My husband is saying he wants anal sex, but I don't want to. He has never tried it and thinks he shouldn't have to rule it out for the rest of his life and that I should at least "do the research" before I say no so definitely, that a quarter of people do it regularly and that it is a hill he's willing to die on.
The context is we've had marriage difficulties and joint therapy, with one of the main issues being our differing sex drives - he wants more frequent and more adventurous sex, and it's changed since the birth of our child 4 years ago now. I've tried numerous things to increase my drive to meet him in the middle more, like starting HRT (I'm 45), doing Couch to 5k and upping my exercise, and making an effort to schedule nights in the bedroom etc. But it's very "stop start" - every time we make some progress for a few days I feel like we take two steps backwards again. I had horrible pain during sex after I'd had my child and I think it really spooked me and things never went back to how they used to be (on top of parenting, and all the other factors meaning I'm always tired by 10pm which I never used to be).
If he doesn't have sex for a few days he gets very anxious. In general it really affects his happiness, whilst I need more of the intellectual connection. He is younger than me too.
Our lives have changed so much since Covid and becoming parents so there's a lot more contextual factors I could talk about.
But just on the anal sex thing, what are people's views and experiences on this?