Tl;dr – husband had fake Reddit account as an outlet because we didn’t have sex for 6 years. How do we proceed forward?
My husband (35M) and I (33F) have been together for 8 years. Out of those 8, we didn’t have sex for 6 years. Yes, you read that right.
I had a medical trauma and it caused me to have severe anxiety which completely shut down my libido for that long. We would try to have sex or oral sex but every time I’d end up crying. Which apparently really scarred him.
So fast forward to this last year, through a lot of work I finally realized I couldn’t live like this anymore and wanted intimacy with him. We started fooling around which led to sex and we’ve been active for 8+ months. I thought it was great. I’d send him nude photos, I was always initiating, but something felt off. I could just tell he wasn’t fully into it.
Yesterday I discovered he had a second Reddit account. He pretends he’s someone else who lives in different states. He has short conversations with women, sexual conversations, and some photo exchanges were involved. I was in utter shock. This is a man I’d always say that I’d never, ever have to worry about.
He admitted once I brought it up. Saying he was trying to support me for those 6 years, needed an outlet, and now it has become an addiction. He said he goes through pockets of time where he feels he has to get it out of his head. He said he hadn’t messaged anyone for a year before he started to again in November. From what I can tell, that seems to be the truth. I asked him why not porn and he said it’s because he craved the attention. Which all makes me feel like shit, the guilt I feel, is another story.
If I’m being real with myself, a part of me understands. Being in a relationship as a young person and not being intimate is hard. I think most men would have left me. But I also feel incredibly betrayed because we started having sex and we got married. Our relationship continued to progress with this lie.
He said he is going to go to therapy and should have a long time ago. He also wants us to go to couples therapy. We talked for hours and he calmly told me “the truth”.
I’m sure I’m leaving stuff out and I’m not even sure what I’m asking for here. I never thought I would have to deal with this with him. But maybe that’s unfair of me and maybe I’m just fucking stupid for thinking any man could really be in a sexless relationship. The ironic part is that now all I want to do is have sex with him.
How would you handle this? I’m looking for kind and honest perspective.
2 comments
He took accountability and is taking steps toward mending the problems he caused. Many men won’t even acknowledge the problem and start gaslighting. I think it’s great he brought up therapy and you should ( if you want) see how that works for the both of you.
I’m not defending what he did. However, if he is taking steps to fix it, I think it may be worth your while to bear with him as he bore with you for 6 years. You say you feel betrayed because it continued once you wanted to have sex but even were he not doing this, of course you would always be the one initiating because for years it wasn’t an option and it would be hard to just flip away from that mindset like you did. Again, what he did was wrong, 100%. But some things in your story (like saying your reactions “apparently” scarred him) give the impression that you’ve been thinking about this whole situation just from what’s best for you, maybe forgetting to consider your partners experience. I think couples therapy would be a great start.