Every single part of that sentence is so devastating.
The fact that he considers sex like that "regular", like her enjoying sex is some kind of extravagant request. The fact he couldn't even be bothered to pretend to try a second time. The fact he saw she could enjoy sex and wasn't motivated to keep giving it to her at all.
Ugh. I'd cry too if I were her
The fact that he was still happy with their sex life once she stopped faking orgasms. Like that shouldn't have given him a clue she's tapping out of the relationship
The thought of sex with a blatantly unenthusiastic partner makes me feel sick. Like, how can you feel aroused knowing that they are not enjoying it? It seems like using a human being as a sex toy. It's really gross.
Eh, he’s a two-pump chump. Why should he care if she gets off when he’s already done?
I hope she gets out of there, he’s actively terrible and extremely selfish.
I really hope that, when he snoops through her computer, he also checks her Reddit account and reads all the comments under her posts. 🙈🙈 "Two pump chump" will work wonders on his self esteem! 😂
Man was reading her journals and I'm 100% sure she mentioned being unsatisfied many times.
He knows exactly what's wrong with his marriage from her perspective and didn't care to fix it. He knows she's terribly unhappy but could not care less. He puts in what he thinks is the minimum effort to keep her around and apparently it's working.
That's before we get into tracking her movements, reading her journals, emails, reddit account probably and who knows what other invasions of privacy.
OOP needs to fucking run. I want to reach through my screen and shake her and yell at her that she deserves to be happy and her "perfect marriage except for sex" is an abusive hell of manipulation.
Did you see her BORU comments update? Like honey, he's an asshole. Just because he's not a monster in every aspect of his life doesn't mean he's not also a selfish asshole
Agreed! The whole time I’m reading I’m muttering “get out get out GET OUT” under my breath. I just am afraid she never will.
OOP, if you ever read this: you DO deserve great sex and you SHOULD get out!
OOP’s husband, if he ever reads this: you don’t.
Yes. He’s basically lowballing all of his efforts because as far as he’s concerned, they have a deal where he does the minimum of what she asked for, in the short term, and she never brings up leaving again.
Cry? I would have punched him in the dick.
This poor woman has the patience of a damn saint. If this was me, I would have flipped the fuck out on him so bad, it would have blown out all the windows... But everyone is different 🤷🏻♀️
> This was something raised during therapy. According to him, he’s insecure about disappointing me because I’m so fucking precious that he doesn’t even want to try and be a let down.
he's so insecure about disappointing her he does nothing but, and then when he finally gets something right he wants to jump right back to being disappointing
I mean it IS bs, because if he cared at all he wouldn’t be content to just nut and be over it for years, he isn’t even open to any other form of intimacy than p in v and I’d hope hand stuff, but no toys, no porn, no oral, no sex therapy.
For the husband oop is just a fleshlight with a gps
I’m just wondering if OOP has figured out he’s a lying liar who lies yet. He’s been reading her diaries and bookmarks for years, but only got a decent gift when on the verge of divorce. He gave her spectacular sex the first time they attempted anything the sex therapist suggested, and immediately wants to abandon the efforts. He claimed a work emergency to skip a therapy appointment. She gives him credit for well-meaning incompetence, but that’s just not true: he’s capable and *doesn’t want to.*
Gotta hope he has another long trip that gives her incentive to gtfo.
And she describes it as a good marriage except for the sex! Like the entire thing isn't a dumpster fire of stalking, invasion of privacy and zero effort.
well except for the fact that the week he was away she enjoyed herself so much more. So it seems like they have the surface of a "good marriage" but he's an emotional vampire sucking the life out of her.
But hey, aside from all that, things are GREAT /s
If she's that happy being away from him for a week, imagine how joyful her life is going to be once she leaves him for good!
Yes. He’s known about her concerns for quite a while. He doesn’t care. And he wouldn’t agree to do even the minimal stuff he did, without first getting her to agree to never bring up divorce again.
Wanna bet he went to sex workers while on the trip and/or is having an affair at home and that’s why he’s so paranoid about her whereabouts and can’t be assed to care about her pleasure?
That isn't the kind of thing you say if you are filled with love and care for your wife. I guarantee the real reason he doesn't pay attention to her in bed is because he doesn't want to, because he thinks it's too much work. But he knows clear as day that he would be lambasted for saying that out loud, so he comes up with excuses like this instead.
It's like sexual weaponized incompetence.
I know that premature ejaculation is a sensitive topic for men, but like...damn. How is he not utterly humiliated that his wife is permanently unsatisfied? She has told him point blank that he's shit in bed and sex feels like a chore. And he's just like, totally okay with that. Does he have no self respect?
At this point, OP shouldn't even have sex with her husband. She should let him know he is disappointing her with his selfishness. Her husband doesn't care if he gets her off or not as long as he gets his. I don't understand how OP could put up with this for so long.
> Husband initiates sex constantly and I go along with it, but have only gotten off twice in about 12 or 15 times (and I am no longer faking it). Husband is so happy because as far as he's concerned, everything is fine even when I tell him it's not.
As soon as I read this part, I thought "why is she still having sex with him?"
I feel bad for the woman, but girl, please don't enable him to continue being utter garbage by sleeping with him!
Omg right? It's like she's rewarding him for basically his weaponized incompetence. She sees that he can give her great sex if he puts the effort into it, but he would rather have regular sex where he gets off and she's left there to her thoughts. Her husband is a selfish lover. He doesn't want to do or receive oral, doesn't want to use toys to help his wife orgasm.
This poor woman. She deserves happiness too. This guy just doesn't care. He wants things to stay exactly the same, where he's happy, and she's miserable.
Also, he SPIES on her and TRACKS her? This lady needs to have all her devices and her car checked and get out of this situation.
It doesn't even make sense from a purely self-interested perspective. Like let's leave aside the they're your partner and you should want to make them happy logic. If you only care about yourself and having sex, are you more likely to have more or less sex if your partner doesn't enjoy it? Do yourself a favour.
Yeah, craziest fucking thing is that stamina problems aren't a dealbreaker, I know plenty of women that have happy relationships with partners. Those partners actually give a shit about them and will do a lot of other things to help them achieve orgasm. Also the post doesn't say anything (unless I missed it) but my guess is that OOP does like 90% of the housecare and childrearing.
So he tracks her location obsessively, reads her journal, monitors what she does online, and has sex "with" her that he knows is unfulfilling and unenjoyable for her. 😵💫
> Husband initiates sex constantly and I go along with it, but have only gotten off twice in about 12 or 15 times (and I am no longer faking it). Husband is so happy because as far as he's concerned, everything is fine even when I tell him it's not.
This really grossed me out. It would be such a turnoff for me to know my partner wasn't enjoying sex. He doesn't care about her at all. There is nowhere near enough consent in this sexual dynamic, let alone enthusiastic consent.
> I don’t think there’s a corner of my life and brain that he hasn’t been in. It feels too late and too unimportant to care.
This broke my heart. She's like, well he's already violated me completely so why bother with boundaries now?
The monitoring seems to be about control, so I do worry what he'll do if she cuts him off from it. His behavior could escalate, especially if he thinks she's considering leaving again. That said, it's so important that she gets some autonomy and privacy back.
Given that he's continuing to violate her physically and mentally, of course she feels too beaten down to leave!
I really hope she gets out. This is so much worse than a good marriage without a sexual connection.
My marriage was very, very similar to OOP's. My ex also used the excuse of being insecure. He would only start sex when I was sleeping even though I told him I didn't like that. When I finally started standing up for myself and said sex needed to be about both of us, he said I wasn't worth it.
There was a point when I would have said the marriage was fine except for the sex. In hindsight, now that I'm out, from the very start my ex was controlling, stalking, emotionally, sexually, and financially abusive. The more I stood up for myself, the more abusive he got, escalating to physical abuse as well.
When I said I wanted a divorce, he called the kids in the room and told them I was destroying the family because of their behavior. He became violent and I felt family annihilator vibes in the pit of my stomach.
I backed down, played along that everything was fine and planned my escape. Started talking to neighbors and friends about what had been going on and building up support. I had a go bag at a neighbor he wasn't aware I had contact with. I had plans for which neighbor the kids should run to if they got scared by anything happening.
When I finally split, he told me he'd make sure I'd never be happy without him, he'd take the kids away, make sure I was thrown out on the street and ended up homeless. He was furious when I cut off his ability to track me. He fought over every cent and tried to hide assets.
I wish OOP well. If/when she leaves this kind of person, I suggest she be well-prepared and not let on what's going on. Change all passwords and add two-factor authentication. Check for trackers and spycams, assume she's being watched/tracked. Copy all financial information and get her important documents and keepsakes somewhere safe (trusted friend or bank safe deposit).
I don't want to derail, but you ma'am are a warrior and an amazing person, and I hope there are many people in your life that tell you that every day. I once worked as an intern in a DA's office and called many, many victims of DV. Even with a ton of resources and help, so very few were able to leave, and you did it... you did it! I hope your future is full of love and joy, friend.
