Recently, my husband wanted to watch me use another sex toy he had bought. I told him I didn’t always want our sex life to be me with a toy. His response was that we were sexually incompatible, and that if we stayed together, he should be allowed to sleep with other people.
I’m still trying to understand that leap. It has been about a year since we had sex, and when I try to move what we’re doing toward intercourse, he refuses. Yet somehow I’m the one being blamed for our lack of a sex life.
I’m 34, and he’s 36. He wants to watch me have sex with other men. He wants me to be a “hotwife.” I’ve said no. Since I won’t take part in that fantasy, he refuses to have sex with me. The sexual contact he does want centers on using toys on me to act it out.
This isn’t about occasionally bringing a toy into something we both enjoy. It happens every time. Even then, he doesn’t want intercourse; he wants oral sex from me. I can be physically involved in everything that’s happening and still feel as though there’s very little room for what I want.
What I miss is being wanted by my husband in a way that includes me as a person. I want pleasure, but I also want the emotional closeness of having sex together. Instead, I feel like a body he can use to make his fantasy happen. That’s how it feels to me; I can’t tell him what he’s thinking. I can tell the difference between taking part because I want to and feeling that the only available role has already been chosen for me.
He also tells me I’m bad at sex and that he’s too sexual for me. Those comments stay with me. It’s difficult to want to reach for someone who criticizes you, especially when reaching for him doesn’t lead to the kind of sex you’ve been missing. He won’t initiate intercourse, and he turns it down when I try. I’m left hearing that I’m inadequate while being refused the chance to share something I actually want.
By now, I’ve started not wanting to do anything sexual at all. That loss of interest has come after the repeated focus on toys, the blame, and the feeling that we aren’t connecting. It doesn’t feel accurate to describe it simply as him wanting more sex than I do. I have wanted sex with him. I haven’t wanted the particular arrangement he keeps asking for.
Maybe we do want different things sexually. I can recognize that without understanding why my refusal to sleep with other men should mean he gets to sleep with other women. His latest request leaves me with a question I can’t get past: what would change with someone else, when I’m here wanting sex with him and he keeps saying no?
