Husband’s constant touching and comments are putting me off intimacy and making me feel resentful

[Thatneedyduck]

Hi all, please help!!!

Is there something wrong with me or is what I feel valid?

So my DH who i have been with for 16 years is great and I love him dearly but he is irritating the hell out of me to the point I don't even want to think about been intimate let alone be intimate with him!

I have some sensory issues and do not like been touched much, he knows this and tries to kiss me or hug me or feel me anytime he can or when we pass each other in the house, it really irritates me if im in the middle of doing a task or just busy and having to break of what im doing to passify him or sometimes I just want to be left alone, he can see the irritation it causes me and then jokingly tells me im being mean for not wanting to hug or kiss! While this is frustrating its not the worst of it for me, he is constantly telling me how beautiful or gorgeous my body parts are while trying to cop a feel as if to emphasize his words and the worst time he does this is when we are being intimate and he will sit back and look at me like he is viewing a top side of beef in the butchers and tell me how beautiful my a*e or fa*y is, I don't think I can put in to words how much of a turn off this is and how much I cringe and dry up quicker than a puddle in the desert! I have now got to the point where I am becoming avoident of him and situations I am not happy with, obviously this is not good for the relationship and my sex drive has plummeted to none existent, he is now doubling down like a horny teenager trying to give me constant affection and compliments which has made everything 10 times worse as all I do now is snap at him whenever he comes near me as I just feel like hes doing it just to get intimate with me. I also have some pain related health conditions which he knows about but still it feels like his only objective is to get me in to bed (it might not be but my mind thinks that way now) it now feels like a chore and if he's gone more than a week without intamicy then he sulks with me and i feel guilty. I don't know how to approach this with him without making him feel rejected and hurting his feelings as he is genuinely a great guy!

Any advice welcome please x

Thank you @Devilsmommy and solidarity! 🖐 It was actually quite hard going, and I didn't know what to do/how to stop it, because it was foreign territory to me, and I hadn't experienced it before. He was only my 4th 'boyfriend' and the only man I had ever lived with. Interestingly, it didn't start really until about half a year to a year after we got married. (We were together about 5 years before we got married, and it started about 6 years in.)

Like the OP, I wondered if I was in the wrong, and there was something wrong with me/if I was cold and unfeeling. I also wondered if this is how men act in marriages. Sounds bizarre and fucked up now, but I honestly didn't know.

One day, I overheard 2 women talking at work (I wasn't close to them and wasn't friends with them I just overheard them when I was in the loo) and they were both complaining about handsy, groping, over-touchy husbands who sulked when they didn't like their boobs being grabbed, or their arse being slapped. (Both around my age at the time.) I started to realise that it was not on, and I had a right to be pissed off. I was not a piece of meat to be poked at and prodded, or some kind of sex doll.

One of the women said a friend of hers had left her husband for this, because no matter how many times she told him to stop it, he carried on, as he was 'entitled!' She was his WIFE, therefore his to handle when he wanted.

You couldn't fucking make it up! Some men are utter arseholes.

Thank you all for your support and comments, just spent the last hour or so having "the talk" he has taken it well and said he understands so time will tell. Much appreciated to you all x

@BatchCookBabe unfortunately it's too fucking true that some men do feel as though they can whatever they want to their wife as if she's his property🤨 I'm so glad my DH wasn't one of those twats😅 I think it's a lot more common than we all realise and it's a shame that some women feel they have to put up with it because they're married. I'd hope that the younger generation of women would be more outspoken about it than women of our generations were. I asked my husband at one point, after he's stopped pulling that kind of crap, why do men think that sulking when they've been told no to sex will somehow make the woman want to do it. He really couldn't answer me. I mean surely it's painfully obvious that sulking like a petulant toddler is 100% not the way to get a woman on bed right? Yet you read it all the time on here, partners sulking when they don't get sex. Men need to seriously start using their brains to think with instead of their cocks. Imagine how much better the world would be for women if that happened 😅

That's great news @Thatneedyduck All the best going forward!

