# How to Change Sexual Dynamic



## Frustrated0145 (Feb 14, 2021)

I have been together with my husband since we were barely 20yo. We have never had sex with anyone else but each other. We have been married 3.5 years, but our only delay in marriage was financial.

We have one soon and I am 23 weeks pregnant. I do NOT think my pregnancy is relevant to these issues, but mentioning since it is germane.

We are pretty happy day to day and I am not dissatisfied to the point of leaving. There are more important things than sex and we are pretty solid on those fronts at this present time. Ultimately, I would stay even if we never had sex again. However, there is a lot of room for improvement and I feel so impotent about how to tackle it.

THIS WILL BE LONG. Sorry.

When we first got together, it was somewhat long distant. I met him at college (and he still lived 2 hrs from it) but I lived 6 further hours from that during breaks. He would travel frequently to see me and our sexual encounters at this time were good. Before we had sex, he tried to initiate sexting a few times, and though I didn’t intentionally shut it down, I am not very good at being flirtatious in that way and it didn’t go. But I was a virgin at that time as well.

During one summer break subsequent to having sex etc, we did have phone sex sometimes and we enjoyed it but that stopped for ???? reason after we reunited even though we had been separated again after that.

It came out during this summer that he had lied about being a virgin (he’d told me he wasn’t, in very specific terms, actually fed me a sob story about being used for sex, but actually he was a virgin too) and also about school (he was in school but dropped out - he didn’t lie about actually being in school, but he realistically knew it wasn’t going to end well since he wasn’t going to class consistently and misled me).

During this time frame, we overall had a decently satisfying sex life. He wanted to please me. I relied on him to lead me because he misrepresented his level of experience to me. In hindsight, I would have handled this differently had I known he was also a virgin, but that’s not my fault.

I considered at this time leaving him for the lies, but he said he told them before he knew we would be serious and then didn’t know how to take them back, which made logical sense to me, so I forgave him and we continued. We loved each other very much always. I adjusted my expectation from a college educated man who would be a strong provider. This was less important to me than having a good partner and father to my children, which I always felt he would be. I was a high achiever so it was a mental adjustment to me but he always had a job, wasn’t lazy, so I decided it was ok.

Even at this stage, he had a hard time finishing. Our very first losing of our virginity, he had finished earlier on that day by coming on my boobs, but did not finish during the act. I was mildly disappointed but no big deal, it was a mildly painful encounter for me anyway as my first penis in vagina sex - no problem. I tried from day 1 to be sensitive about this issue and didn’t give him a hard time. He claimed he didn’t like condoms but neither of us considered going without as we absolutely could not afford an unwanted pregnancy.

A couple years go on and the shiny newness wore off and I was more comfortable in my own sexuality, and it became quite clear that my libido would outstrip his. Rejection became a fairly regular thing, though we still had sex. One incident in particular has always stuck with me where he said he didn’t find it attractive when the woman asked for sex. I am deeply insecure about my own desirability and this was a pretty damaging comment for me that I took to heart.

The problem was he rarely initiated himself any more. During THAT timeframe, he still did because we would be apart for days at a time and the reasonable expectation when we saw each other again was that sex would happen, and so it did. But I lost the budding confidence I had been growing.

But then life tragedy struck, and I spiraled into depression and dropped out of school myself. As I said I was a high achiever with many family expectations on me, so reconciling this image of myself to a new reality was very hard and I struggled mentally. Also, an autoimmune disorder had begun to plague me (though I didn’t know it yet) and the vague symptoms (like joint pain, chronic fatigue, brain fog) were debilitating but also unidentifiable to me as of yet so I felt inadequate in many ways.

We moved in together during this time and he financially supported me. We were at his mother’s house. I was hiding from my family and very depressed. I was also on birth control that made it hard for me to come. Our sex life declined drastically during this time frame.

Eventually, I was miserable and had to face the music. My dad needed my help with the family business and if I wasn’t in school, there was no reason for me not to be doing it. So I moved back home. My husband (then boyfriend) was very upset about this. He didn’t verbalize it much but he grew resentful. I didn’t realize how it was exactly because he kept quiet and because I was really in the hell of recovering from mental illness.

