Date night

[NewStickers]

Dd is 3.5 and I have had a low libido since she was born. Dh is very understanding but also says he doesn't want a sexless marriage. We agreed to try having a 'date night' once or twice a week where we have dinner together and have sex. I am hoping that my libido will come back with practice.

The problem is it hasn't. I dread date night. I fancy dh and love him but I am rarely in the mood for sex. Dh makes a fuss of me on date night days, which is lovely, and I know he's doing it to make me feel relaxed and comfortable. But it also feels like I 'owe' him something so I end up resenting what he does. In general I would like some intimacy but am scared of anything because it always leads to full sex / giving him a blow job and so we can't just have a kiss and a cuddle.

I love dh and don't want to deny him an important part of a relationship. I don't know what is wrong with me. Perhaps the anti depressants I take (although he problem pre dates them). Perhaps that I have put on weight and don't like my body. Perhaps that dd is clingy so I spend all evening being touched. Perhaps that I'm tired ... But the main thing is I don't know how to get my libido back and am worried for the future or my marriage. I'm hoping some other people have faced similar and can tell me it gets better?

Sorry, boundaries, not bounfarirs! ?!

I've now RTFT including your upset and my blood is boiling. You have to have sex on Wednesdays? He notices you crying but carries on? You feel beholden to him because you're not earning any money? This man sounds like a full on dick. I think you may find your sex drive comes back miraculously if you meet someone who's not a Grade A Idiot.

I am sorry, what? He knows you are crying about the sex, but it's ok if it's perfunctory and he still wants to?

And he criticises your housework and thinks you don't do enough, but you have zero time to yourself. But he's willing to let you have a night to yourself in exchange for sex?

Plus he doesn't care that his breath stinks and puts you off kissing enough to do anything about it. Gross.

It's no wonder you don't want to have sex with him.
It's perfectly normal not to want to have sex with someone like this.

I have just read this thread and I am in complete disbelief. I started by thinking off that you probably had a caring husband who would be mortified if he knew you felt like this but upon reading your latest post about his reaction to you being honest, well, I'm just gobsmacked, what a total, total bastard. You are a person, not a sex toy for him to use on set days of the week. I really can't believe men like this exist.

My DS is 2yrs 4m and mine and DH's sex life has been hugely affected. We didn't have sex again after the arrival of DS until he was about 14 months old and not once in those 14 months did DH ever try and pressure me. It took a while for sex to feel natural/normal and even now we probably only have it about once a month. I work full time (very long shifts), still breast feed, lots of night time wake ups and early mornings all contribute to me just feeling exhausted most days. Most evening I collapse into the sofa with a cup of tea and biscuits and trying to find the energy for sex is the last thing on my mind. Like I said though, DH is fantastic, he understands that I'm tired most evenings and is happy to just wait for me to initiate sex when I feel I would like it. In the meantime we have lots of kisses during the day, we walk around holding hands, we hug all the time, lie on the sofa together to watch films etc, send each other loving texts throughout the day and ring each other through the day for little chats etc so we still have the sort of closeness and intimacy. I know DH would never, ever expect sex of me, he wouldn't even suggest it.

This does not sound like a man who would react well to the suggestion of counselling as it doesn't sound like he's gives a shit about how you're feeling and as long as he gets sex on a regular basis then he's not interested in much else.

I actually can't believe he said sex is ok if it's perfunctory if you aren't in the mood, what the hell? So he's now giving you permission not to enjoy it but only on the basis that you still do it anyway? He sounds horrendous.

I also can't believe he said that about sex being perfunctory. It just doesn't fit with the kind, caring, loving man I married. I know that he has a need and I want him to feel loved and to have sexual pleasure. But this is all so fucked up.

I think I have to get us to relationship counselling. Because I don't think we can sort this out ourselves. I tried to say it is not my problem but our problem, but he didn't really get it. And if this goes any further then I don't think our relationship can sustain it.

