Family Beef is our family and relationship advice column at HuffPost Family. Have a beef you want us to weigh in on? Submit it here.

Dear Family Beef,

My wife (43) and I (44) have been together for 11 years, married for three. We’ve always had a pretty consistent sex life, with a few slower or less active periods over the years: when our kids (6 and 9) were always sleeping in our bed, when my mother got sick, when my wife had a fracture. But they always felt like understandable circumstances where sex wasn’t the priority. I had my hand; it was fine. Outside that, we’ve stuck with once a week or more pretty consistently.

In this past year, we’ve had sex maybe four or five times. I am the one to initiate most of the time, and it feels like it wouldn’t happen if I didn’t. She says she’s tired or “isn’t feeling it” and asks for a rain check most of the time. I love my wife so much, and she’s my dream woman in every way and the best mother to our kids, but lately I feel like I’m annoying her by trying to show her how attracted I am to her.

I did some Googling and ended up finding a Reddit dedicated to “dead bedrooms,” and it made me feel sick with how familiar it all sounded. Reading more, I decided to have a conversation with her and tried to emphasise how important our relationship is without sex but that our sex life is also important to me and how I want to figure out how to get us back on track.

She said she didn’t think it was that big of a deal or that we were even off track, said the summer was busy and that small dry spells happen. She wasn’t unkind and told me that we’d find some time when the kids were at a sleepover. The weekend and sleepover came, and she said she was really tired and just wanted........

© HuffPost