Suddenly realised I’m not attracted to DH anymore. What am I supposed to do?

[Weirdrose]

Have been with DH for 10 years, married for 7. 1 dc. I’m mid thirties, he is mid forties.

We’ve always had mismatched sex drives. Mine is quite high and DH not so much, though this didn’t really become an issue until the last few years.

It began to dwindle, then it was only when I instigated it. He stopped ‘giving’ me anything in return. He would happily accept blowjobs or a quickly but anything for me/kissing/foreplay went out of the window. Eventually I had to stop instigating as I’d be constantly rejected, and I hated feeling like a sex pest. It’s been completely none existent for the last 10 months.

We’ve talked about it so many times in the past. Dh even went to the gp and got diagnosed with low testosterone and a prescription for viagra. But he never followed up with any of the other appointments, blood tests or prescriptions. He didn’t seem to care and at this point I’ve had to assume he just doesn’t want to.

I won’t lie, I even considered having an affair. I started noticing attractive men and fantasising about them. I even signed up on an affairs dating website, which lasted all of two minutes before I was horrified by the influx of messages and guiltily deleted the account! It’s definitely not something I could ever do, so not an option. I was beginning to plan a life without him, as even though I love him, I can’t live the rest of my life without any passion or intimacy.

The thing is, the last month or two or so DH has begun to make advances. But only when very drunk at the weekend.

And my physical reaction shocked me. I was absolutely repulsed. And a little offended (I’ve been taking even more care of my physical appearance, but he has to be steaming to even consider it?!).

I’ve been craving this so much, but I felt awkward and very uncomfortable. My skin crawled. And we’ve just had an argument because now he doesn’t understand why as ‘this is what you want isn’t it’. And I don’t really understand either.

It’s a long shot I know, but has anyone experienced or found a way to get over something like this?

Your talk sounds frustrating and upsetting. He seems to be completely disregarding your feelings and trying to place the blame on you for not "persuading" him enough. The problem sounds less about the sex per se and more about his failure to do the basics (such as go back to the GP) to keep the relationship going while trying to blame you for wanting a functioning marriage.

I don't think that the porn alone indicates a problem- watching porn is very different from having sex with a woman, doesn't require him to maintain an erection and doesn't involve any sort of performance anxiety.

I had similar also with a 10 yr age gap.We had sex therapy but it just confirmed even more that I didn't fancy him at all.It came to a head when I gave my number to someone on a night out.
I ended it the next morning.

He said it was a horrible reason to leave a family, that I would be selfish and everyone would think I was awful. Including dd.

The more I think about this bit, the crosser I feel on your behalf.

There is no 'cheating' if one side goes off sex. It can only be considered cheating if you're open to having regular sex with your partner. Otherwise, they're free to find it elsewhere.

I think your reaction is quite normal. Firstly because sex is a habit, if your relationship has no intimacy and your head has been accepting it as platonic it's a bit of a shock to get your head around the switch back to being sexual again

Secondly you've not said if there is any other intimacy, do you hug, kiss, hold hands etc? If not then jumping straight to sex feels a bit quick an unnatural

Lastly if he is drunk and given his history of not seemingly being bothered about this I'd be wondering what's going on and why now etc. Does he actually want sex or is he doing it so he doesnt lose you? Is he getting drunk because he feels nervous as he hasnt done it in a while or is it because he still doesn't actually want to and is getting drunk to cope with it?

I think the answer is having some really honest conversations and taking things slowly again if that's what you both want

It's cheating whatever the circumstances.

If one person goes if sex, you are free to leave them you are not entitled to cheat.

If you honestly think cheating in a marriage is alright then never get married.

Either he changes or dump him. It's not much of a marriage if you're fantasising about other men, that seems lonely. You were probably repulsed because he tried to have sex with you while drunk. Intimacy is more than just sex, you need that closeness, the cuddles, the small things he does for you. If all that has fizzled out you might as well be living with an acquaintance.
For the marriage to work he needs to see what is wrong too and actively seek change.

Sorry OP. You can never compete with hardcore porn in a porn addict's head. It can turn men into selfish lovers who disengage from real intimacy. I've been there. Have you checked his search history for searches for escorts?

you come across as rude without trying then. And very judgemental and opinionated.

Something to consider OP, what was your sex life like before this? When you first got together? The first few years after? Was he instigating things or passive? Do you think hes maybe a sub? What porn is he watching? It rang alarm bells for me when you said he wants you to "persue" him.
He is either just fucking lazy, a sub, doesn't fancy you and isn't being honest or getting it elsewhere.

Also ,I would be asking him if he wanks to porn and see what he says. If he denies it you know he's lying and if he admits it he hasn't got a low sex drive really or he finds " real life" sex ie with you not stimulating or porn like enough.

I was ready to say you should go to counselling together, I know you said you tried it with an ex, but as you have a child I really think you should do it with him too. However the fact he’s look g at hardcore porn, and not listening at all to your points, I’d say forget the counselling and just divorce him, I doubly you’ll ever get the attraction back, knowing he’s secretly and regularly looking at that.

