A question from the Waiting for Baby Bird community
A woman from our community recently reached out to me with a question that many quietly wrestle with but rarely feel safe enough to ask out loud:
“What am I supposed to do if my husband has lost all desire for sex? How are we supposed to try if he doesn’t even want any? He knows how badly I want a baby, but that doesn’t even help.”
It’s an honest question. A vulnerable one. And it deserves a gentle, thoughtful response—not silence, shame, or quick fixes.
Here’s what I want to speak into this, with care.
First, I want to gently say this in case it ever crosses your mind: a loss of desire like this is not automatically a reflection of your worth, your desirability, or your value as a wife, and it doesn’t mean your husband doesn’t love you.
When intimacy shifts or feels absent, it can leave a lot of unanswered questions. Before trying to fix anything, it’s important to pause and bring this to the Lord intentionally. If you haven’t already, I would encourage you to make this a daily prayer point—not something you pray about once and move on from, but something you consistently place before God.
God is not uncomfortable with this topic. He created sex and intimacy within marriage, and because He created it, He cares about it deeply. He cares about the connection between husband and wife, the unity of marriage, and the weight infertility places on both hearts. Bringing this to Him daily helps keep your heart anchored in truth rather than pressure.
As you pray day after day, invite the Holy Spirit into more than just the desire for a baby. Pray daily for intimacy, desire, peace, communication, and understanding on both sides. Ask Him to gently reveal anything sitting beneath the surface—stress, grief, exhaustion, or pressure—and to bring healing where words may be hard to find.
It’s also important to name something many couples experience but rarely talk about: timed intercourse and prolonged years of infertility can absolutely impact desire. When intimacy becomes scheduled, monitored, and outcome-focused for long periods of time, it can stop feeling connecting and start feeling heavy. Over time, desire can quietly shut down as a form of protection after repeated disappointment. And sex, intimacy, can become business—transactional, not pleasure.
One gentle step forward can be creating space for connection without expectation. Sometimes that means intentionally removing “trying” from the moment for a season and focusing instead on emotional closeness, safety, and rebuilding intimacy as something shared—not measured. That isn’t giving up; it’s caring for the marriage.
Alongside daily prayer, fasting can be a powerful companion. Fasting quiets the noise and brings clarity. The power of the Holy Spirit can do more in a moment than any supplement or pill ever could. And while there are times when medical or therapeutic support—including testing or counseling—is wise and needed, prayer and fasting help bring clarity about timing and next steps, not from urgency, but from trust
Infertility places a heavy emotional and spiritual weight on intimacy. Prayer and fasting don’t remove that weight overnight, but daily prayer keeps placing the burden back where it belongs—into God’s hands.
This isn’t just about conceiving a child. It’s about protecting the heart of your marriage along the way. Be gentle with yourself. Be gentle with your spouse. And keep bringing this before the Lord day after day, trusting that He sees, He cares, and He is at work—even when progress feels slow.
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Many of the questions shared here come from women quietly navigating infertility, faith, and difficult decisions.
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