How long would you put up with dh sex and intimacy problems?

[gemitygem]

Am just wondering, obvioulsy not something I can discuss with many people so a post on here is just what I need!

Dh has had a erection problem since we have been together for 7 years. I have put up with the problem and taken it on as my own too. We have had 4 children remarkably together in the 7 years, the last two very difficult to conceive due to the problem.

We have only had sex probably around 20 times in the 7 years, but have had lots of foreplay and been intimate ect. I have said enough is enough now and we are going to see a sex therapist. This has been difficult for me as I am suffering with blaming myself for the problem, but I have recently felt much better as told dh if it is not better this time next year I want to split up.

The sex therapist gives us tasks and we had our first task given last week. Dh wanted to wait till the weekend to do it, so ok far enough. Come Saturday no mention of the doing the task came from dh and I had to remind him that I was going to be leaving him if things did not change, so we did it and it went well.

Dh has promised me that he is going to take me away somewhere for a weekend to do our next task, things like this have been promised before and as dh gets scared of what might be involved in going away together he avoids talking about it and doesn't take me.

I am now preparing that I may have to face life as a single mum and somehow feel rather impowered by this that I will do it on my own.

How long would you put up with this sort of behavour from dh?

It's also true that some men marry a woman to do the housework for them. They'll make just enough vague effort to keep her happy to stop her from leaving, but they're not really interested in how she feels about anything.

Well, I look forward to all those who thought the OP did a Good Thing advising the next DW who wails that she can't stand her DH touching her in that way, it makes her feel so horrible that a 1 year ultimatum to fck him or fck off is just the ticket :o

Would certainly make some of those threads more entertaining though.....

I am truly sorry if I am missing something here, but I am surprised nobody has mentioned a possible physical reason for ED on this thread yet? I have read the whole thread in about 25 increments whilst making dinner/refereeing fights/changing nappies/doing bedtimes so my apologies if I have missed it.

Sexual dysfunction (largely psychological) and 'proper' ED (physical) are NOT the same thing - though they can overlap and coexist, of course.

OP, I am also surprised at how many unkind comments you have received. I think it is hard enough to have a handle on what really goes on in somebody else's relationship when you know them in RL and for a period of time. There is just No Way for anybody on a forum to tell you what to do or what to feel in your situation.

You mentioned previous therapy that was not successful and that set me off thinking whether your DH has been medically assessed: what age is he? Does he manage to achieve a satisfactory erection when he masturbates? Does he have morning erections? Does he have any medical problems ie diabetes (v common cause for ED in young(ish) men)? Has he been examined including his genitalia and his prostate? Has he had his testosterone, prolactin, thyroid levels checked to mention just a few? Has he been to an ED clinic; usually run by urologists?

I hope you'll come back. PM me if you have any other questions.

It sounds like you have a good relationship in other respects and it'd be a shame to not explore all options before you throw in the towel. Huge sympathies for your situation.

Math,

Why is it fine for a woman to threaten to take her children away from her partner (which is what the OP's ultimatum means) but not vice versa? I find that awfully hypocritical.

I have not been the victim of domestic violence dished out by (shock horror) A MAN nor even a woman. However, this thread has nothing to do with DV, and I have no idea why you are bringing it to the table in your big bold shouty letters.

I doubt that the OP's DH is actually happy with how things are. I suspect that deep down is very unhappy, but is too scared/immature/stubborn/in denial [delete as appropriate] to take the very frightening steps of opening up his inner psyche and trying to change a problem which, in his mind, he may wonder is ever fixable.

I hope that you find happiness and a way of moving forward (be that individually or together) OP. As I said above, I have been in a similar situation, and I left as I couldn't be in a relationship where I was the only one putting sustained and prolonged effort into fixing an issue that was ultimately my partner's but which was having an adverse effect on the quality of my life.

I think, if you haven't already, you should explain how you feel to the sex therapist and your DH, so that this can be explored in a proper supportive environment.

LarryGrylls: It is fine for a woman to threaten to take the DC away from an unsatisifactory partner because guess what, it's the woman who mainly looks after them. Threatening to go to court for custody is what abusive men do when they mean to upset the woman and prevent her leaving - when they in fact do little or no childcare and don't actually want the responsiblity anyway.

SGB,

All complete sexist supposition. As an average, it may be true but each case is unique. So, if in a relationship pre split, the man earns most of the money, is it fine for him to take most of it away with him, or does it somehow not work that way?

If a couple decide, as a partnership, that a man is going to do most of the work (and earn the money) and that a woman is going to do most of the childcare, that man has not signed away his rights to see his children (except for the odd access visit) in the event of a split.

Abusive men may well use applying for custody as a weapon. However, that does not mean that non-abusive men have no right to share the upbringing of their children. Where is the abuse in this thread?

