DH and I are currently seeing Relate, we’ve not been operating as a couple for years and years - I have had the dc unilaterally and he’s carried on as if more or less single.
Three areas at Relate are: time as couple, communication and sex.
I am basically only here for the dc although I care about Dh. I can’t decide if I’d miss him or if it would be missing the family unit and the safety and familiarity. He used to be away for work for a couple of weeks at a time and I didn’t ever miss him but I suppose that’s not the same thing.
We’ve had a really poor sex life for a very long time and we were at six years and counting. However since we sort of hit crisis point and started seeing Relate DH is trying to initiate sex quite frequently - and I still don’t want to. I can’t imagine ever wanting to, but that seems a really awful thing to say. A few times I’ve just gone along with it because I know it must be hurtful to DH and also I can feel it makes him angry, which is reasonable as rejection is hurtful.
But when we do have sex I try and work out how few times I can get away with kissing him. How quickly I can make it be over. Afterwards i usually feel really upset.
I can only ever see me being in a place where I tolerate sex with DH, at best. It makes me feel dread - when he does the whole ‘let’s get the dc to bed early and have an early night’ I feel dread and resignation in equal parts.
But I want to keep my family together. I don’t know what to do about this. I genuinely can’t see it changing but I suppose I hope that it will. There’s never been much of a spark from my side I suppose and we’ve been together for nearly 20 years and married for 15. DH is a perfectly nice looking man - and yet, and yet, intimacy with him feels weird and uncomfortable to me. Kissing him makes me feel awful, I don’t decide it, my body just goes nope. The thought of oral sex with him is absolutely no, but luckily (I suppose) he’s never liked giving and so has never done that. I might possibly be able to make myself give but receiving would be an absolute no now. Years ago I would have liked him to but never really discussed it as I knew he didn’t like it, which again is fair enough.
Sorry, that was long.
Is there a possible way forwards? I am not asexual or anything, I just don’t fancy DH I suppose, but it is more than that.
I know logically the options are:
Stay and keep having sex I don’t want and hope it improves.
Stay and tell DH I can’t have sex with him again - he wouldn’t want to open the marriage and nor would I really. I think it could be messy. I appreciate if I don’t want sex with him he is entitled to leave to find someone else.
Or just accept the marriage is over and leave.
There are dc involved here too.