Amen to that! Very good points @Devilsmommy As if a woman is going to want intimacy with a big baby of a man who is sulking because she isn't in the mood for sex after having her arse slapped, and her boobs manhandled, with 'I'm sooooo horny' yelled in her ear, as he tries to force his tongue in her mouth! 😬

🤢🤮🤢🤮 yet they expect the woman to be so fucking grateful and to see it as a compliment FFS 🙄 honestly someone needs to teach men that sulking is literally the biggest sex stopper going. Maybe if they realised that then they'd stop doing it. I'd imagine though that it's so deeply ingrained it's almost become an evolutionary thing that maybe couldn't be erased. That's a fucking scary thought isn't it😳

It’s behaviour they learned as a toddler 😅. Someone foolishly indulged it then!

Totally agree!

Yep. Their mummy probably!

Now as much as I agree with that I kind of don't want to because it makes it sound like it's a woman's fault that a man is a sulky twat as an adult iyswim. And it's like no, you're a grown ass man, being told no sex doesn't give you the right to treat a woman like shit and have a huge sulky tantrum about it🤨 honestly I despair 😅

Fair enough @Devilsmommy and I hate the thought of this too! It's just that most men I know were treated favourably by their mother, (when they were a boy) and allowed to get away with a lot more than their sisters, so I do wonder if that preferential treatment as a boy, is why some men think they can always have their own way as a grown up.

Just my musings. As I say, I am also not keen on the thought of pointing the blame at a woman, and in most cases, it's probably very likely nothing to do with the mother. It's probably just the way society seems to let men get away with all sorts, and have their own way. Men are far more entitled than women, and the mothers can't be blamed for everything.

We totally have the exact same feelings about it. Men have been centred since the beginning so that level of entitlement is purely ingrained in them. This world is made for men and that's why there is always so much push back when women want to advance themselves. Men want women in second place always. Reading the fwr board on here is very eye opening I have to say. I never realised before just how deeply it went in society. And it does start from the mother, they do the whole boys will be boys shit and they do get away with far more than girls. Whether that will ever change I don't know. Internalised misogyny is also very ingrained in women

Again, couldn't agree more @Devilsmommy 👍

I’m glad you posted this - I’m going through something similar with dp and was feeling like maybe it was a ‘me’ problem. I’m perimenopausal and dealing with a very variable libido, and dp’s solution is to try to grab my boobs/bum at every opportunity (usually when I’m washing up/making a sandwich/running late for work and trying to get ready). Yesterday we had an argument because he grabbed me and tried to pull me onto his lap when I’d just got a burger off the barbecue and was putting it in the bun ready to eat - I stumbled and knocked a drink over trying to keep my balance as it totally took me by surprise, and he went into a sulk as I’m ’always rejecting him’. The grabbing just isn’t doing it for me, I find it a total turn-off too. The issue is that he needs physical affection to feel good, but I have to feel good to want physical affection… I’m feeling quite reassured that I’m obviously not that unusual or unreasonable reading all the other replies.

Thank you all for your support and comments, just spent the last couple hour or so having "the talk" he has taken it well and said he understands so time will tell. Much appreciated to you all x

No you are seeing this correctly, he isnt a bad guy and he does absolutely adore me, I know I have changed since starting perimenopause and we have just had a long chat tonight, he was very understanding, boundaries have been set and we are cuddled up now watching a film together (not in a sexual way lol) thank you x

He sounds so stupid & insensitive , like a typical dumb bloke tbh . My ex partner was exactly like this , all I had to do was walk past him & he would practically quiver & struggled to keep his hands to himself . Needless to say I got sick of it as I felt that it was all he cared about . When I spoke to him about this he went in the huff , accused me of cheating with my closest male friend ( my close friend is gay ) & not loving him . I left the relationship not long after this . My partner now is much more kind & caring . You have to be really honest with him , if he is a great guy he will understand .