Are we doomed?

[Changing2011]

Hi Im sorry but this is going to be long.

I have been with DP for seven years and we have 1 young child. Ours was not an instant love, but things happened quickly in the beginning (moving in, baby etc). Since then things have stalled considerably, but my love for him has grown immensely (possibly due to all we have been through together). I really love him now, but I cant say I loved him in the beginning. He seems to love me more then, and less now.

When we met we had both recently finished LTR and to be fair, I think DP was more bothered than me about finding someone new. He seemed keen to get serious very quickly. I would have liked more of a courtship. But he seemed to hate being single/alone. He as very sweet but not big on the passion side. Sex has always been a little stilted, but we have grown into knowing one another and now, when we have sex we both love it. But I have always had a higher sex drive than him. He likes it a lot abut one week in the month (I swear men have monthly moods as well!) and not at all other times. I prefer more regular sex, but get annoyed when he wants it a lot all at once. He has said in the past it really turns him off if I ask for sex/making love so i dont do that now. It seems the female making any approach doesnt do anything for him and it makes me feel cheap so if he doesnt approach me, we dont do it.

What does annoy me is that he feels the need to grope me in sexual places as a form of affection (he never kisses and cuddles me) and he does this in a jokey way, but I think its a bit cheeky when we are a) not having much sex and b) he doesnt show me more romantic affection which I would dearly love. I do get a bit tetchy with the boob/bum grabbing I must say.

So, the sex is one issue. The main problem is that he uses sex/affection to punish me. I am a busy career mum and run a tight ship at home. He also works full time, but I do expect some help around the house every now and again. Admittedly because I find it quicker and more painless to do things myself, I tend to simmer resentfully and then blow up every so often about his lack of thought around the home (leaving dirty clothes on floor, not knowing the location of the dishwasher, coats in the bedroom, etc etc just general annoying stuff). When I do challenge him or make any sort of confrontation, he withholds affection and sex for up to a month. Basically until he gets blue balls then he jumps on me for about a week. I think this is a cruel way of dealing with everyday family arguments.

Another ploy he uses to put me down is to call me names in front of his family, he is quite the snob and likes to sneer at people he considers to be lower class than him, so calling me a chav or pikey is his favourite put down. Although my family are quite well off and I am very well educated. This makes me seethe and I am not averse to going ballistic when he does this. I am no wallflower, dont get me wrong but the constant sniping is making me feel looked down on.

I had an affair about three years ago (only slept together once) but it was a mutual friend and needless to say when he found out he was very hurt, but I realised I really did love him and he forgave me. Or so I thought. I think his behaviour detailed above is more of the same punishing style he has developed and my affair gave him fuel for his fire. But the reasons I looked for affection from another man are also detailed above! Our whole relationship I have felt a little lonely and like him having sex/giving me love is really a chore for him. I feel he is putting up with me to keep our family together (he is very good with our child, and child adores him). His parents have had a very long marriage etc.

The bottom line is I love this man to the bottom of my soul. I know I have wronged him and nearly lost him in the past but I know the relationship I desire is in there somewhere! But I need to regain his respect before he can truly love me I feel..... any advice or alternative perspectives? Please, no man-hating abuse style advice please, I am well aware what constitutes an abusive relationship and this is not one of those.

I am the violent/dominant one in our relationshop IMO. Its always me who blows up, me who gets fed up and stomps off, me who cries and tries to get to the bottom of things. He says lifes too short to sit there going over and over the finer points of our unhappiness. He even said that he has had much better relationships than this one :(

I cant compare my previous relationships to him, I feel like my life only started properly when we had DD and settled down. I had a very turbulent life before then and I suppose I always felt like he saved me and geve me the chance to start again. Prbably this is why Im clinging on to him subsciously.

I don't think you should even be considering marrying him. Try to take a step back and see it from an objective point of view - he calls you hurtful names and humiliates you, doesn't show any love or affection except for groping you/grabbing your boob (which doesn't sound much like affection to me), is 'turned off' by you wanting to be intimate with him but 'jumps on you' when he feels like it, he is happy to treat you as a domestic servant doing all the housework even though you both work full time...and you think you love him and he's 'very sweet'?

You don't need to earn his respect, you're his partner and the mother of his child, which means you already deserve to be treated with a great deal more respect than you are at the moment.