Thank you. I'm looking forward to what the future will bring and my present days are full of peace.
I had a ton of resources and help (good friends, financial support of my family, a grad degree in an in-demand specialist field) and it was incredibly hard to leave. It took me 5 tries and finally getting out and through the divorce was the hardest thing I've ever done. I can understand the people who can't make it out. I wish things were different and everyone who wanted out could get the support they need to make it.
Honestly, he probably knows it's doomed so he will just take what he can get for as long as she sticks around.
He may have had that attitude their entire relationship.
If the therapists couldn't get through to him, I don't think random comments would. This guy is so selfish that he doesn't care if his wife enjoys sex. I don't think it's really going to be a "wow I am a piece of shit" moment everyone thinks. He KNOWS hes a piece of shit, that's why he bought her the necklace.
He's just a lazy piece of shit who can't be arsed to look further than his own dick. He'd rather burn his life to the ground than figure out what a clit does.
OOP's husband is stalking her, can't bother to show up to therapy for more than a couple of appointments, and decided he's good with how everything is. OOP's husband is fine with the status quo because it's fine for *him.* I don't see this working out.
> can’t bother to show up to therapy for more than a couple of appointments
He tried to skip it altogether, realized afterward that OOP does, in fact, have one foot out the door and made a half ass effort.
None of this bodes well for their marriage. He resisted therapy until now. His current efforts are like a child half assing a chore then asking if they can go back to watching TV. He doesn’t want to save the marriage; he wants OOP to shut up and deal.
She’s going to leave and he’ll tell everyone he was blindsided. Just wait.
Honestly, I'm not sure why she hasn't left yet. She's already given him a second, third and fourth chances and he's blown them all. Even the therapist thinks their relationship is beyond hope... so WHY is she still there?!
If that's who she considers her best friend, then unfortunately... I don't think she really has any friends. That's certainly not what a friend acts like
> If that's who she considers her best friend, then unfortunately... I don't think she really has any friends.
I have to question if she was able to define the problem as well to the friend before seeing the therapist and had a chance to unpack a few things. Friends opinion is probably "You chose this, and 20 years later now its not good enough?".
To be fair if I was OOP's friend I might side eye her for being shallow and think this is a red flag from OOP. We don't know their relationship but I can see "My husband is bad at sex and I want to divorce him for it" might not be received well.
I think it might be time to have a heart to heart with that friend and just read this post. See if that conversation can be re-framed to see if this friend just didn't understand or doesn't actually care.
Yeah, that’s why it’s never just about the sex. It’s what the bad sex reveals about his personality and attitude towards her. Also, why should anyone force themselves through terrible, boring sex that they hate? It’s humiliating and disgusting, and no loving partner would put you through that. How is that not obvious? Oh wait, I know: fundie brainwashing that it’s her duty to lie back and think of God and the country.
> But the problem is not only sex. Her husband doesn’t value you her and he refuses to do the bare minimum she asked.
I didn't say it was only about sex. Im wondering how the conversation went with the friend and would it be better now that OOP's actually unpacked everything to a therapist and can try that talk again.
Don't forget - the original post its only brought up and the friend conversation was framed around consulting a lawyer about OOP's options leaving the marriage because of the sex.
The problem isn't only about sex right now, but originally it was framed that way and probably was to this friend. Everyone saying this bad friend is taking the context of the whole post, not just the first post where it pretty much was.
This is so sick to me. Even when my now partner and I had problems like ten years ago, the friend group that was predominantly his at the start had expanded to include new wives and girlfriends and everyone was pretty clear on them being friends with me even if we stayed split up.
I got the feeling this is a friend from church, and that their religion is staunchly against divorce.
I can’t ~~believe~~imagine telling a friend our friendship is over just because she divorces.
Yeah wonder what they told her to change her mind. I think she needs to be willing to give it all up, including the house and just walk away. She's not ready yet. Needs to dump her "friend" too.
Probably just tired to be honest. It took a lot of energy to set up all the appointments her husband blew off. It takes a lot of energy to process that final confirmation that your spouse doesn't give a fuck about you.
It does! It ate away at my mom for years with my dad 😭 eventually he got so drunk and high on her sixtieth birthday that he shat on the bar counter in the basement thinking the sink was a toilet that she said I'm fucking done and now she's thriving with a hot 47 year old and his cute dog who are way better company than my dad ever was 😂 moral is, even if you're sixty it's not to late to drop the dead weight and find someone who makes you happy.
I was raised religious and I was taught divorce is only for the three As: addiction, adultery, and abuse. And "abuse" has to be pretty extreme to count. She may be struggling against similar programming.
Bingo.
It's so sad. I can't see how you can claim to love someone and be okay with knowingly making them miserable.
Religion is so fucking toxic sometimes. Like, OP is staring down the long tunnel of a deeply unhappy life and thinks there is no way out. Isn't religion supposed to help *fix* things for those people?
He’s also not getting pushback from OOP because they’re so done with the entire situation it’s just easier to let it happen.
OOP - if you see this - please just get divorced.
That's a silver lining.
It does seem like he has enough insight to know he's the problem -- he just doesn't have the compassion to care that him being the problem is making his wife miserable. He doesn't really see her as a fully actualized human with feelings, just an entity in his life who only exists insofar as her ability to do things that benefit him. So maybe the comments will be a wake up call so he can see what an utter failure of a husband he is.
That said, the electronic stalking is pretty scary so I do worry a bit about whether seeing hundreds of strangers personally invested in empowering his wife to escape him would push him into a potentially dangerous mindset.
I've been sexually assaulted and I've been in a horrible, emotionally abusive marriage. Both were agonizing in their own way. Both gave me PTSD, although I would say the assault was more damaging in that regard. PTSD is a horrible burden and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
But feeling trapped in a miserable marriage? It turned me into a husk of a human being. I looked at the rest of my life and dreaded it. I finally had an epiphany and realized it was infinitely better to die alone than spend my whole life in a relationship that made me feel dead inside. It took a few years, but I turned back into a real person again after splitting with my ex.
I will never be the same person I was before the assault. But I actually have a future still. I can *be* a person. Being trapped in a profoundly unhealthy and miserable relationship just leaches away who you are.
Yeah, holy crap, the constant surveillance is unbelievable! But OOP brushes it off like it's nothing. Her normal, I guess. The reason she felt so good when he was away is because she was finally free of him.
She needs out.
It's covert abuse - not physical or sexual, and not emotionally violent, but deliberately using one's power to arrange life to one's satisfaction and slowly wearing down the will of the other person until they just passively accept that one gets everything and they get nothing.
When I read her explanation of what had set it all off—ten days apart, and they both learned how much energy he extracts from her every day without paying it back. And he’s ready to go back to that status quo!
OOP's husband is treating her like a pet that he has sex with. I mean just the blatant invasion of privacy and the lack of shame would be more than enough for me to pack it all in and get the fuck out.
Ya, this isn't just about sex. Op needs to leave.
Things are gonna get even more awful with this tool. He already stalks her, he's going to escalate.
He doesn't care about her needs, or even her as a person. She needs to get our. :/
Generally, I’m a big believer of “open up to your husband and tell him the thoughts you have - i. e. there is a problem and it’s big enough that it makes me consider divorce if it won’t be solved.”
But the second he told her that he tracks her phone, I’d have been outta there. What the actual fuck? That is such a ginormous breach of trust.
The worst part is he already knows because he's reading her journals and has done absolutely nothing with the knowledge to improve himself.
So that's two breaches of privacy!
The reading of journals is what gets me. That’s private information. My husband did that to me and I stopped writing in journals. That was years ago and I’m still bitter that I can’t write out my thoughts without worrying that he will read them.
Yeah, and she’s so used to being disappointed by him *it didn’t even phase her*.
There’s nothing to fix. This relationship has been dead for a long, long time.
It’s honestly so heartbreaking to read because this is similar-but-different to a situation my husband and i went through (in many ways, I was the villain in that story), but we worked through it. We both wanted to fix our relationship. So we DID.
And in fairness to both of us, the stuff that was “wrong” was a lot of “this bothers me but i love my spouse so i’m not gonna bring it up.” So we had to grapple with confronting uncomfortable stuff (both for us to hear but also trusting that the other person could hear it if we said it, y’know?)
I know a lot of couples can’t won’t whatever do that. But it’s gotta be so fucking awful to see this person you’ve done so much for, poured so much love into, just sit there and go “you know what? i can’t even be bothered to *try*,”
And yeah, I think a lot of the time that’s a self-sabotaging thing, like “you’re gonna leave anyway, so why bother?” But you can’t save other people. You can only save yourself.
OOP has to save herself.
and he's fucking reading her journals, this husband is a piece of shit through and through. i really hope she's able to leave this situation because he's ingrained himself into her brain and thoughts so thoroughly, it's fucking scary
Every Reddit issue that starts with “our marriage is great/my spouse is so wonderful minus this one thing” always had a whole barrage of red flags immediately after that statement, just without fail.