"Unsatisfactory" partner....love it! As if a man is disposable if he no longer ticks all the boxes, rather like an old car that is getting a bit rickety.

Op I know EXACTLY what you are going through. My seven year marriage (also with 4 kids) came to an end nearly 3 weeks ago now. The premature ejactulation issue was a part of it, though not the whole reason.

My Ex wasnt always like that, to start of with things were great. About three years into the marriage he began to suffer problems. I put it down to the fact he drank a lot and smoked a lot of pot...At first I was very understanding. And I DID buy a vibrator. He made all the promises to stop this stop that and get help. Gradually the affection went from our marriage and we were left with 5 minute wham bam thank you ma'ams before he would say sorry, turn over and go to sleep. I did the whole ultimatums thing and he did give up pot...cut back on drinking....for a while. He did go and see a doctor then missed every follow up problem. He did try various methods to help...once or twice. But the simple fact of the matter is that he never really seemed to care that he wasnt able to make proper love to his wife. I ended up feeling used. My confidence took a nose dive. I started resenting him. It was all one big slippery slope. In the end he got violent with me, which is the main reason I called time on our marriage but you have my every sympathy. It is very very difficult maintaining a good, loving, satisfying relationship with premature ejaculation.

I wont give you any advice about how long you should stick at your marriage for. I will say that three weeks into being a single mum of 4 kids under six....I have never been happier. I did feel like I was living a lie for a long time and its like I have had a massive weight off my shoulders. My ex is happier now too. Good luck with whatever you decide to do.

oh and I am not sure a vibrator is the answer. I began to prefer it to doing anything with him! :D

I bring it to this thread in big, bold shouty letters because I don't know where you live and so it is impossible to get your attention by renting a billboard to tell you the truth about what you post.

The only abuse in this thread was introduced by you. You may not like to hear it, but what you posted was the threat that so many abused women live under -- choose to live at home as the husband dictates and see the children grow up or leave and have the children taken. I repeat, in bold what you posted were the words of vile men all over the country and all over the world.

And yes, in the age of a universal right to divorce, people can get divorced if they feel like it. Men and women alike. Rich and poor. And couples who can get along fairly amicably work out between themselves how best to deal with the upbringing of their children. Nobody here was talking about divorcing this passive aggressive man and removing him from the children's lives.

Your 'logic' wrt money is utter bollocks.

You are the person who suggested he would stand a chance of taking the children from his wife, and in my opinion you owe him an apology, because there is nothing in what the OP posted to suggest he was the kind of man who would even consider using the children to hurt her.

Good post, mathanxiety

LarryGrylls: It is fine for a woman to threaten to take the DC away from an unsatisifactory partner because guess what, it's the woman who mainly looks after them. Threatening to go to court for custody is what abusive men do when they mean to upset the woman and prevent her leaving - when they in fact do little or no childcare and don't actually want the responsiblity anyway.

Apart from the inherently sexist presumption that when an unsatisfactory situation or relationship develops, it must by definition be because the woman's partner is "unsatisfactory", not herself...

1. It is not always the woman who mainly looks after the children. And even when it is, if she does so say 60/40 or 70/30 percent of the time (as is pretty common in marriages where both partners work, but the woman maybe a little less than the man), that's a better argument for nearly even shared custody than full woman's custody with occasional vists.

1. How is working your arse off all day to earn the money to support children not "looking after them"?

Larry's approach makes far more sense. A couple make decisions together about how to share and organise their time and workloads based on arriving at an end result which, as a whole, is hopefully intended to be best for the children. Often these decisions involve a partner making sacrifices that don't even look like sacrifices. Eg one partner may not like their job, but the couple choose to have them stay as the full-time wage-earner because they earn far more money than the other.

You can't go into those situations after the fact and presume that everything the woman did counts as "looking after the children" and everything the man did didn't.

Oh, and flagging up the roaring double standard about how it's perfectly OK for a woman to take a man's kids away because she doesn't find him sexually "satisfactory", whereas any man threatening the same thing must be a devil-possessed manipulative abuser, is perfectly reasonable too.

Math,

You are too amusing to take seriously; sorry.

You know what, Math, a man wanting to share custody of HIS OWN children can be a caring father, not a vile abuser. It is not only about you (or some woman you choose to live vicariously through). It is about two people and 4 children.

Fathers can love their children too and want to spend time with them. It is not the 1950s, wake up and smell the coffee!

Confidence and Larry, you can both go and sing your sad song to the divorce courts, or send off missives to the Times, because the way it works is that the mother is assumed to be the main caregiver of the children even if she works outside the home, and she gets residential custody most of the time. A man who provides the family income could not do this if he had to take care of the children year round. Unless the mother has been guilty of egregious abuse or neglect or is in some other way prevented from taking care of the children (through imprisonment for instance) then she gets residential custody of the children and he gets to see them every second weekend and maybe on a weekday night.

