Relationship worries

knottief94a3a24ec5fddf2

My husband and I are intimate very infrequently. He has some performance anxiety and is honestly not good at making me feel aroused at all he just kind of pokes at me. He has never seduced me even though I try and slow down and work with him. Never touched my body in an appreciative way.

I am the only person he has been with. We have been married 3 years and have had sex 4x. Thinks was totally different with my ex of 6 years.I know this isn’t normal and that there is nothing wrong with me. Somehow we managed to get pregnant on a night I knew I was ovulation. I’m 6-8weeks pregnant and last night (he was in bed I was awake wa were both matching videos) he was watching ticktock and some half dressed dancing girl came on he watched the whole video and went to her page of all her videos and selected one that was alot more hardcore potent than the previous and turned over so I could no longer see the screen. I think he just assumed I wasn’t paying attention at the first part. I have expressed that I want to have more sex, I want to be wanted I want to feel wanted, but he’d rather just look at this porn? I feel betrayed I feel jealous I feel like I’m not good enough because I don’t look like those girls. I’m so fucking angry. His pregnant wife was awake in the bed next to him and completely willing to have sex with him if he would muster up the effort.

A similar issue has happened before. we got married before we moved into our home. My husband did not start working for eight months after we moved into this home because it was taking a long time to get his medical license transferred to the new state we were paying a mortgage on a $1.5 million home with no income at the time. Things were tight until he started working again. I was clipping coupons, checking out all the sales meal prepping as cheap as I could. I was feeding us on about $30 a week.

We hadn’t had sex since getting married for 6 months and I was going through bills trying to find ways to save money and found out he was spending thousands of dollars on only fans requesting specific poses ect. I was very angry. to add insult to injury. All of the girls were teeny tiny, super thin, young young, looking Asian women they looked like they were probably 12. I will never look like that. I’m a tall blonde with large breasts, I’ve gained weight during Covid that makes me feel horrible that he’s completely avoiding me sexually and spending all this money while we were struggling. He said he wouldn’t do that again

We had an agreement . that he could look at porn, I know all men look at porn, and if I tell him to not look at porn, he’s just gonna lie to me about it, but I told him not to pay specific women, not to send messages to those women he’s getting porn from not to have a relationship with those women.

In this most recent issue, I just don’t think it’s respectful at all for him to do that while I’m in the bed and have been asking him to have sex with me. Essentially showing me I’m not the kind of woman he wants.


Is it normal to feel this way? I have a second ultrasound today (a little worried, they said they couldn’t see a gestational sac at the first ultrasound, and that the pregnancy must be less than four weeks but that doesn’t line up with the timeline of positive pregnancy tests I took) I have half a mind to just not let him in the appointment after all of this. Am I over reacting with hormones. What would you do

savredd

First I’d like to say I’m happy to give my opinion and give you an ear but I really think you would benefit from counseling or even couples counseling. And I’m definitely not a licensed therapist so take what I say with a grain of salt.

Porn can be a root issue for many couples, especially when the women/men that are chosen to watch are vastly different than the significant other. But you have got to communicate your feelings about it. If you let it brew and become more and more angry about it but never talk about it, you’re not giving him a chance to change or see how it is hurting you, and your not allowing yourself to express your feelings and do what you need. 

There are many things that we “deal with” because we love someone. My boyfriend gags at the idea of laundry but will clean the dishes all day. I can’t stand when he wants to sleep in when our 5 year old is ready to run around and start the day. But then at night when I’m ready for bed, he will be the one to check on the dogs and make sure the house is ready to settle down. There is compromise. But what you are describing doesn’t sound like compromise. If his want for porn is hurting you emotionally and mentally than you need to have a conversation that porn isn’t something you can compromise on. Explain why it bothers you and the feelings you get when he sees interest through a phone but not who he is next to. It may not be something he wants to be willing to compromise on either. And if he isn’t, that likely won’t change. Maybe couples counseling will give you each an opportunity to express your feelings and see how the other person feels about the actions. 

Ultimately, you need to decide what is best for not only you, but also your baby. And the only person who can make that decision is you. You’ve got a little bundle that is going to depend on you. But you also need to make sure that you are well. Make sure that your mental, physical, and emotional health is being taken care of. You are important. And no I don’t think you are over reacting. You could also bring up your concerns with your doctor, they should have some connections that could be beneficial to you. 

meggyme

This is more than the Bump can help you with. You need to have a real honest, lengthy convo with your husband. It also sounds like you both need counseling and a financial advisor before your baby gets here.

finalcountdown5

You are so valid in your feelings. Sex and intimacy play a huge role in a relationship. If you have voiced and communicated to him your need for more intimacy and he hasn't worked on it then it is time to talk to a professional. He is doing worse than work on it, it seems. To be watching women scantily clad on social media whilst in bed with you, is such a POS thing to do. I think boys watch porn. Men IMO know better. My husband and I have watched it together a couple times in our decade or so together. We were young and dumb when we did. He never watches it. I never watch it. It has contributed to the complete degradation of our society, so partaking is not something we are OK with. By partaking you are no better than the women with soulless eyes on the other side of the camera and with trafficking being what it is, how many of these women are truly willing participants? 

