Submitting to unwanted sex in order to please him never felt right, but maybe I should have done that to keep him happy. I was of the opinion that sex is something you do with, not for, your partner. But maybe I am wrong. He was never able to express how he felt about it, other than petulance and blame, which made me feel guilty and defensive. I explained many times that you cannot pour from an empty cup, and that I needed more emotional support from him without the expectation it would lead to sex. As the saying goes, women are not vending machines that you put niceness coins in until sex falls out.
Your Ex should’ve been more understanding about PPD. I mean, the pregnancy and becoming a mother alone mess with a woman’s body and brain enough without PPD already!
I don’t know about other women, but I remember for awhile I was really having conflicting feelings about my body after becoming a mom. Forgive me for being forward here- my nipples- are they for pleasure or for breastfeeding?? I felt like a cow constantly breastfeeding my baby but I somehow needed to figure out how to switch to “sexy wife” mode after the baby is full? How are we supposed to know this stuff??
But with that said, I also believe that sometimes you do it with your partner just to do it. We don’t have enough candle light dinners to set the mood first, and with a high drive partner sometimes it just needs to happen. Now looking back at my own M I feel like part of what went wrong is I didn’t examine the situation hard enough. (And I didn’t know how) I felt like I was trying so hard to match my H’s drive but it was so exhausting for me. And it was disappointing for both of us because he didn’t want to feel like I was forced, and I didn’t want him to feel like it’s still not enough. I think the key is to figure out WHY- why didn’t I want to have sex with this man? What is missing for me? Basically shifting the focus to myself instead of him.
And also obviously it takes two to tango. There’s lots of things husbands can do to help plant the seeds for the flowers to bloom instead of focusing on “poor me, I am not getting enough sex.”
Don’t beat yourself up for what’s in the past. We all have room for improvements. But I think your H wins that one, he needs A LOT of work.
