Grateful to have found this resource!

I (35F) have been with my husband (38M) for 7 years, married for five, virtually sexless for three.

A few things are different about our story compared to many I’m reading here:
- he has always been openly queer and open about dating men before he met me
- he didn’t cheat, I did. (We started talking opening our relationship and I jumped the gun.)
- I’m six months pregnant!

And a few details that paint the picture of our relationship:
- I have been unhappy about our sex life for years and have expressed that to him. I tried all the tricks in the book. Nothing changed: I continued to be rejected and felt undesired constantly.
- not only that, I feel disconnected from him emotionally. He doesnt share my interests and has even made fun of my interests and hobbies in the past.
- so how did I get pregnant with him if we aren’t having sex? It was not fun. I had been tracking my temperature and basically bullying him to have sex with me. In hindsight it was honestly kind of traumatic. We had discussed taking a break from trying, and then I got pregnant on the first try.
- From the start of our relationship, I was open with him about my hesitations about his queerness. I did not think he was interested in me nor interested in women when we first met. He pursued me very strongly and eventually I could see he treated me well and our sex was good at first.
- his expression of his queerness has changed over the past few years to be more out and proud. I feel like everyone thinks I’m a beard or doesn’t put it together that we’re married when we meet. He started painting his nails regularly, dressing more flamboyantly (sometimes with women’s clothes items mixed in). He even put on makeup and wore gogo boots to march in our local pride parade. I’ve let him know that I don’t find this attractive, even tho it’s hard to say as someone who wants to be supportive and progressive.
- since I slept with someone else (it just happened twice and then I understood we weren’t at a place to open our relationship) he has done a 180 in his behavior. I listened to one of the podcast episodes with Ryan King, and the way Kristin explains the 180 she saw in her spouse reminded me of what I’m experiencing now. He is blaming all of this “phase” he went through in the past few years on so many different things—COVID life changes, a new job where part of his duties is to work with LGBTQ college students, a move to a more conservative place, childhood trauma, mental health medication changes. Now he is so hyper attentive, wanting physical intimacy. He is dropping his more femme ways of dressing. But it all feels fake and shallow and just plain icky to me. As far as sex goes, I think I have trauma from being rejected for so long and from having sex with someone who clearly wasn’t enjoying themselves (for whatever reason). He also told me recently that he watches gay and trans porn. Admittedly I occasionally watch porn with two women when I do watch porn, which is seldom, but I feel like this is a false equivalency (I mostly do because so much straight porn feels violent). I’m not super comfortable with him watching gay and trans porn considering the context of everything. He’s also recently been saying he feels he is “pansexual” not “bi” — which to me feels like he’s acknowledging more of his attraction to trans and nonbinary people.

There are 100 other things I could share, but this is getting long!

Basically, I’d love to hear this community’s take. I know he will be a good father and coparent so I’m not concerned about that. After the way the idea of opening our marriage went down, I don’t think that is a viable option for us. We are in couples therapy and she is urging us to work on our physical intimacy but I just can’t. I honestly can’t imagine myself ever wanting to have sex with him again.

Last edited by OhOhNo (December 29, 2023 1:08 pm)