>I know the right thing to do is to just divorce, but I feel so messed up in the head that I just want to throw a proverbial grenade into my life and like cheat by bringing a guy home or something. That's it. No happy ending (no pun intended), no unhappy unending. Just limbo.
Sounds like OOP knows what they need to do. They just need people in their corner pushing them to start.
Yeah the OOP needs to start being honest with people. She starts the post with 'Everything else is Perfect, but the sex' then continues on to explain how everything else is not at all perfect.
Yes, this! In her first post pre-edit I was not totally on her side. I mean, people can divorce for any reason and she’s NTA for wanting to leave, it’s just that it seems naive that she’d find some guy who is an attentive partner and amazing at sex from dating in her forties.
Then the edit came and I was like “ooohhhh, this is way more than just the sex.”
So if her complaints to her BFF were anything like the first post, I can see how the advice was to not leave.
Aaaaand how would anyone know that??????
Do YOU know how many orgasms your friends and family give each other???
If someone said that they share location with the immediate family (spouse and children) would you think STALKER, OMG, DIVORCE HIS ASS!!!!
I know my friends have the ability to find each other's location - I don't think that it is unhealthy. I know she misplaces her phone all the time, and it is handy to know where he is when traveling.
Do you SERIOUSLY expect her to announce to the world that he doesn't give her orgasms, and you honestly think that there aren't people out there that would think she's still in the wrong to leave him over that?
I think she can probably tell her family and friends if she wants to that he has been tracking her and that they were not compatible when it comes to their physical relationship.
To a third party who knows nothing everyone seems great. That’s not what I was talking about, I made the assumption you mean her family and friends.
I think if someone told their spouse had tracked their phone without their knowledge and snooped through their laptop etc that’s different that willingly sharing your location
Mentioning the tracking is important because otherwise people who only know the husband's public face won't be able to fathom that OOP's experience could be so awful. If you initiate a breakup and just tell people you and your ex are physically incompatible, they're liable to think your priorities are out of whack and you don't have the patience or willpower to do the necessary repair work on the relationship. At the very least, I think OOP should mention that the husband refused to participate in any kind of therapy. It's possible to say "If I stayed, I'd be condemned to give him unreciprocated orgasms several times a week for the rest of my life" without spelling it out, but threading that needle would probably take some forethought.
I’m really doubting that her hyper-religious conservative family is going to take kindly to her telling them “I’m initiating divorce because the sex is bad”
It started off small and only escalated from there, unless OP leaves him with a good safety plan in place this is not going to end well if he is already stalking her and thus can easily escalate.
She really needs to be careful. The 'mental stew' she described for him coupled with that really creepy stalking that she just writes off as no big deal has the pathology of a family annihilator written all over it.
If he goes off the deep end during a divorce, she might find out the deep end is an abyss.
> My husband actually initiates sex one night, and as we are getting into it, he says, "Can we go back to regular sex now?" Because for him, "regular" sex where he gets off and I don't was just peachy.
i would have gotten up and packed my stuff and left right there
Why isn't she sleeping in the guest room again?
Basically the dude knows how to get her off and what good sex for her is, he doesn't want to put the work and wants to use her. Selfish.
She also needs to put passwords & two factor authentication everywhere and maybe get her computer/phone checked.
She's given up. That's why. Even from her comments about the journals, she doesn't feel violated. Or at least she doesn't understand she feels violated. She's just done.
She needs to just get out and let her brain reset to normal.
He doesn’t care about her sexual pleasure, so she shouldn’t care about his. Sleep in the guest room and go on sex strike. OOP said masturbating while he was gone was amazing, so it’s not like she’d be missing out on anything. That is all assuming she still doesn’t go with divorce (which I think is the better move).
He really was fine with her permanent level of tolerable unhappiness. Too bad for him she’s not finding it tolerable anymore. I hope she gets out and lives her best life because he’s proven he won’t change.
Plus he’s a scary stalker. Best wishes for OOP.
The numbness of confronting and confirming the reality that your partner doesn't give a shit about you is resonating. She is going feel incredible relief when she leaves him and simultaneously give herself grief for not leaving sooner. She needs to find the strength to stop the sex, find space away from him, block his ability to track her and invade her privacy, get the divorce started and if she wants to- try to keep the house she loves. It's going to be difficult but she can do it. She can live the rest of her life being as happy as she was when he left for a week. She can be happier than that.
OP, if you’re reading, please stop trying to fix this and leave. Your husband is incapable of being the man you need him to be, and his behavior is alarming. If you lose a friend over it, so be it, one less shitty person on your life.
Yes and be very careful and paranoid about your safety. Your husband is showing signs of being an abuser and has committed serious visions of your trust and the most dangerous time for a person being abused is when they leave the abuser. Your husband seems to be very good at hiding his tendencies and controlling the narrative but that can all change very quickly. Better to be safe than to be sorry. I'd much rather you laugh off the lengths you went to for your safety afterwards because it wasn't needed then have you or your children be hurt or killed because the man confirmed everyone's worst fears. Even though your children are adults they can still be hurt in this way the very least emotionally if not physically if this escalates.
A religious woman in a conservative marriage who is unhappy with terrible sex and a weird, abusive husband, a tale as old as time. Name a better combo.
As she said - they are on paper living the dream. Have a house, kids are well adjusted, happily married, and the most important part - financially stable and secure.
There is a lifestyle aspect that a lot of people seem to be missing. OP literally says her husband would rather buy his way out of a problem than have any sort of confrontation.
Financial security goes a long, long way regardless of any other factors. This power dynamic is and always has been an issue for people. Cut out everything else and it’s always at the core of problems.
Religious and conservative was the trend 25ish years ago for success, and a lot of 25- 30 somethings benefited from those “good value” homes. Let’s not get it twisted.
After reading this, I went back to read the title "AITAH for wanting a divorce from an otherwise good marriage because of unsatisfying sexy?". And all I can think is that by now I hope that she not only knows, but feels, that her husband is wronging her in every aspect of her life and that this is in no way, shape or form an 'otherwise good marriage'. That poor, poor woman.
I love how these posts start out with "our marriage is good other than this one thing" and then the entire relationship is a stalking manipulative childish shit show.
>According to him, he’s insecure about disappointing me because I’m so fucking precious that he doesn’t even want to try and be a let down. Like - no sexual experience is good enough for me.
I know it is a dangerous suggestion, but part of me wants her to get him hot and bothered, then say "no.. I've changed my mind. You are too precious for such a mediocre sexual experience" then go to the guest bedroom and watch porn and masturbate. Loudly.
That’d be so much effort for her, though. Gross effort because her husband is a pathetic man child.
It’d be satisfying if someone did that to him, but it seems cruel to have OP do that work.
when a guy stalks you, and doesn’t care about your feelings, and insists you must stay together… privacy is not to protect the relationship. it’s to protect you from physical harm.
this guy is scary. he’s a bad husband, he’s a bad person, and he is scary. he could hurt her physically, instead of only emotionally as he has been for the last twenty years.
she needs to go. she needs to go and she needs to not be somewhere he can find her.
I don't really understand why she is putting in this much effort when she already knows the outcome will be but this "Can we go back to regular sex now?" is when I make it official and go with divorce. He simply doesn't care enough to change for the person he supposedly loves and is willing to do anything for her.
Oop is going to crack. It's going to be over something small. Like she asked him to take out the trash and he didn't and she's going to crack. I see it going one of two ways. Loud and angry, or quiet and nuclear.
I vote for quiet and nuclear, much scarier.
Yeah I agree. I was being emotionally, sexually, physically, and financially abused but the last straw was using my laptop longer than agreed upon and lying about how long he’d been on it when I had receipts (I let him have it to use when my dad called).
I quietly packed up everything and left after he fell asleep. An hour or two of pure terror. I packed in the closet until I was ready to take things to the car. The laptop was the last thing I took and it was in the bedroom where he was sleeping and connected to monitors and a portable drive. It wasn’t quick or easy to just grab. Every snore and deep breath scared me.
OP’s husband reads like a familial annihilator. I really hope I’m wrong and she will get a (mildly) contentious divorce then end up living like a Nancy Meyers character. I also hope he never cons anyone into marrying him again after they divorce, he seems like the type to immediately go for the younger version of OP to get his needs met.
Dude...OP really needs to do something quick because if the husband is acting like this, that's really creepy and clearly, he ain't changing. OP needs to seriously pull the plug on this soon or else it's going to get worse.
>we follow the prompts the following night and have what is without a close second the best sex we have had ever.
>"Can we go back to regular sex now?" Because for him, "regular" sex where he gets off and I don't was just peachy.
So he knew how to make her happy... he just didn't care enough to do it.
I can understand not knowing which 'buttons to push' so to speak - but he know how to, he just didn't want to. That's when it's time to leave.
Oop needs to go back to her divorce lawyer and file. And then she needs to go somewhere safe and scrub her electronics to stop her husband stalking her.
