Sex has been an issue for us for a long time. Our DS is 18 months and isn’t a good sleeper, which means we aren’t often intimate. To be fair to DH, we can have a few months where we don’t have sex, but go through periods where we manage once a week.
I had a traumatic forceps birth and as a result have two prolapses, and now found intercourse quite uncomfortable, I’m still BF too and find I don’t have much of a sex drive, but I still try to make the effort when I feel able to.
Something I’ve struggled with is that my DH wants a lot of attention from me and is almost quite needy since having DS. And I’m almost fearful of too much touching or kissing as he then wants more and I’m not willing or able to give it.
We spoke the other day and I asked him if we could set aside one evening a week for intimacy/sex, and then put it off the table the rest of the week, so that I feel less pressure and more able to be affectionate towards him without worrying about him wanting more. He said yes fine, however he’s clearly not understood as today during DS’s nap he’s asking me to ‘help him out’ so to speak. He works from home and so we are in the house together a lot, and for me it feels like I never get a break from it. I feel like he feels he can ask for it at the drop of a hat whenever he pleases and it’s too much.
In addition to this, he knows I’m having a bad time with DS at the moment. He’s extremely clingy to me, I regularly feel touched out and am up BF still several times in the night. I just feel like DH can’t understand me at all to think it’s ok to do things like this.
Another example is when DS was just a few months old. He was a poorly baby and we had to have a lot of tests and I was in hospital with him until he was 14 days old. At 3 months we got some test results back which showed an abnormality and more tests needed. We got the results on a Saturday and I couldn’t get much info from the doctor. On the Sunday I was still very upset and spent a lot of the day in tears. While I was crying downstairs, by DH was upstairs trying to get me to send dirty texts to him. He’s not a bad person, but I just cannot forget that incident and cannot understand how he got that so so wrong, and how he was even in the mood when we had had such horrible news.
AIBU here? Is he just a normal bloke? Is it me that’s the problem because of having a low sex drive and a toddler that doesn’t sleep well? Should I just be getting on with my ‘wifely’ duties? Or am I right to feel like he’s not respecting my boundaries and how I feel?