My [30m] wife [28f] is going off birth control temporarily, and it scares me for a weirdly different reason than most would think

Sorry, I was instructed to repost this, and I can't access the previous comments.

Sex has often been a point of contention. Cliche enough: mismatched libidos, I want it more, she could take or leave it, initiation left solely to me and thus only I deal with rejection, feeling unwanted, blah blah blah. We've gone to therapy over it, worked through it, and I've mostly learned to live with it. Another cliche: the rest of our relationship is great because I've worked on just keeping this all to myself, personal therapy has helped (very little). I'm not at peace with it, and I likely won't ever be, but I know how to better distract myself. It's not like we have NO sex, it's just very, very infrequent.

She acknowledges that her lack of interest in sex or touch is solely on her birth control, but has also made it clear she's not taking birth control for sex, but to stop periods and some other skin-related things suggested by her doctor. I've offered other solutions (condoms, vasectomy, implant), but she's adamant about staying on the pill, again, not for the sexual benefits.

Recently however, due to the you-know-what, her particular pill has been in short supply, and her doctor switched her to a similar one. The similar one, however, has an unwanted side effect of bloating and weight gain, so she's put on a (barely noticeable) few pounds. She's been trying every day the last month to get into the doctor and switch medications, and eventually, I brought up the alternatives again: I can start wearing condoms (not ideal but better than nothing), I could pay for an implant (painful and uncomfortable from what I've heard but might be a good non-hormonal option), and a vasectomy (we want kids but I can't see it happening anymore so a worthwhile option in my books).

She reiterated again that birth control wasn't for sex, but she let me know she was going to stop her current birth control when it ran out until she could get a non-hormonal one (she's on a wait list to get into the doctor right now but might be a while since it's deemed 'non emergency' with the you-know-what).

I should've been happy, because when she hasn't been on birth control, her libido was as high (if not higher) than mine was. But I'm not happy at all, because this exact situation happened about 5 years ago. Our sex life was in a bad place (pre-therapy). We weren't really having much sex, and she started birth control, and what little sex we had gone out the window. She stopped taking it to switch to a new birth control, and her sex drive shot up. We had sex multiple times a day, she made me feel wanted, she surprised me, she did things I never thought we'd do. And then she took her now birth control and that was it.

If I can be brutally honest, the constant back-and-forth of fighting for some semblance of feeling wanted and desired has worn on me so deep that my sex drive is next to nothing now (and I'm only 30). Porn is out of the question, and seeing movies, tv shows, YT vids / IG vids / Tiktoks, etc. - even posts here - where women are actually into their partner and talk about how much they want them just makes me sad. The idea of having to go through a proverbial trial-period of normalcy only to have it ripped out from under me again makes me sick to my stomach. I'd honestly rather cut my own dick off than go through that again.

I know it probably just sounds like generic "oh boo hoo a man isn't getting laid", and maybe it is, but to be touched, wanted, and desired one minute and literally the next have it disappeared hurt terribly. I demanded couple's therapy over it, but that didn't help much. Or rather, she made effort for a couple weeks before admitting she didn't feel comfortable with it since she didn't really want to have sex.

I don't really see the benefit in bringing it up for discussion again. It's entirely her decision what she does with her body, and I know a discussion will circle back to nothing like it usually does. Beyond just being like "hey don't touch me when you're off your birth control", or just caving in and having sex anyway, I don't really know what to do. I'm on a waiting list for therapy as it is so I can't just see a therapist, and any friends I've talked to about this just say to suck it up and be grateful. I don't think I can handle this again. How should I approach this because of the exact same thing happening in the past?

tl;dr: Wife's libido likely to temporarily come back as she switches birth control. How should I approach this because of a similar past issue?

Submitted April 28, 2021 at 05:42AM by aurevoirlibido https://ift.tt/3nrn2QP