Not long after this, he lost his job. This really was the last straw for him mentally. He had unemployment for awhile but was spinning his wheels, saying he was job searching but nothing came up. He does live in an economically depressed area and he was applying, but not in an effective way. Unemployment ran out and I took over the bills (he lived with his dad but still had car, phone payments, etc) on my very limited income. (We never had squabbles about money - this is not a problem - just demonstrating the responsibility has flown back and forth.) He was taking a couple college classes to try and rekindle his career dreams. We had grown very distant. I tried desperately to reconnect. I sent him a whole album of sexy pictures, to which he didn’t really respond. I knew something was wrong but felt it was my fault at that time for being in such a depression that I had to leave the state to go home to my family etc. I convinced him to come help my dad out with his business for awhile since he wasn’t working anyway.

During these few weeks, a couple of things happened. He messed up something for school - a single assignment, which he did, but did improperly, and they kicked him out of the class. This was a terrible blow to his ego. I felt responsible since I distracted him by enticing him into very all encompassing work while he was in school (just the one class, but the timing was not ideal I guess, but it is a timing sensitive business). Also, I caught him texting someone to say “haha you’re cute.” He gave me a poor explanation about a friend blah blah. I don’t know how but I managed to ignore this. I think I knew but didn’t want to. His loyalty and kindness had never before been in question so I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Well, I did confront him about the relationship stalling out and he said he was still committed and in a mental funk. He felt terrible about not having a job and now not being in school either etc. So we decided he would finally allow me to help with his job search (previously he denied) and would apply at my place too. I found him a job within 2 weeks in my state. He moved there. I was excited about this - seemed like progress, and things had sucked, but this would change it.

We scrambled at low paying jobs and lived with my dad. We both had student loans to repay with no degree to show for it. But we took care of our responsibilities and tried to get on our feet.

Things felt drastically better at first. But one day, I had to go to work and my phone was messed up so he lent me his phone. Idk what he was thinking because he had made no effort to hide in his phone that he was sexting and even video chatting MULTIPLE other girls, including the one he had said was a friend that he had texted was cute. With that girl he was carrying on a full blown relationship, but one that was based entirely on lies. He told her he was a professor and a bunch of stuff that was untrue... very obviously living out his fantasies in life, sexual and otherwise. Most of the sexual stuff seemed to happen over video calls so I don’t know the sexual details, just that she was very vocally satisfied sexually. He sent her “I love you” on my birthday and our anniversary.

I was (obviously) devastated. I cried. I had to get through my 12 hour shift somehow. I pushed it down.

As soon as I got home, we had a throw down. I couldn’t feel more betrayed. He cried, apologized, swore none of it meant anything at all, and that he never met up with any of them or intended to or ever would, and it was just to make himself feel better, that he moved here to be with me because he didn’t want anyone else. This did seem to be clearly true... the main girl lived in England, for example. And nothing he told her about himself was true, just things he wished were true.

We had great passionate emotional sex but he knew it was on the rocks. I thought long and hard about it. I knew the mental state he had been in, and after further investigation, he had already pulled away from her before he got caught. He didn’t tell her he was through but he ghosted her and his email was filling with desperate pleas from her. I decided to give him another chance if he proved himself and immediately started individual counseling, which he did.

He was on good behavior after this for a very long time. Sexually it wasn’t perfect but sex has never been the top of my priority list and wasn’t at that time. I tried to talk to him about what we were lacking that he sought out from other people, but he swore nothing was lacking and he was just insecure. He seemed to me to have experimented with dom/sub role play so I suggested it and we dabbled in that a little and it was OK but he kept reverting to our old dynamic and it just fell by the wayside I guess. He seemed to have been dominant in his fantasies but actually asked me to by dominant, which I lack the physicality for, and he gave me no guidance about how to actually do that so attempts were awkward and fizzled out.

He went to therapy, and I encouraged him to enter community college. I thought a problem was that his ego was shot by messing up in school twice and that his fantasies of being a professor showed his true desires to be more academically successful. I coordinated his therapy appointments, college applications, everything. I mean he agreed to everything but I did the mental work of it all. He did go to school and I thought there was improvement as he succeeded at classes. He got a professional certification, in hopes of finding a better job, and worked while he went to school. We could not afford us both to go to school, so I put him first because it seemed vital to his mental health, and he needed an employability boost more than me anyway.

We got married. Shortly after we got married, I got pregnant (on purpose).