Hmm... At the start of the thread I was like hmm you should tell him and he can decide to leave or not I can understand not wanting to be in a sexless marriage. But after your update and I don't say this lightly because I know things aren't black and white they are shades of grey. Please LTB he knew you were crying about having sex and he still wanted to continue and now he knows you don't want to have sex but you're pencilled in for Wednesday and he will take perfunctory sex?!? That sounds awful and abusive and I'd consider it rape, or at the very least rape adjacent.

I just don't know what else to say. I get that you love him but If he's treating you like this does he love you? I know this is pushing my own morals but I think it'd be shared amongst others that his behaviour is terrible

Tbh I don't see how you will get past this. Even if you both go to counselling (and you say he has reservations and you can't afford it for yourself) how long will that take to have an impact on things? In the meantime you are having sex you don't want and dreading 'date night'. You really don't have to do it you know.

The thing is it just doesn't make any sense - because he is a really kind and caring person in every other aspect of our relationship. I just can't believe he is saying and doing these things, because it doesn't seem to be in character. I think if someone else told me about their husband doing this I would be horrified.

Maybe I should put off the bills tonight and try to talk to him again.

He's treating you like a wank sock. What a despicable way to treat another human being. He's coercing you into sex. He knows you don't want it and he doesn't care.

He wants sex and doesn't care whether you want or enjoy it. He tells you its non-negotiable - that you must have sex on a certain day whether you like it or not. He knows that you cry during / after sex with him, amd doesn't see this as an issue. He's only concerned about the sex being perfunctory because it affects his enjoyment.

This is not a decent man, and I consider what he's doing to be rape. You may not be saying 'no', but he's not giving you the option of saying 'no', is he? It's unforgiveable, really it is.

I'm so sorry this is happening, but it's not you that's the problem here.

Well I might have created this situation because I said that he shouldn't wait for me to finish, because I couldn't and it was becoming like a performance anxiety thing on top of the pressure to have sex. I thought if we got rid of a layer of pressure it would be easier to relax into it but now we seem to have created a situation where my needs are irrelevant.

He's not that kind and caring if he's acting like your boss with regards to what you do all say.

You might be living off his income, but he is living IN yours.

Your redundancy brought in money to the family that you all benefit from.

How much money would you have if you had used it to fund your expenses until you found work?

He sounds like an utter pig TBH.

Even insisting on twice a week regular sex from a woman with no libido was grim before it got to his rape plans fpr tomorrow night.

Where could I start looking for relationship counselling?

Bastard. Sorry, I know that isn't very constructive but his behaviour is appalling. You do NOT have sex with him Wednesday. Or any day. Who the actual fuck does he think he is? I'm not surprised you don't want sex with him. And even if he was bloody perfect it wouldn't matter because you are not a machine.

I would be looking at some space away from each other to be honest. You can not continue this way.

I can imagine this is a very hard thing to post Op. Because as you write things down you are realising that your DH is a twat. That is obviously raising the concern of the logical course of actions that are going to follow. Possibly ending with LTB.

The plain fact is your DH is a twat, he is forcing you or at least coercing you into sex. You keep making an attempt to the make him sound OK, because you fear the consequences of realising he is a twat.

The thing is it just doesn't make any sense - because he is a really kind and caring person in every other aspect of our relationship I often use this analogy. I am sure some people thought Fred West was OK, but that didn't stop him being a rapist. I am not saying your DH is a rapist, I am saying one facet of his character doesn't wipe out the other facets.

First - stop having sex with him completely until you 100% want to. If that's a deal breaker for him, then so be it.
Next start counseling, if your DH doesn't want to go, that should also be a deal breaker.

I think you need to find a bit of anger here, OP. Not anger as in shouting and ranting, but the kind of anger that enables you to say "No. I'm not happy with this and it's not going to happen until we've sorted things out properly. "

For what it's worth, most women go off sex when they have very young children and most men don't insist on going ahead anyway.

