I don't find you attractive but I never want you to leave

[Totallyconfused90]

This is my first time here. I've been having a lot of problems with my partner. He was the full time single parent before I moved in, not much input from mum. Adapting to step parenting has been a challenge and I'm getting all kinds of things wrong but generally we get on well and have things in common. Problems with partner have always been about sex and intimacy. I've had 2 years of casual sex after a long term relationship, he's had 12 years of bringing up baby. I'll be the first one to admit that I'm not particularly sensitive to this. I want to be but I get it wrong all the time. Neither of us really know what we're doing in a relationship. I love him. He says he loves me. I adore his child and his dog. We've lived together over a year. But things in the bedroom have got steadily worse in that time. I packed on Monday. I haven't unpacked yet. I feel trapped. I'm sure he does too. I so desperately want things to work. We had a better day and had sex. I felt really happy but this just seemed to aggravate him. He still felt the problems, I did too but how dare I be so happy. He is drinking and smoking so much now and I don't know how to reach him. Everything I do makes things worse, including doing nothing at all. He has just told me that he doesn't find me attractive in any way but doesn't want me to leave, doesn't ever want me to leave and I feel so confused.

Asofanearyou
Problems I've been insensitive about: insecurity, not being big enough or hard enough, feminised with being mum aswell as dad. Back pain every time we have sex. Anxiety that I'll have my head turned as I like younger men not older ones. Emasculated that once I finish my apprenticeship/train to teach I'll earn more than him. At the moment he 'tips up' he pays me the bulk of what he gets and I sort out all the bills and make major purchases. Mainly because I want to do things like pay council tax and the water bill. That sentence 'I don't find you attractive but I never want you to leave' he wants to find me sexy and fun, he's so unhappy that he doesn't. It's all the last 15 months of issues boiled down. I love you, I never want you to leave but I don't know how to live with you.

JayeAshe. My mum says I'm always bringing home strays. I never thought I wanted a 'project' maybe I did and this is the price to pay? I did want to wrap him up and love all his hurt better. I can't live with knowing I've made it worse instead. I do find him sexy and funny and I do love him. I can't change what we've said to eachother but would seek to overwrite it. I've not exactly got self esteem central going on here but I've enough to not be overwhelmed. I realise when we embarked on this that it could have been special and incredible. Instead both our insecurities, misunderstandings and 8 months WFH with a teenager on site have kinda just made everything really crap.

Oh the poor ickle pet.

How dreadful for him shackled to a woman who doesn't see and anticipate his every thought and emotion.

Perhaps if you throw yourself on a physical cross rather than an imaginary one, it might help the poor misunderstood manchild?

Jesus Wept OP. Hes picked well with you. You look in the mirror and just see ITS ALL YOUR FAULT smeared across your forehead.

What are you getting out of this relationship now?.

What did you learn about relationships when you were growing up, what sort of an example were you shown?.

Good relationships are not like this at all; are you somehow addicted to the deep lows and highs that go with these types of dysfunctional and codependent relationships?.

At the tender age of 30 you've already had one unhappy marriage and now you are in another relationship that is unhappy and is making you miserable. Your own self and your attendant fears also are stopping you from leaving him but staying with him will not make you happy either.

What attracted you to this 43 year old anyway?. I would think you've been further manipulated and or otherwise groomed here to accept this ill treatment anyway.

You need to completely reassess your whole approach to relationships and unlearn all the crap you have picked up about these along the way.

You deserve better than this. Don't settle and live the rest of your life like this.

Really he sounds absolutely awful. You don’t need to settle for this.

You never got the memo that you cannot act as either a rescuer or saviour in a relationship and here you're trying to be both to him. It never works out well as you are all too clearly seeing.

He was never a project either nor yours to rescue and or save. He does not want to be rescued and or saved; he merely wants you around as a form of childcare.

Wow he's a cunt. He's manipulated you into thinking you're responsible for all his issues. You're not. You can't save him and nor should you, it's not your job. He's treating you like shit. When people show you who they are, believe them. Leave him. I know it sounds harsh and I'm sorry for that but you really need to leave.

Dear God, just leave, I’m exhausted reading this mess.
It’s not your job to coddle this man, why on earth would you stay???

Get some therapy.
You are not responsible for what goes on in anyone else's head.

Oh, and leave him . Today's a good day for that. Do it.

Good lord he certainly has picked a fantastic mirror to reflect all that well-crafted angst back at him!

If ONLY you were also safely with no career prospects and a foot taller with boobs a basketball's width bigger he'd be all set. But you aren't! Boo hoo. Can nothing ever go right for our hero?!