It was a high risk pregnancy and got a little stressful at times, but overall, this was a very happy time in our lives. At first he was very interested in sex, and seemed turned on by his virility, which I greatly enjoyed. As pregnancy progressed, sex stopped entirely. I don’t think we had sex for the last 5-6 months of pregnancy at all. I was throwing up constantly and hormonally not horny so I never pushed the issue but it did hurt my feelings. He was very involved in the pregnancy though so I was overall emotionally fulfilled in other ways. He was trying desperately to get a better job. We were in sync in this department. We both worked 2-3 jobs round the clock to make things work. We moved into our own apartment after we paid off my dad’s mortgage (he couldn’t afford to live on his own with the payment, but also wouldn’t stop smoking so I couldn’t have the baby there). This all felt good to me, like we were moving forward in life etc.

Once the baby was born, we had some normal post partum struggles that I won’t bore you with. More importantly, the sexual dynamic became a real issue for me. He was desperate to have sex when I was finally cleared for sex (rough birth - major surgery) and we had a very good encounter he was totally into it. And then nothing. Crickets. For months and months, after 6-7 months of celibacy with only this one encounter to end it. At some point he quit therapy after a disagreement with this therapist but he seemed to be doing well so I allowed it.

Our son was hospitalized around 4 months old and they didn’t understand what was really going on with him. This was stressful, and we were stressed about finances. My husband had finally finished school (an associates, but something) and gotten a further professional certification, but still no local job offers. We realized that the problem was the area we lived in, which was awful for his industry (too rural). We decided to expand our search and almost immediately had success with a good offer but about 8 hours away from my family. It was within 2 hours of his family.

It was extremely difficult for me to leave my family (my dad’s health was failing at a rapid rate and he was in ICU not expected to live while I was pregnant and actually having surgery on the day we moved) but I felt him having a real career was vital to his mental health and also the best financial move for us, so I moved anyway. It broke my dad’s heart and he lost the will to fight and died within 1 year of us leaving, which I predicted in my heart. But I put my husband first. I don’t regret this... but I want to demonstrate I have always tried to be mindful of his needs, not always successful, but my heart is in the right place. In fact I applied for all his jobs, and my own, and coordinated every minute detail of the move.

Within months in the new city, I discovered my husband chatting online again. We had a relatively dull sex life, but we had other things on our minds. But he had been “stretching” little errands and acting shady for months (inside the house, not out) and something made me check his phone. This was on reddit, Kix or something like that, and discord. Most of it was anonymous, all fantasy again. I caught an “I love you” on discord but he swore I missaw that and it was just anonymous sex type stuff. I was frozen in desperation. I felt trapped in a new city and that I had given up so much for him including my safety net. I felt so disrespected that he would gaslight me like that. I told him that he needed therapy immediately while I considered what to do, and that I wouldn’t help him get it this time. I banned him from Reddit and all other such things, and went through his phone regularly. Within the month, my son was hospitalized again, this time even scarier. He was around 10 months old. The stress of this with brand new jobs and everything else was considerable. I needed my husband’s emotional support, and he gave it to me. He has always been an excellent father and loving husband (affectionate, outside of sex, vocal, accommodating in most ways, cooks, cleans). That has never wavered.

I decided to forgive him again... I felt dirtier about it this time. I did feel stuck, but also still very much in love with him. I couldn’t imagine leaving such a good father. He was was apologetic and overwhelmed by trying to navigate finding a therapist with new health insurance in a new city, but made token efforts and complied with all other demands. Eventually I gave in and found him a therapist and psychiatrist since he’d been wanting to get tested for ADHD too. Once I set it up, he was compliant and seemed to put effort into it. I thought maybe I threw him into the deep end too fast on this. I wanted him to take responsibility, but like many men, he went from his mother coordinating all medical appointments to a girlfriend/wife doing it (me) and never had to do it before, and making a mental health appointment is more difficult than any other type of appointment. I work in healthcare.., so I took over as usual. But he went on medication and seemed to progress.

My dad died and that was a whole multistate ordeal and as usual, my husband was very supportive and I leaned on him. Shortly after, our son was hospitalized for a third time.

