Am I acting in retaliation?

[thislittleworldofmine]

My h and I have a one side open relationship. We have spent the last 18months where he has explored very slowly into other sexual options. He currently has sex regularly but doesn't have a girlfriend. Our own relationship is now sexless as part way through the journey I discovered I didn't want to be sexually active with someone who was sexually active with others. This hurt him a great deal and he felt I did it in retaliation. We got through that and I have again come up against something he feels is retaliation. I asked tonight if he would consider me having the same freedom as he has been afforded. I reassured him I was not looking, I had no male attention offered to me and that I didn't intend to act on the freedom in any way, shape or form but that I would like it to be a possibility in the future. He has basically spun out and said that he took 18 months of careful consideration of my feelings and he expected the same from me and if I didn't want it why was I asking and therefore it must be either something I want or a form of retaliation. Am I being blind to my own behaviour?

If so, stop all of that. If it’s financially and practically easier to take care of your daughter while sharing a home for the time being, do that, split the childcare, go out and have fun with friends on your time off, let him do his own chores, like roommates rather than husband and wife. You are no longer husband any wife in anything but name. Think about why he wants to keep you under that lock and key- get real about the benefits to him! There are many

Yes we did, at first we tried the you can have sex but no emotional connections route. He was not keen on this as he needed an emotional connection to feel comfortable. He backed off and just went to professional services. When he was feeling the waters of another actual relationship he was telling me way too much and I asked him to just tell me the bare minimum. He heard this as me not wanting to hear anything and was pretty upset so he didn't tell me any information for a while. At the moment I am at the point that I honestly don't mind if he wants or needs a haram, I just don't need all the details and don't want to be part of it. What he actually has is a professional who is 'tutoring' him and he is not sure what he is going to do after this but is pretty sure it is not monogamous. There may be a few details missed but this is the gist of it.

My god, he's really done a number on you. He's totally totally gaslighting you. First prostitutes, then casual sex, now relationships (because he needs). I'm so sorry for you. I wish you had some real female friends in real life you could talk to about this, because I doubt anyone who cared about you would think this is OK.

This is emotionally abusive. It means he gets all his home comforts, and gets to keep his money, while you are left, sounding like a husk of yourself.

All the while telling you it's your fault and that you are the emotionally abusive one.

Have you heard of DARVO? Basically, when a bully reverses the blame so as to to accuse his victim of actually being the bully.
Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender

He's showing you what he is. He's converted what he wants into what he needs. It's bullshit.

Sounds like you've gone above and beyond and tried to appease a man who was basically abusing you sexually, getting you to do things you didn't want to, is abuse. No wonder your libido went.
I very much doubt enthusiastic concent was always there, and I'm not buying that he didn't know it at the time.
He changed the goalposts and got you trying stuff you didn't like after DC's, yet he lived quite happily without certain activities at the start of your relationship. Why? Well because sex is not a need, nobody dies without it, it's a want, and his wants are all selfish to the point of being abusive.
I think your mind is not allowing you to think of it as abuse, although it was. Sex shouldn't hurt if you're not into S&M, and nobody who is should be trying it out on anyone who isn't.
You've tried too hard to understand a man who has abusive tendencies and control issues, hence he wants to still control you and give you different rules.
You didn't and don't have to tell him, if or when you see someone else.
The only saving grace to this situation is that he's accepted that you no longer want sex with him, and who can blame you ( although you seem to blame yourself).
You have a profound fear of being on your own. That's why you don't split, own it and get counselling for it. His pension is a BS excuse. The longer you are together, the more of his pension he'd have to split with you. The only way to improve on that is to stay together till you die. That's a very sad thought, if that's his hope, that you go first, and the decades wasted till then. Your life is a mess, but he's made it that way, and you fail to see it.

Sorry in my last I should have said "prostituted women" - someone else is doing the prostitution, IYSWIM.

No wonder you didn't want sex with him just from a hygiene POV, @thislittleworldofmine - the risk of STIs when he is so promiscuous is high.

Some of us have been out with men like him, but haven’t had it escalate to this point, so you are not stupid, he saw how giving you are when he married you. You’ve struggled in one area- and important one, but have you got to the heart of why? Is it kids and perimenopause or has he over the years done things to get you to this place? Did sex become a chore because he was prioritising his kink above balancing it for mutual satisfaction? Was he jealous of attention given to children and didn’t pull his weight! Essentially- did he get the relationship to this point, having an enthusiastic lover who he slowly turned off over time, and then went fully in the direction of abusing your mind even more with these other women? Maybe counselling would help. F* sex therapists, you don’t need some dick telling you you are deficient and need to please him more, you need one to one counselling to unpack how it came to this place to begin with. Men like this can be very subtle in the drip drip poison abuse, over many years. My bet is things are exactly how he wants them now, and until he’s ready to fully trade you in, he will keep his slimy claws firmly on you while he tests the waters elsewhere, I hate him and I don’t even know him, because you come across so sweet and you deserve better than this shit head

She wouldn’t want sex with him for that reason, but also very importantly, she’s clearly not polyamorous, and his lifestyle is a huge turn off and passion killer for a mongamous woman. Plenty of women have a dip in drive at certain hormonal times in their life and then it comes back stronger than ever when they get through it- for example menopause/ childbirth. He’s written you off as an old classic car that he’s going to stick in the garage for old times sake, occasionally coming back to tinker with it, and making sure it stays locked in that garage, while he goes out racing the latest models. He’s a prick

I can’t wait until ED sets in for him and he’s lost his retirement fund. Please update this thread when you come home to find him having a mental breakdown over a box of viagra mourning the loss of the only brain he thinks with.

This. Best thing you could do is divorce such a manipulative, self-centred narcissist.

