DH thinks we don't have sex enough. Is he right?

[Airyhutt]

NC for this because DH knows my login.

DH works away during the week. On weekends when he's home we have sex once or twice. He has decided this isn't enough and calls me frigid for not wanting to have more sex. In a joking way, but also meaning it. We have been together for twelve years and have three children. From conversations with friends, it seems that once or twice a week is actually an above average amount of sex to have, particularly when you have young children. DH thinks either that I am lying or that my friends are lying and that he is having a lot less sex than is normal so he feels hard done by.

My problem is that I have body issues and am unhappy about my weight, which means I often don't feel attractive and this means I don't want to have sex. He knows this, but doesn't accept it as a valid reason because he thinks it reflects on him, that I don't find him attractive enough.

It doesn't help that, when he was sick and taking it out on me, he called me a fat fuck and even now he goes on about how fat I am, even though he says he still finds me attractive. When he left on Monday morning, he reminded me to lose weight and work on my attractiveness.

I know he probably seems like a shit husband, but there is a lot of background with his own parents, particularly his father (who was obese), underlying how he behaves when it comes to marriage and I don't want to give up on our relationship just because he has suddenly got an idea about how much sex he should be having. I think if he actually talked to people about it, he would find out that actually we do have a reasonable amount of sex, but of course he won't ask anyone. So I am asking: is he justified in his complaint?

Normal non abusive people who are secure in themselves rarely react to having upset their partner (accidentally or on purpose) with contrition and comfort, not minimisation, anger, denial, gas lighting and blame. It's one of the ways of sorting the non abusers from the abusers IMO - how people react when they have done something wrong.

So when he tries to brush it away, you can say quite calmly that it's really bothered you, and actually it's very serious he thinks it's ok and you will also brush it under the carpet. And this time, it's out there, like a great big elephant and you have no plans to skirt round it for years on end.

What else is under that carpet? Because ime the little things build up until actually they are quite big things. I might be wrong, but does he belittle you in other ways? Do you parent the same way? You have very different upbringings, so perhaps there is friction there as well.

Is he a man who will talk or a man who listens?

*with anything but contrition...

Ugh... Tired sorry!

Anything other even... Dunno what's wrong with me tonight!

He's lived the op long enough to realise that she is a comfort eater. At best he's ignorant if he's hoping that being verbally abusive is going to work. The distinct change, the urging to lose weight, could perhaps be reflecting some anger DH has at his father if his obesity was a cause of his earlier death. Angry at him for not doing anything about it until too late, likewise angry at op.
He needs to be made to understand that giving support is a more effective way to lose weight. Perhaps some activity together at weekends you can do together - sadly, sex is a poor form of exercise. Hill walking maybe? Chance to all connect (good for kids too).

I think whether you have enough sex is the least of your worries.

I'd tell him to 'work' on his hideously unattractive personality this week.

what a disgusting specimen. don't know how you can bear to speak to someone that calls you names like that, let alone be intimate with them. I think you need to raise your standards

Offred he does react with denial, blame and anger, but again this is only a recent thing. It is exactly what his dad did. He could never accept that he was wrong, it always had to be someone else's fault. I have enabled DH by not bringing things up that really did need to be discussed.

lavender there are things brushed under the carpet, but parenting is an area we generally do quite well together. He has never said anything derogatory about me or my weight in front of our children. He has become a man who talks. He does listen, but he talks more.

smorgasboard I think you have hit the nail on the head. His dad's illness wasn't spotted as quickly as it could have been because he was fat and had all the problems you get with being obese. Exercising together might work too.

I know I need to say something to him, but I feel like I'm swimming through treacle now and it all feels too difficult.

It will be more difficult if his disrespectful, nasty behaviour continues.

Take the time you need to think things over. In the meantime you don't have to continue to have sex with him. If this increases the nasty behaviour that makes him even more of a shitty partner.

Sounds like there could be some manipulation and gas lighting going on too, eg you feel you can't explain things clearly and feel a discussion would end in confusion, but you have been very clear on here, which suggests he denies and manipulates things.

So you look after the DC all week every week while he works away, and he thinks your priority should be to lose weight and work on your attractiveness!

Was it his decision to work away from home during the week or is it a requirement of his employer? Could he find a similar job locally if he really wanted to? Someone suggested that working away gives him the opportunity to get extra-marital sex with sex workers, through online dating or some other way. I would say I'm almost 100% sure he is. If he thinks he's not getting enough sex at the moment then his only time to increase it is during the week. Would you want to investigate this by checking his phone, laptop, bank statements, his wallet etc? It could give you ammunition if you are thinking of divorce.

I know I need to say something to him, but I feel like I'm swimming through treacle now and it all feels too difficult.

You don't actually need to say anything to him because you are his wife not his moral guardian and he is more than capable of understanding that the way he is behaving is wrong, he shouldn't need to be told to know should he? If he does need to be told then that's a problem isn't it?

You may want to say something as I probably would too just for my own peace of mind and clarity but you don't owe him an explanation. He should already know.

The purpose of telling him, if you do, should not be because you think he just doesn't realise what he is doing is hurtful and if you can get him to listen and understand he will stop.