I managed to mentally rug sweep again. I was happy again. I decided to go back to school for nursing, and he agreed to pick up more child care and house duties than he already did (which he never has slacked on - in fact I’m more of a problem in the house duties arena). Then the pandemic hit, and he has more than stepped up. My son’s doctor advised us to pull him from daycare as they thought a COVID diagnosis would likely lead to another hospitalization. My husband has been working from home, watching our high energy toddler, and doing the lion’s share of the housework. He is tired... and I get that. His self image has drastically improved (to my estimation) given that he is now the primary breadwinner in his chosen profession. I work full time but he makes more now. He has been promoted and is getting a second major promotion very soon. We were able to move to a better neighborhood.

We decided to have a second baby, which was always part of the plan. We timed it out to be over the summer of my school year. All my pregnancies are high risk due to my own health disorder, and I still work full time and go to school full time.

We had very infrequent sex leading up to TTC. My sexual confidence is shot. I no longer feel attractive. I feel I must be lacking something he keeps seeking elsewhere. It’s a never ending cycle ... I ignore my sexual needs until I just ask for sex, which he doesn’t usually comply with. Sometimes he does, but it’s an act of rote most of the time. He gets me off but only half the time gets off himself. We had a medication issue for awhile that killed his sex drive even more. I actually did better during this time because there was a medical reason, a problem to solve, and I solved it by helping him coordinate with his psychologist to change medications.

He was into TTC at first (he’s got like a virility kink I think), but very soon couldn’t keep up with the pace we needed to for TTC. So then it became a chore. However, we still conceived quickly. We are very happy about the baby. He has been less connected to this pregnancy but I give him allowances for this - his attendance to appointments and such has been limited by the pandemic and it’s not our first child anymore. I know he will love this baby more than air when it’s born.

But being pregnant again has increased my insecurities. Last time I was pregnant, I thought everything was great also, and he still began to cheat again after our baby was born. Unless I initiate, sex is non existent. I always manage to enjoy it, but it hasn’t been fulfilling my emotional needs because he isn’t sexually even into it, even if he manages to come. There are always good sessions every once in awhile, enough to keep me on the hook and hoping for more, but I inevitably end up frustrated and grumpy. This has been the cycle for years, waxing and waning.

He says he doesn’t have much of a sex drive, and that he’s mostly just physically tired and it makes him not want to bother. He says if you look back, the times when we are less busy, he’s more into sex. I don’t think this ISN’T true, but I also think it’s an excuse. We are adults. We are parents. We can no longer be carefree college students. That’s a life we will never have again. He needs to learn to adapt. He also stopped going to therapy because he said it plateaud and isn’t helping anymore. He feels he worked through his old issues and the therapist and him agree what’s going on now is situational stress. He does continue with medication and psychologist.

We started arguing more over a period of time. I finally worked myself up to telling him how deeply insecure I was feeling and about how certain behaviors were triggering bad memories for me. He usually shuts down this type of conversation because he feels so deeply guilty about having cheated, and he has a tendency to self flagellate and spiral down, so I don’t usually push the issue. But this time, he must have realized how much I was struggling because we were able to talk calmly and openly. He admitted he was also engaging in fake relationships during the last incidence and lied about it. He admitted he didn’t really open up to his first therapist and deal with his issues the first time, but claims to have the second time. He feels very bad about what happened. He compartmentalized and has a hard time reconciling his actions with how he really feels (which is that he loves me and our family). He says it feels like a different person did those things, and he felt like a different person while doing them. He says the second time started the first time our son was in the hospital, and while I was staying overnight in the hospital and he had to go home, he was so upset he went into like a dissociative state and fell into bad habits. He says it was just an ego boost for him. He wants to feel loved and desired due to his own insecurities, like a security blanket, and used to do that type of thing often before he met me. I have always been very vocally into sex and attracted to him, so I don’t understand how I don’t make him feel this way. He says it’s not my fault and it’s his own problem. He said he knows I enjoy sex with him but usually feels like I want to get off, but not that I am attracted to HIM specifically, which isn’t fair at all because I always tell him how attracted to him I am, and have literally never had a desire to be sexual with anyone in the But I wanted to know how I can make him feel desired and how to get him to engage in sex - not just the action, but fully.

