Losing my mind over my sexless state of marriage.

[1hedlite]

Steve,

It was actually DR that I read, not DB. I recently went on my Amazon account to look DR up, and a message came up saying I purchased it in 2016.

Drop the anger. It is exacerbating your problem, not helping it. It is like using motor oil on acne.

I know. But my God, it's been almost 2 years without sex. I'm dying.

Drop the pariah act. Truth is that there is plenty of blame to go around. You aren't an innocent victim in this, nor is he. So stop trying to play the "he did it first" game. Again...motor oil on acne.

I think it's a little more than a martyr act, but yes, it's irrelevant as far as DB is concerned. I know I'm not a victim. I made my bed and am now lying in it. Red flags were firing off almost as soon as we started dating, and then I married him. Red flags continued firing off, and then I got pregnant by him.

Does he blame you for that WHEN you bring it up. Or has he just said out of the blue. "You know, if you were better at seducing me...." My guess is that his comment on your failure to seduce him was a defensive response to you brining the problem up.

Neither one of us has been happy with the frequency since we got married. The only time we were okay with the frequency was sometime before we were married. Right after we found out I was pregnant, though, we were having an amazing amount of sex - it's like he was so happy about my pregnancy that his testosterone and libido shot up or something, but that lasted maybe a couple months.

So to answer your question. Back when we were at least having sex infrequently, he would bring up the topic of the infrequency AND blame the infrequency on me. I remember he would do that, and then my head would be spinning because I had been spending hours upon hours doing my darnedest trying to turn him on, to no avail, and then he would act like none of that ever happened and complain about the infrequency and blame me. That led to really awful fights.

But blaming me for things that are objectively not my fault, even things that are objectively his own fault, is a long-standing issue. Then again, I do fail to seduce him - he's not wrong about that.

Nowadays, he does not bring up the topic. It only gets brought up if I bring it up, and he blames me when I do. So yes, nowadays, he blames me when I bring it up. I have not brought it up since the fight I mentioned in my first post. The plan is that I not bring it up anymore.

This is pure conjecture. Most ICs are pretty good and sifting through the blaming, etc. Be glad he is in IC, so many LBSs would kill to have their WASs in IC.

Another long-standing issue is H's propensity to badmouth me to friends, my in-laws, etc. So it stands to reason that he will badmouth me in IC. Badmouthing me to third parties killed us before we could ever get off the ground. That has been very damaging over the years. I am largely disinterested regarding him being in IC - I don't hold out hope that it will benefit our marriage, but if badmouthing me in IC somehow makes him less inclined to badmouth me to a friend, in-law, co-worker, ex-lover, lover, etc., then that's good. But based on my own experience in IC, it is often divorce-leaning.

This is why the less pressure you put on him, the better.

The weight of the world was already on his shoulders when I met him. I remember telling family members, when I first started dating him, that I wasn't sure I wanted to get too involved because I was intimidated by his being so dang busy and tired all the time, burning the candle at both ends. Our marriage is a potted plant that has been placed in the cupboard until it is convenient for him to nurture it. It has never been convenient. Other people and other things, even hobbies of his, have always taken priority. Another issue is that he has ADHD, but he is high-functioning.

Avoid this like the plague. Nothing complicates a R with someone than introducing a new person into it. If your MR ends in D, there will be plenty of time for this later.

It's not that I want a new person. I just want to be loved and desired by my husband. However, the boost in mood and energy that I got just from an anonymous man saying witty flirty things to me in Twitter DMs - it astounded me. It made me cheerfully scrub the kitchen floor, which my husband found curious and delightful. But he still didn't desire me.

There have been a couple instances of inappropriate texting between H and other women that I know of. He has never apologized for that - his take is that I drove him to it. He had a prior sexual relationship with one of those women, but they supposedly stopped having sex before we started dating.

I told the anonymous man that I thought his wife would take issue with the flirting, and that broke the spell. I didn't outright tell him to stop, but he got the message, and he stopped. I liked hearing from him. But I didn't want to offend his wife.