My “fiancé” (24M) and I(24F) have been together for 5 years and have three young children together. Having been through three pregnancies all very close together, and having to deal with PPD, while also growing into my role as a mother, has been pretty hard on me developmentally, and on our relationship. I love being a family and I think he is an amazing father. He’s attentive to them, we make a great team, and we both have the same priorities as parents. We take our kids out all the time for adventures. We also never disagree about finances, which I know can be a big issue for couples.
A big issue of our relationship is that we don’t get enough time to just be a couple. I know this happens to pretty much all couples when they have young children, and it will likely get easier with time as the kids get older. By the time the kids are all asleep at night, I’m usually ready to pass out myself. We don’t go on many dates, but I’m trying to work on that now that I’m a month post-partum.
While pregnant, I was not very interested in sexual intimacy. I had a pretty bad umbilical hernia, and severe anemia. On top of that, I was just exhausted from chasing after toddlers all day when I wasn’t at my (physically demanding) job. On Mothers Day of all days, he asked me to look something up on his phone. I accidentally found porn open, which was a big deal to me because we both dislike pornography and he had told me he doesn’t watch it. (If you watch porn, no judgement here! It’s just personal preference.) I wasn’t snooping, and didn’t bring it up until he asked why I seemed upset. We talked about it, and he explained that he had to watch it because I’m not- y’know, providing for him. Men have hormones and needs. I felt pretty heartbroken at first, but I understand why he was watching it and I’m not holding it against him. I believe he’s loyal to me and would never actually cheat on me, plus as I said, he’s a great father and life partner.
The main issue I’m having that makes me write this is that, around the time he was watching porn, he started making comments about how “tons of women are constantly checking him out”, flirting with him, giggling to their friends, etc. and that it seems like women think it’s weird that I’m not giving him more attention? I asked him who he was talking about, and he wouldn’t tell me. When I pressed, he told me he had made it up to try to make me jealous so I would give him more attention. I just felt bad after he said that and reassured him that he didn’t need to do that, and apologized for not giving him enough of my attention.
Now he still brings it up though, and he has never told me who is supposedly giving him all this attention, but he has indicated it includes some of our female friends. It only makes me uncomfortable because he seems to like the attention and focus on it too much. I feel like generally, even if a guy did get a lot of female attention, he wouldn’t be bringing it up to his girlfriend or even paying so much attention to it. He actually said to me “I can smell their pheromones, it’s an exchange of pheromones.” Idk if that’s supposed to be gross to me, or if I should appreciate his honesty. I also wonder if he could be simply reading too much into girls giving him platonic attention or just being nice to him or something. I know I might come across as immature, but I really just want to get a better understanding of I guess the male psyche, lol. Should I be worried about the way he seems to obsess about female attention? Is it harmless, or a serious indication of his dissatisfaction with our relationship?
Sorry if this post is too long or doesn’t make a ton of sense. If anyone has questions for clarification just lmk!
TLDR; my fiancé seems dissatisfied with our sex life and keeps bringing up attention from other women- any advice or insight is appreciated.
2 comments
I bet you dollars to donuts that if you started talking about all the guys flirting with you and claim “it’s just pheromones” and how you like the attention, he wouldn’t be too happy about it.
Your husband is a jerk and is trying to neg you and make you jealous. It’s not the “male psyche” to blame here, it’s his attitude.
Probably should consider couples counseling or something if you want to work on things. He isn’t really communicating his needs/concerns in a healthy way. Maybe he doing things with bad intentions or maybe he is just a bit slow. You would know better than we do.
He should probably understand why sex isn’t the same at the moment but might need it explained more bluntly to get his head straight. Maybe knowing it’s a temporary state or something you two are working on would help. Healthy ways to work on it or deal with it would be very important. He isn’t doing anything well about it right now.
Him getting out his sexual frustrations solo can be reasonable and he can do so discreetly within whatever bounds you’re comfortable with. You can establish some boundaries about his behavior in general. You can tell him that his behavior hurts you and the relationship when you and his future child needs his support. Also that you want to work on things together to improve the relationship.
His reaction to the idea of couples counseling or a conversation could tell you a lot about who he is or how you want to deal with it.