A different question related to consent

[Justlurkingaround]

OK, I'm going to risk posting some very personal thoughts prompted by another thread. I don't think this is a TAAT and I hope its not disrespectful to the OP. There is a very sad thread about consent, with some great advice for the OP in what is very clearly a very wrong situation.

My experience is very far from this...and to me not clear at all.

I've been struggling to get back into sex after 2nd child. DH decided he was going to put the affection back into our relationship. One of the things he did was to "spoon" up to me each bedtime, pressed into me with his hand on my breasts. Very tired I tried shifting his hand but he put it back more firmly saying we needed to be affectionate. I felt told off. He did this several nights. I lay there frozen, feeling awful, like i had no say, and a week later had sex so he'd stop hassling me.

He would definitely be shocked to know this has made me miserable. He probably thought he was helping me. He even said we didn't have to have sex when he saw i was reluctant. Is the misery my fault for not being assertive? I hope he is not reading this as it would make him sad.

I have nowhere else to ask though and have lost all ability to judge anything.

I wonder if I was unfair to have sex when I didn't really want to. That must be hurtful.

Families survive all kinds of things. You don't have to hold it all together you know? It's ok to feel pain and not be able to cope with it.

You don't have to stay married. You can split up and your family will change but probably for the better. I've been there... been in pain and trying so hard to pull everyone through. It's shit.

I feel like I've been sinking today but tomorrow I'll probably feel a bit better and keep trying. I can't end the marriage. He's my family. I've had some help with depression and I'm taking anti depressants. Ive been trying to sort "me" out. It's not working. I keep get waves of knowing i cant fix things, i cant fix me and its horrible. But it'll pass.

Oh sweetheart, I'm so sorry things aren't better for you. I posted earlier on in this thread suggesting counseling. Did you try it? If he refused, did you go alone?

I haven't searched out any of your other threads so I'm 'winging it' here. If you feel that you've tried all you can, that you've given all you have to give and you're not getting anything back, just know that you have the right to call 'time' on your marriage. And I don't say that lightly.

You deserve to be happy. You deserve to have a peaceful life.

Op... I remember thinking there was something in me that needed to be fixed... for me it took realising that it is ok for me to be me, with all my strengths and weaknesses and it was ok for dh to also just be himself... nothing wrong with either of us... but that didn't mean we were compatible or able to meet each others needs.

It's a lot easier to feel better when you forgive yourself in advance for not being perfect. It's ok to hurt. It's ok to be desperate and to feel awful. It's also ok to change your family setup.

There is no right or wrong. Be gentle with yourself, you are precious and worthy of peace. Im wishing you peace tonight.

I've been struggling with depression for the last couple of months, couldn't face joint counselling. I saw a counsellor by myself, didn't really work for me but will try again.

He woke up but gave up easily. I make it sound bad. It's me who is abnormal.

What did he give up easily?

You aren't abnormal!! You are depressed and sad. It's very normal not to want sex when you're sad. Doubly so if you're (still) being pressured. Have you seen your GP about the depression? If not you should. If so and medication hasn't helped, go back and tell them. Again, you deserve to feel happy. Any 'issues' regarding your sex life can and should wait until you are feeling better.

Depression can have a chemical component, so that's part of the whole picture, counseling is another part. It also may take a few tries or different counselors until you find the one that 'clicks' for you. Do this for yourself, not your DH, not your marriage. For YOU. Because you are important.

I don't know what's going on with him, but your DH should be a part of your return to happiness. He should be gently encouraging you to get help, encouraging you to talk. If he's not or if he's actively criticizing you or making it all about him, then he's a jerk.

Sorry wasn't trying to be cryptic. He gave up trying to be intimate. Too tired to think of the grown up way to say it. It's really helped to talk. No longer feeling the panic type feeling. I might try sleep. Thanks all.

It would be fairly abnormal to want to be intimate while you are depressed. You aren't abnormal. You're suffering and need support.

I hope you're able to sleep. Please know that we are all thinking of you. And we don't think you're abnormal at all. You really aren't.

Sweet dreams, serial. Hope you feel a bit better tomorrow and start to work towards a happier future.

With 2 hours of sleep today has been a bit blurry, but I can see what happened yesterday. We talked about trying to get our relationship back on track. Spending some time together. Which of course he read as getting physical. It's a classic misunderstanding. I know he thinks it's what we need but i'm sad he can't tell that I'm not feeling like sex. That he takes it on himself to try. But I clearly do not communicate well at all.

