My partner of 19 years and the Father of my children has recently started acting even more pissed off with me.
For background, he’s always low-key pissed off about something and has been a difficult partner over this time with many challenges including financial issues (lying about debt), an affair, no job or income for many years and heavy drinking. He’s easy to anger, brittle and not so light and breezy.
However I have noticed a much more intense anger towards me recently, which when asked about he opened up and said I was just too cold, passionless, not enough sex, no spark etc.
We do have a sex life but it’s obviously not the kind he wants, he says he’s disappointed in me and dissatisfied. It’s not regular enough for him. I try to be intimate but he is quite cold towards me also. He wants dirty messages and much more kinky sex but I am not in that feeling or mood.
He is framing the entire relationship as a dead bedroom situation which is not true, it has been at some points. In summary - very passionate for the first year then tapering off and then going up and down with regular sex nowadays.
From my point of view I feel very unloved and put upon, I earn all the income and bear all the responsibility for getting work (I am freelance). He is home working on a business that has zero income and has for years now. When I get home I work on that business too to try and make it successful.
Trying to talk about it doesn’t work, he thinks I can just change myself physically without him changing materially or emotionally. I suggested sex therapy that he might need to change his approach and he just got angry at the suggestion as if it’s just me who should instantly change.
He is making me feel very down and life is hard but I cannot see a way out. After his affair I tried really hard to be more sexual and up for everything but maybe I just can’t keep that up anymore.
Does anyone have any advice? He’s making me feel he has just been sexually frustrated the entire 20 years and that’s why he has been so unloving and horrible to me.