lost

I’m so happy you’re here, and welcome! I’m going to answer your question, but next time, please post in the Q&A forum! 🙂

My first piece of advice to you is to cut yourself a break. Losing your job is [i]a big blow[/i] — especially to a man. 🙁 Financial stress can affect your emotional, sexual and physical health and relationships. So, understand that if you weren’t having these issues and feeling lost, you wouldn’t be normal right now.

The fact that you’re having trouble communicating these stresses with your girlfriend is also normal for men. So, again, [i]cut yourself some slack.[/i]

Understand that your girlfriend is probably stressed and anxious that you’ve lost your job, and not just because of the financial worries. She’s also picking up on your anxiety and it’s alike a common cold that people who are close to each other catch and reinfect each other with. I can imagine the emotional tenor in your house isn’t very upbeat. Understandable. 😐

So here’s what I advise. Allow yourself to be in “a relationship that is not developing” as you put it — for now. Once you get back in the work force, you’re going to feel a lot better about yourself, and the whole world. But for now, put your focus on your own health and career. Eat well, sleep well, and exercise. The exercise will help you get rid of some of the negative results stress induces on the body. If you can manage it, have sex with your girlfriend, even if you don’t feel like you want to. It’s going to be good for your well being, so just do it.

A schedule will be your friend right now. Even if you don’t feel like eating breakfast, eat it. If you don’t want to shower and go to the gym, do it. You need to break the cycle of depression before it gets it’s clutches in you. Staying active and consistent with what you can will combat that. Sometimes people have to power on automatic pilot when there is a crises in the family, and losing your job is that crisis. So just walk through it — but get to the other side.

Once you’re working again, I guarantee, you’re going to feel better about your girlfriend and yourself. You’re not lost, you just took a hit to your person with your job loss. Take care of that business, and you won’t feel lost.

I hope that helps. Please let me know how things go. 🙂

You haven’t told me how old your child is, so when you write that you haven’t had sex since the birth of your child, I don’t know if it’s 6 weeks or 6 years.

In general, your loss of a sex life with your girlfriend is something that needs attention now. While you’re addressing your job loss and taking care of business in the work place. The longer this lack of sex lingers, the harder it is to get back on track, but it’s important that you do get back on track.

Having children can take sexual impulses away from new mothers. It’s probably something Darwinian to protect the species, but you have to protect your relationship! So, let’s ask Darwin to take a back seat at this point. 🙂 The only reason I want to bring this up is so that you understand what your girlfriend may be going through. Physically, her hormones are probably out of whack from the delivery. She may be depressed, as in post partum depression, and that can lead to low sex drive. If she’s nursing the baby, she may also feel a lack of sexual interest because, again, her hormones are working to make her a baby nurturing machine. So if your wife is in any of these stages, let me know.

But if that’s not the case, and the child is six months old or more, I think you’re just in a rut that you need to get out of. You have to start to romance your wife. Sexual impulses in women are different than in men. They often start in women’s heads, and then work their way down the body! 😉 So get a babysitter (I know money is tight with your job loss, but a family member or a neighbor would be willing to gift you a few hours, I’m sure.) and take your wife out of the house, to a nice dinner or a picnic and start building the bridge to liking each other again, as man and woman, not just mother and father.

Tell her that you miss her, sexually, and you think she is still just as hot as the day you met — in fact hotter, because she’s given you a child. Tell her that you desire her, and that you’d really like to get back to having a relationship in the bedroom again.

Don’t push too much because if she’s not feeling sexual, and she’s feeling uncomfortable about her body changes, which are natural, she may get defensive. But definitely make the loss of your sex life a relationship issue, not just your personal issue.

Don’t expect a switch to flip and your sex life to get hot like a match was lit, but do start a campaign, where you tell her how great she looks, give her a wolf whistle and a leer more often than not. Start to seduce her without the bedroom being the goal, each time.

In other words, don’t give up. It’s great that you have sexual feelings about her. Now act on them, but making them known, and making her realize that you’re not going to give up on what is one of the most vital parts of any adult relationship — a sex life. 🙂