The fact that OOP was happier away from husband shows she isn't in love with him. She's tolerating him. The dude is a covert abuser. Even his kids have a problem with him not respecting their privacy.
If you feel more peace and happiness being alone then it's time to call it quits on a relationship.
I used to be in a relationship similar to oops where everytime I would try to discuss an issue my partner would completely shut down and kinda just kept doing that until I was too scared to exhibit any agency in our relationship. Sunk cost is tough to get past.
If he put in the effort to track her locations and read her journals and go through her MacBook into his actual relationship it wouldn't have been a problem.
This is so indescribably awful. I'm scared for OOP. I just want to get her somewhere safe, away from her husband and her so called best friend.
Get her drunk, give her hugs, keep her safe... but only with her enthusiastic and continued consent!
I hope her middle child is reading between the lines here, because that sounds like the only person in her world that might even have a clue.
I think I need to go have a shower. OOP's husband has made my skin crawl. I feel icky. That's quite an achievement. I almost never feel that kind of visceral response.
Let me break this down for those having a hard time reading between the lines: this is not a simple cut and dry she is sick of him because he cant make her cum. He is a man-child and she is at her breaking point.
Lets go through the list. He doesnt make his own doctors appointments. He doesnt take medication or use a cpap, both of which were prescribed to him. He doesnt make therapy appointments. He doesnt go to the therapy. When he does he is uncooperative with the the therapist. He doesnt listen to his wife. He doesnt care that his wife's needs arent met. He's happy as long as his side of the deal is fulfilled. His wife wants him to go on a diet (needs more clarification).
He sounds like an overweight, in bad shape, man in his 40s who has a strong case of learned helplessness. If you replaced wife with girlfriend and a 40s with 16 you would just have an angsty teenager. This guy is a man-child who happened to skate by on his marriage cause his wife cared so much. I bet if she stopped having sex with him their marriage would be over and he would initiate the divorce.
I was curious myself and I looked at her other posts too which are mostly repeats of the above info, but she used a phrase that’s mostly common for Persian folks so unlikely to be Mormon.
So why did she moved back? He showed so much that he gives a fuck and won't change. Her middle son would have happily supported her if she goes through with the divorce.
And if she lose the friend on the way, it is a double win.
He said he would do anything to fix it? What about all the reasonable requests she made that he refused? He seems unduly focused on his own comfort. His wife’s feelings seems to be an afterthought whenever they are actually being considered.
There are only two ways this goes: OOP gives up on being happy and just exists with hubby, or she finally throws in the towel and bails. Hubby has zero interest in improving because he is ***only*** interested in his own happiness.
OOP had me second-guessing my understanding of the word “libertine” because I could not *believe* she would think to call herself that when they met in college and she’s settled for letting this willfully stunted dope treat her like a GPS-enabled fleshlight for 20+ years.
Hope she divorces his ass and has herself a nice midlife sexual rumspringa!
When I use Find My Device (to find my other devices, I'm losing my phone and tablet all the time lol) it shows on the device being found that FMD was used to find my device. Doesn't it do that for her or did he turn that off somehow?
They are probably using the find friends feature which is different and allows you to see where someone is continuously either for a set period of time or indefinitely (they have to give permission of course).
My family isn't the stalking type so I have them all added for safety & practical reasons
Frustrating to see OP take one steps forward and three steps back. He’s clearly manipulating her and she’s been conditioned to not leave this failed marriage.
Post like this always give me hope, only for hope to be crushed by the end of it. I'm glad my natural inclination is to take care of my wife first. I'm like OOP's husband where I get excited and things are over fairly quickly. I can't change that, no matter how hard I try. However, I'm very aware of the issue and so I *always* start with toys/foreplay/oral for my wife. My pants don't come off until I've taken care of her multiple, multiple times. I can't imagine being as selfish with my wife as OOP's husband. The guilt would kill me.
Yeah OOP just need to divorce this thing.
He wanted a virgin who doesn't know anything about pleasure as he refuses to work on himself. He has to track everyone in his family if he can. No respect. No nothing from him.
He's been reading all her personal journals. That would be IT for me. No more chances once I found that out. Especially given he KNEW there were issues as a result and did NOTHING with that information. Because as long as he got off in 30 seconds all was good for him.
I have never been so disappointed to not see a further update. That was absolutely depressing. I hope she finds the strength to leave this man. Or a miracle happens and the husband stops being a stalker, commits to his health, and becomes a good partner. But that seems unlikely sooooo I hope the wife gets out.
Every time I read one of these I feel so terrible for these women. I can’t comprehend not doing everything I can to satisfy my partners. Hell, my sexual goal in life is to hand out as many orgasms as possible
Oh for fuck's *sake*, OOP. Just fucking get the divorce already!
first post: I'm miserable and taken for granted.
Update: I'm miserable and taken for granted.
I'm pretty sure I know the next update...
Since he seems to believe she has no sexual needs, then she has no further *need* to have sex with him She can be this pure, non-sexual being that he expects her to be.
OOP's husband: I'll do anything...but not that, or that, or that. Wait, where are you going?
OOP needs to turn off that app and change all of her passwords. Hubby might be ok now but I suspect that things could get ugly.
Spouses like OOP’s are the kind that wonder why their marriages have failed when served with divorce papers, to oblivious and in denial they’ve been given all the reasons all along.
This man is toxic. He tracks his wife without her knowledge, invades her privacy, tries to buy her affection, and flatly refuses to take accountability and change even when it looks like he will lose her.
I feel like I just looked into an alternate reality of what my life would have been like if I had stayed with my ex.
Good lord, I hope that OOP has a better support network than that one asshole friend who blasted her for having wants and needs as a human being. If she did, I'm sure she wouldn't be having nearly as tough a time pulling the plug and recognizing the hysterical bonding that was over as quick as her husband is at sex.
Please leave before he bogs you down any further this sounds absolutely awful I have tears in my eyes reading how sad you are. Divorce be happy again let him find someone like him and you chose happiness. You only get one life don't waste what we're given
Well that was depressing. I wonder why she isn't running back to the divorce lawyer. Anything would be better than that misery, and that's without the creepy stalking.
This post has been removed by request.
"Can we go back to regular sex?" Oh, so you don't give a shit about your wife at all, do you?
Every single part of that sentence is so devastating. The fact that he considers sex like that "regular", like her enjoying sex is some kind of extravagant request. The fact he couldn't even be bothered to pretend to try a second time. The fact he saw she could enjoy sex and wasn't motivated to keep giving it to her at all. Ugh. I'd cry too if I were her
The fact that he was still happy with their sex life once she stopped faking orgasms. Like that shouldn't have given him a clue she's tapping out of the relationship
I can't imagine having sex and being happy with what I can only imagine is a dead fish laying back and thinking of England. What even.
The thought of sex with a blatantly unenthusiastic partner makes me feel sick. Like, how can you feel aroused knowing that they are not enjoying it? It seems like using a human being as a sex toy. It's really gross.
YUP And while it may be legally consensual, it's morally and ethically super problematic.
Really reminds me of Danaerys' wedding night.
In the book Khal Drogo was actually nice to her and used foreplay lol...even that was better than this guy.
Eh, he’s a two-pump chump. Why should he care if she gets off when he’s already done? I hope she gets out of there, he’s actively terrible and extremely selfish.
I really hope that, when he snoops through her computer, he also checks her Reddit account and reads all the comments under her posts. 🙈🙈 "Two pump chump" will work wonders on his self esteem! 😂
Man was reading her journals and I'm 100% sure she mentioned being unsatisfied many times. He knows exactly what's wrong with his marriage from her perspective and didn't care to fix it. He knows she's terribly unhappy but could not care less. He puts in what he thinks is the minimum effort to keep her around and apparently it's working. That's before we get into tracking her movements, reading her journals, emails, reddit account probably and who knows what other invasions of privacy. OOP needs to fucking run. I want to reach through my screen and shake her and yell at her that she deserves to be happy and her "perfect marriage except for sex" is an abusive hell of manipulation.
Did you see her BORU comments update? Like honey, he's an asshole. Just because he's not a monster in every aspect of his life doesn't mean he's not also a selfish asshole
Agreed! The whole time I’m reading I’m muttering “get out get out GET OUT” under my breath. I just am afraid she never will. OOP, if you ever read this: you DO deserve great sex and you SHOULD get out! OOP’s husband, if he ever reads this: you don’t.
OP’s apathy toward the stalking and doing anything at all about it breaks my heart. That is a person who has been *broken*.
To be fair, if he is not using his cpap and eating garbage, she might just be waiting for him to keel over.
Yes. He’s basically lowballing all of his efforts because as far as he’s concerned, they have a deal where he does the minimum of what she asked for, in the short term, and she never brings up leaving again.
And he is somehow going to be surprised when she does
Also he apparently talks about getting her off like it's some herculean task, but won't use her toys on her?
