My wife and I are newlyweds of eight months and our sex life has been non-existent for nearly eight months. It all started when she confessed to me that it sometimes hurts when we have sex and that she doesn't really enjoy having sex in general. We only really do it missionary due to the fact I have a smaller-than-average penis, caused by a defect at birth, and experimenting with other positions was unsuccessful. Now when we have sex I'm so worried about hurting her it's difficult for me to maintain and sometimes even obtain an erection. It doesn't help that my wife isn't really willing to help me in the foreplay department. When I ask for help it's like asking a teenager to do her chores—even after I've spent 20-30 minutes getting her revved up, as that's the only part she says she enjoys. It's causing undue stress in our otherwise great marriage, we connect great on every other level. My wife now thinks I'm not attracted to her anymore and that I'm cheating on her which is not the case!

Disappointed Husband

I'm kindasorta tempted to blow up at your wife, DH.

Because I did the math. You've been married eight months and your sex life has been "non-existent for nearly eight months." Eight months subtracted from eight months is zero months. So your wife waited until the day after the wedding to inform you that 1. she finds vaginal intercourse painful and 2. she doesn't much enjoy having sex generally. (Followup question for the wife: Would she feel the same way about sex if vaginal intercourse wasn't painful? Because there are people out there who can help her with that problem. She also has a husband who's willing to enjoy other forms of sex play.)

Those are both things your wife should've disclosed to you before the wedding, not after—but, hey, maybe your wife feared rejection, as so many people do, and put on a brave face and got through as much vaginal intercourse as she could stand before lowering the boom/gloom during your honeymoon. And maybe she never intended to lower the boom/gloom at all; maybe she thought she could pretend to enjoy sex—and pretend to enjoy fucking you—for decades. That's also not uncommon; lots of people marry people they're not attracted to, or accept monogamous commitments from people they don't wanna fuck/don't enjoy fucking, hoping to muddle through... only to discover they can't take it and they can't fake it.

But something about the timing of your wife's announcement—something about the math—has me doubting the "she went in hoping she could do this" theory. Announcing that she hates sex and that it's painful shortly after the wedding, and being willing to accept foreplay-style attentions from you without demonstrating any desire to reciprocate, and then blaming you the miserable state of your sex life... well, all of that has me wondering whether your wife married you under false pretenses and isn't now gaslighting you, DH, i.e. trying to convince you that you're the problem when she knows the problem is hers.

If she wants to have a sex life that's nothing but foreplay-style revving up (revving up to full release)—and there's nothing wrong with that, sex is more than PIV intercourse, plenty of people enjoy satisfying sex lives comprised of nothing but activities others consign to foreplay—she needs to say so. And if she's not willing to reciprocate because she's lazy or selfish or not into you, she needs to say so. And if things continue on as they are now indefinitely, DH, if nothing changes, then she said so. And if that's what she's saying... you may want to be going.