u/ChippedHamSammich

Question: How do we rebuild that trust to get to intimacy to then try to rebuild a sex life?

TLDR; broken trust and not great sex in the past are making sexual compatibility hard to recapture.

Background:

So my husband(35M) and I(38F) have been together for 7 years. We have had a lot of ups and down; the most insane down was probably during the pandemic. He was still drinking and that would lead to drug use (recreational), I would even call his drinking recreational, but it just would escalate and finally I told him I can't date another alcoholic and if that's what he wants to do, he can keep doing that. To his credit, he quit all of it and is 5 years sober, I do not worry about relapse at all. That said, I think there were moments where trust was eroded (like lying about drug use and then coming clean about it later), that I still see shades of with really dumb shit ( like saying he ordered something for the house that he meant to order, but then didn't order it, so we stay in a perpetual state of work around until I force a solution).

I feel like he is still pretty avoidant of facing certain problems head on, and still very much thinks about himself when decision making, but doesn't always think of things in terms of our family. This makes me the breadwinner, the decision-maker, someone with high standards who is high-strung. A lot of this comes from my own childhood trauma where I don't really have safety nets and feel the need to take care of things myself, because I don't really trust other people to.

This basically broke our relationship down and made me "controlling and difficult", and made him "inadequate". After having a kid, my libido kind of disappeared too but it's returning slowly, Despite my husband being conventionally attractive; the amount of problem solving and future thinking I have to do makes me feel like I can't even take a step towards intimacy, no matter how improved our interactions become (eg, me not being so judgy or rude, and him making an efforts and generally being more helpful).

We go to a therapist but often end up in the same cycle; we both feel under appreciated.

He is a GOOD man, there is no question of this. He is kind, he can be helpful, he has a career, but it is his own business so the struggle is his work can be inconsistent and we can't really rely on it like we can mine. This puts a lot of pressure on me to be perfect in my career and job, because I carry that consistency.

Recently he lamented our lack of sex life. I have told him in the past that I don't think he is that great at sex; I feel like because of the way our trust has been broken in the past, it's been very difficult to get to a place where we can both trust and learn. I don't think anyone is inherently bad at sex, but I am just really struggling to feel attracted to him because I feel like whether he means to or not, I ended up doing a lot more work overall. Even the way he broached the sex stuff, he was willing to use my own excuses (re: body changes, hormones etc), as the only reason, and not really looking at why I am not attracted to him at the moment as the issue.

We have opened our relationship up in the past which honestly wasn't a bad experience. I am not really a jealous person, and neither is he. But also, I feel like this is the lazy and easy way out. I also feel like when I ask him questions about his perspective, he really doesn't have answers. He says "I don't know" a lot, so I have asked him to go to an individual therapist multiple times to figure out that perspective, and surprise surprise, his avoidance has made it so he still hasn't done it. It's been a year since I first brought it up.

Like, we can be friends and good parents, but the connection in the relationship beyond that feels nonexistent.

It always creeps up slowly, and then bam.

Shaking, crying while trying to steady my breath. I turn into a cornered cat, lashing out at my mother like I am a teenager trapped in her house again. Except now, she is at the nursing home. Her condition has worsened but it’s more of the same. she was always quadriplegic, but now, there are voice activated devices. But of course her vocal chords are weakened, so I get phone calls in the middle of my work day, trying to decipher what she is saying.

There is no completing a task. I am a human proxy for control. Do this, then this, put the soup in a plastic cup, ask for this, cut the sandwich, fold it in half. only feed her the middle- cut the cucumber into four pieces on the salad, fold the towel put it under her hand, move the wedge, reset the alexa, add water to the soup, check the AC, put on the fan, move the blanket down, scratch her nose, head down, feet up, dip the chapstick into vaseline then apply it, scratch her nose, scratch her eye, shift her pillow.

When she called today, it was because she felt scared that she would die without seeing us. i was there yesterday.

I simply don’t care if she sees me before she dies. At this rate, I hope it’s me first so I can escape her without guilt. This is the same feeling from when I was 16, still plaguing me at thirty fucking eight.

She is a version of someone I knew. I don’t love this person. I feel obligated to this person, but in my mind, I am unsure I ever knew my mother. Just versions of someone who needed to extract the last bit of humanity from me so she can keep living.

Rarely do I let it feel this bad. But fucking hell, I feel like I don’t exist.

Has anyone else run into this with family members?

My mom and grandma both try to shove cookies at me, and I say no thank you. They are also the first people to tell me that I look fat or tired.

I told them that I can’t eat cookies whenever because I am at risk for diabetes and they both had some snarky or shitty thing to say.

It makes it really hard to interact when people are essentially mocking your health and dietary choices.