How to process this - sex and marriage

[Piccalino3]

I am separated from my husband of 13 years and am just starting to process what went wrong in our marriage and why.

I think it boils down to a lack of emotional connection and intimacy over many years, but today I have been thinking about how our sex life dwindled. We have 3 kids, I've had birth injuries each time and then a recent repair of the last injury, so there's been a fair bit of physical trauma to that area that did no good for that aspect of our lives. Over the last 5 years, really since our last child was born, I didn't want to have sex anymore. Our physical intimacy stopped over the last year because any non sexual physical touch would lead to pressure for sex, which I didn't want.

The thing I'm trying to process now is my feelings about sex. For the last 2-3 years of our relationship I would give in to duty sex. My husband would ask and I'd say no, and then he'd pester and sulk which made me feel pressured. I'd give in at times to keep the peace, sometimes I would be actively angry while doing it and say something along the lines of 'hurry up and get it over with', he would and then he'd say thank you. There were a few occasions I turned to my side after and cried. The pestering wasn't all time, maybe once a month, but the feeling of emptiness would be awful. I couldn't bear to kiss him, would turn my head away. Sometimes I would actually feel physically like I wanted sex but also really didn't want to do it which was confusing. There were a couple of occasions he was drunk and threatened me by shouting that there would be 'consequences', although we never discussed what these were.

He was never forceful, and I did tell him the impact of his behaviour when we went to marriage counselling and that it made me feel like a wank sock. I tried surgery to fix my prolapse, HRT, reading erotic books etc to increase my desire, it didn't work and now we are separated I find that I am sexually interested in another man, so when I thought I was broken I was not, it was probably the situation. He was hurt by the lack of physical touch and I understand that.

Suddenly I find myself reflecting on these experiences of sex and it's upset me. I think of my husband to be a good person and things just didn't work out with us for various reasons, but this sits with me, I wonder how I'll react in my next relationship (if I have one) around sex and expectation.

Has anyone had any experience of this?

I'm really pleased that what you're doing works for you though I think the OP may find the mixed messages confusing. You're having consensual sex and she isn't.

There's a continuum. "If you loved me, you'd do that" is a coercive tool used to by men to get sex. So is sulking, so is threats.

"If you loved him, you'd suck his dick with a smile" is the peer pressure version of "if you loved me, you'd do that".

Is that what they were trying to do? Tell a domestic abuse survivor to submit with a smile? I got a bit lost at the chocolate detour. I wasn't sure if they were comparing eating chocolate to having sex.

If my BF/GF expects me to smile and pretend enthusiasm for fixing a drawer, they're an ex immediately.

I spent enough of my life masking my emotions already. If I cannot be honest about my feelings about a task with my partner, then I can't be honest with them full-stop. Lies and preference falsification are no basis for a trusting relationship.

This applies to the OP too: if she cannot be honest about how she feels, in bed or out of it, she hasn't got a relationship based on mutual honesty, respect, and trust.

Basically saying that if a woman loves a man, she'll lie through her teeth about not wanting sex, will fake liking it, and will have sex she doesn't want just to make him happy.

The chocolate thing was comparing popping to the Coop on the way home from work for a Toblerone to having a man put his dick inside you.

It's the peer pressure edition "if you loved me, you'd do what I want".

There are some strange fish on here.

Oh, and she'll take enjoyment from making him happy, even though she didn't want sex.

Meanwhile, the rest of us aren't Surrendered Wife doormats.

Thanks to those for trying to bring back the thread to its original topic.

The message that you should be giving of your body to please someone else does not sit right with me. I've tried to do that and it's taken me down a dark place. I've had friends tell me to do that just to keep my marriage alive for my kids sake but to bring it back to one of the original points, having sex you don't want is bad for you. I'm just trying to make sense of that - whether it's something that I accepted and set up in a way and my feelings about it towards my husband and the impact it has on my feelings about sex and intimacy in the future.

This is a really interesting discussion though, thanks everyone. I'm reading the comments and it's really striking me how hard it is for me to acknowledge what coercive sex is, even though I know what it is. I almost feel like I've made my post sound much worse than it is after reading the comments. I've gone back and re read what I've written and it's accurate, no embellishing, so maybe I've under-reacted. I've arranged to speak to a very trusted colleague where I volunteer about this which will be good (it's specialist survivor services). I'm finding my own cognitive dissonance challenging on this topic.

My Dd is a disability rep at her University and is brilliant at identifying when someone might need bit of help and signposts them to it.

