagging behind the loss of relationship intimacy to some degree.  This lag makes it even more difficult to "prove" that her loss of desire or pleasure is due to the change in the relationship.  Her sexual changes don't seem tied to any recent change in time together, and that makes her claims seem false.

So, is a lack of relational intimacy a reason for there being less sex in your marriage, or less enjoyment of sex by your bride?  If your marriage had had any drop in the non-sexual intimacy, it has caused a change in how she thinks and feels about sex - even if you have not yet seen it.  But why try to see it? Unless there are other problems, increasing the relational intimacy in your marriage will certainly have a positive affect your bride's sexuality.  Please trust me when I tell you that working on the non-sexual parts of your marriage will do far more for your sex life than a new position, a new sex act, or getting her to read a book about sex.

Finally, just as her loss of sexual interest lagged behind the loss of relational intimacy, her recovery of sexual interest will lag behind the restoration of that lost intimacy.  Give it time - keep working on building intimacy, and the sex will follow.