I think I remember your previous post although there are many like this. My dh also decided he couldn’t have sex with me once I was pregnant “because there’s a child in the room, it’s weird.” It took me months to get that out of him.
He watched the birth. Vaginal. I am not sure if that was the moment he decided I was now unf**kable, or if it came later with breastfeeding, or if was the fact I had gained some weight and curves, or because I was now simply “mum” not “sexy partner.” But our fabulous sex life did not return.
I was devastated, hurt, confused. He wouldn’t discuss it, and said there was “no reason” but still no sex. Five months after I gave birth, we put our baby in her nursery overnight and that helped - no child in the room. Sex resumed but only in only in silence. For some reason kissing and cuddling stopped so it was very functional, and several times he didn’t really wait to check I was turned on, which made me quite sore. I bought lube to help with that situation, as I thought it might be my fault I couldn’t get turned on, but I knew deep down it was simply that I felt like I could have been a sack of mashed potatoes not someone who was cherished and wanted. Since I didn’t enjoy it, I gently explained that without foreplay sex is never going to be great for most women, let alone for a woman who had been repeatedly rejected without much explanation or apology for 14 months, and that for women, good sex is very much about thoughts, feelings and anticipation. I said I understood that I wasn’t the same person I had been before the pregnancy and I didn’t blame him. He just said “it’s not that, I’m just tired” on repeat. So I gave up trying to talk to him.
Our relationship suffered - as you say OP, that connection was broken. We had always had our most intimate emotional moments in bed. Outside the bedroom, we were tired and fed up with each other. I became stony and resentful and he thought I’d become a bitch. He insisted he still loved me; I could see no sign of it. Things got worse and we lived like this for years - occasionally flaring up into arguments. It turns out I don’t function without regular sex, but he gets on fine. He didn’t want oral by the way - he didn’t seem to want me in any way at all.
Did he have an affair? Did he masturbate? I found no evidence either way.
After seven years, I finally spoke to my mum about it and said I could see no solution and I was going to leave. She pronounced “he must be gay; I always suspected it.” My lovely, loyal mum supported me, and said that no woman should stay in a marriage where there was no physical expression of love. Such a simple, easy conclusion.
I left him.
One day later he asked me to meet him. There was a lot of crying. He asked me to try again and promised to change. So I gave him another chance. And we both made changes, and miraculously it worked.
It hasn’t been easy. But here was are - fifteen years afterwards - and the sex isn’t perfect but it’s okay, and we might go a few months but then we are okay again. I feel loved enough to stay and I love my dh, truly deep down I can say as much as I ever did.
I think it’s uncommon to recover after so much hurt but I’m very glad I pushed through all that pain and hurt. That we pushed through it together in the end. He is the man I chose for my life and for my family, and in the end even my mum forgave him too