Larry's approach is (as usual) a great example of how you can take 'logic' and run with it all the way to Bedlam (to paraphrase a comment made by J.M. Keynes in another context altogether).

People can arrange their workloads to suit their family circumstances, and employers will happily go along with whatever arrangements they need to make because that is what is best for their family?????

Hahahahahahah. You are obviously not women in today's workplace. It is equally obvious that you live in that parallel universe inhabited by people who never have to juggle the demands of children and jobs because you have someone else doing the childcare part of life for you.

Women don't take a man's kids away . They are the children of the women too, let's not forget.

Women are awarded residential custody of children most of the time by the courts because they believe it is in the children's best interest to have their mother take daily care of them. If you don't like that, as I have said, write to the Times.

And what is exactly 'satisfactory' for a woman whose husband has done nothing for years about a sexual dysfunction? What is wrong with a woman wanting a reasonably satisfactory sexual relationship with her own husband? You would think to read your posts that the OP was some sort of nymphomaniac who was impossible to please in bed.

(What buttons of yours and Larry's are being pressed here, I wonder?)

It is not the 1950s, you are so right, Larry.

Men who threaten to take custody of the children from their wives nowadays get short shrift from the courts.

They are not the kind of men who love their children. They are the sort of men who get their kicks in life from hurting their wives and want to keep them trapped where they can use them for cooking, laundry and sex, and taking out their insecurities on.

Your repetition of that threat of those vile men here as advice to the OP is an indication of how little you know about life for a lot of women in the UK, and for you to keep on defending your crassness here shows how little you care.

Larry you posted this --You feel "empowered" by the thought of being a single mother. Well watch out, his sexual dysfunction does not disqualify him as a father and he may well go for at least joint custody of your children.

Gem had not outlined what the custody situation would be if they were to split up? Plus you could read your post as a threat - or though I might think you posted it as a statement (possibly a weighted one at that with the watch out).

Believe me I have encountered male abusers who use this threat as a way of tormenting women who do walk away from emotionally abusive relationships.

She has explained why she married him and it is easy to say with hindsight that this relationship may not work in the long term. Reading through the posts it seems as though it is not so much the sexual dysfunction that's the be all and end all of the problem here rather the attitude of Gem's husband. Seven years seems a long time to work through a such a problem and I can only speculate that sex was not a priority whilst raising four children. It is possible to have sex infrequently and still have four children.

And confidence - your posts are a little defensive - presumably you would have no problem if someone told you just to use your hand more if you posted on here about your wife not being interested in sexual intercourse? But then your post wasn't out to be supportive was it?

O. M. G.

How much further can a thread be derailed by other agendas?? No wonder the OP has left - who'd blame her?

Why everybody keeps asking 'why now?'

It doesn't surprise me at all that you got frustrated now , after the first task. Maybe you were in a sort of denial and optimism -between being busy with 4 pregnancies and births-but now once you started the tasks you think more about it. About the part of marriage that you miss. Even the promise and the completed task probably made you more sad because you should have that in the seven years and without hard work from your side. And now there is not even the excuse of pregnancy, breastfeeding etc. I think it is normal to feel resentful. I think you are right in trying but giving him some ultimum too.

And personally i say the same when the genders are reserved. Imo, Sex- or rather intimacy- is important in the marriage.

I think you are right, Laquitar. As well as intimacy, it is important to get the sense that your partner is at least trying and not being dragged unwillingly into making changes that promise to turn out really well for both of them -- this man on the other hand is behaving as if he has something to lose by attending to his problems.

Omg i 've just seen the 'reserved'. and i should read before press post.

Yes, many partners wont try hard to change while they have you next to them. He has his wife and he has 4 kids so he can kid himself or others that everything is ok.

Math,

The fact that courts currently award residential custody "most of the time" to women does not correspond to what is morally right. To quote your favourite economist, "ideas shape the course of history".

"(What buttons of yours and Larry's are being pressed here, I wonder?)"

"They are not the kind of men who love their children. They are the sort of men who get their kicks in life from hurting their wives and want to keep them trapped where they can use them for cooking, laundry and sex, and taking out their insecurities on."

Nice ad hominem attack. Always good to go ad hominem when you cannot make a logical or moral case.

I don't think it is me projecting onto this thread. I have addressed what the OP has said. She said that she wanted to give her husband an ultimatum by which time he had to give her satifactory penetrative sex or she was looking forward to becoming a single mother (i.e taking his children away). There is absolutely no mention of cooking and laundry and as for him using her for sex, oh the irony that you post that on this thread!

Larry, I don't know how you manage to get the wrong end of the stick every single time.