However when she has the exact same issue, despite knowing the options available to her, she's reluctant to use them. She says she feels guilty and unworthy of help, despite having specialist documented diagnosis and recommended reasonable adjustments.

Totally different subject I know, but I think that sometimes we don't see ourselves in the same way as we do others.Possibly because of the message of "be a good girl and don't make a fuss", told to us in our formative years.

Sexual relationships and expectations aren't often discussed, so most of us have a limited pool of experience to draw from.

What happened in your marriage is a very difficult experience. That has many conflicting emotions attached and the feelings/damage evolved of the time you experienced it. It's bound to be hard to reconcile so having a trusted professional to help unpack it is really great.

@BeNavyCrab that's really interesting and I can identify with so much of what you're saying. My job is all about helping other people, which I love, but if I was offered help myself I often turn it down because I feel I should push myself to rely on myself and maybe there is an element if not feeling worthy of that help that I would offer others. I need to reflect on that.

I was definitely told to me a good girl and not make a fuss by my parents, both in different wants and it's only now, mid 40's that I see how that message has impacted me and my relationships.

It is hard, and the narrative from my husband is that the failure of our marriage is 100% my fault. I know that's not the case, but it's hard not to take that on board. I felt so exhausted with this yesterday, I wish I could take tomorrow just to sit peace and think. Your comments are really useful and I'll think about them.

When I went to Relate they told me how odd they found it that my ex still expected to have sex even though it was giving me a uti every time n making me very ill n he blamed me for the problem. They found him concerning in his behaviour and attitudes when they discussed this privately with him. There’s a lot of backstory here but it was damaging to me.

Good that they addressed that with him at least I suppose. It's so upsetting that they almost don't see us as humans when it comes to when they want sex. I hadn't even thought about my experiences of counselling and bringing this up during the session, the counsellor said nothing - I remember when using the term wank sock. At least I vow to do better for my children, girls and boys. I sometimes feel that I sleepwalked into some aspects of my life and didn't notice it happening. I feel this sense of inertia today, like I can't get moving, thinking about it all.

There are so many reasons why you shouldn't have counselling with an abuser and one of them is the lack of training many therapists have regarding abuse.

@MiloMinderbinder925 I know this to be true about counselling, although I've never considered him an abuser, but this thread is making me question that, which almost seems crazy.

I have been with a man who was an actual abuser previously, and I think my Dad was abusive at times. I've just assumed it was male behaviour perhaps - which is insane because if you met me you'd think I was a really empowered woman. I've never been beaten etc, but if I were to talk to someone else who had experienced what I have I would call it abuse. It's hard to marry my experience with an objective view.

Many women in abusive relationships are in denial. They'll tell you a stream of horrific abuse then tell you what a nice man he is.

I see that every day on here pretty much, a lot for me to think about. Thank you for posting. I feel like I've learnt a lot from this thread, and have a lot of work to do on myself.

You might find this helpful
https://www.plannedparenthood.org/blog/sexual-boundaries-how-to-spot-sexual-coercion#:~:text=One%20form%20of%20sexual%20coercion,your%20boundary%20and%20stop%20asking.

Try not to be hard on yourself and judge yourself for not identifying it as abuse. Very often it develops slowly and comes with a drip drip attack on your self esteem. So over time you don't see each step as unreasonable as you judge it against your "normal" where you have come to accept behaviour that's damaging. They can make you think it's your fault for not being nicer, looking better, pandering to their whims etc. You are also vulnerable because it's a person who you love, at least at the start. So you want to please them and make them happy. Even when things aren't going well, you are hoping that you can turn it around and will grasp onto every indication of them being "nice" to you.

Eventually being "nice" is eating dinner, ignoring you and then demanding sex, rather than the usual of coming home in a mood, throwing the perfectly good dinner across the table, grabbing your hair and dragging you upstairs to violate you as roughly as they can, for instance. Meanwhile you think it's your fault for not making the meal nice enough, for having asked them not to have the 6th beer, or not being affectionate enough or 101 reasons they've told you it's your fault entirely!

If we all could see where we started from and where it ended up, one after another then of course we could see it's abuse but that's not the reality of how a person breaks another down. You did nothing wrong. The only person to blame is the one who perpetrated it!!