I thought I was feeling assertive and like I had drawn up boundaries over the last couple of months about not doing things because I felt pressured - not just sex - in general. But I froze again last night and lay in fear, then glad that he stopped. I need to find a way to talk before we're back into the same nightly pattern.

I do not sound like an intelligent 40 year old. I sound like a teenager ffs.

Op it's not great that you are laying in fear. Nor that you find it difficult to be honest with your husband. If you find the right counsellor, they will definitely help you with finding your boundaries with others, building up your confidence and working out what you really want out of your relationship and how to communicate this. Can you afford a private counsellor? If so, you could meet several until you find someone who can really help with these things. Otherwise, there may be some low cost counselling services that can help.

Resolving these things is not being selfish because when you feel better about yourself this will benefit your dc and hopefully your relationship if your husband is able to accept your greater confidence. If he's not prepared to do that, you may end up questioning the whole relationship. But that is in the future, try to focus on yourself atm.

Op, I don't know if I'm grasping this right but it sounds as if you weren't moving in bed because if he thought you were awake he would make a move on you? And then you moved, and then he tried it on and you had to (yet again) stop him pressurising you into sex?

I'm sorry, but if that's true, if your bed is not a safe sanctuary but a place where you feel so under threat and anxious that you are lying frozen in place, and can only relax enough to sleep when he's 'given up' for the night, then that is horrific.

I've been there, op, it's over three years since I got out, but I'm having a flashback here remembering the awfulness of living like that. You are mentally under siege.

I'm worried you are looking at this backwards. There's nothing wrong with you, you aren't abnormal, you're depressed because your subconscious is screaming at you that you aren't safe. You're trying to rationalise away an absolutely valid fear, and is isn't working, for the simple fact that YOU ARENT SAFE.

I think you need to realise that you can't fix this, because actually, you aren't broken. He's broken, in that he can't see the awfulness in what he's doing, and because he can't see it/would refuse to accept it, he won't fix it either.

I think your depression would disappear along with him. You're allowed to leave, and you don't need his permission, understanding or agreement. You can't live like this.

I haven't read all of this thread OP. But I just wanted to send you my thoughts. I think I was the author of the threads mentioned in your first post. I did t see this thread at the time. DP and I have talked a lot and worked a lot of things through. Things have been a lot better since. I have been a lot more assertive in saying no when he wants to be intimate and I don't, and he has accepted every no that I have said. We still have issues in our relationship that need ironing out, but we have come a long way. M
Sending you OP. Having a third party to talk to (in my case MH worker) has really helped me to rationalise everything. After I have completed the therapy program that I'm on at the moment DP and I will be doing some couples therapy. I'm very nervous about it, but I'm hoping it won't be too bad and that we can both participate and work things through

Sorry it's awkward to explain without TMI but DH never forces sex, he "pesters" but gives up. The times he's really persistent I'm not even sure how fully awake he is.

Maybe I sounded over the top last night but I did feel and it did happen like you describe NotQuite. But i think the fear and thumping heart is more about being powerless than being in actual danger. And maybe some of my reaction is remembered fear from other situations brought on by DH not caring or appearing to care about what I want.

It's not nice. I will persist with finding a counsellor.

MummySparkle sorry to have posted about your situation. Thank you for not minding. I'm glad things have improved for you. Thank you very much for the update.

I realise the things I'm writing are probably a repeat from a couple of months ago. I dont mean to waste everyones time posting again. I have given it all lots of thought and am trying to sort.

Do you tend to give in to him a lot in other areas of your life too? Is it a pattern of your marriage that he gets his own way?

Yep. It has been but I recognised this recently and I'm changing it.

Serial, you didn't and don't sound over the top. If anything, from out here, you sound like you are under reacting.

That sense of fear, listen to it. It's trying to alert you to the fact that you ARE actually in danger. Add together what you have written about coercion, continuing sex when it was clear you weren't into it, and what you have just said about him 'being half asleep' yet being 'really persistent'. You know, deep down, that that important distinction between consensual and non-consensual sex has disappeared from your relationship. You are in some horrible murky place because he has no respect for your autonomy, and the distance from where you are to 'I'm sorry, I didn't realise you said no', is tiny.

Please do see a counsellor, but you could always talk this through with women's aid? They may help you get some perspective, and will be available to you far more quickly than a counsellor. I'm worried for you, simply because it is unlikely he will reverse from the path he is on, and it only leads in one direction.