Look, he's a moaning, fag-stinking, alcohol swilling twat with zero self awareness who think that because he's done the solo parenting trip that MILLIONS of women have done before him (if this was a woman, do you honestly think you'd be mentioning him BRINGING UP A BABY ALONE as if he'd lived through war in Yemen or something?!) he's some tragic hero.

He wants you to stay to make his life easier.
He gives you nothing.

Stop romanticising Fag Breath and get out.

OP He has used you like a convenience and you have allowed it to happen.
You deserve better than this and one day you'll look back and wonder why you stuck it out for so long

Good Lord, OP just listen to yourself. Why are you so important that you have to be responsible for everything this man thinks and feels? He's used you. At the least he is unkind ("I don't find you attractive") If you became a fantastic Head Teacher on a ton of money, he would feel 'emasculated'??? Is this the 1920s?
Find your happiness within yourself, cut yourself loose and be free of this boulder around your neck.

This fella would feel emasculated if you got a job in McDonald's and didn't actually fuck up any orders the first day.

He wants to find you attractive and is upset that he doesn't?! Are you effing joking??? In that one sentence he's made it your responsibility to sex him up, rather than his to see you for the lovely person you are. And you're not allowed a career either. So he wants a free nanny, housekeeper, therapist AND trophy wife. Right. Stop making excuses for him and find your self respect. I mean that kindly. He's played you like a banjo and you deserve a million times better. NOBODY, no matter how rubbish their childhood, gets to make other people responsible for fixing their lives.

My inability to talk and help him out of the hole I've dug has ruined this man and he was already pretty broken

I can’t believe that you have internalised all the blame for this in what seems like it was a pretty normal start to a relationship -it started when you were seeing other people and then you gradually got closer and became exclusive.
If he is impotent has he sought medical help for this?
Has he just cornered you and now you are seeing the real him; he’s a bit abusive and jealous, he wants to pull you down he is are being guilt you.

Except my experiences made him feel terribly insecure, which I brushed off. And continued to ignore until it became a constant thought in his head and impotence. And now I have no idea how to reverse that. My inability to talk and help him out of the hole I've dug has ruined this man and he was already pretty broken. He's brought up baby on his own after mum walked out.

He really has done a number on you. Why are you blaming yourself for his problems? I keep hearing this in his voice, he's blaming you for this because he knows the effect it will have on you. He is responsible for the state he is in, not you.

I would also want to know what happened with the mother of his child - I bet she tells a very different story to the one he's come up with.

He's using you as his punching bag.

Everything is your fault.

His impotence
Depression
Insecurities
His lack of attraction to you is also your fault. And this is after just ONE YEAR of living together. He's ground you to nothing.

You're his dumping ground, only there to absorb his emotional vomit and diarrhoea, facilitate his life, ease the tedium of lone parenting and make him feel better while he makes you feel shit.

It's a good day to leave. Future you will thank you.

Sorry if I have misunderstood OP, but are you saying he beat up his child's mother and is attacking the dog too? And that the child is coping with all this? That's heartbreaking.

I read your posts OP and thought, "What a load of old pony".

He encouraged you to share your previous sex life with him, but has now decided to use that knowledge against you. If he can't get it up it's probably because he drinks too much, not because of you.

You'll get no sympathy for your tragic hero here, we all live in the real world.

Why on earth haven't you left yet?!

Sorry if I have misunderstood OP, but are you saying he beat up his child's mother and is attacking the dog too? And that the child is coping with all this? That's heartbreaking.

I read it as his parents and his upbringing. So he was the child watching his father beat up his mother.

What a twat OP.

You deserve better.

This story is all about him and how he’s this and he’s that. This is YOUR life. Not his.

What’s he doing to deal with his problems? Apart from blame you or let you blame yourself and become unhappy? Has he done anything? He needs counselling.

You are a Rescuer. You try and fix people’s problems and make them happy because it makes you happy. The reason could be because it gives you an excuse for not addressing your own problems. Counselling would help you a lot too. Separately.

You need to stop this pattern of behaviour as it’s not working. It didn’t work in your last relationship. It’s not working in this one. You need to change and be on your own for a while. Get to know you. Without fixing anyone but YOU!

While you are alone consider buying a battery powered friend instead of shagging about. For some, that type of ‘relationship’ can be because for a fleeting moment it helps the person forget their lack of loneliness and make them feel loved and they feel special for a few minutes. Or it could be that people need the sex rush of brain chemicals to momentarily block out the pain in their life. If either apply to you, could sex have become a drug and you an addict?

You can’t fix him. It’s not a partners job to fix their partner. I think you’d be better moving out. If you want to date him while you get the strength to dump him fine. But like others I’d suggest dump and move on would be better. He’s never trust you in a flat alone.