Porn is a drug. Men that pay for OF are pathetic IMO. Especially in your position as you were struggling and you were making ends meet he was handing over YOUR money to sloots on the internet. I wish women would value themselves more. They devalue us all when they act in such degrading ways. If I had a daughter I'd fear how she would view herself in this world. I have sons and I always worry they won't see through these women and be duped or even worse, bring one home. 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with you and I'm glad you voiced that. There is definitely something wrong with your husband. I'd try to get him help as well as marraige counseling, because you shouldn't be forced to live like this in your marriage. Marriage is not a sentencing but a commitment. You both have committed that only you can do those things for eachother, so to deprive you of it is not OK. Just like women withholding sex from their husbands to get them to do what they want is not OK. You belong to eachother. Furthermore, when the woman is pregnant and more emotional and vulnerable the man needs to step it up. You are stepping up and will in so many ways, he needs to as well. 

I truly hope you seek help on this matter, because women have an increased sex drive with age and men's deplete. If my husband did this to me and it continued after seeking help, we would no longer be. As would it be if I did it to him. You deserve better. I will be praying for you both. And for your US. Hopefully all is well. 

j-redd222

You are valid in feeling this way. I would echo previous comments that you would benefit from couples counseling so both of you can be heard and work through this. Trust and intimacy are a really key part of any relationship so both of you need to be on the same page with what is okay and what is a violation. 

For me personally, my husband and I do not watch porn as we consider it a form of cheating and choose to devote our lives to God. Because this is a standard that we set, if he were to break that, we would have a serious breach in trust and I wouldn’t feel nearly as comfortable being intimate with him. It’s very hard not to compare yourself to a sexual figure that your husband chooses to look at when you are a physical option right there. Porn can lead to unrealistic expectations and it can be addicting where it becomes an issue of preference no matter what you look like. In my personal opinion, him spending money you don’t have on porn and choosing that over you might be a problem that he has with pornography that needs to be worked out in counseling more so than anything that is physically wrong or unattractive with you. He may also feel inadequate in his sexual performance with you whereas he doesn’t have to worry about that with porn because it’s not real life so there’s no one to disappoint. Either way, these things should be taken to a professional who can help you work through it. There’s also sex therapists that might be able to help on top of couples therapy that can help work through some of the hurts this has caused. 

If you want to continue this relationship and build it into a healthy relationship both sexually and mentally, you’ll both need to put in an effort to work through the breaches of trust and hurts that have happened and learn how to gain intimacy with one another. Also, one thing to note is that intimacy can go beyond sex in a relationship. For example, my husband and I make a point to be emotionally intimate and available for one another every day, having deeper conversations than typical day recaps. We talk about highlights and lowlights of our day and how they made us feel. This is really helpful when some of those high/lowlights involve each other. I get to know things that I do that really make his day and I also get to have a better understanding about how something that I might not have thought twice about hurt him and made him feel bad in some way and vice versa. Being emotionally intimate really helped our sexual intimacy and our ability to open up to one another in that forum. 

Personally, however, if I were in this kind of a situation I would not allow my husband to disrespect me or our marriage in our bed right next to me. If I saw that I would’ve called him out and let him know it is absolutely not okay and we would’ve had to air it out right there. I would schedule for couples counseling and tell him if he doesn’t want to go that tells me he doesn’t hold our relationship in high regard enough to work through this. (For reference, my husband and I have a healthy marriage in my opinion and still go to couples counseling because, as he put it, it’s better to go for maintenance than to need to take it in for fixing after it’s broken down.) You should not be feeling this level of disrespect in your marriage and have any sort of complacency with it or feel in any way this is because of you no matter your physical attributes or changes or anything of that nature. He married you- for better or worse, in sickness and in health, etc.- and that means he should love you for who you are not what you look like. Part of living you is respecting you and treating you in a way that makes you feel respected. 

To put things in perspective, do you think he would be okay with you watching porn in front of him? Or paying a man to send you inappropriate photos and messages? Would he be okay with you messaging random men on platforms and receiving sexual photos and messages from them? If not, then it shouldn’t be a large stretch of the imagination for him to see why this would make you uncomfortable and disrespected.