'She said that she wanted to give her husband an ultimatum by which time he had to give her satifactory penetrative sex ..'
Wrong.
She wants her husband to appear to want to try to cure whatever problem it is that is stopping him from having sex with her, without having to be poked and nudged along. He doesn't even seem to want to put in that much effort. He apparently can't see that he stands to gin as from a happy sex life with his own wife as she has.

'or she was looking forward to becoming a single mother (i.e taking his children away)...'
Wrong.
Becoming a single mother is not 'taking his children away. This is where you take a massive leap into Fathers Rights territory, and not the reasonable middle ground either but the far reaches of the loony fringe. They are not just 'his' children, and if they divorce, he will see them as much as he and she care to arrange together or as much as the courts decree.

Calm down Larry and put the pike back in the thatch. No insatiable woman is trying to take anyone's children....

And as for the question of what is 'morally' right in the current tendency of the courts to award residential custody to mothers too bad if you don't like it, but that's the way it is. In a way it redresses centuries of history where a man kept 'his' children upon separation. It also recognises reality for millions of families where the mother is the one who is responsible for the daily care of the children, where she will have had to give up significant chances to advance her job or career through having children and therefore will not be able to earn enough to keep the children fed and a roof over everyone's heads.

It is a huge pity that you do not seem to be able to recognise and accept reality as the courts do, but instead keep on insisting that it is perfectly reasonable to post what you posted. Men who threaten their partners with taking the children from them or keeping the children if they leave are rightly viewed by the courts as moral voids.

Math - it's disingenuous to sidestep between moral arguments about what is right, and sheer observations of what currently happens. The fact that divorce courts currently massively favour women in custody settlements is no more an argument that they SHOULD do so, than the fact of some people beating their partners is an argument for domestic violence.

FWIW - I have no personal issue with divorce courts. I'm in a happy stable marriage. And this:

It is equally obvious that you live in that parallel universe inhabited by people who never have to juggle the demands of children and jobs because you have someone else doing the childcare part of life for you.

is WAY off beam. My wife and I both work part time (verging on full time) and oh BOY do we have to juggle childcare and jobs.

What a lot of women perceive as discrimination against women in the workplace is often not that at all. A lot of it is simply the difficulty of working part time, which applies equally to men when they want to work part time. (Which is not to say, of course, that discrimination against women doesn't exist, in other ways.)

I know loads of couples that juggle BOTH their careers and BOTH their parental responsibilities the way my wife and I do. Painting divorce as though it automatically takes place against a binary backdrop of alpha male breadwinner and full time SAHM is a ridiculous anachronism, especially when spouted by people who claim to be challenging traditional gender roles in the name of "feminism". The fact that divorce courts are largely stuck in that anachronism is irrelevant to the question of whether it's right or not.

And confidence - your posts are a little defensive - presumably you would have no problem if someone told you just to use your hand more if you posted on here about your wife not being interested in sexual intercourse?

Well I certainly wouldn't be stupid enough to do that, given the abiding preconception here that any man who wants more sex from his wife is an abusive monster who ought to realise how lucky he is to have her at all, and be happy to never mention the subject again so she doesn't feel unfairly pressured by it.

But to answer your question, I would have no problem with people advising men that way, as long as they advise women the same way under similar circumstances. I don't care whether people put the responsibility for dealing with unequal sex drives on the hornier or the less horny partner, as long as they are consistent. What's ridiculous is the blatent double standard that says "if a man feels sexually dissatisfied by his partner, it's obviously the man's fault for no being sensitive and responsive enough; and if a woman feels sexually dissatisfied by her partner... it's obviously the man's fault for not being sensitive and responsive enough!!"

Fair point confidence but from this - I would have no problem with people advising men that way, as long as they advise women the same way under similar circumstances. I don't care whether people put the responsibility for dealing with unequal sex drives on the hornier or the less horny partner, as long as they are consistent. What's ridiculous is the blatent double standard that says "if a man feels sexually dissatisfied by his partner, it's obviously the man's fault for no being sensitive and responsive enough; and if a woman feels sexually dissatisfied by her partner... it's obviously the man's fault for not being sensitive and responsive enough!!" I would offer an opinion based on what had been posted rather than be fixed in what 'advice' to offer based on whether the op is a male or female?

And 'defensive' because although there will always be posts such as you have outlined - by both males and females - there will also be posts giving the opposite view. I wonder what the actual proportion is - rather than your preconception? It always easier to become focussed on the posts you consider are negative rather than the positive. People post on here with issues/problems and few, if any, threads are started because everything is fine. Most people want to offer support to the op - unless posting in AIBU -so it's hardly a shock that can come across as bashing the op's partner. In the OP's case here she is clearly unhappy and I think your post was just nasty.

As an aside -I've often wondered how many couples do consider the impact on their sex-lives when they are planning to have children? Whether they actually discuss it? And how honest they actually are about their expectations?