Have you actually been to the doctors together, or just this “sex therapist”

Honestly I can’t think of anything more pathetic than a middle age man heading towards his twilight years still thinking about all the places he’s going to stick his prick before it droops, while having the mental and emotional capacity of a 3 year old when it comes to his wife’s emotions and needs. It’s really sad.

You deserve better, and you need to write out a list of how you see your ideal life in 5 years time. At the very least do that.

PS. Why TF shouldn’t you act in retaliation to such a shit arrangement and treatment? He’s lucky you’re not cutting the sleeves off all his shirts or dumping all his shit out on the doorstep. That would be an understandable reaction / retaliation to his treatment of you. I hope you find your anger and better things, OP.

op, i'm not sure who what where when or why your self esteem ever got to the point where you fell for this bs.
gaslighting to a whole other level.

Oh so he's still having sex with women who aren't having sex with him because they want to. It's gross that he does that and it's gross that you support it. Just let him go. He will eventually form feelings for someone anyway and off he'll fuck leaving you and your children behind which will be even more devastating. You will feel better if you actually have some control over officially ending your dead marriage.

Sorry haven't RTFT, but a one-way open relationship isn't a thing. If he gets to, you do too.

Please please go the therapy with a women. It sounds like you have made yourself so small in order to stay in this relationship. The thing that jumps out from these pages is that you can’t hear yourself. Your only response is in relation to his needs, his wants his desires. The physical side of a relationship is the 1st thing to go usually because there is something off, somewhere your mind or consciousness knows how he behaves towards you isn’t ok. But instead of listening to that you shut yourself down and have tried to do what you can to save this relationship whether it’s having sex you don’t want or aren’t comfortable with or now having a one sided open relationship. It is completely normal that sexual desire for women changes following childbirth but the marriages that made it are the ones were women in particular during the extremely vulnerable years of early childhood are cherished by their partners. You have spent so long trying to adapt and shape yourself to what this man wants that you don’t appear to be able to recognise yourself in this. Its like he has just controlled how you think and feel. But your body not wanting to have sex is telling you something. But you aren’t listening. When you want to ask if you can open up your side again your body and mind is telling you something. That’s why you are pushing against this. And the fact that he used professional services, ie he bought women’s consent with money says more than you ever could about your husband. His wants, his desires all come 1st. He can spent all this time on his wants, needs but he can’t learn how to effective communicate with his daughter. Again it’s like he has given you a narrative of your life and you have whole hearted accepted it as your own. But it isn’t. Please speak to someone who is independent in your life

Of course he does, that would require empathy and working hard to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and try to meet their needs. The only needs he cares about meeting are his own. I think you should leave, rediscover yourself free of his presence and let your daughter bloom.

My daughter is autistic and he struggles to communicate on her level.

But you don't struggle, and I'm assuming other people in her life don't struggle - or if any of you does, you learn how to communicate with her. You try.

But her father just can't be bothered because it's a "struggle." So he gives up - on his own daughter!

Just say for the sake of argument that he wanted the type of sex you would be happy with, would you still want sex with him? You've not specified his proclivities but I can see how and why they would have pushed you into a corner whereby you've agreed to him getting his preferred type of sex elsewhere.

Sex has become a source of conflict in your relationship: perhaps in asking him if he would mind if you had sex elsewhere, you were signalling that the right type of sex for you would possibly be welcome at some indeterminate point in the future with someone else who would be exclusive to you. At the moment, it sounds like you are being blamed for not enjoying the type of sex he likes and for being turned off him because he's sleeping with others. The fact is you are both completely incompatible wrt your respective sexual needs and that is not something you should have to pay for endlessly. Stay together if you really must but he needs to understand that both your sex lives now exist outside of the marriage. I think it is quite likely he will fall for someone else and you need to be ready for that eventuality

I think it is quite likely he will fall for someone else and you need to be ready for that eventuality - this was part of the letting go process.

I accept this may happen and I am okay with it. I doubt if he finds someone serious that they will be keen on our living arrangements. Mostly I would like to get my daughter to 16 so that she can opt out of spending time with him if she chooses.

Just say for the sake of argument that he wanted the type of sex you would be happy with, would you still want sex with him?

I think if we managed to deal with the issues we have had about respecting a no without repercussions then I would. I still have a libido just find it really hard to relax and enjoy sex with him due to built up baggage.

I think if we managed to deal with the issues we have had about respecting a no without repercussions then I would. I still have a libido just find it really hard to relax and enjoy sex with him due to built up baggage.

I’m sorry @thislittleworldofmine but this just gets worse and worse.

Did he ignore you saying “No” and kept going with something you had not consented to ????? That’s actually sexual assault (or even rape).

Or was he sulky and angry when you said No, but actually respected your non-consent ?

Still terrible behaviour from a life partner but at least it’s not rape.

But either way, what’s awful about this is the way you use “we” as if you are part of the “not managing” when you set your boundaries and say No.

If he cannot deal with you setting boundaries it’s not a “we” problem, it’s his problem.

And please, reflect on consent and rape.

You really have been slowly boiled.

You don’t have to constantly search to think ‘logically’. Your emotional needs, your right to personal agency and your need to feel safe and loved are important and he is trampling all over them.

He’s an abusive narcissist.

If you split and got away, I feel absolutely sure you would look back on these years with frustration that you’d stayed as long as you did.

Honestly, don’t waste another second on this nasty waste of space.

Or was he sulky and angry when you said No, but actually respected your non-consent ?

This cold shoulder, sullen, moody and several times he would explain why he wanted xyz and how it felt when I turned him down

It's nice that you get on well and this means you should be able to have an amicable relationship once you see the light and kick him to the curb. Honestly, please get rid of this randy unfaithful hypocrite. He is disrespecting you massively.