I don't mean to sound patronising as I'm not that much older than you :) But you've been in this relationship since you were 20, so it's probably the first proper adult long-term relationship you've had. So maybe you think this is normal? It's not. No it probably isn't very rare, and of course there are worse abusive relationships out there as you know. But plenty of good ones as well where people treat each other with love and affection and respect - yes every couple have their disagreements and ups and downs, but there shouldn't be a general dynamic of one person humiliating and 'punishing' the other, and the other one desperate to gain their respect. That's not a healthy relationship at all. I understand the feeling of not being able to imagine yourself with anyone else, no other man will compare etc, have been there myself. But I didn't know what I was missing.

but he doesn't sound like he feels the same way and that is not something you can change in him. That's entirely up to him.

It's not supposed to be like this, you do know that don't you?

He saved you did he? Only now to call you a chav and a pikey?

Please FGS, read this OP and thread like someone else wrote it, and then ask yourself what would you tell the person writing it.

Trust us, We do know what we are talking about here, you have some of the Big Guns of Relationships telling you that this is not right.

Please listen. Please be brave and demand more for yourself. Please tell him it's over.

A man who truly loves you doesn't call you names. Other than love, sweetheart, darling.

A man who truly loves you never puts you down but stands up for you.

A man who truly loves you doesn't use his dick to control you.

Need me to go on?

Do you think you feel guilty for your affair and are conditioned to try and make it up to your partner now? I can't see why else you'd be putting up with this toxic behaviour, it's as if he's constantly punishing you.

You can't live like this, don't ignore the red flags (getting serious very quickly, name calling, stonewalling, using sex as a weapon etc etc) and definitely don't marry him unless you also want a divorce.

I dont know what to do! Feel like if I walk away I could be letting myself and DD down. Had a chat with my brother this aft and he reckons my bloke is a good man and I could do a lot worse.

I do love him and I think he loves me, obviously the love is not getting through at the moment.

When I said he saved me, I meant we saved each other a little bit as we were both upset at the end of our first loves (mine 4 years and his three years, we were both engaged to our previous partners).

You will be letting yourself and your dd down if you stayed in an abusive relationship.

Your brother doesn't see what you have to put up with and doesn't have to live with him.

I dont see how using sex in a way to get back at me for nagging is abuse? Hitting, kicking, punching, hair grabbing, ritual humiliation is abuse. But he doesnt do any of those things. He is just selective about when we have sex and it turns him off when I ask him for it.

Doesnt make him an abuser surely? When we do make love he does consider my feelings etc. He would never do anything I felt uncomfortable with etc. The groping thing I think is a boy-ish jokey way of showing affection but I do wish he would grow out of it.

if you don't mind me asking...why did his first engagment break off?

I don't know if this is abuse or not either....but I do think it needs sorting before you marry.

walking away now is a lot easier than divorce (trust me ) so you need to know you have it right...now.

Well of course you could do a lot worse, but is that the standard you should have in your relationship? I wish your brother had observed that you could do a lot better, which of course you can.

You also seem to have very narrow definitions of abusive behaviour. You don't think that calling you a "pikey" and a "chav" and trying to humiliate you in front of his family, plus denying you the right to ask for sex, are abusive behaviours? You don't see the sexism that runs like a thread throughout this?

Like I said upthread, I don't think your behaviour in this relationship has been acceptable either and I don't see him as the villain and you as the saint. Most relationships are far more complex than that.

However, I do see your behaviour as capable of change, faster. I suspect his are far more embedded and would take a lot of work and therapy to alter.

You are making excuses for his behaviour.

Migrating Coconuts - she dumped him for someone else. She had been cheating for a while with multiple partners.

My prev relationship was the same.

WhenwillIfeelnormal - how do you think I can change to improve my behaviour? I know the affair was unacceptable but I dont think asking him to help with housework is a bad thing.

My brother said today that I do nag him and I have a very sharp tongue which he thinks is putting him off me (from a man's POV)

Goodness me, you are really missing my point!

I don't think he should "help" with the housework. I think he should just do it. "Nagging" is an entirely sexist phrase. Asking someone to pull their weight is not nagging.

I don't think you should stay with this man full stop, so the above is a redundant point.
In my posts, I was pointing out that your own behaviour in this relationship needs to become more assertive and not passive-aggressive and aggressive like it appears to be. But frankly it wouldn't matter if you became the most assertive person in the world in this relationship, it would still be wrong, because of his behaviour and core attitudes to women.

However, if you practise becoming more assertive in relationships, it will help you with your next one.

