Active discussions

Meet the Other Phone. Only the apps you allow.

Meet the Other Phone.
Only the apps you allow.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Talk
Relationships

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Original poster

I have not had sex with my DH for 12 years

99 replies

Playedaway · 08/10/2013 20:49

Namechanged for this. Booble plate, MNOldies yada yada yada. Not trolling.

It just is not possible for me to have sex with my husband. Too many awful things have been said and done and my relationship with him is utterly pants. We have stayed together for the children. It has been hard. Frankly, it has been horrific. Please don't suggest counselling. We have done that three times and the one thing I have learned about counselling is that it helps for a short time but is useless in the long run. it just prolongs something that should not be prolonged.

So I went to a conference last week, and met a beautiful intelligent funny and clever bloke. I spent the entire conference in a blissful fugue of - well - lust tbh. It's been a gamechanger. It just reminded me how it was to be happy. Truly happy, both sexually and to be in comfort and amity with someone else. I haven't slept for four days and I am confused and muddled and I don't know who I am.

I don't even know if I feel guilty tbh. For years I have not had sex. I like sex, I remember that now. I do not know where to go from here.

OP posts:
bragmatic · 09/10/2013 02:20

My parents split when I was 12. I was devastated. Really sad. For months. I got over it. Eventually I grew to like my new normal. Soon after that, I didn't even want my old normal anymore.

My mum had met someone else. As a grownup, I'd be wracked with guilt if she had stayed with dad (a perfectly nice man) for me and my siblings. Your kids will be fine if you do this right. Hell, they will probably be fine if you make a but of a hash of it, as long as they know their parents care for them.

My parents' split is but a blip on the landscape of my life. A life of ups, downs, triumphs and disappointments. I never think of it these days. Not until I see threads like this.

Emmabombemma · 09/10/2013 05:23

I wish my mum had left my dad years ago. I'm 35 now and hated my childhood living with their awful relationship. As an adult My idea of a relationship was really affected and it's taken years of counselling, and a very lovely patient man, to help me see what a real marriage should be. I still hate spending time with them together but enjoy seeing them both separately. I still wish they would separate now.

Original poster
Playedaway · 09/10/2013 05:25

Thanks all. It might be laziness or selfishness or fear of the unknown that has kept us both in this marriage. It might be all of those things. I do hear what you are all saying

OP posts:
Verso · 09/10/2013 06:36

My parents stayed together out if a (misplaced) sense of duty to me and my sister. It was terrible. Years if rows and bitterness and open spitefulness and fear. It only ended when my father died in 1988. My mum denies a lot of it ever happened and sometimes I wonder if I exaggerated it in my mind but after my sister died (brain tumour at 19) I found her diary and it was all there in black and white. It was all so twisted and hypocritical and horrible. Going to church on Sunday after massive rows all Saturday night. Awful. Scary. Mum threatening to leave and packing our bags but then staying ... Her being the martyr but then being vindictive and cruel to him. Him throwing things or smashing things and me and my sister cowering upstairs.

Leaving isn't easy, but neither is staying in such a sad situation.

CogitoErgoSometimes · 09/10/2013 07:04

I think you probably do need to work out what's actually keeping you in the marriage. You've lobbed up quite a few things .... your DH's parents, fear, lazinesss, children etc.... and none of them, with respect, seem to adequately offset the description of 'horrific'.

Of course, you may have decided that a more workable solution is to keep hooking up with your conference buddy, or someone similar, and that it'll make the marriage more bearable. Plenty do.

stowsettler · 09/10/2013 07:54

How many more lives do you think you will get? You've already wasted about 15% of this one. If you're lucky that is. That's what it boils down to.

Your DCs will cope. They really will. And what your DH believes is frdankly irrelevant.
Wishing you all the luck and strength in the world.

AttilaTheMeerkat · 09/10/2013 08:01

Staying together for the children is never a good idea as it teaches them unhealthy ideas about relationships and how they are conducted.

It is probably out of habit and both of you not wanting to face up to anything that you have remained together. That and innate selfishness on both your parts. This sham marriage should have ended a long time ago.

The people I feel sorry for in this mostly now are your teenage children; we after all learn about relationships first and foremost from our parents. What have you both taught them about relationships, both of you have taught them a lot of damaging lessons. I sincerely hope that they do not go on to replicate this in their adult lives but that could too easily happen now.

Your own relationship with them could well be damaged too in future years because they will look at you and wonder why you were so weak and did not leave far earlier. If you say, "well I stayed for you" they will call you daft for having done so.

froubylou · 09/10/2013 08:02

My mum stayed in a loveless marriage for many years due to the DC. I am the oldest out of 6 so difficult to leave. She did though, a few times until eventually she reached her breaking point and we left for good.

5 years after leaving she began a relationship with the love of her life. She had met him when they were 17/18 but by the time they realised their feelings for each other his then girlfriend was pg and he did the decent thing and married her. She moved on, met my pa and had me etc etc etc.

By the time it was OK for them to be together they had both had DC and different lives. They got together. He was diagnosed with prostrate cancer a year later and died after 8 years together. Far too short for either of them.

So my point is don't stay in a loveless marriage for the sake of the DC. Go make yourself a new life and maybe you will meet a new love. But if you leave it too late you are eating into the time you could be happy.

monkeynuts123 · 09/10/2013 08:04

Go and have a wonderful affair with this man and remember who you are. Start divorce proceedings at the same time. Don't marry affair man or move in together, he is just there to bring you back to life.