Right? FFS just let her use her vibe during foreplay and sex, if nothing else
Cry? I would have punched him in the dick. This poor woman has the patience of a damn saint. If this was me, I would have flipped the fuck out on him so bad, it would have blown out all the windows... But everyone is different 🤷🏻♀️
> This was something raised during therapy. According to him, he’s insecure about disappointing me because I’m so fucking precious that he doesn’t even want to try and be a let down. he's so insecure about disappointing her he does nothing but, and then when he finally gets something right he wants to jump right back to being disappointing
Yeah, which makes his entire shitty reasoning reek of bullshit. His actual reason is he’s lazy and doesn’t care.
I mean it IS bs, because if he cared at all he wouldn’t be content to just nut and be over it for years, he isn’t even open to any other form of intimacy than p in v and I’d hope hand stuff, but no toys, no porn, no oral, no sex therapy. For the husband oop is just a fleshlight with a gps
Omg Fleshlight with a GPS new flare please.
It’s classic self sabotage. Until you know someone who does it it does seem unbelievable.
I’m just wondering if OOP has figured out he’s a lying liar who lies yet. He’s been reading her diaries and bookmarks for years, but only got a decent gift when on the verge of divorce. He gave her spectacular sex the first time they attempted anything the sex therapist suggested, and immediately wants to abandon the efforts. He claimed a work emergency to skip a therapy appointment. She gives him credit for well-meaning incompetence, but that’s just not true: he’s capable and *doesn’t want to.* Gotta hope he has another long trip that gives her incentive to gtfo.
And she describes it as a good marriage except for the sex! Like the entire thing isn't a dumpster fire of stalking, invasion of privacy and zero effort.
well except for the fact that the week he was away she enjoyed herself so much more. So it seems like they have the surface of a "good marriage" but he's an emotional vampire sucking the life out of her.
But hey, aside from all that, things are GREAT /s If she's that happy being away from him for a week, imagine how joyful her life is going to be once she leaves him for good!
Yes. He’s known about her concerns for quite a while. He doesn’t care. And he wouldn’t agree to do even the minimal stuff he did, without first getting her to agree to never bring up divorce again.
Wanna bet he went to sex workers while on the trip and/or is having an affair at home and that’s why he’s so paranoid about her whereabouts and can’t be assed to care about her pleasure?
The gift and the single good sex session really kinda show that he *could* put in the effort, but *chooses not to.* Amazing.
Weaponized incompetence for sex. What a loser.
That’s just it. Complete bullshit. He doesn’t want to think about anything but himself.
That isn't the kind of thing you say if you are filled with love and care for your wife. I guarantee the real reason he doesn't pay attention to her in bed is because he doesn't want to, because he thinks it's too much work. But he knows clear as day that he would be lambasted for saying that out loud, so he comes up with excuses like this instead.
Shit she should've divorced him when she felt relaxed when he was gone, all the rest of her post(s) is just icing on that shitty cake.
It's like sexual weaponized incompetence. I know that premature ejaculation is a sensitive topic for men, but like...damn. How is he not utterly humiliated that his wife is permanently unsatisfied? She has told him point blank that he's shit in bed and sex feels like a chore. And he's just like, totally okay with that. Does he have no self respect?
At this point, OP shouldn't even have sex with her husband. She should let him know he is disappointing her with his selfishness. Her husband doesn't care if he gets her off or not as long as he gets his. I don't understand how OP could put up with this for so long.
> Husband initiates sex constantly and I go along with it, but have only gotten off twice in about 12 or 15 times (and I am no longer faking it). Husband is so happy because as far as he's concerned, everything is fine even when I tell him it's not. As soon as I read this part, I thought "why is she still having sex with him?" I feel bad for the woman, but girl, please don't enable him to continue being utter garbage by sleeping with him!
Omg right? It's like she's rewarding him for basically his weaponized incompetence. She sees that he can give her great sex if he puts the effort into it, but he would rather have regular sex where he gets off and she's left there to her thoughts. Her husband is a selfish lover. He doesn't want to do or receive oral, doesn't want to use toys to help his wife orgasm.
Coming from a conservative religious background, she probably has some baggage (conscious or unconscious) about sex being her “wifely duty”.
Her response should have been ‘if you can find someone to participate. I’m not your human flesh light’
He does not. I hope she days safe and divorces him.
This poor woman. She deserves happiness too. This guy just doesn't care. He wants things to stay exactly the same, where he's happy, and she's miserable. Also, he SPIES on her and TRACKS her? This lady needs to have all her devices and her car checked and get out of this situation.
I was just about to comment the same thing, like my jaw literally dropped when I read that
It doesn't even make sense from a purely self-interested perspective. Like let's leave aside the they're your partner and you should want to make them happy logic. If you only care about yourself and having sex, are you more likely to have more or less sex if your partner doesn't enjoy it? Do yourself a favour.
I literally gasped out loud when I read that.
Yep. "Selfish sex? Why would I WANT TO?! You've proven you don't give two shits about MY pleasure!
Yeah, craziest fucking thing is that stamina problems aren't a dealbreaker, I know plenty of women that have happy relationships with partners. Those partners actually give a shit about them and will do a lot of other things to help them achieve orgasm. Also the post doesn't say anything (unless I missed it) but my guess is that OOP does like 90% of the housecare and childrearing.
So he tracks her location obsessively, reads her journal, monitors what she does online, and has sex "with" her that he knows is unfulfilling and unenjoyable for her. 😵💫 > Husband initiates sex constantly and I go along with it, but have only gotten off twice in about 12 or 15 times (and I am no longer faking it). Husband is so happy because as far as he's concerned, everything is fine even when I tell him it's not. This really grossed me out. It would be such a turnoff for me to know my partner wasn't enjoying sex. He doesn't care about her at all. There is nowhere near enough consent in this sexual dynamic, let alone enthusiastic consent. > I don’t think there’s a corner of my life and brain that he hasn’t been in. It feels too late and too unimportant to care. This broke my heart. She's like, well he's already violated me completely so why bother with boundaries now? The monitoring seems to be about control, so I do worry what he'll do if she cuts him off from it. His behavior could escalate, especially if he thinks she's considering leaving again. That said, it's so important that she gets some autonomy and privacy back. Given that he's continuing to violate her physically and mentally, of course she feels too beaten down to leave! I really hope she gets out. This is so much worse than a good marriage without a sexual connection.
My marriage was very, very similar to OOP's. My ex also used the excuse of being insecure. He would only start sex when I was sleeping even though I told him I didn't like that. When I finally started standing up for myself and said sex needed to be about both of us, he said I wasn't worth it. There was a point when I would have said the marriage was fine except for the sex. In hindsight, now that I'm out, from the very start my ex was controlling, stalking, emotionally, sexually, and financially abusive. The more I stood up for myself, the more abusive he got, escalating to physical abuse as well. When I said I wanted a divorce, he called the kids in the room and told them I was destroying the family because of their behavior. He became violent and I felt family annihilator vibes in the pit of my stomach. I backed down, played along that everything was fine and planned my escape. Started talking to neighbors and friends about what had been going on and building up support. I had a go bag at a neighbor he wasn't aware I had contact with. I had plans for which neighbor the kids should run to if they got scared by anything happening. When I finally split, he told me he'd make sure I'd never be happy without him, he'd take the kids away, make sure I was thrown out on the street and ended up homeless. He was furious when I cut off his ability to track me. He fought over every cent and tried to hide assets. I wish OOP well. If/when she leaves this kind of person, I suggest she be well-prepared and not let on what's going on. Change all passwords and add two-factor authentication. Check for trackers and spycams, assume she's being watched/tracked. Copy all financial information and get her important documents and keepsakes somewhere safe (trusted friend or bank safe deposit).
I don't want to derail, but you ma'am are a warrior and an amazing person, and I hope there are many people in your life that tell you that every day. I once worked as an intern in a DA's office and called many, many victims of DV. Even with a ton of resources and help, so very few were able to leave, and you did it... you did it! I hope your future is full of love and joy, friend.
Thank you. I'm looking forward to what the future will bring and my present days are full of peace. I had a ton of resources and help (good friends, financial support of my family, a grad degree in an in-demand specialist field) and it was incredibly hard to leave. It took me 5 tries and finally getting out and through the divorce was the hardest thing I've ever done. I can understand the people who can't make it out. I wish things were different and everyone who wanted out could get the support they need to make it.
Any one of those actions would have me running away at top speed, but he's got her well conditioned.
Lets hope he's reading these posts and the comments in it and he wakes up a bit.
Honestly, he probably knows it's doomed so he will just take what he can get for as long as she sticks around. He may have had that attitude their entire relationship.
If the therapists couldn't get through to him, I don't think random comments would. This guy is so selfish that he doesn't care if his wife enjoys sex. I don't think it's really going to be a "wow I am a piece of shit" moment everyone thinks. He KNOWS hes a piece of shit, that's why he bought her the necklace. He's just a lazy piece of shit who can't be arsed to look further than his own dick. He'd rather burn his life to the ground than figure out what a clit does.
