Me, 32F and HL. Him, 36M not attracted to me.

So my husband and I have been together now for 10 years and married for 8 of those. We started out as an LDR, I had a kiddo, we'd both been married before, but we had a great time when we chatted together and seemed really compatible. I started making the 9 hour drive up to see him about once a month while I was finishing up college, and upon graduation, about a year after we'd first met, we moved in together.

Intimacy between us has always been a challenge. From the beginning, I can remember trying to entice him away from games at night by wearing sexy lingerie, suggesting dirty things, touching him, or, sometimes, begging him. I'm overweight, was moreso then, but he had told me in the beginning that he was into that. At 5'1" and around 160lbs, I wasn't happy with my own body shape, but I figured if he was into it, I wouldn't let it slow us down.

I'm currently down to 140lbs, which is still overweight, but I'm no longer unattractive, and I find men eyeing me not infrequently.

Anyway, he had always kind of shrugged it off and said sex just wasn't all that important to him and he felt he could do without. I said I could handle him having a lower libido if he'd be willing to work with me on it. It would get better and then worse and then really bad and then we'd fight and we'd be better but it would fall off again.

About a year ago, I put forward an ultimatum when I found out he was looking at porn on a near daily basis, sometimes multiple times a day, and then waving off my advances at night. I said it had to get better, meaning that he couldn't neglect me for porn anymore, or I was going to go. It was a huge fight, but afterwards he said okay, and we agreed to keep trying.

He never stopped, continued to do it secretly, and when I was suspicious and confronted him about it, he said he never told me he'd stop, and he'd been making a real effort to cut back, and felt like if I was going to keep nagging him, it wasn't worth it. I said again, what I thought was clearly, that it needed to stop, and we could have real discussion about what he got from the porn, and that I would do literally everything it took with him to meet those needs, including swinging if he wanted to see and experience other women. He said porn wasn't important to him, but he felt like my request was an invasion of his privacy and his right to his own sexuality.

But ultimately after considering, he said yeah, agreed. I asked him about it a few weeks later and he got really defensive and said no, of course, he wasn't doing anything and I had to get over it. So I tried, I tried really hard, but all the signs were still there. Three weeks ago, I confronted him again and said hey, I'm worried, I think you're still looking at porn. He blows up and accuses me of spying on him, says he was just clicking links and never agreed to no porn, just not to masturbate. This wasn't my perspective, and I told him I believed he was misleading me, and that I felt like he'd been hiding things from me for a very long time. He said he was done with the relationship, that it wasn't worth it anymore. But the next day, there we are again, we make up, he wants it to be good between us but is tired of the drama. Last week, we were sitting next to each other, and it occurs to me to ask him, "are you physically attracted to me?" and after some hesitation, he says 'no.' I asked when the last time was that he had been and he said, "Well, never." Turns out he didn't think it was that important since "it happens in every long term relationship anyway" and because we were otherwise compatible, he was willing to overlook it. He said he realized now that this was unkind to me, because I didn't get any say in it. I was hurt, really, really hurt, but suddenly everything made sense. Why he never touches me, why I always initiate sex, why no matter what I wear or say or add to our sexual repitoire, it doesn't really do it for him. So I figured, welp, that's that. Then he comes out with this: "I've never been attracted to any of my girlfriends." And then it occurs to me, the porn might not be be the symptom here, but the cause. He says he's spent his whole life alone, and this is just what he does, he craves the visual stimulation, being physically excited and is reluctant to give it up.

Whenever I try to talk about how porn can rewire one's brain to find only particular things attractive, he shuts down, isn't interested. This time I asked if he believed it, and he said 'sure.' I said let's try to attack this from both sides, he'd give up porn and I'd do everything I could to become attractive to him. That's where we are now. I told him I want him to be honest and open, and if mistakes happened, it was okay, I understood, just don't hide, don't be secretive, let me in so we can see where we're headed and evaluate together. He says he's always been honest, but I'm pretty certain that's not true.

Anyway, I dunno, just wanted to share my story and see if anyone had input.