I can't leave NotQuite. I know you will think I have options but I don't. I don't fully know why, I can reason through it all but I come to the answer that I know deep down - that i am not leaving. So I have to find a way to work on us, a way to understand things and make sense of them.

It took me a long, long time of thinking this through before I left, and ultimately I'm not sure I would have if he hadn't taken things a step too far and in that moment everything crystallised, something inside broke and I said ' that's it, no more'.

I was trapped by these reasons

I can't break my family.
I can fix this, I HAVE to fix this.
He can't possibly understand what he's doing, so I must be explaining it badly.
I don't want to be a single mum with no money.
How can I tell my family what I've allowed myself to put up with?

But by far and away the biggest reason was that I couldn't get him to agree he was doing anything wrong. He kept telling me it was all MY fault and my problem. That he was happy and couldn't understand why I had to make life so difficult. I just wanted to MAKE HIM SEE.

In the end I came to realise that I was just a normal human being, I didn't have to be perfect and that I was doing everything in my power to fix the problem, but he didn't want it fixed. That to have his life the way he wanted he was quite prepared to use and abuse another human being, whilst being in total denial about it.

Op, don't feel bad about feeling you can't leave. If you can though, do the following things. Get and read a book called 'Why does he do that?' By Lundy Bancroft. Read Reality's pinned post at the top of the relationships board and explore the links. And consider phoning women's aid, and say 'I just need to talk to someone about what's happening at home between my partner and I'. You won't be wasting their time. Knowledge is power. Arm yourself. You can do this.

NotQuite yes to all those reasons. And because DH is so sure that I read things wrongly, that he loves me more than ever so I feel a bit crazy. I can't trust my own judgement and emotions. What if I act on how I feel and it's a huge mistake.

I'm going to sound really infuriating. I have read Should I Stay or Should I Go by Lundy. I thought it was a light bulb moment but then it passed. I think I was reading things into my relationship that weren't there.

I feel like you have given a lot here and I keep coming back. Please don't worry about responding. I don't want to lean heavily on you. I just think for the first time I am realising that I can't keep going.

Do you think people call Women's Aid when they are not in an abusive situation, just to talk through and get perspective. See things a bit more clearly. I know it's not really what they are for.

Do you think people call Women's Aid when they are not in an abusive situation, just to talk through and get perspective. See things a bit more clearly. I know it's not really what they are for.

But depending on exactly what is happening, him being a 'sex pest' is abusive. Emotionally abusive. He should be encouraging you to get counseling and wanting to go with you so he knows how to approach you to make you feel secure.

AcrossthePond he doesn't know how I feel or that this is an issue. I don't want to talk about it to him. I don't want another way to feel like I'm unhinged.

Serial, yes, this is absolutely something to call women's aid about. You've got blurred lines around consent, you feel your heads a mess, your partner is blaming you and you are stressed and confused. They will definitely help you to sort out your feelings about this. They possibly could help you to clarify whether or not he is abusive towards you.

I haven't read 'should I stay', but 'why does he do that?' made what was happening to me crystal clear in a way that nothing else did. You haven't got anything to lose by reading another book. If 'should I stay' gave you the response it did, then def get this one.

Grasping this stuff can be like waking up. Sometimes you want to turn over and go back to sleep and not wake up yet, just have 5 more minutes. Maybe you are awake a little more now?

And remember, for this to be a major problem, it only has to be a major problem FOR YOU. He doesn't get to say what is or isn't a problem. It doesn't stop being a problem because he won't agree with you that it is one. In fact, he can angrily object and dismiss you all he likes, call you unhinged even. It doesn't change a thing. If being pestered for sex is a problem for you, then IT IS A PROBLEM FOR YOU, and that's that.

Lastly, it doesn't matter how much he says he loves you. Words are cheap. 'But I love you so much' is a silencing tactic. If he loves you so much, why isn't he listening to you? Helping you? Changing his behaviour? Why do you need to hide the fact that you are having these thoughts from him? I don't think you are reading things wrongly, but I think he wants you to think that you are because he doesn't want to deal with the implications of you being right, because that would mean he'd need to take a good hard look at himself and change his behaviour.

Trust in yourself. You know what you think and feel. It's your reality. It makes no difference if he doesn't approve or agree. He doesn't have to accept it for it to be true. He doesn't get to say what's real.