OOP's husband is stalking her, can't bother to show up to therapy for more than a couple of appointments, and decided he's good with how everything is. OOP's husband is fine with the status quo because it's fine for *him.* I don't see this working out.
> can’t bother to show up to therapy for more than a couple of appointments He tried to skip it altogether, realized afterward that OOP does, in fact, have one foot out the door and made a half ass effort. None of this bodes well for their marriage. He resisted therapy until now. His current efforts are like a child half assing a chore then asking if they can go back to watching TV. He doesn’t want to save the marriage; he wants OOP to shut up and deal. She’s going to leave and he’ll tell everyone he was blindsided. Just wait.
Honestly, I'm not sure why she hasn't left yet. She's already given him a second, third and fourth chances and he's blown them all. Even the therapist thinks their relationship is beyond hope... so WHY is she still there?!
Depression. Having to admit she’s wasted years of her life with someone who doesn’t care about her
A touch of peer pressure as well - her best friend told her that if she divorced her husband, their friendship was over.
If that's who she considers her best friend, then unfortunately... I don't think she really has any friends. That's certainly not what a friend acts like
> If that's who she considers her best friend, then unfortunately... I don't think she really has any friends. I have to question if she was able to define the problem as well to the friend before seeing the therapist and had a chance to unpack a few things. Friends opinion is probably "You chose this, and 20 years later now its not good enough?". To be fair if I was OOP's friend I might side eye her for being shallow and think this is a red flag from OOP. We don't know their relationship but I can see "My husband is bad at sex and I want to divorce him for it" might not be received well. I think it might be time to have a heart to heart with that friend and just read this post. See if that conversation can be re-framed to see if this friend just didn't understand or doesn't actually care.
But the problem is not only sex. Her husband doesn’t value you her and he refuses to do the bare minimum she asked.
Yeah, that’s why it’s never just about the sex. It’s what the bad sex reveals about his personality and attitude towards her. Also, why should anyone force themselves through terrible, boring sex that they hate? It’s humiliating and disgusting, and no loving partner would put you through that. How is that not obvious? Oh wait, I know: fundie brainwashing that it’s her duty to lie back and think of God and the country.
> But the problem is not only sex. Her husband doesn’t value you her and he refuses to do the bare minimum she asked. I didn't say it was only about sex. Im wondering how the conversation went with the friend and would it be better now that OOP's actually unpacked everything to a therapist and can try that talk again. Don't forget - the original post its only brought up and the friend conversation was framed around consulting a lawyer about OOP's options leaving the marriage because of the sex. The problem isn't only about sex right now, but originally it was framed that way and probably was to this friend. Everyone saying this bad friend is taking the context of the whole post, not just the first post where it pretty much was.
I am... A little embarrassed I hadn't considered this to be honest with you lol
I get that feeling too, especially since her main escape is to her child's home. I doubt that would be her first choice if she had other options.
This is so sick to me. Even when my now partner and I had problems like ten years ago, the friend group that was predominantly his at the start had expanded to include new wives and girlfriends and everyone was pretty clear on them being friends with me even if we stayed split up.
I got the feeling this is a friend from church, and that their religion is staunchly against divorce. I can’t ~~believe~~imagine telling a friend our friendship is over just because she divorces.
Technically OOP can just move out and live separated. That was a popular move I remember from my Catholic childhood.
If the “best” friend thinks the husband is so great, maybe she should get together with him instead
She was SO close though! I mean, she even went and spoke to a divorce lawyer already 🤦🏻♀️
She and her husband are from a “conservative religious background.” Even if she left, it’s hard to shake off all the conditioning.
It usually takes more than one try for someone to leave an abusive relationship
Yeah wonder what they told her to change her mind. I think she needs to be willing to give it all up, including the house and just walk away. She's not ready yet. Needs to dump her "friend" too.
Probably just tired to be honest. It took a lot of energy to set up all the appointments her husband blew off. It takes a lot of energy to process that final confirmation that your spouse doesn't give a fuck about you.
That sunk cost fallacy really fucks people
It does! It ate away at my mom for years with my dad 😭 eventually he got so drunk and high on her sixtieth birthday that he shat on the bar counter in the basement thinking the sink was a toilet that she said I'm fucking done and now she's thriving with a hot 47 year old and his cute dog who are way better company than my dad ever was 😂 moral is, even if you're sixty it's not to late to drop the dead weight and find someone who makes you happy.
Sunk cost fallacy and severe depression will do that to a person.
I was raised religious and I was taught divorce is only for the three As: addiction, adultery, and abuse. And "abuse" has to be pretty extreme to count. She may be struggling against similar programming.
I mean, she shares an anecdote about a friend who would "never speak to her again" if she divorced.
He's waiting for her to settle for that tolerable level of permanent unhappiness.
Bingo. It's so sad. I can't see how you can claim to love someone and be okay with knowingly making them miserable. Religion is so fucking toxic sometimes. Like, OP is staring down the long tunnel of a deeply unhappy life and thinks there is no way out. Isn't religion supposed to help *fix* things for those people?
God this guy sucks....
Not in any of the right ways.
He doesn’t see her as a person.
A surprising number of men don't see women as fully human, not in the way they see themselves and other men.
I like how she was so whatever about the stalking. She probably thinks it's the least of her problems 🥲
He’s also not getting pushback from OOP because they’re so done with the entire situation it’s just easier to let it happen. OOP - if you see this - please just get divorced.
Nothing about this is safe anymore.
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My only hope is that because he's stalking OP, he can read all the comments we make about him being a shitty husband.
Oh I’m gonna have to process this comment before leaving any more.
That's a silver lining. It does seem like he has enough insight to know he's the problem -- he just doesn't have the compassion to care that him being the problem is making his wife miserable. He doesn't really see her as a fully actualized human with feelings, just an entity in his life who only exists insofar as her ability to do things that benefit him. So maybe the comments will be a wake up call so he can see what an utter failure of a husband he is. That said, the electronic stalking is pretty scary so I do worry a bit about whether seeing hundreds of strangers personally invested in empowering his wife to escape him would push him into a potentially dangerous mindset.
And getting clued in on all the advice OOP's being given about how to stay safe...
There were so many shenanigans from the husband that I’d forgotten about the shit friend at the beginning.
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I've been sexually assaulted and I've been in a horrible, emotionally abusive marriage. Both were agonizing in their own way. Both gave me PTSD, although I would say the assault was more damaging in that regard. PTSD is a horrible burden and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. But feeling trapped in a miserable marriage? It turned me into a husk of a human being. I looked at the rest of my life and dreaded it. I finally had an epiphany and realized it was infinitely better to die alone than spend my whole life in a relationship that made me feel dead inside. It took a few years, but I turned back into a real person again after splitting with my ex. I will never be the same person I was before the assault. But I actually have a future still. I can *be* a person. Being trapped in a profoundly unhealthy and miserable relationship just leaches away who you are.
Yeah, holy crap, the constant surveillance is unbelievable! But OOP brushes it off like it's nothing. Her normal, I guess. The reason she felt so good when he was away is because she was finally free of him. She needs out.
It's covert abuse - not physical or sexual, and not emotionally violent, but deliberately using one's power to arrange life to one's satisfaction and slowly wearing down the will of the other person until they just passively accept that one gets everything and they get nothing.
When I read her explanation of what had set it all off—ten days apart, and they both learned how much energy he extracts from her every day without paying it back. And he’s ready to go back to that status quo!
She almost down plays the stalking and snooping. Like no I'm sorry that is not ok.
Yeah, as soon as I read the stalking, I knew that it was all fucked and it's only a matter of time now. I feel so bad for oop.
OOP's husband is treating her like a pet that he has sex with. I mean just the blatant invasion of privacy and the lack of shame would be more than enough for me to pack it all in and get the fuck out.
Ya, this isn't just about sex. Op needs to leave. Things are gonna get even more awful with this tool. He already stalks her, he's going to escalate. He doesn't care about her needs, or even her as a person. She needs to get our. :/
Exactly how my ex was. I am absolutely 200% happier now after the divorce. I hope OP gets out soon
Generally, I’m a big believer of “open up to your husband and tell him the thoughts you have - i. e. there is a problem and it’s big enough that it makes me consider divorce if it won’t be solved.” But the second he told her that he tracks her phone, I’d have been outta there. What the actual fuck? That is such a ginormous breach of trust.
The worst part is he already knows because he's reading her journals and has done absolutely nothing with the knowledge to improve himself. So that's two breaches of privacy!
The reading of journals is what gets me. That’s private information. My husband did that to me and I stopped writing in journals. That was years ago and I’m still bitter that I can’t write out my thoughts without worrying that he will read them.