Me too!

He says he cares, but can't be bothered and is just waiting for you to give up asking.

He pretends not to remember interactions that were very important to you.

He's not even gay! He's not even disnterested in sex!

But that bit about accusing YOU of selfishness and awfulness, and trying to undermine your relations with everyone else... that's just corrosive nastiness.

Oh OP, from your first post I thought that a split was on the cards. Maybe not immediately, but that’s where it’ll go.

Perhaps your relationship (sex aside) isn’t actually that healthy if the two of you can’t communicate with each other.

Threatening you with your DDs reaction is a disgusting thing to do. Absolutely revolting.

When you leave/make him leave (and it sounds like he’s going to force you to do it. Cowardly.) you’ll be leaving because the relationship has run its course.

And - loudly for those at the back - YOU DESERVE TO BE HAPPY

It could rise to Me 97squillion Mumsnetters posting in solidarity.

That won’t change the reality she potentially faces.

The reality being people will come to hear the OP’s own, (more sympathetic to her) or his (far less sympathetic) explanation for why their DD now shuttles between two homes, or doesn’t live with one of her parents anymore.

She and her DD will be exposed, overtly or covertly, to family, friends, acquaintances, neighbours views as to how justifiable that was.

In part because it is taking a gamble on how much her DD is impacted long term. We still don’t have good data on the when, how and why some children end up with poorer outcomes, and others not so much. Having spent years looking at it I have some hunches. But ultimately it may be that even with the best behaviour all round from parents and family, some children (nature+nurture) do not have the magic resilience that is often bandied about.

In part because while leaving in order to find romance, intimacy and an active sex life looks obvious on paper, the prospects for a second go around are not that great. Entering the dating pool with one marriage under your belt, the responsibilities for a child, often the need to work more and harder to support a single parent household, is not a bed of roses. And tough on somebody who has already felt very rejected.

The OP needs to be at peace with being on the end of other people’s potential judgements, whatever they may be. Because virtual crossness on her behalf will not cut it when she’s going through a lot of changes, some of which she will have little or no control over.

Yes, very true @AlienatedChildGrown. The emotional and practical difficulties of splitting up a family should never be underestimated.

And coming to terms with other people's judgement is always tricky when breaking up. I remember one woman on here saying her DH would probably tell everyone she left him over a piece of boiled meat, but the behind-the-scenes story added up to a lot more than that, and this sounds similar: him insisting that everyone will find OP awful, including her DD, sounds mean-spirited and manipulative.

The trouble with some relationships is that you can't put your finger on what makes them bad until you've had plenty of experience of kinder situations, which can take some time to get under your belt. Then, years after leaving for some trivial reasons such as "because he used to leave his socks on the landing carpet", one day you can find yourself revising that, with surprise, to something like "because he never took my feelings seriously."

So yes, it might be humiliating for OP to split up with "just wanted more sex" hung round her neck as "the only reason", but I bet there's more to it than that (e.g. "he can sometimes be very jealous"). I suspect if OP leaves, it will be in search of a lot more than an active sex life, whatever her DH wants to minimise it to.

Of course, OP is the only one who can tell what's really going on! But that's my tuppeny's worth! 😊

She isn’t the only one though.

There are 3 perspectives. Because there are 3 of them in the family. Who all have their own 3 versions of “life in this family unit”. A version called “before”, one for “presently” and one for “what my tomorrows will look & feel like”.

All of us have a tendency to see things through our own lens. Especially when between a rock and hard place. The desperation gets to you and emotional detachment from your own vision of who is screwing up, who should be fixing things, how much better things would be if the spouse disappear in a puff of smoke, or got plugged into the internet overnight for an upgrade with far fewer bugs. That’s normal and human.

But is also the cause of some people going from a frying pan to a roasting tin, if not an actual fire. And a lot of children get bits of the soul burnt to a crisp in the process.

The OP needs to know the good, the bad, the great and the ugly. Which includes perhaps a decade or more (depending on how well or badly things go for her child as she turns into a teenager and young adult) of judgement. Some harsh. Some barely tangible, but sensed behind polite words and neutral faces. Some that rolls off like water off a duck’s back cos it’s bullshit, and some that feels too ”big grain of truth” not to cut like a knife. She can’t prepare for that, let alone work out which pile of life crap she’d rather dig away most days, if she’s mainly exposed to advice and empathy of the LTB variety.

@AlienatedChildGrown, this is all true. Clearly something for the OP to work out for herself!

The puff of smoke/bug fix is really the only painless way forward... 😎

You're right about the different lenses. I am biased by having been burnt to a crips by my mum sticking in a sad marriage for 70 years.

This is a very good post in many ways and it does point to the very real emotional fallout and judgement that dare I say it particularly women ending a relationship with children experience.

However one thing I think it underestimates and underplays is that the issues around love and intimacy have the potential to make this become a very corrosive environment (it is already on that track) as two people don’t get their needs met in the relationship. I think that needs to feature heavily in the decision making too. I genuinely think a conversation about opening up the relationship might be worth considering because like you @Weirdrose if there was no intimacy or sex in my relationship I would have a tonne of negative emotions about that experience.

