Hi. I'd like some outside input on my situation, as it's reached a point where I don't know what to do anymore and I'm really upset.
I work at home, except a couple of mornings a week, and my husband goes out to work every day. A couple of months ago, I went to do some laundry for my husband and I found that one of his handkerchiefs was totally wet - he'd clearly used it to clean up after masturbating. This really surprised me, as he's hardly ever at home on his own, so he must have waited in after I went out one morning in order to do so, before going to work himself. I would like to make it absolutely clear that I have no issue in principle with my husband masturbating - we have always talked about it in the past, and sometimes do so together. What surprised and upset me was the idea that he was waiting for me to leave some mornings simply in order to masturbate alone, and this opened up a massive trust problem in my mind.
I figured the best thing to do would be to talk to him about this, so I did. We agreed to be totally open about if and when we masturbate, so that it would definitely not be a matter of breaking the trust between us. I felt much better, and then over Christmas we had far more time for sex and used it well. Then a couple of weeks ago, he told me that he'd masturbated. My feelings went like this: 1) really happy that he'd stuck to our agreement, and that we could trust one another, 2) excited at the thought of him masturbating, 3) really upset that he'd felt the need to do this again. Thinking through all this again I got very mixed up and unhappy, and decided to talk to him about it again.
We have a pretty good sex life, but I have a pretty high sex drive and would always be up for more sex. So another thing that bothered me about this discovery was that he clearly also has an unmet need in terms of his sex life, but that rather than approaching me, he was masturbating. I found this idea really upsetting. I always thought we had quite an open, healthy relationship, and that we talked about the things that mattered, masturbation and sex life included, but this proved otherwise.
In our second discussion on the matter, I explained that I would like to have more sex, and that if he's feeling needy, I would really love it if he would just approach me and tell me so. I would find it really sexy, and be happy to make more time for sex together. I also acknowledged the fact that masturbation and sex are not mutually exclusive - sometimes it's still good to masturbate, even when you have a good sex life. So I suggested that if at any time he wants to masturbate, e.g. in bed together, that's also fine - even sexy. I just don't like this feeling that on the rare occasions when I work away from home, he waits for me to leave and then masturbates. It strikes me as secretive, closed behaviour, and it makes me unhappy and start to shut down towards him as I feel like the trust between us is broken. He agreed to all of these suggestions, and said he was sorry that I had been so upset - apparently he hadn't initially realised just how upset I was when we discussed this the first time. So I thought this was now fixed, and we were onto something really good.
Since then we've had a noticeably better sex life - more sex, more often, more open, and I've felt much happier and closer to him as a result. But today I've just found he's been masturbating again. It upset me even more this time, as I feel like somehow the awesome sex we had at the weekend was just a free masturbation pass - as if he had gone out of his way to spice up our sex on one day, simply in order that I shouldn't be able to mind him masturbating another day. I felt a lot of different things on this discovery - mostly just confusion and great unhappiness. I don't believe I should (and nor would I want to) ask him to stop masturbating, but clearly this has turned into a major issue for me by this point, and it's affecting our relationship.
What should I do to get over this? Am I being totally unreasonable here? Do any of you have experience in similar situations, and if so, how do/did you handle them? I know I need to talk to him again, but I am a bit stumped at this point, as I would have thought that the conversations we've had so far would have resolved something, and I worry that by bringing it up again that makes me look crazy AF... but maybe that's what I am.