Husband: “make me feel horny, at least once in your life”

[EE13]

I am completely at a loss here and don’t know what to do anymore. These were my husband’s words to me this morning in bed. Needless to say I got up without a word and left our room. We are married now 3 and a half years with a 3 month old baby. His behavior has totally changed since the birth and I really don’t know what to do anymore. Little bit of background about us: baby was 100% planned, as we are 42 and 46 years old and when I was 39 we started IVF which was grueling,, we had 5 viable embryos, 3 didn’t catch, baby is number 4, so we still have one embryo frozen. Husband was very very supportive throughout the entire process, actually I was about to sort of give up and was saying to him that I can be happy by just being the two of us but actually I had the feeling that he desired the baby more then i did. When I got pregnant he was entirely supportive the whole time, actually from this point I miss being pregnant because since the birth of the baby everything turned upside down. It’s like he is missing our old life but doesn’t really say so just acts so childish and spoiled. Obviously I don’t have time to cook gourmet meals anymore ( I love cooking) and the house is also a mess sometimes… I am currently staying at home with the baby, he is working 4 times a week ( we are very comfortably off), he doesn’t have pressure from work point of view. Baby is super amazing and now he started to even sleep through the night already which makes things much easier. Still my husband seems so unhappy and has been behaving so unreasonably. In the first two months of baby’s life two times he called me ‘stupid woman’ when we had an argument, which hurt like hell but I attributed it to tiredness. I admit the first two months were difficult, but since then things have improved and we are sleeping so much better. So I don’t understand today’s hurtful frase. Our sex life has been good so far, and since the birth of the baby ( c-section ) we had sex already two times.
I really don’t know what to do here anymore, I just feel that his words/ behavior is killing the love that I have for him. What shall I do? If I wouldn’t have the baby at this point I would start searching for a divorce lawyer…. Am I exaggerating? Did any of you have similar experience? Is he going through some kind of depression? What shall I do?

Call him out in his behaviour. Not in the heat of the moment but when you are both calm.
"When you say X, I feel Y". "I need to understand what is going on with you"

He's being a prick.

I'm sick of men being abusive selfish pricks, calling it 'depression' and expecting the woman they've been abusing to nurture them back to health.

Fuck that.

If he's depressed then he needs to do the work himself.

He should be supporting his partner right now, not adding more problems to her plate.

Firstly congratulations on your beautiful baby. You're doing amazing!

Now it is possible for men to develop baby blues. Post natal depression. This can be frustrating because as the person who carries your baby and went through all the challenges and changes in hormones it's far more plausible and understanding for you to experience baby blues. However, I can say that it is possible that he may need to see someone about his emotions. This could purely be just that, HOWEVER if he does not admit to the emotional struggles and does not speak with someone, he then needs a sharp word with reality. You DO NOT get spoken to like that. You deserve respect and support. This is a time where he needs to either accept he's struggling or apologise and sort himself out. Having a child is hard work (totally worth it) but hard work. You're doing outstanding and you deserve to feel that.

Jesus, what the fuck?

She had a C-section and the scar still hurts.

Op, please do run away.
He owns you now you’ve had his baby and despite recent major surgery he is expecting you to provide sex. That is what his behaviour is saying.
This is appalling, and that is before we consider the fact you have a tiny baby.

He has shown you who he is. Sadly, not a Nice person.
Being depressed, if he is that, is not carte blanche to behave like a total arse AND pressure you for sex in a completely awful way.

Depression doesn't turn you into an asshole. "Make me horny, for once in your life", how the hell does anyone make the leap from that to depression?!

OP ppd just means depression in the first year after a baby. But your husband doesn't sound depressed, he sounds angry and horrible.

He doesn’t have to have gone through the process personally, but having the major change to your life that a baby brings can most certainly cause this.
The posters saying it's like a grenade exploding in your relationship are correct.The fact that you are older first time parents must make it even more shocking.
Things can get better, but not without hard work (counselling?) and an overriding desire from you both to make it work. Not sure if either of you are motivated for the long haul.

Having a baby is a massive change to all involved in the relationship. The demands on the mother from the baby are huge, tiredness, feeding amd lacknof sleep to name a few and the partner has to realise the change of her focus, that time and sleep are precious and one to one intimate time is not a the forefront of things to do.
It's hard on everyone to adjust. His words and rudeness are unpleasant but you both need to communicate your wants and needs from each other and find a happy place for all involved.
Difficult I know but build up resentment is not going to be good in the long run. Everyone needs to adapt to the balance of changes.

Yuk op that is a cringeworthy thing to say let alone hurtful and damn rude.