He said he wants to be “into it” first and get in the mood. More flirtation, non sexual touching, etc. He said I just ask for it or start touching him sexually and his brain doesn’t get engaged. This sounds good in theory but these are things I gave up on years ago because they don’t work. I have resorted to directly asking because he ignores all other attempts and pretends not to notice them (or actually doesn’t notice them?) I told him about how years ago he said he doesn’t like when the woman asks for sex, which he says he doesn’t remember saying and was just an insecure idiot when he said that. I reminded him of the several times I did racy photo shoots that he ignored, or bought lingerie he said was a waste of money. I have stopped doing that type of thing because when he doesn’t respond, it feels like another rejection and I have needed to protect myself. He wants me to text him at work and tell him I’m thinking of him, and things like that. But at work I’m so busy I cannot pee. I’m not in that frame of mind at all. I have NEVER been good at flirting. I’m amazed at myself that I flirted enough to land him in the first place. I’ve had male friends my whole life and we never ever had sexual tension and they specifically told me part of the reason is that I do not flirt in the way most women do so we just had a buddy dynamic (which always suited me just fine as I wasn’t interested in any of them). I was raised by my dad so that may be a reason, idk. I think a larger reason is that I’ve always been too insecure to even consider putting myself out there and risk rejection. My husband pursued me and since he started it, I was able to respond in kind. I have always let him take the lead, but always tried my best to reciprocate. This worked for him just fine in the beginning of our relationship but is seemingly lacking now, and I don’t know what to do.

I wanted to know his sexual fantasies. He says he doesn’t have any. I smelled ******** - he talked through plenty of fantasies with other women. He watches porn. He masturbates. He can be plenty sexual, just not with me. He says he reflects other people’s fantasies, whatever they are, and just likes when they’re into it which makes me into it, but that I don’t have any fantasies of my own because I was so inexperienced when we met. The only thing he really likes is dirty talk (which he’s literally never said in 10 years of being together) but that I am always very quiet during sex and he thinks I wouldn’t be into it or would be too embarrassed. But he doesn’t dirty talk to me and never has outside of that one summer of phone sex which I enthusiastically participated in! He led that and I always responded in kind to the best of my ability and we both usually got off, but he was the one who petered that out, not me. He wants me to try it, on my own, with no guidance whatsoever. Just take a leap of faith into the dark with nothing at all to go on from him. I want him to model it for me so I can follow along. He said it’s not the same and isn’t “genuine” if I don’t come up with it myself. He knows I watch porn with the sound off, when I rarely watch, because the sound is too awkward to me. I have written erotica since before we met and he has never attempted to read it, despite multiple offers. I reminded him of that and he sheepishly admitted it was hypocritical but he just isn’t into erotica. I mean that’s fine but don’t tell me I can’t be sexual and then blatantly ignore my sole sexual outlet for 10 years. I told him that we are actually the same, and the only real kink I have is to be desired, and anything he would want to do, including dirty talk, would become attractive to me and I would be into it as long as he was, and that I currently felt as unattractive as one could possibly be, PLUS being pregnant.

We ended up having good sex then with some dirty talk and he said it was hot and I was pleased with that.

But after that night, everything got worse. I tried to get his mind engaged, non sexual touching, only to be consistently ignored, as usual. I didn’t try the texting because I’m just too scared of rejection and don’t know how. I asked him to try it first and I would definitely respond so I could see how he liked it then I’d try it on my own. He has yet to do this. I sent him a sex column about something similar where a sex therapist was telling someone it wasn’t fair to ask something like this and not provide a script. I don’t think he even read the article and I’m too embarrassed to ask him to do it again.

The next time we had sex (I broke down and had to point blank ask him again, since he ignored all other attempts), it was going well at first until he tweaked his **** or something, not sure what, but he claimed it hurt, lost his erection, and shut things down. I was super close when this happened and he didn’t try to finish me off, but I was okay with it because he said it hurt. No problem. We tried again the next night or so and he couldn’t keep an erection. He said it still hurt a little bit. I started having fears but pushed it away as irrational. He has never had problems keeping an erection before, just climaxing sometimes.

He didn’t initiate sex again. My insecurities are raging harder than ever, and I was too scared to try again. I am hormonal and pregnant and feeling sexually frustrated, so I bought a new sex toy in hopes that would rev him up and take pressure off him to perform (since he could use the toy instead). He did use it on me the first night we got it, and told me it was sexy, and that he liked it, but he didn’t get hard at all or have any interest in me trying to sexually satisfy him in return. He hasn’t attempted to use it again. I have used it on myself to waylay sexual frustration. The more frustrated I get the more obvious it becomes and I don’t want him to feel that pressure since I know he’s feeling weird about his sudden erection issues. He states it is not a physical issue, but a mental one, and said he thought about trying viagra. I said that’s a good idea, why don’t you go to the doctor about it? But he hasn’t made an appointment or asked me to make him one.

