After twenty years of marriage, people tend to assume they know what love looks like. Comfort. Familiarity. Quiet evenings and shared routines that no longer need much explanation.

In many ways, they’re right. My husband and I have built a life that feels steady. We talk easily. We enjoy driving places together and filling the time with conversation. We can sit in the same room without needing constant attention from each other. There’s a deep friendship in that kind of marriage, and in many ways, it’s good. Very good.

But that isn’t the whole picture.

Last week made that quite clear. Every day that week, I wanted to have sex with my husband. Not in a vague, romantic sense. I mean I wanted sex. I thought about it. I went to bed expecting there was a fair chance it would happen.

Some nights I curled up next to him, waiting to see if he would turn toward me. Other nights I put my hand on his leg so it was obvious where I stood. There was nothing particularly subtle about it.

And every night, there was a reason it didn’t happen. He didn’t feel well. He was sore from working out. He was exhausted. It was late. All of those things were true. None of them were unreasonable.

And yet I still wanted sex.

Not because anything was wrong between us. Not because I felt unloved. I wasn’t lying there wondering if he cared about me. I knew he did.

But being loved and being wanted sexually are not the same thing, and I was very aware of that difference by the end of the week.

I do initiate sometimes. But if I’m honest, I prefer when he does. There’s something about being chosen in that moment that feels different. Especially now, when I am more aware of my body than I used to be. I am not the size I once was, and while I don’t spend much time dwelling on that, it sits there quietly in the background.

When he initiates, it tells me he still finds me sexy.

Not in a general, long-married way. Not in the “of course I love you” sense. It tells me he looks at me and wants sex with me. That matters more than I tend to admit.

Years ago, when we attended marriage retreats, the message for wives was always the same. Your husband has needs. Physical needs. Be attentive to them. The assumption was that men want sex more, and women respond to that.

That has never quite fit my marriage.

No one ever talks about the wife who wants sex more. The one lying there awake, fully aware of it, waiting to see if he will turn toward her. It’s a slightly awkward place to sit, if I’m honest. Not painful. Not dramatic. Just… there.

In a long marriage, desire doesn’t line up neatly. It shifts with energy, stress, health, and timing. Some nights it matches. Some nights it doesn’t.

Nothing is broken. Nothing is wrong. But the difference is still there.

You can have a good marriage—a steady one, a happy one—and still lie next to your husband wanting sex when he doesn’t.

That doesn’t simply disappear because everything else in the marriage works.

— Kate