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?

His feelings towards his fathers death have a point, and if he's worried about you following a similar path then that does actually come from a caring place. He's wrong in how he is dealing with it all, so I wonder how or if his mother reacted to his fathers weight. Whatever she did or didn't do never worked so has your DH ended up following the same or backlashed if his mother said nothing?
Lots of reasons for his bad behaviour, lots of ( not wrongly) disdain from posters. But by now you see how wrong he is. Next think is it coming from a good place somewhere. Rather than jumping in with it all being irredeemable, can something be done. I guess you posted for solutions, not just to vent.
Don't have a magic answer, but to try to change the way he behaves, you can only change what you do.
Explaining why his behaviour is wrong is not so likely to work. If you turn it around and say he has to support you, by exercise together, both eating a healthy diet ( get him to cook it at weekend).
Perhaps make a list of various strategies to get the pounds off, but all that involve him and the whole family at the weekend.
What you may find is the more you do together, the more you connect, the happier you will feel so the less comfort eating you need to do.
Someone needs to break your current cycle, looks like he's not able to. It's going to be a lot of work on your part too. Worth a shot for the whole family you have?

Smorgas i used to be ten stone heavier Ive been with my DH for 23 years. He has been through a lot Lost his mum to breast cancer when he was 23 in the early 70s Been through a lot of crap but NOT ONE TIME has he refferred to my weight in a derogatory way NOT ONCE. Ive lost the weight now but i did it when i was ready.

A partner calling me a fat fuck would not have helped at all.

Do you want to have sex with him? Do you enjoy it? Or do you do it more out of a sense of duty or trying to please him? Because if someone called me fat and frigid I wouldn't shag them at all, ever. I just wouldn't want to. Having sex when you don't want to is unspeakably damaging.

He is not justified in his complaint. Tell him to fuck off with the fucking personal abuse.

Is his internet use monitored at his workplace? Wondering if he could be using a lot of porn!

Why are you speaking to him so much while he's away in the week? Must eat into your time a lot. Seems a bit controlling on his part.

The stuff about the weight and his father's death I think is a bit of a red herring.

The fact is that a man who bullies his wife into having sex when she doesn't want to and stomps about being angry because he feels slighted by 'only' having sex twice in the two days he spends with her, tells her she has a problem if she won't do it more and the whole world would think she was unreasonable is a dangerous man.

Trying to care about why he is doing this is a dangerous thing to do IMO, it is such a wrong thing to do that caring about why he may be doing it is not something anyone should do.

If the 'fat fuck' comments were about him being concerned for her health then he'd be being nasty about it in relation to her health. He isn't - he's being nasty about her weight in relation to their sex life...

Feelings of entitlement to access to another's body + derogatory language about the person's body when stropping about lack of access + lack of care for consent = sexual abuser. Sexual abusers are all either actual or potential rapists.

Does the op really need to be considering his feelings anymore than she already is?

And yes sexual abusers and rapists can be 'normal' people, may have been 'lovely' husbands at one stage. Very very few abusive people are out and out bad people. The behaviour he is displaying right now is what matters. It is not normal to respond to a bereavement by becoming abusive, that makes me wonder if those traits were there all the time and actually have just become more obvious since his father died because he is now feeling like 'head of the family'.

Totally agree with Offred. Especially re the rapist observations. They make you think it's you and it's not.

"have a magic answer, but to try to change the way he behaves, you can only change what you do."

This is a very, very dangerous and futile tack to take in an abusive relationship.
The OP is not responsible for her dps EA behaviour. Thousands of abused women spending most of their day working out how they can change to stop the abuse. If only I was more this or less that.

The victim is not the problem and as they are not the problem they cannot be the solution.

They do not need to change. There is no change that will stop it anyway. Fix one 'imperfection' they will find another.

You cannot change someone else. Only they can change themselves. And they have to want to change.

The OP can possibly give him a reason to want to change but that is all.

I nearly broke myself trying to change to please an EA ex, trying to meet him half way. Everytime I did he pushed the boundary further over.

The reasons why abusers abuse, drink, drugs, depression are not reasons they are excuses and they are the things that make it easier for them to do but they do not cause it.

The only thing the OP can or should do is say thus far and no further. "You dh need to admit your behaviour is wrong and deal with it. No matter what your excuse you are not entitled to treat me, a fellow human being, in this way."

You can sympathise with someone's plight without having to stand there and suffer their abuse.

So to convert that to.practical advice tell your dh all his behaviour is his problem and he must do something about it or you will leave.

And you have to mean it.

Also I would suggest you check out the EA thread many helpful links there.

He is not a rapist. I can see why you are saying this, that it could be the thin end of the wedge, but he is so far away from that kind of wedge. He would never force me to have sex with him.

duckdeamon he has no access to the Internet at work. And we call each other. I probably call him more than he calls me. I don't want to think that I might be controlling. I just like talking to him.

minkGrundy "You DH need to admit your behaviour is wrong and deal with it. No matter what your excuse you are not entitled to treat me, a fellow human being, in this way." This is what I need: things to say that are clear cut and firm, that call him on his behaviour without being overly antagonistic.

smorgasboard The way his mum dealt with his dad was to ignore any issues. She was silently desperately unhappy in her marriage and only confided in her children after he died that any attraction on her part had vanished a long time ago. She blamed his weight for the lack of attraction, though I suspect that actually it was because he was a complete bastard and the weight thing was a way of deflecting criticism from her because she stayed in a hideous relationship which damaged their children. I honestly think that DH, in a fucking cack-handed way, is trying to make sure we don't repeat their marriage, but of course he is behaving just like his dad.

