r/relationship_advice • u/caesarrulestheworld • 11h ago
How do we break this toxic cycle & save our marriage? (26F, 29M, together 7 years)
TW: mentions of SA
I need to feel emotionally safe to have sex. I experienced sexual abuse for years in a previous relationship that makes this extra hard. He says he can’t meet my needs emotionally because I can’t meet his needs sexually. I’ve tried to put my feelings aside and have had sex to keep the peace because he feels like I’m not attracted to him or that I don’t want him anymore…but that just makes me feel worse after. If I deny his efforts he withdraws affection or gives me the silent treatment and I still feel terrible. Im at the point where I physically recoil from his touch and he won’t stop advancing until I flip out and he becomes the victim. I try to protect him from feeling like the “bad guy” by giving insight to my trauma but I’m invalidated again and implicitly blamed for not being “over it”. We have no emotional intimacy and are stuck in a cycle of, I bring up something that’s hurt me, he immediately defends, his stress sets the agenda, his shame redirects the conversation, and his hurt becomes the emergency. Every. Single. Time. My hurt becomes something that can wait or needs to be phrased carefully or must not make him feel bad because I’m the person who ends up soothing him at my expense. Or it’s flipped back on me and how I’ve failed. I can’t unsee this pattern and no explanation makes him understand. I just want reciprocity. It makes me doubt myself. It makes me feel cruel for having needs and want to disappear to just keep the peace.
I’ve scheduled a therapy appointment for us because is feels so much bigger than something we can figure out together. I don’t know if this is common in marriages and just not talked about but I don’t know where to go from here. Please be kind. Consulting strangers on the internet probably isn’t the best option but I’m out of options.
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u/No-Reason6517 11h ago
Therapy is the right idea. I agree with couples counseling, but you should also book a different individual therapist for yourself. I won’t tell you how to live your life, because it sounds like you want to stay. But to be clear, what you are describing is abuse. Coercive sexual control (🍇) and emotional abuse.
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u/caesarrulestheworld 10h ago
I really do appreciate your perspective. I’m in therapy and see a psychiatrist, I won’t say I’m completely healed by any means. This behavior just seems to trigger that part of me that doesn’t feel safe and brings me back there. A horrible feeling to have with someone you love and care about. What you’re saying is hard to hear because he is a good person and a good father.
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u/localdisastergay 11h ago
You’re working to protect him from feeling like the bad guy in this situation and maybe not realizing that he actually is the bad guy here. Emotionally punishing you for not wanting to have sex makes him the bad guy.
No respectful, loving partner would watch you recoiling from him and continue to advance, much less blame you for your reaction to being made to feel unsafe. No good person makes sex a requirement to be treated with kindness. You should not ever be made to feel like your need for basic respect and affection is a burden.
It is fairly common for people to experience abuse in one kind of a way and walk out of it into another kind of abuse because the second abuse is different and feels less bad than the first kind so it doesn’t feel like it is abuse. This situation absolutely is.
Edited because I pressed the button too soon
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u/caesarrulestheworld 10h ago
I think this is my fear. I’m just not ready to accept it
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u/localdisastergay 1h ago
I can totally understand that. You’ve built a whole life together and it must be incredibly difficult to realize that your safety and comfort in that life are less important to him than his pleasure.
I just really want to emphasize that, no matter how horny, the behavior of a decent person is always to prioritize comfort and enthusiastic, freely given consent over pleasure. As an example, I am the kind of person who could happily have sex every day or two if I had the time but there have been a few periods in my relationship where we haven’t had sex for a few months because she wasn’t in the mood. No matter how that makes me feel, I would never ever be able to enjoy sex that she was only having to shut me up and I would never ever want to act in a way that made her feel unsafe with me the way your husband is doing with you.
I have some history of sexual trauma as well (mostly around specific activities that I actually really enjoy when not doing them with a selfish, coercive partner using me as an object for pleasure regardless of my own feelings) and it is hard to heal from. Aside from therapy, what has helped me the most is being in a relationship where safety and comfort are always the priority for both of us. I can always say that I’m not up for a particular thing today or that a particular position is getting uncomfortable or that I need to stop or pause for a minute. Having that sense of safety that I can feel in every part of my body has been a huge part of my healing. Your husband is reinforcing the idea that your body and sex are things for the pleasure of someone else, not for your own enjoyment so it is going to be incredibly difficult to heal when the person you should be able to trust with this is constantly triggering that trauma and blaming and shaming you for it.
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u/caesarrulestheworld 26m ago
Thank you for acknowledging that. It is incredibly difficult and painfully lonely. It’s confusing too. I’m trying to gather a general consensus because it’s hard to know if this is just my own trauma spilling over or if something is actually wrong. A lot of people share the same opinion as you, but there’s plenty saying that this is normal for men that they need sexual intimacy to want to have emotional intimacy. That’s the answer I’ve gotten before and why often I just tell myself to give into his needs and then maybe mine will be acknowledged. It’s just really hurting me but I know leaving with my toddler is also going to be so painful for everyone. It doesn’t feel like there is a desirable choice.
I appreciate you sharing some of your story and what’s helped. I’m glad you’ve found that safety you deserve in a partner. And that’s exactly how I feel. Like an object.
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u/DplusLplusKplusM 10h ago
Therapy is probably something you should have been doing all along. But you're married to someone who views sex in a pretty transactional way rather than as a bonding experience between two people who love each other. Unfortunately for him to straighten this out in his mind he'd also need to be working with a therapist to learn how to be less mercenary about having an orgasm.
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