So I’m starting on this journey of understanding after many years of feeling rejected by my husband. Sex is always once a month at very best if I initiate it. It has been this way since 20’s and through our 30’s. I’m a petite, attractive woman who has tried for years to be prettier, thinner, kinder, a better wife etc and tip toe around his feelings in hopes he will feel sexual desire.  That hard part for me right now is talking to my husband in denial, because he truly hasn’t progressed. He is in the gay Internet porn phase. I have read these boards and know the response is likely, either he won’t admit, will never come out & I should move forward. But that is really hard to accomplish while he is angry and denying his true self.  He is a doctor, and works 24 hours s day, 7 days a week. And for many years was only home 2 nights a week. The lack of sex was blamed on his fatigue & stress or my demands, a messy house, and just him not feeling “connected to me”. Early on he would reject my sexual advances at night, because he was tired, so I stopped trying at night. But the constant thing was he never, in any way initiates sex.
     I first started finding the porn sights like, straightcollegemen.com on our computer about seven years ago. Prior to that, he got gay magazine publications on occasion, but claimed someone signed him up as a joke. He denied the gay porn for several years after, but I know what I saw, right? Gaslighting didn’t work on me, other than just being really sad about it and not knowing what to do, or how to cope. I started asking other men on line dating sites if straight men watch gay porn. The resounding answer was NO, nope, never. I was lonely, but never cheated. I used the sites simply to cope with loneliness, feeling unattractive or somehow just the shrew unworthy of sexual desire.
   . Earlier  in the marriage I tried pleasing, read the book Love And Respect, left love letters, but the more I gave the more he took without reciprocation. Respecting him more did. Not. Work. He didn’t want more sex, maybe even less. This phase ended with a big fight where he threw me down & My wrist was fractured. It felt like a linebacker had tackled me and as I lay on the floor he paced around me, saying nothing that I remember. All I could say was “you hurt me” & cry. It was a complicated time, where he was on house arrest and blamed me for 100% all. He and his lawyer tried to convinced me that he hadn’t thrown me when I broke my wrist. He had to go to counseling. I refused, because I knew he would manipulate and ask me to meet his needs, when none of mine were being met. I almost moved out of state, but our kids heartbreak took me back to the marital home. Still married almost 10 years later. He is bullemic and was in treatment years ago, and he still makes himself vomit. He self medicates with alcohol. He will not acknowledge his sexuality but will say “I’m not talking to you about that”. I worry about him, but I find it hard to have true feelings of compassion when it feels like he is a black hole sucking all life away. Radioactive is an apt description too. But I can objectively see the tragedy, and beginning to understand self loathing that comes with the denial. Thanks for any support. Just reading similar stories is profoundly helpful.