It’s very normal for a separated wife who is still committed to her marriage to look for any advantage that she can get to give herself a chance to get her husband back. It’s not unusual for the wife to look to sex to give her an edge. And you can’t really blame her for this.
I know first hand that when you fear losing your husband or your marriage, you’re often willing to take whatever advantage you can get, no matter how slight.
I heard from a wife who said: “my husband and I have been separated for about seven weeks. My greatest hope is that one day he will decide that it’s time to come home. His behavior is all over the place right now. Some days he is actually receptive to me and he flirts. Other days, he seems to want to have nothing whatsoever to do with me. We have go out together and sometimes things have gotten kind of steamy between us at the end of the night. I will try to make advances toward him and he will always push me away and say that we shouldn’t be having sex when we are separated. He says that this will just confuse things. I feel differently. I feel that if we are having sex, then that will bond us and we will have a better chance of getting back together. So I admit that I have been trying to seduce my husband because I feel like once we do have sex, then he will want to have it again and this will lead to reconciliation. But no matter what I wear, say, or do, he seems very determined to keep me away. How do I get him to have sex with me?”
I will answer this question in just a little while, but before I do, I have to be honest and say that although I completely understand this wife’s mind set, I don’t think that this strategy is the best one. Believe me when I say that I understand wanting to use whatever you can to lure him back. I have been there.
Why This Strategy Can Cause More Trouble Than It Is Worth: Having sex as a means to reconcile is really just a temporary band aid that often causes more problems than it solves. Here’s why. You’re not doing anything to address the issue that lead to the separation in the first place. Yes, you are creating a sense of intimacy and closeness when you have sex, but if the emotional intimacy is not behind it, then it is a facade. In the morning, you will look at one another, feel awkward, and wonder what happens now when you have not laid any new framework or made any improvements. Now you have this issue between you in addition to the others that are already piling up.
Why It’s So Much Better To Reconcile Emotionally Before You Pick Up Your Physical Relationship: When the thing that you fear losing it right in front of you, it’s natural to want to lay claim on it. And you likely feel that having sex with your husband will help you to, at least in a sense, reclaim him. But you already know that he has doubts about this. So you also must know that his heart may not be truly in it even if you are successful and you get him to have sex with you. Sure, he may be caught up in the moment, but he may have serious regrets the next day and, because of the awkwardness or the fact that he might assume that you’re going to think that the sex means you’re getting back together, he may start to just avoid you altogether. And suddenly you have problems larger than just getting physical with him.
The Most Efficient Way To Start Having Sex Again: I know that this is going to sound cliché. But honestly, the best way to get him to want to have sex with you (and in the right way) is to start to heal the emotional distance between you. Build a new foundation. Seriously address your problems. Build on the progress that you are making gradually so that it actually lasts. And only when you have made progress that you both know the time is right should you have sex. Because at that time, you will both be willing participants who are doing this because you know the it is an extension of your healthy relationship. You want for your husband to willingly want to have sex with you, not just because he is caught up in the moment but because having sex is an extension of the love and respect that is part of your now healthy and healed marriage.
I know that this is probably not what you want to hear. But I am saying it because I really want for you to have the best chance of healing your marriage for good, and not only for a little while. I want for you to reconcile because you identified and fixed your problems and not just because you were able to act on physical impulses that have nothing to do with improving your marriage.