A guy wants sex. His wife doesn’t.

He asks himself, “What’s the point of being married if I can’t have sex with my own wife? Will it be like this forever?”

He feels trapped.

Have you ever felt trapped like this in a sexless relationship?

I have. I even went to a sex addiction therapist at one point in my marriage.

Maybe I’m a sex addict, I thought. I didn’t understand why my sexual desire was so much greater than my wife’s. I wanted to get it checked out.

“No,” he said after 30 minutes. “You’re just a normal guy with healthy sexual impulses.”

Whew! I thought, relieved. But when I looked at the problem (of my sexless marriage) again, I thought, Damn, now what do I do?

What can you do when your sex life flatlines?

Well, in my case, I tried to talk more with my wife. I tried to connect more with her.

This seemed like a reasonable strategy, considering I typically heard her say to me, “I need to be connected emotionally with you before I can have sex with you.”

And to her, that meant talking. Lots of it.

But the problem was that often at night, when we went to bed, I had little mental energy to talk. I just wanted to love her. I just wanted touch and intimacy, at the very least, and sex, at the very best.

But she wasn’t budging.

What’s a guy to do when his partner won’t budge?

Step one. Stop giving all your power away to her.

Do not spin off your partner. Trying to please her. Trying to make her happy. Thinking if she’ll just trust me enough, she’ll let me back in — as in back into her vagina.

This is a losing approach. And it will keep you stuck. I know. I’ve seen many guys fail this way and perpetuate the feeling of being trapped.

Instead, do this. Focus on yourself. Not her. Get clear on the impact of the sexless relationship on you.

How’s it impact your sense of your manhood? Your sense of your self-esteem?

I know that’s hard stuff to look at. But the real trap is the powerlessness you feel in not being able to change things in your relationship.

In the video below, I speak to this trap of feeling powerless, how to get out of it, and how to go directly after what you want. Check it out.

But if you’re not willing to try a new approach, it’s better to not watch this. It’ll only annoy you.

What if the trap wasn’t really what you thought it was? 

Well, you’d be on your way to getting free, instead of what I see a lot of men do.

And that is tightening the trap, digging in their feet and saying, she’s the problem, she won’t have sex with me.

And yet, when I talk with these men and they’re open to looking at themselves, they see quickly that this approach is a way of hiding out from themselves. A way of staying stuck, instead of acting to make change in their relationship.

And that is the major difference between guys that I work with who make change in their relationships and the guys who don’t. The willingness to actually do something about it — not just dabble in information.

If you’re that rare guy ready to get out of the trap of a sexless relationship, join a group of like-minded men, going after what they want in relationship.

Join our next “Men’s Relationship Tools” call on Tuesdays at 9am mtn time. It’s a great place to get custom advice on your personal relationship situation.

And if things are really tense now with your partner, shoot me a quick email.

Life is short. Free yourself from the trap of a sexless relationship now. You deserve that.