I talked to him at some point about how he hasn’t tried to do any of the things we talked about and has continued to shut down my attempts. He said before how didn’t like when I was still cute and funny while working up to sex, but he also does this, says “boobies” etc. He realized I am right but said it’s very hard to change a dynamic we have had so long. I asked him how does he expect me to do it on my own then? He said he doesn’t know.

I finally asked him for sex again the other night. He was open to it. He tried. But he couldn’t get hard. He didn’t try to finish me off but half heartedly said he would. I said no, I didn’t want to just get off, I wanted to have sex with HIM, so it was okay, I could wait. I could tell he felt bad. I tried not to make it worse.

This morning, he woke me up at 5am asking me if I wanted “daddy’s ****.” He was still basically asleep (this happens sometimes and often leads to our best uninhibited sex), so even though I really don’t like the “daddy” thing, I went along with it and was excited. He was briefly hard but didn’t insert, still half asleep, but he was still being sexual and doing some other dirty talk, and I was halfway there when he got soft, and rolled off of me, and tried to go back to bed. I asked him if he could NOT, as that wasn’t fair, he just said “but I’m not hard” and went back to sleep. On Valentine’s Day. I couldn’t go back to sleep because I was so upset.

Then while he was typing this post he asked why I looked so tired so I told him, and he said, “Is that why you’ve been grumpy all day? You keep saying I don’t want you when I obviously do.”

I just feel so defeated. I really don’t care if he can get hard... I love p in v sex, but there’s plenty of other ways to be sexual together and feel emotionally intimate. But I can’t take this feeling of rejection over and over and over again.

In our whole lives I have never felt so inadequate. He was finally honest with me, which I appreciate, but as it turns out, he literally doesn’t think I’m capable of being sexual in the way that he wants. As long as he has that perception of me, I don’t know what to do. I think I have provided him with tons of contrary evidence through the years, and that it is all coming from his own insecurity and that it’s not fair. I don’t think he would even argue with that, but that doesn’t really fix it, just saying that. Until this, I never realized he thought I was limited in this way. I feel crippled by this. It has triggered the return of my anxiety over it tenfold. I don’t know how to move forward. I think he knows that and it’s part of the erection issues.

To be clear, he’s not complaining about our sex life, to my knowledge. I am. I think he’d be pretty happy just to have sex when the mood strikes him once every 3-6 months. So while he isn’t pressuring me to make these changes, I desperately want to. I think if we could sort this issue, we’d both be more fulfilled, feel more desired, and secure in ourselves and each other. But I feel like I’m trying to make them 100% by myself which isn’t feasible.

If I don’t fix it, I’ll always be waiting for him to crack and start sexting someone again.

I can’t talk about this in real life... no one knows about his virtual infidelities and I don’t want them to. I don’t want them to look at him differently, or me for staying. It’s our private issue. But I feel it’s intrinsically tied to our sexual issues and one can’t be helped without understanding the other.

I would love to do couples therapy, but we CANNOT afford it. We could stretch the budget to put one of us in individual therapy at a time, not both. Outside of this issue alone, I don’t feel like I need it though I think basically anyone in the world benefits from therapy.


----------



## LisaDiane (Jul 22, 2019)

There are SO MANY problems with your sex life with your husband, and they are so intertwined, that it's going to be VERY difficult for you to untangle them and get to a satisfying place for both of you, I'm afraid.

Let me say that from what you've shared here -- and I want to be VERY CLEAR with you about this -- THESE ARE HIS ISSUES ALONE. I want you to reread that, and let it sink in. IT IS NOT YOU. The worst thing you may have done is to take over for him in areas that he should have been acting like an adult himself, but the issues he is having with initiating with you, getting hard, finishing, following through with what he says, "not knowing" what is wrong or how to fix it, etc etc, ARE ALL HIM. 