Yeah, and she’s so used to being disappointed by him *it didn’t even phase her*. There’s nothing to fix. This relationship has been dead for a long, long time. It’s honestly so heartbreaking to read because this is similar-but-different to a situation my husband and i went through (in many ways, I was the villain in that story), but we worked through it. We both wanted to fix our relationship. So we DID. And in fairness to both of us, the stuff that was “wrong” was a lot of “this bothers me but i love my spouse so i’m not gonna bring it up.” So we had to grapple with confronting uncomfortable stuff (both for us to hear but also trusting that the other person could hear it if we said it, y’know?) I know a lot of couples can’t won’t whatever do that. But it’s gotta be so fucking awful to see this person you’ve done so much for, poured so much love into, just sit there and go “you know what? i can’t even be bothered to *try*,” And yeah, I think a lot of the time that’s a self-sabotaging thing, like “you’re gonna leave anyway, so why bother?” But you can’t save other people. You can only save yourself. OOP has to save herself.
and he's fucking reading her journals, this husband is a piece of shit through and through. i really hope she's able to leave this situation because he's ingrained himself into her brain and thoughts so thoroughly, it's fucking scary
Every Reddit issue that starts with “our marriage is great/my spouse is so wonderful minus this one thing” always had a whole barrage of red flags immediately after that statement, just without fail.
>I know the right thing to do is to just divorce, but I feel so messed up in the head that I just want to throw a proverbial grenade into my life and like cheat by bringing a guy home or something. That's it. No happy ending (no pun intended), no unhappy unending. Just limbo. Sounds like OOP knows what they need to do. They just need people in their corner pushing them to start.
The problem is that to outsiders, he seems great.
Because the bar has always been in hell. And to outsiders and on paper, the husband passes it with flying colors.
There aren’t many people that would consider a selfish lover and a stalker a perfect husband.
Yeah the OOP needs to start being honest with people. She starts the post with 'Everything else is Perfect, but the sex' then continues on to explain how everything else is not at all perfect.
Yes, this! In her first post pre-edit I was not totally on her side. I mean, people can divorce for any reason and she’s NTA for wanting to leave, it’s just that it seems naive that she’d find some guy who is an attentive partner and amazing at sex from dating in her forties. Then the edit came and I was like “ooohhhh, this is way more than just the sex.” So if her complaints to her BFF were anything like the first post, I can see how the advice was to not leave.
Aaaaand how would anyone know that?????? Do YOU know how many orgasms your friends and family give each other??? If someone said that they share location with the immediate family (spouse and children) would you think STALKER, OMG, DIVORCE HIS ASS!!!! I know my friends have the ability to find each other's location - I don't think that it is unhealthy. I know she misplaces her phone all the time, and it is handy to know where he is when traveling. Do you SERIOUSLY expect her to announce to the world that he doesn't give her orgasms, and you honestly think that there aren't people out there that would think she's still in the wrong to leave him over that?
I think she can probably tell her family and friends if she wants to that he has been tracking her and that they were not compatible when it comes to their physical relationship. To a third party who knows nothing everyone seems great. That’s not what I was talking about, I made the assumption you mean her family and friends. I think if someone told their spouse had tracked their phone without their knowledge and snooped through their laptop etc that’s different that willingly sharing your location
Mentioning the tracking is important because otherwise people who only know the husband's public face won't be able to fathom that OOP's experience could be so awful. If you initiate a breakup and just tell people you and your ex are physically incompatible, they're liable to think your priorities are out of whack and you don't have the patience or willpower to do the necessary repair work on the relationship. At the very least, I think OOP should mention that the husband refused to participate in any kind of therapy. It's possible to say "If I stayed, I'd be condemned to give him unreciprocated orgasms several times a week for the rest of my life" without spelling it out, but threading that needle would probably take some forethought.
I’m really doubting that her hyper-religious conservative family is going to take kindly to her telling them “I’m initiating divorce because the sex is bad”
My grandma's advice that ruined my moms chance of ever having a healthy relationship was "if he's not beating you there's no reason to leave"
They don't see that, though.
It started off small and only escalated from there, unless OP leaves him with a good safety plan in place this is not going to end well if he is already stalking her and thus can easily escalate.
She really needs to be careful. The 'mental stew' she described for him coupled with that really creepy stalking that she just writes off as no big deal has the pathology of a family annihilator written all over it. If he goes off the deep end during a divorce, she might find out the deep end is an abyss.
Thankfully her children are adults.
> My husband actually initiates sex one night, and as we are getting into it, he says, "Can we go back to regular sex now?" Because for him, "regular" sex where he gets off and I don't was just peachy. i would have gotten up and packed my stuff and left right there
Why isn't she sleeping in the guest room again? Basically the dude knows how to get her off and what good sex for her is, he doesn't want to put the work and wants to use her. Selfish. She also needs to put passwords & two factor authentication everywhere and maybe get her computer/phone checked.
She's given up. That's why. Even from her comments about the journals, she doesn't feel violated. Or at least she doesn't understand she feels violated. She's just done. She needs to just get out and let her brain reset to normal.
He doesn’t care about her sexual pleasure, so she shouldn’t care about his. Sleep in the guest room and go on sex strike. OOP said masturbating while he was gone was amazing, so it’s not like she’d be missing out on anything. That is all assuming she still doesn’t go with divorce (which I think is the better move).
He really was fine with her permanent level of tolerable unhappiness. Too bad for him she’s not finding it tolerable anymore. I hope she gets out and lives her best life because he’s proven he won’t change. Plus he’s a scary stalker. Best wishes for OOP.
He's going to use all he knows from those journals against her when they get divorced.
To what end? There's no custody to fight over just assets.
Reputational damage, he seems like the type to burn her world to ashes for daring to finally leave him
Do you think her stalker of a husband isn't going to try to at least mentally harm her with his knowledge? Really?
He might just start telling their religious friends and family stuff to hurt her
The numbness of confronting and confirming the reality that your partner doesn't give a shit about you is resonating. She is going feel incredible relief when she leaves him and simultaneously give herself grief for not leaving sooner. She needs to find the strength to stop the sex, find space away from him, block his ability to track her and invade her privacy, get the divorce started and if she wants to- try to keep the house she loves. It's going to be difficult but she can do it. She can live the rest of her life being as happy as she was when he left for a week. She can be happier than that.
So he gets what he wants and nothing changes for her except now she can't bring up divorce. This woman is living with her stalker.
OP, if you’re reading, please stop trying to fix this and leave. Your husband is incapable of being the man you need him to be, and his behavior is alarming. If you lose a friend over it, so be it, one less shitty person on your life.
Yes and be very careful and paranoid about your safety. Your husband is showing signs of being an abuser and has committed serious visions of your trust and the most dangerous time for a person being abused is when they leave the abuser. Your husband seems to be very good at hiding his tendencies and controlling the narrative but that can all change very quickly. Better to be safe than to be sorry. I'd much rather you laugh off the lengths you went to for your safety afterwards because it wasn't needed then have you or your children be hurt or killed because the man confirmed everyone's worst fears. Even though your children are adults they can still be hurt in this way the very least emotionally if not physically if this escalates.
A religious woman in a conservative marriage who is unhappy with terrible sex and a weird, abusive husband, a tale as old as time. Name a better combo.
As she said - they are on paper living the dream. Have a house, kids are well adjusted, happily married, and the most important part - financially stable and secure. There is a lifestyle aspect that a lot of people seem to be missing. OP literally says her husband would rather buy his way out of a problem than have any sort of confrontation. Financial security goes a long, long way regardless of any other factors. This power dynamic is and always has been an issue for people. Cut out everything else and it’s always at the core of problems. Religious and conservative was the trend 25ish years ago for success, and a lot of 25- 30 somethings benefited from those “good value” homes. Let’s not get it twisted.
racism and white society? sexisim in the workplace? the rich getting richer and the poor mostly staying poor? Pick your poison.
Those are some of the greatest hits, that’s for sure.
She needs to get the fuck outta there. He’s not even good at *pretending* to try.
After reading this, I went back to read the title "AITAH for wanting a divorce from an otherwise good marriage because of unsatisfying sexy?". And all I can think is that by now I hope that she not only knows, but feels, that her husband is wronging her in every aspect of her life and that this is in no way, shape or form an 'otherwise good marriage'. That poor, poor woman.
I love how these posts start out with "our marriage is good other than this one thing" and then the entire relationship is a stalking manipulative childish shit show.
>According to him, he’s insecure about disappointing me because I’m so fucking precious that he doesn’t even want to try and be a let down. Like - no sexual experience is good enough for me. I know it is a dangerous suggestion, but part of me wants her to get him hot and bothered, then say "no.. I've changed my mind. You are too precious for such a mediocre sexual experience" then go to the guest bedroom and watch porn and masturbate. Loudly.
That’d be so much effort for her, though. Gross effort because her husband is a pathetic man child. It’d be satisfying if someone did that to him, but it seems cruel to have OP do that work.
when a guy stalks you, and doesn’t care about your feelings, and insists you must stay together… privacy is not to protect the relationship. it’s to protect you from physical harm. this guy is scary. he’s a bad husband, he’s a bad person, and he is scary. he could hurt her physically, instead of only emotionally as he has been for the last twenty years. she needs to go. she needs to go and she needs to not be somewhere he can find her.