How he is behaving is truly awful and unequivocally unacceptable, even the posters who thought the solution to your problem was for you to go to the gym, make yourself look nice and force yourself to have sex with him when you don't want to (basically what he has been implying you should be doing) thought that what he was saying to you was unacceptable. He should know and the reasonable thing to conclude is that he does know. The thing is he doesn't want to stop or have other people tell him he is behaving terribly.

He is behaving like a teenage son of an abusive man. When women leave an abuser they often find their teenage sons step into his shoes as 'man of the house'. As I said earlier I'd be very wary of the possibility that he is not just struggling with his father's death but stepping into his shoes as head of the family.

And in any case, dealing with trauma by abusing and bullying your wife is not acceptable anyway.

rouxlebandit I know that he is not getting sex elsewhere. He does a job where it would be impossible to behave like that at work and he lives in a place where all guests need to be signed in and out. He phones me every day as he leaves work and we talk until he gets home. Then we chat sporadically throughout the evening on Skype. I am the one who checks our bank accounts and we know each other's passwords to all social media and email accounts. That's why I name changed for this.

Offred I do feel I need to say something. I know that what he has said recently is horrible and yes, any rational person should know it's unacceptable to say those things. But he is not himself, he has everything screwed up in his head and he's dealing with shit that I can't understand, and it's not fair for me not to give him a chance to make things right.

But he is not himself, he has everything screwed up in his head and he's dealing with shit that I can't understand, and it's not fair for me not to give him a chance to make things right

You don't know that he isn't himself. This may be who he actually is. All you can say is his behaviour has escalated since his dad's death. I very much doubt he has completely changed, though I believe it may well seem that way to you atm.

I would feel exactly the same about wanting to try and get through to him but you need to also think about what happens if he won't listen or accept that he is out of order and that you can't be expected to put up with this behaviour. You need to protect yourself a bit and understand that if you try to talk and he shuts you down/attacks you so that you can't even speak then you really need to think about stepping away from him because living with this behaviour will destroy your self worth, it already is isn't it?

And it's never impossible for someone to be having extramarital sex. Your response was not "I don't believe he would do that" but "I don't think he has the opportunity" - does that imply you think he might if he could?

1. foes he admit it is screwedup and apologise. Sometimes I behave badly because I have MH issues but I don't expect other people to just wear it. Admitting you are wrong/ill is part of being well.

2. he may have recovering to do but how long do you give him? What is he doing to actively recover? You do not have to stay with him while he goes through this process. Arguably you being there is stopping him from making a move to recover.

3. of he does tecognise he has changed and is in someway not well then he needs to accept that his complaints about sex are also part of HIS issue and nit a probkem with you.

And don't OP try to change yourself to make him better. The onky oerson you can change is yourself and the only person who can change him is him.

Sorry for typos!

When he left on Monday morning, he reminded me to lose weight and work on my attractiveness.

And with that, he set fire to his Get Out Of Jail card.

Op, when you say all guests have to sign in & out at the place where he stays do you mean that would prevent him inviting a woman to his room? But even if that were the case is he not free to go where he likes in the evening. Couldn't he meet an escort in a hotel or at her place? Or he could visit a massage parlour brothel.

If my DH said the things that your DH says to you, even once, I would not trust him. I would not want someone I did not trust laying their hands on me, let alone anything else.

rouxlebandit we Skype each other every evening. He's not going to hotels or brothels. And yes, the sign in system does prevent him from having guests of either sex.

Offred I don't believe he would do that. The only reason I gave the reasons he couldn't is because I've seen MN threads where the OP says she doesn't believe he would do it, only to have loads of posters piling in on her saying that of course he has opportunity, you just don't want to believe it, but he easily could. I wanted to avoid that by short-cutting to how I know he couldn't.

minkGrundy thank you. Our difficulties do seem to come from an inability to separate his problems from us as a couple, and, to be fair, my problems from us as a couple too.

"It is exactly what his dad did. He could never accept that he was wrong, it always had to be someone else's fault. I have enabled DH by not bringing things up that really did need to be discussed. "

OP, go back and have a look at this again. You've said:

He's following in his dad's footsteps
His dad always blamed someone else
His behaviour is (at least in part) my fault as an "enabler"

Reading some of your posts it's almost like communicating with you H and hearing what he says. So this isn't his problem, it's not his fault he's behaving like this, it's his dad, it's his depression, it's you.

We all go through bereavements. Many of us have MH problems. And yet we still don't call our partners fat fucks and tell them to work on their attractiveness.

I know you want to be fair OP but ne careful! We are taught relationships are work, we have to compromise, there are two sides to everything, meet them half way. And in most cases, in a normal dynamic, this is true.

But. And it is a massive but in an abusive dynamic this doesn't work. An abuser will move the boundary so far past reasonable that even if you meet them half way you are still way beyond where you should be. They tell you it is all your fault. You feel pleased when you get them to admit it might be a little bit their fault. But that is what they want. They want to be able to call you a frigid fat fuck and you to think that is at least half your fault.

Nope.

Once you are in that dynamic nothing you do will ever be good enough.
If you spent all weekend in bed shagging his brains out, it wouldn't be enough.
There would be something else wrong.

It's not you, it's him. Really it is.