I would be responding along the lines of well back at you cause your attitude is the biggest turn off I've ever known

Tell him if he continues to speak to you like it and call you derogatory things like stupid women hel find himself divorced and on his arse as quick as you can throw a stick at him

Prick

Absolutely disgusting behaviour on his part. I'm sick of men and their fucking "need" for sex no matter what the situation, dressing it up as "feeling unloved" - fuck off. You just birthed his child via major abdominal surgery and now have a tiny dependent baby to care for. Why can't (most) men be equal partners with a focus on caring for the child alongside their partner instead of whining that they don't get enough attention. God it infuriates me so much and my partner isn't like this but I hear it so much and what really fucks me off is its normalised. "Oh, you must make sure you make him feel wanted" as if women don't have enough to do aside from caring for childish men who only think about getting their dicks wet.

OP you are not being unreasonable here. I'd ask him calmly to explain himself, and take it from there.

He sounds deeply childish and I’m afraid to say deeply selfish. He probably had too long as an adult just doing what he wanted, when he wanted and as he pleased. A baby has shook him to the core. Sometimes that can happen with men who start fatherhood in their late 40s. They quickly realise it’s quite hard and suddenly they feel quite old all of a sudden.

@C1N1CBoth sides win and lose when a baby arrives... The woman may lose her biology, her hormones, her freedom, her financial security... but the man also loses. He often loses attention, sex, freedom...

Poor "baby king", loosing attention, sex and freedom for a year because his wife (who is also loosing sex and freedom) is taking care of his child, so instead of being aware and helping with the situation like a grown up he belittles her for not being his caregiver and porn star anymore thus making an overwhelming situation much worse . Truly breaks my heart.

@C1N1CSimply saying his problems don't mean anything because hers are more prevalent is gatekeeping discomfort.

his wife is also having the same problems. Isn't he aware the she has to put her needs aside in order to take care of a little human being who demands constant attention 24/7? or is is all about him?

He's nasty.

I think it’s irrelevant if he has PPD or not, if he’s feeling so bad he needs to seek help and sort himself out, not take it out on OP via nasty, misogynistic comments.

A key factor to consider is what the relationship was like before.

OP, you say it was great and he was great. If it was an equal partnership with both of you sharing responsibility for housework, for proving and giving support to each other, then it seems important for the pair of you to do some problem solving to help things get back on track.

You wrote something about no longer providing gourmet meals. It made me wonder if the dynamic was that he provided warmth and love and you did the cooking, cleaning and spent time on your appearance - all of which he assumed was your duty but you assumed you were doing as you were happy to/ it wasn't much bother/ you liked making him happy.

If the set up was something like the second example, he may be feeling like to have broken the terms of the relationship....the problem is - you never agreed to the terms, you didn't see them the way he did.

I meet quite a lot of men who struggle to admit to themselves and others that what they want/ expect is a wife who happily does all the domestic labour and wants nothing more than to look great for 'her man' and to please him sexually. They know enough to know that this sounds really shitty, but nonetheless it is the mode in which they operate and judge their partners. In these instances, unless they recognise this and are willing to reflect on how these ridiculous beliefs influence their behaviour towards their wives/ partners, they will continue to be shit husbands/ partners.

OP, does any of this resonate?

I would be asking myself if his head has been turned and he is seeing greener grass elsewhere, so is now comparing you negatively to justify his contempt. Ugly man!

Your DH isn't happy with the recent sexual performance function on his human support unit (hsu), so has upped his porn intake. He's now trying to install new 'make me horny' code into his hsu so she will be better at accommodating his needs like those women he sees on the screen.

Wanker.

And you know that because you got a nanny cam in his bedroom? 😅

If before baby he was a really great partner then I think you need to really sit him down and talk. Really talk. How are you BOTH feeling, how has becoming parents matched to your expectations etc. it’s an adjustment for BOTH of you and you need to keep communicating as you move through it. He is allowed to have emotions around becoming a father. What he’s not allowed to do is take them out on you or be hurtful to you. If he’s got big emotions he needs to find acceptable ways to deal with them.

There was a study published recently about male satisfaction in relationships post baby. For first time fathers it can take around a year for them to feel the same satisfaction in their relationship as before. It does by and large come back.

This. Yes, thanks this is exactly how I feel. I am just so totally tired and exhausted for being there for everyone ( my mum, dad, baby) and I feel like nobody is there for me.

🤔 More like the other way around.

Thank you. I really needed kind words like yours❤️

I wonder if he is just saying what he has often felt.

Whatever the baby equivalent of "in vino veritas" is?

If he is depressed he needs to get himself to the doctors. Same as when I was going through the menopause I sought help before I destroyed my relationship. As adults we have to take responsibility for ourselves. It’s not the wife’s role to baby him.

He went to sleep in the other room when baby was waking up for feedings in the middle of the night. At first I felt alone and also kind of crushed with the responsibility of being alone in the room with the baby the whole night, but I kind of understood that he has to sleep because he is working the next day and he is doing difficult work (dentist). Now that the baby is mostly sleeping through the night he wanted to come back in our room. I am doing the cooking and all the cleaning and one of our arguments started because I was nursing the baby on the couch one day and asked him to pass me a pillow ( hand was getting heavy) and he made such a grumpy face because he had to stand up to pass me the pillow!

Yes, I was wandering the same thing…. But then why marry? Why have the baby? He was pushing more for it then me…