AIBU re masturbation?

[anonnymum]

DH and I have been together 18yrs. We've had times during this where marriage has been pretty much sexless, for a variety of reasons on my part. Mostly to do with depression, becoming disabled and side effects to medication.

I've found that if I masturbate regularly this then keeps my sex drive from disappearing and results in sex more often for us. Since lockdown, both of us working from home and home schooling, I simply don't have the opportunity to masturbate.

Do you think it's reasonable to ask DH to give me time and space, alone time in the house, for this reason?

He's finding lockdown tough too and becoming borderline agoraphobic, I can't send him out on an errand to do anything because he simply refuses.

The less he goes out, the worse and more entrenched his anxiety will get. So he needs to bite the bullet and keep going out regularly. You could say that to him.

As to someone walking in on you, if you can get under the quilt, no-one can see what you're doing immediately when they come in, and if anyone comes in you can stop.

But yes, your DH can take the kids out, then you can relax into it more. And it'd do him good.

My wife also has a chronic health condition that, combined with us both having demanding jobs and our very demanding kids, has limited our sex life at present. Masturbation is vital for us as she will often be asleep before the kids (part of her condition is exhaustion) and she won’t have sex if they’re awake and could come in. We’re pretty open about it, she knows what I’m doing when I disappear into the bathroom for a long time and I know that when she asks me to take the kids out that she needs some alone time. We will openly discuss masturbation together and the open communication means when we dtd it’s amazing.

So no, you’re not being unreasonable and you should communicate your needs to him