He would never force me to have sex with him.

With the best will in the world I think this is very naive. He is already trying to bully you into having sex with him by destroying your self worth. Rape is about power over another person and the use of destruction of someone's self worth to get it, so he is already more than half way there.

Plus are you really getting anything out of the sex you are having? Most outsiders have said they wouldn't have sex with someone who spoke to them like this at all and I think this is the healthy response, you are still having sex with him, and relatively speaking, a high amount of sex - is this because you love him or want to or because he is wearing you down and making you doubt your sense of right and wrong?

If his intention was to avoid his parents' marriage why is he belittling you to the point you feel you can't even tell him when you are unhappy (making you into his mother) and behaving like his father? I seriously disbelieve any of this is about him not wanting to be his dad, it may be about his dad or as a result of him being his dad's son but I wonder if it is really just that you hope his motivation is not so awful?

The level of co-ordination involved in the type of things he is saying and doing and the effect they are producing does not scream 'cack handed' to me either. And really having grown up in an abusive marriage he knows better than other people what it looks like and how bad it is - but he is still repeating it with him in the powerful position of abuser.

It screams thought about campaign of manipulation... That he is the child of abuse who has learned abuse paid off for his father...

You may think I am projecting as a result of this but I was in a relationship with a sexual abuser for 4 years. I have two children from it. By the time he overtly raped me, after many, many years of bullying, escalation and coercion I didn't even think of it as rape even though he came at me as I got out of the bath in a towel and I told him I was going in another room because I didn't want to have sex with him and he physically forced me to. It would have ticked all the boxes for prosecution with no ambiguity - I had told him I didn't want to have sex with him several weeks before as he was cheating, I told him right before I didn't want sex and he used physical force to do it anyway - the build up of years of eroding my boudaries, bullying and coercing me was about making sure I wouldn't think anything was wrong and he was just struggling with relationships due to his parents etc

And I do see a lot of that here - the trying to sympathise with him, make allowances, push back your own boundaries and tolerate really really awful behaviour you wouldn't tolerate from a stranger because you love him. You just can't get away from the fact that no-one who really did love you would treat you how he has, not one time never mind repeatedly and calculatedly.

So, ok, he is not atm an actual rapist but he is atm sexually abusing you.

OP

It worries me you talk bout not being "antagonistic"

He is antagonistic to you all the time. you should NOT have to worry that asserting yourself will antagonise him

Please read the thread right at the top of the Relationships Board called "Right, listen Up Everyone"

In addition to doing it for purposes of emotional abuse, I wouldn't be at all surprised if your husband is saying you don't put out enough because he's playing away and he needs to justify it to himself by painting you as the baddie.

If he is not currently forcing you it likely has more to do with his feelings about himself - ie that he doesn't want to feel like a rapist because that would make him feel bad. That part may change at some point. People who believe in consent and have respect for their partners simply wouldn't do what he is doing.

Again I agree with Offred because I too was in a relationship I thought was normal and took the same path she describes of my partners sense of entitlement to my body leading to the path of him raping me.

It all started as you describe which is why Offred and I are looking this in the same way with the benefit of hindsight.

Please, be very careful Airyhutt, I know it's not what you want you hear but you're on that slippery slope

The way it escalates to rape (or other awful things) is through this process of devaluing and blaming you - eventually you will (in his mind) 'deserve' worse and worse treatment. He wants you to accept that you are unreasonable over the amount of sex you currently have because he wants you to 'deserve' what he does to you, same with him making a big deal about your weight and you thinking he must be thinking about his dad's obesity and is trying to be cruel to be kind IMO.

I do know you are living with him and see him all the time btw and that this must be really difficult to hear and also may not be how things actually are for you. Your situation just worries me.

It's a tiny step between bullying you into sex and forcibly raping you. A man who is capable of the first one is capable of the second given the 'right' circumstances (him thinking you deserve it and he is entitled to do it).

You are in control here though, you must make up your own mind. No-one's expecting you just pack your bags and leave based on some people on the Internet who don't know you. If it feels like pressure please don't take it that way - it's just concern.

Once again, well said Offred.

Please, look after yourself OP

I can’t comment on the rape thing, having been lucky enough to avoid ever being pressured about sex, but I can comment on the bereavement thing, because I have young children and have lost my Mum this year, and my husband is likely to soon lose his father. I have felt drained and found it hard to manage my feelings at times, but I have really tried to pull myself up at points where I feel that the grief is making me behave in a way I don’t want to with my husband and kids.

I think grief can make you quite self-indulgent – for instance naturally I like to have a lot of space to relax and read that doesn’t come with babies without a big impact on your partner. Sometimes I am a bit remote/lazy and I sort of have to remind myself that I’m not somehow owed that space because I’ve had a hard time – my responsibilities to others continue unabated. If I found myself acting like a person I didn’t want to be I’d be straight off to bereavement counselling.

If your DH’s behaviour really is about his reaction to grief and underneath this is a man with better moral standards, then I think he should respond to a challenge from you that he has allowed this bereavement to make him into someone repellent, and that he needs to get help and change, fast. Bereavement may be awful but part of being an adult is holding it together even when things are tough.