Can I reach my husband before it's too late?

[ProfessorSillyStuff]

I have seen that my husband has been googling women we both know looking for naked pics of them and when not finding any has looked at porn afterwards. He has done this when I'm sleeping.
I have always told him I've no issue with him watching porn alone or together. Just dont want him to hide stuff. He has always said he doesn't need or like porn. He has occasionally watched it before and I never minded. I am more worried about the lack of connection and him looking at his childhood sweetheart and this other female aquaintance (who fwiw is a horrid person and my brother's ex and who he knows I dislike).
We have two very young ds together. I want to work out how to connect with my husband and gain greater intimacy with him. I feel I could do better meeting his emotional needs. I don't know how. I have Asperger's. His relationship with his mother is strained and I feel he may have childhood issues with her that are causing this and in turn causing marital issues for us.
For what its worth I am slim and attractive enough to turn heads including his. Take good care of myself nails, heels makeup etc which I know he likes my style.
I make an effort in the bedroom. His tastes are very vanilla.
I think he needs to feel more safe with me. Has anyone got any advice for me. Please I just want him to feel alright. He's such a good man. Thanks for reading.

A lot of people with Asperger's kind of learn social rules by rote and end up adopting rules of an older generation. When female, they also have a tendency to excuse major problems with their spouses because they are taught that feminine submissiveness is normative, and they believe that the correct thing for a woman to do when faced with any kind of "husband trouble" is to take on the bulk of the work and thinking themselves.

It's so troubling to me to see a woman who believes a man's abuse is something that could somehow "make up for" his creepy behavior toward other women, including women she despises. OP, you may need some kind of hard reset on your expectations for a relationship.

I don't think the masses and masses of women on this website who've been physically and emotionally abused (myself included) would think it somehow made it acceptable to look up naked photos of our childhood sweethearts and men our husbands/boyfriends despise.

I don't think there's even one man out there who'd think it was his duty to "fix" this situation if the roles were reversed. If you were doing this kind of thing, have no fear, OP, you'd be shut out from his life as soon as it was reasonably possible. Women were told in the same era when they were being told to keep themselves as attractive as possible after marriage that they needed to excuse husbands' behavior and externalize it to avoid blaming the husband. This was an artifact of an era when being left by one's husband was permanent economic and social ruin. Don't let that era dictate your modern life.

WombOfOnesOwn - excellent post! Spot on.

Thanks everyone for commenting and being concerned for my emotional wellbeing!
To clarify, I see the googling as a moment of emotional infidelity which warns me that my husband may be emotionally unfulfilled and indicates that he could feel safer with me. Snooping of course will cause further damage and so I need a real solution.
I prefer boundries to expectations and I only mentioned my appearance to give some context in case someone thought it relevant. Of course it's of no import. It's really unhealthy to neglect oneself married or otherwise though and I do find it easier to be present when I'm well presented.
Having been abused does cause behavior like this. I'm not excusing it! He will want to fix it for our sons and I. He may not know how or feel strong enough. The shoe has been on the other foot and he has been and will be right by my side. He's a keeper. He does need to love himself unconditionally as he does our boys.
Joysmum, thanks for sharing your experience. It's amazing that your husband was the catalyst for your healing and self love. May I ask did he approach you about it or did you realise independantly that your past was affecting your relationship? Was he witness to or actively involved in your process or did you work on it in private? How did you get started?
Thanks again everyone, I really am getting my head on straight and seeing a solution forming here

I see the googling as a moment of emotional infidelity which warns me that my husband may be emotionally unfulfilled and indicates that he could feel safer with me.

Obviously you know him well as you live with him, however I’m not sure you can decide that really just based on his googling.

There are a lot of explanations for the googling TBH and it is unlikely that it has anything to do with you and your relationship. IMO it is way more likely that it is something to do with him and his values, his character and his beliefs as an individual.

I really don't think his emotional infidelity indicates that he could feel safer with you. I think that he's looking for something new and exciting, which you basically gave him the green light to do when you told him he could have his cake and eat it too.
There is some disparity in what you have said. On the one hand you have said you don't have a problem with him looking at porn, and searching for naked pics of ppl he knows, yet you're on here asking how to connect better because it's a sign of emotional infidelity. So you're not totally OK with it?
Also, if you're OK with him looking at stuff but don't want him to keep anything secret, what do you want him to do? Come and tell you what he's been looking up every time? I know that sounds sarcastic, it's not meant to be, but I think you need to be completely clear in your own head what you understand by his actions and how you want to move forward with this issue. At the moment it sounds very unclear.

Actually I have no issue with your description of your brother's Ex. What would make me annoyed is my DH looking for naked pics of her. I find that a bit sick if I'm honest.

Not all porn users have childhood issues. I'm not bothered about porn.... but people we know would not go down well with me.

Is he depressed? Is he running away from performing in the bedroom?

"Can I reach my husband? " - I am afraid that that is totally out of your hands . Time after time , well meaning women on here have virtually prostrated themselves for the sake of their husband and all to no avail . A person's decisions are in their own hands . You sound like you are taking the blame for this and it is not your fault . I took the blame for years when I should really have told him to grow up and Fck off !

I fell apart. I couldn’t cope and I took off, ran away.

Then I realised on the night I ran that I’d taken me with me. Dh gently told me on the phone he wasn’t help to help me and that perhaps I needed to speak to someone who could.

What a relief that was. Like I needed to have permission.

This was the polar opposite to when my dh needed help in later years having lost both parent before he was 40 and to long unpleasant conditions. I had to tell him I loved him so much but that DD and I would not accept his behaviour so he needed to see someone as we could see he wasn’t coping well and needed to be happy as much as we needed him to be.

What did happen in both cases was an assertion that things weren’t good enough as they were and had to change. How that was broached was what was different.

Boundaries aren’t boundaries and a merely markers to be ignore if they aren’t set where you need them, and upheld as being your limit.