My [40f] husband [40m] fondles his genitals in front of me when he’s in the mood for sex. I told him that it makes me uncomfortable, but he still does it.
My [40f] husband [40m] and I have been married for over a decade. We’ve had our ups and downs for sure, and things have been feeling pretty rough lately, in general.
When my husband is in the mood to initiate sex, he does this thing that really bothers me. He’ll lay on his back in our bed, fondling himself. He’ll be hard, and he’ll just lightly stroke & touch himself overtop of his clothes. Nothing else besides that, but it makes me really uncomfortable. It makes me feel oddly pressured to have sex, and it feels like a passive aggressive way to initiate. It communicates to me, “hey, I’m really horny, and I’m expecting sex”. I’ve told him multiple times exactly how it makes me feel, we’ve had full discussions about it. Those discussions were a while ago though, maybe a year+ before now.
Our marriage had been going okay for a while until recently, and our sex life was the best it had ever been, so I didn’t want to rock the boat and bring this topic up to him again. He had stopped doing the behavior for a little bit, but then he started doing it again regularly some months ago. But I never brought it back to his attention, bc I was desperate to not fight. I’m so tired of arguing.
So, I found him stroking himself in bed about 5 or 6 nights ago. I told him that I could tell he was in the mood for sex (without bringing up specifics or pointing out that he was playing with himself). We had been arguing over something else recently, so I calmly told him that I was surprised that he thought I might be in the mood to have sex, and that he must not understand how angry & hurt I’ve been feeling if he thought there was a chance we might have sex. He nicely said that he understood, and that was that.
(i’d like to note that he has a prescription for Viagra. So if he’s hard and touching himself, that means he has taken a Viagra, and therefore is at least anticipating the possibility of having sex.)
Then, two nights ago, I walked into our room to go to bed, and he was on the bed, reading on his phone, and fondling himself. Again. Seeing this again really made my stomach turn. Our ongoing issue(s) hadn’t been resolved. Nothing had changed since the other night when I had turned him down. So I called him out on it. I pointed out that he was fondling himself, and that he knows exactly how that makes me feel. I told him that I’d never intentionally do something that made him feel uncomfortable & pressured to have sex. He apologized, and said he forgot that touching himself in that context upset me, but it seemed to me like he really didn’t understand what a big deal this was to me. To get him to see the severity of it in my mind, I told him (as delicately yet straightforward as I could) that it was like sexually predatory behavior in my opinion: He knew that sexual action/behavior really upset me, and he was still doing it, purely bc he wanted sex. I told him it felt like he was sexually accosting me when he did that. He became incredibly defensive. He said I was attacking his character. He said that it was impossible for him to sexually accost me bc that’s only something that happens in public between strangers. He reiterated that he was sorry, but basically that I was blowing it out of proportion bc he wasn’t doing it to be predatory, in so many words, he was doing it compulsively, and he just wasn’t thinking about how it made me feel. I told him that his intent was moot; bottom line is his actions were explicitly unwanted, and he knew it.
I’m deeply disturbed, and frankly grossed out that he would treat me this way. Especially so bc I rarely turn him down for sex. I say yes to sex 98% of the time he wants it. So what gives? Why not approach me for sex in a way that he knows will be effective? Why do something that he knows for a fact will upset me? And how dare he act defensive and like I hurt him when I confronted him about it?! He said that I was attacking his character, and he ended up texting me this metaphor today: “lol I think any human can understand that your comments are not productive and you’re not trying to work out a solution or make this work. You’re just full of contempt. I’ll make sure that when my direct report forgets to do something at work, I’ll just point out that he’s actually a lazy person and because he said he’d do it correctly, he’s also a liar and that’s just who he is.”
This feels like extreme gaslighting and abuse of my emotions. My head is spinning.
TLDR: Is my husband fondling himself a big deal when I’ve told him how much it bothers me? Or is it valid that he just forgot, and is my reaction psychotic?
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eta: it feels like a massive lack of accountability or understanding of the seriousness of this situation on his part. he texted me these two paragraphs after creating these posts
I understand “I forgot” is not reassuring, I understand that trust is earned through actions over time, but I took what you said seriously. But when you keep doing this, telling me how ashamed I should be, and making out the behavior as analogous to something much worse, you show no respect for me, nor my boundaries while asking me to do that for you. I’m not trying to turn this around and make it about me, I’m separating feedback about my behavior, how it makes you feel, and how I can change it vs. you then shifting the behavior to conclusions about my character.
I understand that this behavior has made you feel pressured and I take that seriously. I’m not going to argue with how it affected you. I’ve committed to stopping and I intend to follow through. I also don’t think continuing to debate labels is productive or with benevolent intent.