How do I tell my husband I’m no longer sexually compatible with him when his anger issues are also resurfacing?
TLDR
I care about my husband, but I’m realizing that I’m no longer sexually compatible with him. At the same time, his anger issues seem to be resurfacing, which makes having an honest conversation feel even harder
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Long version:
I’ve been married to my husband for 20 years, and we have two kids, a tween and a teen.
I came out to him as gay about 10 years ago. He was very supportive, and we decided to open our marriage. For a long time, it actually worked pretty well. There were still some things I enjoyed about sex with him, and I figured I could “make the best of it.”
Thankfully, we never had major jealousy or conflict around being open.
But over the years, I’ve become increasingly aware that I just can’t keep having sex with him. The amount of mental and emotional energy it takes for me to make it make sense has become exhausting, and honestly, it’s starting to feel damaging to me. It also doesn’t feel fair to him.
For the past couple of weeks I’ve been avoiding sex, blaming it on perimenopause while I tried to figure out a sane and compassionate way forward. I had decided it was time to see our marriage counselor and tell him that I don’t think we’re sexually compatible anymore, and that we should separate.
The complication is his anger issues.
He is, in many ways, a good man, but he has a history of pretty significant anger problems. They’re verbal rather than physical, but there have been some genuinely awful incidents. He’s yelled at me in public and in front of friends. Once, when our daughter was two, he shoved her toward me at Walmart because he was angry that he couldn’t find me. He denied that one happened for years.
About three years ago, he had another blowup that was essentially divorce-worthy. I finally drew a hard line and told him that he needed to do something about his anger or our marriage was over. He eventually got help, including working with our marriage counselor, and things really did improve. He often thanks me for “taking him back.”
Things have been mostly good since then.
But this week he had two major blowups over stupid household chore stuff, and it honestly felt like seeing the old version of him again. I do the vast majority of the household work, and I’m happy to do it because I work part-time and don’t contribute as much financially. So the intensity of his reactions felt especially disproportionate.
We’re seeing our therapist tomorrow, and I feel like I absolutely need to bring up the anger issue.
But the bigger thing I need to say is: I don’t want to have sex with him anymore.
And I’m struggling with how to separate those two things.
His anger definitely makes me less interested in sex with him. It makes me feel less emotionally safe and less attracted to him. But I don’t want to pretend that his anger is the reason I’m no longer sexually interested in him, because that isn’t the whole truth.
The bigger truth is simply that I’m gay.
I don’t want to continue trying to force myself into a sexual relationship with a man just because we’ve been married for 20 years and have children together. At the same time, I love him, we have a family, and I want to handle this with as much compassion and honesty as possible.
So how do I address these two issues with our therapist and with him?
How do I say, essentially, “Your anger is a serious problem and we need to address it, but it is not the reason I no longer want sex with you. I’m gay, and I don’t think I can keep pretending that I’m sexually compatible with a man” without making it sound like one issue caused the other?