CaptainPoop · 09/10/2013 08:15

No don't have an affair until you're out of the marriage, or at least separated. Your dc are teenagers and will pick up everything that goes on. Your dh may even tell them if you something like have an affair, and the blame game will start. My stepfather used to tell me all the awful things my DM got up to and I hated her. Only, of course it wasn't as simple as that and my relationship with dm was needlessly damaged due to the manipulations of step father. Don't give anyone ammunition.

williaminajetfighter · 09/10/2013 08:32

I think you just need to ask yourself this - are you ok never having sex, romance or proper love and companionship ever again... In your whole life. Because if you stay it sounds like that's what you're signing yourself up for.

If you still value these things, and recognise that you're not dead yet, then it really is time to move on.

Although couples counselling did not work for you could I suggest you try a counsellor for you to give you the support and talking space over this period?

Missbopeep · 09/10/2013 08:34

Apart from the kids and the flirtation, you are in the same position as a friend of mine. Rubbish long marriage, constant huge rows and no sex.
She's talked to me about this for years and has hung on in partly out of a sense of duty and not wanting to be a 'failure' at marriage ( in her eyes) and the hope that they could both change and it would work.

So you are not alone and it's very easy for outsiders to tell you to leave. They aren't living your life.

I think you need to ask yourself some questions and be REALLY honest-

-Has this chance meeting made you realise what you are missing OR has the meeting just made you exaggerate your DHs faults in your head, when day to day things are just ticking along as they do in many long marriages?

-If you feel that you have no chance of saving your marriage then you have to be strong enough to leave it.

-If you think there is any chance of making it work, for your kids' sake, then you should try that first.

Only you know the answers to this. Being alone is scary no matter how bad a marriage is- that's why some people have affairs- they have the back drop of a marriage, even if it's not a happy one, but something else as well.

Lucca22 · 09/10/2013 08:41

The grass, greener.......pass the aspirins.

AttilaTheMeerkat · 09/10/2013 08:43

The children though should not and actually should never have been used as the glue to bind you together.

You've already tried staying together "for the children"; this has clearly not worked either.

MorrisZapp · 09/10/2013 08:53

Breaking up is crap, that's why so many people stay in unsatisfactory relationships. We've all been there, in that catatonic state. But looking back, nobody ever regrets finally plucking up the resources to do the deed and get it over with. Mostly, they just wish they'd done it sooner.

Life is out there. Why waste your one go at it? Give your DH a chance to find himself too. This is no way to live.

Lucca22 · 09/10/2013 09:02

Why did the chicken cross the road........to meet up with the other pluck, pluck chickens.

LifeHuh · 09/10/2013 09:02

Thing is,Lucca22, sometimes the grass is greener. There is a difference between looking at alternatives to staying in a relationship which has died and in which neither party is happy, and looking out from a basically pretty good relationship at a fantasy .
It sounds from her post as if OP is in group 1, though only she knows for sure.
Life is short. I think you have to look at how you are living in the light of this fact. And I agree that children aren't helped by seeing parents model an unhealthy relationship .They might be unhappy if their parents split up, but beyond that hopefully will be a time when everyone has adjusted, the children know the parents love them, and the parents are showing them a more honest life.

Lucca22 · 09/10/2013 09:11

We all have our views.....right and wrong. Oh look the sun is out!

Anniegetyourgun · 09/10/2013 09:18

To all those throwing up their arms in horror and tell in OP to leave her husband.... have you done it? Found the courage, the confidence, the money, the place to live, the destruction of the family, the child care, the access, the approbation of the wider families, the emotional blackmail, the guilt, the fear...?

Yes. Of course it wasn't easy. But it was a whole load easier than living with the bastard.

And less with the "destruction of the family" shit. A family is not a sacred icon. It's the sum of the people within it. And when at least two of those people despise each other, the sum does not add up to something worth preserving.

CogitoErgoSometimes · 09/10/2013 09:21

The conference buddy grass may not be greener and the general unknown future grass may not be greener but what is 100% true is that the grass the OP has at home is 'horrific' (direct quote). Worth getting away from 'horrific' even if it means ending up with yellow grass, brown grass or astroturf

Lottapianos · 09/10/2013 09:25

'And less with the "destruction of the family" shit. A family is not a sacred icon. It's the sum of the people within it. And when at least two of those people despise each other, the sum does not add up to something worth preserving'

^^This

It's really unhealthy to hold 'the family' up as some paragon of virtue. Families can be very dark, unhappy and downright scary places. Some families need to break up for the sanity and wellbeing of all involved.

My parents stayed together 'for the children' and also for their own selfish reasons. I've been aware since I was about 10 years old that they despise each other. It was not a pleasant atmosphere to grow up in and I have spent a hell of a lot of time and money on psychotherapy trying to undo the messed-up attitude it gave me about relationships. Your children will not thank you for this OP. You deserve to be happy.

Missbopeep · 09/10/2013 09:27

But why did it take the conference for you to start saying your marriage is horrific?

What does horrific mean to you- how does that manifest itself day to day?

If it is truly horrific and you are not simply exaggerating - now you have got your eye on Mr Conference- why stay?

I think you have to be honest if it's horrific or just plain dull and boring, and where you have each given up on trying to make it any better.

The biggest question is if you had not set eyes on Mr C would you be wanting to leave your marriage or would you buckle down and carry on?

Lucca22 · 09/10/2013 09:29

I didn't give sex to my husband because he was a barstward......a reason for everything.

CogitoErgoSometimes · 09/10/2013 09:34

I'm sorry you were married to a barsward Lucca22.. Hmm

CogitoErgoSometimes · 09/10/2013 09:38

'Buckle down' Misbopeep? It's a personal relationship, not digging a ditch! 12 years is not some temporary blip and I don't think the OP has only just decided the marriage is horrific. They've tried to go the celibate marriage route and suppress their physical needs for reasons best known to themselves - again, 12 years is one helluva suppression - and the conference bunk-up has shown this to be unreasonable.