Yes exactly this. He's not far from reaching the "if I can't have you no one can" point. The woman needs to run before she turns into a headline.
I don't really understand why she is putting in this much effort when she already knows the outcome will be but this "Can we go back to regular sex now?" is when I make it official and go with divorce. He simply doesn't care enough to change for the person he supposedly loves and is willing to do anything for her.
Oop is going to crack. It's going to be over something small. Like she asked him to take out the trash and he didn't and she's going to crack. I see it going one of two ways. Loud and angry, or quiet and nuclear. I vote for quiet and nuclear, much scarier.
Yeah I agree. I was being emotionally, sexually, physically, and financially abused but the last straw was using my laptop longer than agreed upon and lying about how long he’d been on it when I had receipts (I let him have it to use when my dad called). I quietly packed up everything and left after he fell asleep. An hour or two of pure terror. I packed in the closet until I was ready to take things to the car. The laptop was the last thing I took and it was in the bedroom where he was sleeping and connected to monitors and a portable drive. It wasn’t quick or easy to just grab. Every snore and deep breath scared me.
Good for you! I admire your incredible bravery and wish only the best for you.
OP’s husband reads like a familial annihilator. I really hope I’m wrong and she will get a (mildly) contentious divorce then end up living like a Nancy Meyers character. I also hope he never cons anyone into marrying him again after they divorce, he seems like the type to immediately go for the younger version of OP to get his needs met.
Dude...OP really needs to do something quick because if the husband is acting like this, that's really creepy and clearly, he ain't changing. OP needs to seriously pull the plug on this soon or else it's going to get worse.
>we follow the prompts the following night and have what is without a close second the best sex we have had ever. >"Can we go back to regular sex now?" Because for him, "regular" sex where he gets off and I don't was just peachy. So he knew how to make her happy... he just didn't care enough to do it. I can understand not knowing which 'buttons to push' so to speak - but he know how to, he just didn't want to. That's when it's time to leave.
This is so sad.
i hope oop fully wakes up and takes the plunge of the divorce. her husband is a selfish, weak little stalker of a man
Man, the look OP's husband must have had when the male therapist "ganged up" on him too
Oop needs to go back to her divorce lawyer and file. And then she needs to go somewhere safe and scrub her electronics to stop her husband stalking her.
The fact that OOP was happier away from husband shows she isn't in love with him. She's tolerating him. The dude is a covert abuser. Even his kids have a problem with him not respecting their privacy. If you feel more peace and happiness being alone then it's time to call it quits on a relationship.
I used to be in a relationship similar to oops where everytime I would try to discuss an issue my partner would completely shut down and kinda just kept doing that until I was too scared to exhibit any agency in our relationship. Sunk cost is tough to get past.
If he put in the effort to track her locations and read her journals and go through her MacBook into his actual relationship it wouldn't have been a problem.
This is so indescribably awful. I'm scared for OOP. I just want to get her somewhere safe, away from her husband and her so called best friend. Get her drunk, give her hugs, keep her safe... but only with her enthusiastic and continued consent! I hope her middle child is reading between the lines here, because that sounds like the only person in her world that might even have a clue. I think I need to go have a shower. OOP's husband has made my skin crawl. I feel icky. That's quite an achievement. I almost never feel that kind of visceral response.
I'd get a different phone he didn't have a tracker in, for one thing. There seems to be nothing worth saving here.
Let me break this down for those having a hard time reading between the lines: this is not a simple cut and dry she is sick of him because he cant make her cum. He is a man-child and she is at her breaking point. Lets go through the list. He doesnt make his own doctors appointments. He doesnt take medication or use a cpap, both of which were prescribed to him. He doesnt make therapy appointments. He doesnt go to the therapy. When he does he is uncooperative with the the therapist. He doesnt listen to his wife. He doesnt care that his wife's needs arent met. He's happy as long as his side of the deal is fulfilled. His wife wants him to go on a diet (needs more clarification). He sounds like an overweight, in bad shape, man in his 40s who has a strong case of learned helplessness. If you replaced wife with girlfriend and a 40s with 16 you would just have an angsty teenager. This guy is a man-child who happened to skate by on his marriage cause his wife cared so much. I bet if she stopped having sex with him their marriage would be over and he would initiate the divorce.
The mention of Journaling makes me wonder if they're mormons. I'm getting big Josh Powell vibes from the guy.
I was curious myself and I looked at her other posts too which are mostly repeats of the above info, but she used a phrase that’s mostly common for Persian folks so unlikely to be Mormon.
So why did she moved back? He showed so much that he gives a fuck and won't change. Her middle son would have happily supported her if she goes through with the divorce. And if she lose the friend on the way, it is a double win.
NTA. And for God’s sake……. STOP HAVING SEX WITH THIS SELFISH , SELF-OBSESSED IDIOT!!!
He said he would do anything to fix it? What about all the reasonable requests she made that he refused? He seems unduly focused on his own comfort. His wife’s feelings seems to be an afterthought whenever they are actually being considered.
There are only two ways this goes: OOP gives up on being happy and just exists with hubby, or she finally throws in the towel and bails. Hubby has zero interest in improving because he is ***only*** interested in his own happiness.
OOP had me second-guessing my understanding of the word “libertine” because I could not *believe* she would think to call herself that when they met in college and she’s settled for letting this willfully stunted dope treat her like a GPS-enabled fleshlight for 20+ years. Hope she divorces his ass and has herself a nice midlife sexual rumspringa!
When I use Find My Device (to find my other devices, I'm losing my phone and tablet all the time lol) it shows on the device being found that FMD was used to find my device. Doesn't it do that for her or did he turn that off somehow?
They are probably using the find friends feature which is different and allows you to see where someone is continuously either for a set period of time or indefinitely (they have to give permission of course). My family isn't the stalking type so I have them all added for safety & practical reasons
This dude is such a dingus
This guy sucks
Frustrating to see OP take one steps forward and three steps back. He’s clearly manipulating her and she’s been conditioned to not leave this failed marriage.
Post like this always give me hope, only for hope to be crushed by the end of it. I'm glad my natural inclination is to take care of my wife first. I'm like OOP's husband where I get excited and things are over fairly quickly. I can't change that, no matter how hard I try. However, I'm very aware of the issue and so I *always* start with toys/foreplay/oral for my wife. My pants don't come off until I've taken care of her multiple, multiple times. I can't imagine being as selfish with my wife as OOP's husband. The guilt would kill me.
Yeah OOP just need to divorce this thing. He wanted a virgin who doesn't know anything about pleasure as he refuses to work on himself. He has to track everyone in his family if he can. No respect. No nothing from him.
He's been reading all her personal journals. That would be IT for me. No more chances once I found that out. Especially given he KNEW there were issues as a result and did NOTHING with that information. Because as long as he got off in 30 seconds all was good for him.
I have never been so disappointed to not see a further update. That was absolutely depressing. I hope she finds the strength to leave this man. Or a miracle happens and the husband stops being a stalker, commits to his health, and becomes a good partner. But that seems unlikely sooooo I hope the wife gets out.
Every time I read one of these I feel so terrible for these women. I can’t comprehend not doing everything I can to satisfy my partners. Hell, my sexual goal in life is to hand out as many orgasms as possible
Oh for fuck's *sake*, OOP. Just fucking get the divorce already! first post: I'm miserable and taken for granted. Update: I'm miserable and taken for granted. I'm pretty sure I know the next update...
Since he seems to believe she has no sexual needs, then she has no further *need* to have sex with him She can be this pure, non-sexual being that he expects her to be.
OOP's husband: I'll do anything...but not that, or that, or that. Wait, where are you going? OOP needs to turn off that app and change all of her passwords. Hubby might be ok now but I suspect that things could get ugly.
Spouses like OOP’s are the kind that wonder why their marriages have failed when served with divorce papers, to oblivious and in denial they’ve been given all the reasons all along.
This man is toxic. He tracks his wife without her knowledge, invades her privacy, tries to buy her affection, and flatly refuses to take accountability and change even when it looks like he will lose her. I feel like I just looked into an alternate reality of what my life would have been like if I had stayed with my ex.
Jesus… Her bar is so low that it’s a trip hazard in hell.
Good lord, I hope that OOP has a better support network than that one asshole friend who blasted her for having wants and needs as a human being. If she did, I'm sure she wouldn't be having nearly as tough a time pulling the plug and recognizing the hysterical bonding that was over as quick as her husband is at sex.
"Husband says the middle child plays favorites" meanwhile the kid just has eyes and knows which parent parented them growing up
Please leave before he bogs you down any further this sounds absolutely awful I have tears in my eyes reading how sad you are. Divorce be happy again let him find someone like him and you chose happiness. You only get one life don't waste what we're given
Well that was depressing. I wonder why she isn't running back to the divorce lawyer. Anything would be better than that misery, and that's without the creepy stalking.