DH and I have been together for ten years, married for six. Our youngest is a toddler.
DH has always had a lower libido than me. In general he is not the most confident of men and I suspect he was a virgin or at least more inexperienced with women than he'd admit to when we got together. I never put him under pressure about sex, have always been supportive. I would have liked more sex but was very happy with what we had. DH has also had some health issues which have affected performance
Since our terrible sleeper youngest child was born, sex has become nonexistent. He has always had trouble initiating, and we've spoken about this before, but now he never initiates. When I try, most of the time he'll just sit there doing nothing, then tell me he is tired/sore etc. I have tried to tell him how unwanted this makes me feel. I feel as though he barely wants to look at me and no longer sees me as a woman,just a mum. Disclaimer being that I need to lose about three stone, am knackered, and feeling very insecure, I'm also a bit of a catastrophist and can overreact, so it's possible I'm seeing things that aren't there.
The last few weeks have been stressful and I just wanted to spend some time with DH and feel like an adult again, but after more rejection, I basically lost it and said I was done running after him begging for scraps of his affection, told him how I felt etc. He was very upset, said he felt like shit that he didn't realise how unhappy he was making me, it was his fault etc. There was some improvement. Another issue that I've had is that I'll go to bed, he'll say he will be down in ten minutes, and usually 40 minutes later he'll come to bed. This usually means I'm left to deal with the non sleeping toddler. I asked him what he was doing for all that time, he said locking up the house. It takes 5 minutes not 40.
I also noticed he'd be increasingly keen to pack me off to bed, with comments such as "ooh I'm tired, shall we go to bed soon" he'd turn off the TV/laptop (I'm usually reading) and the lights and just wait around til I'd gone to bed, then cue the 40 minutes later thing.
So I've just been feeling more and more shit, and I pulled him up on this as well. I told him how bloody shifty it made him look, and how unfair it was that he's basically putting pressure on me to go to bed so he can then sneak this 40 plus minutes to himself (alone time is in short supply at the minute and I get none unless I lock myself in the bathroom or leave the house)
So the next day he asked could we talk, which we did. He said he was totally ashamed of himself, had been up in the early hours of this morning thinking about what I said, realised he'd been acting horribly this past few weeks and it was going to stop.
I asked him was there anything else going on that he should tell me, and he said no.
Something made me check his browsing history on his phone. I have never done this before, but our phones are open to each other and I wouldn't care if he looked through mine. DH has no social media at all. Anyway, he's been googling for pictures of certain celebrities in bikinis/topless. I don't really care about that in itself, however I think it's pretty shit that he's been sitting doing that of an evening, then rejecting sex and barely touching me.
More worryingly, he has been looking at my best friend's social media. She posts a lot of scantily clad workout videos, and good for her, she's gorgeous. I'd say my husband has searched her name/looked at her social media accounts at least every day. I can see he has also been searching profiles of women we know locally/through work. Probably just nosiness, but he isn't searching any men.
So there we go. I'm offering it on tap, and he'd rather perve on my friends and random women we know in passing. I don't know how to feel. I'm reluctant to mention it to him because he did genuinely and of his own accord come and have that talk about how he's been a dick recently (and I thought he was being too hard on himself but obviously this is why)
Apart from all this, our marriage is excellent. I'm happy with the division of childcare and housework, he always pulls his weight around the house, would do anything for me (except have sex apparently) and is a kind man whom I adore. I love spending time with him, and I thought we were very happy. I don't think he's ever said an unkind word to me, the last few weeks have been hard and we have been a bit distant but he hasn't acted in an angry or unpleasant way or any thing like that. I veer from feeling that this is my fault, as I've put on weight and am often tired and stressed, and running around after the kids - to thinking he's horribly disrespectful for doing this. My best friend ffs. I'd just like a bit of perspective really