Oh dear. I came here looking for advice on how to save my relationship and all everyone is telling me is to get rid. This is not what I want.

You asked Are We Doomed?

Not, Can I/We save this? How to fall back in love.

We have read what you have written. You yourself say you don't fancy him any more, he calls you names he knows you can't stand.

Does FA to help you around the house, despite you both working full time.

You are 27, you have no decent experience with decent men.

We all think you could do better, this relationship is eating away at you.

Op, my last advise was to talk through this and get it sorted before you get married. You cannot take the next commitment step until you are sure you will both stay the distance....at present, there are signs this might not happen. And previous relationships seemed to have left baggage for both of you.

Talk first, resolve issues, then marry....

Several posters have pointed out that it's unlikely that dp truly loves you. I don't think you love him either - you wouldn't have written about him the way you do in your OP. It's totally full of criticism. Listen, and you will hear your own anger.

changing, you need to read this thread.

Well, I DO love him Almistgrownup and you can be angry with someone you love. I dont need telling how I feel thanks.

Don't get defensive.

It's utterly no skin off our nose if you are with Prince William or the Price of Darkness..

BUT

YOU ASKED US for our opinion.

You told us stuff that is beyond unreasonable for a man that supposedly loves you to do to you.

His treatment of you is disgusting. Please don't sit there now and defend him.

I know it's hard to read when the replies are against your P/H. Even with the arse of a man I have, when I have written about him and all my fellow MNers have given their honest opinions and expressedx genuine fears, based on their experiences, or those they have learned from contributing here for years.

I know it's hard to read, even when you are NOT in love with the H/P, but many of us here are a lot older and have seen a lot more than you have in life.

We don't take crap and it offends us and upsets us when we see a young lady with her entire life ahead of her be subjected to unacceptable behaviour from anyone. You could do so much better. You really could.

You are not a chav, nor are you a pikey.

You are a warm, caring, hard working, funny and attractive young woman, with so much to offer. He is trying to belittle you to gain control. It is a very slim end of a very long wedge.

Meant to say, and I mean this with the best intentions in the world. I don't think you are in love with him.

I think you are in love with the idea of being in love with him.

Decent men don't treat women the way he is treating you. They just don't.

LMHF thanks for your posts. It is very hard to read negative stuff about DP because I do really love him, and Im so used to people telling me what a good guy he is!

An update on proceesings over the weekend - after Friday night's upsets, we spent most of Saturday apart, he was working and I was looking after DD, then in the afternoon, he came and took over with DD and I went off to help a family member out with a house-move. We met back at the house for tea, he was friendly enough, then my friend texted me to go out for a drink. I asked him (couldnt really be arsed to go if Im truthful) and he tried to act all not-bothered, but really he didnt want me to go! He suggested a nice bottle of wine and a film (he wouldnt of bothered if I wasnt going out), he would of usually sat on playstation or watching cartoons! Anyway I was tired after cooking tea and baking with DD so I relented and didnt go out. We then had quite a nice evening which ended in sex four times (you see what I mean about overkill, then nothing for weeks). I did actually mention it to him the next morning (after even more sex) and he just commented "well you should be nice to me more often".

Had a lovely day yesterday at family's house for lunch and went home a little later than planned (me and MIL were having wine and a good gossip), so he was all huffy about DD being in the bath late and having to rush around to get her stuff ready for school at 7 o clock at night (all her uniform was clean and dinner money ready so I dont know what the moaning was for!). He was huffy in general but did apologise afterwards. Then the sexual incident that quite upset me looking back on it.... he asked me for a BJ and asked me to sort of turn facing his feet so he could look at me while I was dong it (sort of 69 position) - he didnt return the favour. Just enjoyed what I was doing and then it progressed into sex as normal. Its the elective non-participation in our sex life that is really upsetting me. I am performing for him. I asked him after the sex if we could have sex facing each other some time (a sort of jokey throwaway comment - I do try hard not to criticise as I know it ruins the mood) and he just said "why would we want to do that". So I said "because we love each other?" and he just muttered something and we went up to bed. I am starting to realise his behaviour is not only controlling but rather petulant and I wish I could be stronger and return the games he is throwing to me.

How do you normally have sexual intercourse then, OP? This is perhaps more significant than you have realised and would be very illuminating.

Well he has got a thing about being face to face, he would rather do it from behind. We do it normally sometimes though. It upsets me a little because I do like to kiss and cuddle. I dont want to feel "faceless". We do have "normal" face to face sex sometimes.