It sounds to me like he has polluted his sexual experiences with FANTASY only, so he cannot connect with you sexually or become aroused with you because he has insulated himself inside his own mind when it comes to his sexuality. This is something that will be VERY difficult to address and change, even if he wants to. But he should want to, because it's going to plague him in ANY relationship he is in -- it's NOT about you personally at all. There is nothing you can do to change into the "perfect" woman who he would be turned on by - that's just not how his sexuality works.

I would bet that he cannot get hard because he's masturbating too much to porn and his other fantasies. He doesn't need Viagra, he needs to stop engaging in sexual activity that doesn't include you, IF he really wants to fix this.

But I have to be honest with you -- there is only a very slim chance that you are ever going to be able to have the sex life that you want with him. And if you have ANY chance at all, it will ONLY be by both of you going to a therapist trained in sexual dysfunction. I know you said you cannot afford it...you don't have insurance? The problems you've described, and his attitude about them, AND the damage that it's all doing to YOU, will just not be able to be set on a path of healing without professional guidance.

The only other choice you really have, besides leaving him, is to accept him the way he is, tell him that you are finished struggling with him about it, and open your marriage so YOU can have another partner who will meet your sexual needs. And I'm being completely serious with this. If you want to stay married, and he will not change or work harder to do what HE KNOWS he needs to do, then that's your only other option - and it's worked for alot of couples!!


----------



## TJW (Mar 20, 2012)

LisaDiane said:


> there is only a very slim chance that you are ever going to be able to have the sex life that you want with him.


I concur. I recommend the professional guidance. You two are going to have to make a financial priority and do what you need to do to support it. Without it, I don't think you stand a chance.
I don't recommend going outside your marriage for sex, not in any way or form. I believe that will only destroy.



Frustrated0145 said:


> It’s our private issue. But I feel it’s intrinsically tied to our sexual issues and one can’t be helped without understanding the other.


I'd say your are correct about the intrinsic nature. I know fully well it's your private issue, aside from a professional counselor, I wouldn't "share" any of it.


----------



## badsanta (Oct 13, 2014)

Frustrated0145 said:


> I finally asked him for sex again the other night. He was open to it. He tried. But he couldn’t get hard. He didn’t try to finish me off but half heartedly said he would. * I said no,* I didn’t want to just get off, I wanted to have sex with HIM, so it was okay, I could wait. I could tell he felt bad. I tried not to make it worse.


If you are in the mood for sex and your partner can't get in the mood but is willing to please... rejecting that can actually serve to create a lot of performance anxiety. 

Him initiating when he was half awake and then half heartedly stopping when you were half way there may have been a form of passive aggressive revenge for you rejecting him when he was willing to please you. As in he wanted you to feel rejected in the way you rejected him. 

Stop rejecting each other. When you want sex, be sure that you want it and be easy to please. Be willing to please yourself in his presence if needed. Eventually he will respond and join, but do not make him solely responsible for your pleasure.

Regards, 
Badsanta


----------



## CatholicDad (Oct 30, 2017)

Everyone on TAM is tired of me blaming porn for everything, but here I go again. I also didn't read all of this- too long. That said, if you could get hubby off porn permanently it would make a long term lasting improvement. It's sort of like "eat healthy" if you don't want to be overweight.

Porn wrecks men and marriage. It contributes to sex trafficking and the actors are often victims of abuse. Users of porn over a long period find they need highly visual sexual stimuli for arousal. If hubby can't become aroused by a intimate hug, kiss, or even your scent- than he is either seriously unhealthy or (more likely) a long term porn user. I also don't believe that a man would marry someone he was not attracted to- this has to be exceedingly rare. I think men may _lose _attraction for their spouse if they spend time watching younger, prettier, more shapely actors perform via porn. This may especially be the case as a woman ages, has children, etc. No woman can keep up with the porn fantasy over the course of a long marriage.

I'm sorry OP with what you're going through. If hubby would give up his phone and computer he could probably heal his body and mind over time. If it's NOT porn, I'm happy for you and I have no other advice.


----------



## ccpowerslave (Nov 21, 2020)

Erm I don’t get this guy. If I woke up and my wife was even somewhat interested (like yesterday Valentines Day) I would (and did do) whatever it took to get her there despite me popping early. Not sure how you roll over and go to sleep and leave your partner hanging.

I think your instinct to seek therapy is a good one. It sounds like you maybe have something to work with there.


----------