Be proud of yourself that you had enough strength to know that you deserved better and got out of the situation, even if you couldn't name it. You have the rest of your life to recover and rebuild yourself so be as gentle with yourself as you would be with one of the people who come to you for help. Xxx

@Piccalino3 I can really relate to what you said about your upbringing still affecting your relationships now in your 40s. I also tend to people please, avoid conflict and have a visceral reaction to being ignored or rejected (dad was a sulker/ used silent treatment on all of us).

Looking back, I have had sex I didn't really want for validation, to keep the peace, to stop partners from leaving me, to prove to myself that I was desirable to someone, to avoid conflict and only in a couple of relationships was it because I genuinely wanted to be physically intimate in that way with someone. I was often an enthusiastic participant for all of the reasons above but it came from a place of insecurity rather than desire.

It's only now, menopausal and introspective as an important relationship has come to an end, that I'm starting to try and unpick why I am stuck in the same patterns.

No advice, just wanted to acknowledge you are far from alone in this!

@BeNavyCrab thank you so much for posting such a lovely message. You are right that the poor behaviours creep up on you, and what is acceptable becomes blurred. It's interesting that you recognise the need to be kind to myself. I don't feel like I'm hard on myself, but then again I feel bad on some level that I've crushed his self esteem by rejecting him (sexually and just regular physical touch).

It's so complicated when it's your situation, rather than looking in from outside. When I think about whether I would want that for my daughter the answer is absolutely not.

@AltitudeCheck I'm sorry to hear that your childhood affected how you do relationships too. It's difficult to realise and unlearn. I'll have a think about the validation from sex and whether that has been my motive. I certainly feel I had quite a bit of unwanted sex in my marriage and was amazed that some of my friends weren't having sex during pregnancy, or even for a year afterwards. I know I put pressure on myself. Lots to think about.

@MiloMinderbinder925 thanks for the link. I certainly recognise some of those behaviours. The repeated attempts I've just always thought was quite normal, and it's probably been a feature of most, if not all of my relationships. I find it hard to think some men don't do this to be honest. My boundaries and what I consider normal are clearly way off.

@Piccalino3
No problem. I've never been in a relationship where sexual boundaries weren't respected so it's difficult for me to imagine having someone constantly pestering. I'm the opposite to you.

Men who don't respect boundaries sexually won't respect boundaries in other areas. It's extremely rare to get a man who is completely respectful until it comes to coercing you for sex.

It's useful to do the Freedom Programme and read up on red flags. Say no early on in the relationship and run as fast as you can if he doesn't respect that the first time.

Thanks @MiloMinderbinder925 I don't feel like he constantly pestered me, but there were times I'd jump into bed if he'd been out and I'd pretend to be asleep. There were times that he got angry about me not having sex with him, times he shouted and threatened and times I cried, did it anyway or felt on edge, heart pounding or really sad. My mind thinks that wasn't bad enough, but writing that down makes me think even if it happened ever that it's poor behaviour at best.

My Mum very much had the attitude that sex was to be endured, or at least that's the message I got. My Dad was a quite a dominating personality in our house so I can see where my thinking comes from, but it's hard to know something v's believe it.

I will look into the freedom programme. This sounds so stupid to ask - but if you've said no to sex, you've really never had a man have any comeback? They just accept it without any further 'it'll feel nice', more hands etc? I feel embarrassed to write that but just wanted to check if we are understanding things the same way. I think I need to be more assertive maybe.

but if you've said no to sex, you've really never had a man have any comeback?

No, never. In all my long term relationships I've never been pestered for sex. I had a short term fling years ago who wanted to record me doing sexual acts and when I said no, said "If you loved me you would." This was just one of a long list of bad behaviour from him and he was dumped.

I wasn't brought up to see sex as something a woman endured as part of a relationship. I also wasn't brought up to submit to men.

Don’t feel embarrassed. As women we get such mixed messages about sex : play hard to get, don’t be a tease, make him chase you, don’t be too too keen or you’re easy, but don’t be frigid either … it’s exhausting to navigate and sometimes it feels like we are damned if we do and damned if we don’t… ! It’s no wonder it’s confusing… It’s not your fault , you’ve done nothing wrong.

I can't believe what a revelation it seems to me for men not to try and push it when told no. I don't always mean in an aggressive or horrible way, just to see if they can. But then again, I think my own ownership of my sexuality is also a bit messed up. I have said no with very weak resistance, when maybe I wanted to, just because I felt like I should (not with my husband).

@ShockedandStunnedRepeatedly we really do get mixed messages. I want to undo that conditioning for myself. What it must be like to be a man with regards to sex I just can't imagine.