AlienatedChildGrown

you post is very interesting and I’m certainly not going to argue with you

I totally 100% underestimated the impact it would have on my children

now in my situation there was enough verbal abuse and some other issues that forced the split

but when we save a parents sanity through a split , we do impact a child’s and it’s worth being mindful of that

but -for every divorced parent with a mentally ill child , there’s a married one too

and many children from unhappy or less dysfunctional marriages grow up and have the same dynamic in their unhappy and dysfunctional relationship

basically humans are fucked

You have my huge huge sympathy. My ex (together 3.5 years) started having ED issues about 1.5 years in. I really like sex and physical intimacy and found it so hard. He’d start things and be unable to continue for a while and then he just stopped being interested all together. He still wanted massages from me but there was no reciprocity. I tried patience, explaining my need for intimacy, suggesting alternatives etc.. He kept telling me it was work
stress or he had no idea what the problem was.
Eventually we split up over something else and after a month he asked if I wanted to be his fuck buddy (like seriously WTF!). When I said no strings sex wasn’t for me so no he said it was the strings that made him
not want to for so long.

I felt physically sick. All that heartache, my worrying, my trying and all along he just didn’t want the obligation of a relationship with me. Now he doesn’t have to tolerate my presence in his life he is Mr. Stiffy. Fuck him and fuck your husband too. I hope his cock rots and drops off!

@Nicanabanana I totally agree with you. One of a pair allowing intimacy, sex, love to die on the vine can be corrosive, to the point where the fabric of the relationship frays, sometime to the point of breakage beyond repair. And I think chapter 10 (?) in 12 More Rules is particularly good at getting that across in a man-to-man way. As well as laying out some good solutions towards narrowing the rift that evolves during the “not in the bloody mood” years. A solution is needed. But there are many, many paths to be considered and attempted before a child’s future outcomes in life need to be gambled with.

@Thisisworsethananticpated On one aspect the evidence (thus far) there does seem to be clarity.

The poorer outcomes of a divorce are still better than the even poorer outcomes a child in an abusive home suffers. It’s not that divorce doesn’t affect them. They have no special immunity. But the damage so far done + the damage incurred from a parental split is still far less damaging for the children than staying in an abusive dynamic.

Not all the kids are fucked. I promise, it’s not as bleak as that.

The use of abuse by laypeople does not always coincide with how professionals evaluate and measure it. In both directions.

Some parents will deny entirely evident abuse, and continue in their coupledom even if you point to all the very obvious ways their children have been, are being and will be harmed. They will cling to the “better outcomes” of children from intact families as justification for their choice to stay together, deny the abusive nature of their pairing and tell a world (who is giving them this face 🤨) they are an extra good parent doing their best for their child.

There are also parents who will take any slight, irritation, disappointed or let down and magnify it. Until they feel justified in relabelling it abuse, in order to grab the “lesser harms” of children in abusive homes + divorce. So they get to leave for their own reasons AND polish their “good parent” halos.

Those kids likely range from deffo fucked, to somewhat fucked at best.

The difference in outcomes between “just about good enough” parents and “fucking AMAZING” parents is surprisingly small. Every kid with just about good enough parents, who manage to find a way through rough patches, work on imperfect matches of values/needs/desires (which isn’t static over the years) and hang on in there, are not fucked.

Each of those children will have their own, individual nature+nurture cross to bear. Divorce is not the sole cause of mental illness or wellbeing issues. So kids in intact, “good enough” homes are not immune from either. But they will have one less specific “bucket of pain” to lug through life when compared to their counterpart with a parent who chose to twist rather than stick.

How big the bucket of pain a specific child of divorce gets, is anyone’s guess. It doesn’t seem to correlate as tidily with polite, non conflictual co-parenting as was once presumed. That’s not to say post split conflict is no biggie for the kids’ outcomes. It is. But the absence of conflict and existence of cordiality between separated parents is not a step by step recipe for a child of divorce minus the poorer outcomes. I have my hunches, as per why. But at present, there doesn’t seem to be much study in that direction. Not that I’ve found anyway.

I think we threw out quite a few babies with the bath water with divorce from the late 70s onwards. Of course not all marriages are going to make it. Humans get married. They are fallible, fuck up, fuck people over (even by accident) and fuck about. Divorce needs to exist. But at some point the warnings professionals were giving about the negative impacts of staying in a volatile home got translated (probably the media’s fault, human interest does tend to get good ratings) into “unhappy parent/s=unhappy child so following what makes parent happy = better for the kids”. As a result a lot of children got accidentally thrown under the bus by parents who would willingly die rather than harm them. But they didn’t know what they didn’t know.

AlienatedChildGrown

thats a long post to digest and wrap head around
I’ll read it again
thanks for taking the time x

They have a child. So unless they want to put their sex life before their child’s home and family, it’s not as simple as “just leave”