Stand up for yourself; you are not wrong and you are not unusual.

Sweetheart, please don't go to relationship counselling.

This is a person who has said out loud that he is happy to have sex with a woman that doesn't want it, a woman he's supposed to love.

He has also said that in exchange for just spending time with you and being nice to you he wants to rape you.

You need to get away from this man as soon as possible.

I agree with Sparrowhawk.

Sex is not a need. Food, water, air and shelter are needs. Sex is a want.

I apologise, this is probably going to sound harsh.

Your 'd'H is planning to rape you, every Wednesday night, and ameliorate any residual guilt he might have for that by being nice to you on Wednesday evenings. The rest of the week, he's going to pretend to be your boss and demand a daily productivity report and, if you have done enough to satisfy him, you will be 'allowed' to take a few hours off to do as you wish. If you so much as suggest that this isn't working for you, he ratchets up the manipulation to make you do it.

Kind caring men do not continue to have sex on their partners when they know they are crying. Not ever. Rapists do that. Kind caring men don't force their partners to have sex they don't want to have just because they've been nice to them for a couple of hours. Not ever. Rapists do that. Kind caring men do not manipulate, cajole or guilt their partners into having sex they don't want to have. Not ever. That's what rapists do.

Your husband is not a nice, caring man, he is an abuser, please, please get away from him.

Just out of interest, who's idea was it to sink your entire redundancy payment into an extension on the house?

I would say the same things if I read this thread. And a couple of times it has definitely felt pretty close to something bad. But I also feel like I have misrepresented things a bit, because he is kind and caring and I feel sure that if he really thought things through he wouldn't want me to do anything that made me feel uncomfortable.

We both sank all our money into an extension, because it was either that or sell the house at a loss. It was a good idea in the long term but I didn't anticipate it being this hard to find a new job

I've decided to talk to him tonight and I am going to make a few notes here that I can refer back to. In no particular order:

I want to tell him exactly how I feel about having sex when I don't want to - that that is what's making me cry. And that I am confused and upset by his remarks about the perfunctory thing.
I want to tell him that the problem is not my low libido but our unmatched libido, and that we need to sort it out between us.
I want to tell him that we should start relationship counselling as we clearly don't have the tools to solve this problem ourselves.
I want to tell him that if he wants me to be more intimate then he could help by sorting out his bad breath
I want to say that there should be no bartering or exchange for sex - if I say I need more help with the housework to feel more relaxed that doesn't mean that we will always have sex if he does some housework.
I also want to say that I love him and understand his desires but that I am very concerned about creating a situation where his sexual desires are more important than mine (or lack of), or where sex is seen as a service to him.

Good luck with the talk. You shouldn't have to tell him these things.

"I also want to say that I love him and understand his desires but that I am very concerned about creating a situation where his sexual desires are more important than mine (or lack of), or where sex is seen as a service to him."

Absolutely.

"But I also feel like I have misrepresented things a bit, because he is kind and caring and I feel sure that if he really thought things through he wouldn't want me to do anything that made me feel uncomfortable. "

If he wanted to go out for a Chinese for a friend every Wednesday and the friend said, "nah, I wouldn't enjoy that" - would he say that it was non-negotiable?

There's really not much thinking needed to understand sex should be something both people want.

But I also feel like I have misrepresented things a bit, because he is kind and caring and I feel sure that if he really thought things through he wouldn't want me to do anything that made me feel uncomfortable.

I really do hope this is true, however, you have said that you have had discussions about how it makes you feel and that the upshot of those discussions is that he manipulated you into being forced into having sex with him every Wednesday. He knows you feel uncomfortable about this, lovely, he is still going to plough ahead.

Sex is constantly negotiable. If the shoe was on the other foot, and you were the one with the high libido, are there any circumstances in which you would say that he had to perform every Wednesday, no matter what?

Men don't need sex any more than women do.