I’m posting because I don’t really know who else to talk to about this and I could use some perspective.
I’ve been with my husband since we were 18 - 23 years together, married for 12, with three children. We are both now 41. Our day to day relationship is good, he makes me laugh, we rarely argue, he's a good and hard working dad.
Over the years though, our sex life has been quite limited. I struggle to be able to relax and even in our late teens / early 20s, I might only want sex occasionally. Obviously he would try it on a lot of more often than that, and this made me feel pressured, which would make me shut down even more. That's not to say we didn't have fun, because we had some really good periods in our relationship where we might have sex once or twice a month, but there were other times where we might have sex a couple of times a year. He would then try to talk about it but I basically felt the discussion was always about pressuring me into having sex I didn't want, so the conversations were always difficult.
When we got engaged I felt really safe and secure and we had a really good regular sex life, around once a month, for about three years, and I had a planned pregnancy in 2016. Obviously having a baby changes things and it was 18 months before I felt ready to resume things, but I wanted another baby so that helped push things along and second time round I got pregnant with twins.
About 18 months after having the twins he'd tried many times to start things up again but I was tired and felt pressured again, so he then kept trying to start talking about it, which led to friction. Things did start up eventually and it's always fun when we do it, I do climax often when we have sex, but I know it just takes a lot to get me relaxed enough to want it and having 3 kids doesn't leave us much space or time.
We had sex about 5 times in the next 2-3 years but he was trying things on like at least twice a month. Then he just stopped and it made life a bit easier if I am honest because I wasn't feeling this pressure all the time for sex, so we could enjoy each other's company a bit more without that expectation. But because he stopped asking, we haven't had sex now for 3 years.
The last year or so I think he's started suffering from depression, although he hasn't said that directly, but he seems to struggle with life, getting up and going to a job he's always enjoyed seems a big stress for him, he's put on quite a bit of weight, he stays up really late (he never comes to bed with me) and is always tired a grump as a result. We had an argument last week and from that he started to cry (which he never does, he's literally cried maybe twice before in the whole 23 years we've been together) and said he feels unwanted and has no confidence or self-esteem and he thinks I don't even like him. I asked why and he referenced his 40th birthday, which was in Jan 2024, because I didn't get him a present and promised instead we would go away for a weekend. I haven't got round to booking anything yet, it slipped my mind if I am honest and I am rubbish at organising stuff anyway. He then started comparing it to my 40th, as he did make a lot of effort for that (a surprise dinner with a group of my friends and my mum), and said that basically he doesn't feel like I care about him in a romantic sense.
He’s now said that if things don’t improve, he doesn’t know if he can stay in the marriage. That feels like an ultimatum and has made me feel very anxious and defensive, because I genuinely don’t know how to change how I feel about sex, and I don’t want to be having sex just to keep him happy.
But I don't want to lose him or have him break up our family.