I (40/F) Got Permission.

Hello...LT, 18 year DB here, if you want more info you'll have to read my past threads. So I (40/F/HL) was going to ask DH (M/46/LL) for an open marriage after we came home from seeing the eclipse. We saw the totality, we came home, I asked for permission to open our marriage, and I got it. If that's all you want to know you can stop here:)

This was really hard. I've been kind of snippy with DH lately, although I don't mean to be. I hate being that kind of person. Usually we can spends days/weeks in each others company and not get annoyed (I mean we go backpacking together, that level of being in each other's face) but lately my limit is like an hour and I need a break. So we barely got through the eclipse trip, it went fine, but he definitely knew something was up because I wasn't acting like my self.

I still could not pull the trigger, despite all the ruminating I was doing on the subject, until I thought of this, and it is so obvious, I have to face that I have really been in denial:

When I turned 35, we finally and completely decided that we weren't going to have kids. We had GREAT health insurance at that time, and I said, "Hey, this is final, I can't be on BC, why don't you get a vasectomy? Then we can have sex whenever, we don't have to gauge what cycle I'm on/use condoms. Wouldn't that be great?"

Yeah, wouldn't it? Isn't that what normal men do when they reach the point that they don't want or don't want more kids??? Especially at 40 years of age?????? Don't you want to fuck and take the pressure off? (And just to be clear, we still don't want kids. This is not some subconscious desire for children on his part.)

Well I should have gotten my tubes tied, because initially he went along with the idea, and then for a year I'd bring it up, but he made absolutely no action to ever get a vasectomy. Then he would act like I was bugging him if I brought it up, so I stopped.

And that's that. What the hell. Am I wrong here? When I remembered that, and really thought about it, it was like someone dumped a pail of ice water on me. He just. doesn't. want. to. have. sex. He really doesn't care about it at all. As if the years and years of rejection shouldn't have told me, that should have been the final nail in the coffin 5 years ago, his refusal to get a vasectomy.

So later in the day I asked. Previously when we would talk about our (lack of) sex life, I would become so upset, angry, and crazy that it would turn into a yelling match, full of accusations, recriminations, and all the rest. Then he would either shut down completely, I would go cry in the shower, or we would have hysterical bonding sex (ugh, in retrospect, I should have just gone into the shower and cried lol) but nothing would be resolved.

This time I just very gently, and very quietly told him that we needed to talk, and that I wasn't happy, that sex was no longer something that I could live without, and that things had to change.

And honestly he finally, after all these years, admitted that he just wasn't sexually attracted to me, mostly because he's never had much of a sex drive/interest, that he feels like no one should even want to have sex with him and that makes him not want to do it ie depression/low self confidence/etc (I don't even need to get into that rabbit hole right now) and that he was sorry, and that he always felt that this day was coming.

Oddly enough it was an ultimate relief to hear all this. I told him, and I honestly think this, that it's not his fault, that I'm not mad at him, and that I don't want our lives to change at all (maybe this last part is a little dishonest, it's that I'm not ready for a total life overhaul, thus why I am starting with permission to step out, and not divorce.)

The permission was not that straightforward, at first he thought I was already cheating on him, then he said I had to move out, then he told me he can't handle me being with anyone else, but we finally arrived that I would be discreet and that for now he doesn't want to know about it. Which is fine with me.

So yeah. I am still in a little bit of shock that I took this step, and that I got what I wanted...but I am still at square one.

The truth is this: I am not sure I can even be with anyone else. When I think of the past years when I've been throwing myself at my DH, I can hardly recount it is so hurtful, but I would dress up, shave, do my hair, kiss him, tell him I loved him, ask if we could go to bed early, drape myself across his lap, just all of it, for fuck's sake he's the only person I've been with, and ALL I KNOW ABOUT SEX IS REJECTION.

I've asked myself why, now, when I think about sex most of what I feel is paralyzing terror and anxiety. And it's because I have never been with someone who wanted me, it's because I have been sexually rejected for my entire adult life, and this rejection is the only sex I've experienced. God that is so depressing. How the hell am I supposed to move on with that kind of background???

But, I got permission. And I'm giving myself at least a year to use it...and if nothing pans out I'll probably just go to the doctor and get on some serious anti-depressants.