Tl;dr: Wife made a comment about how sex feels for her, I was caught off guard by it and asked for clarification, she panicked and felt like victim, so I shut up and dealt with it quietly on my own like I suppose men are supposed to.
I (40M) feel a little lost and generally disheartened by what my wife (30F) said to me and how she handled the fallout from it.
We’ve been together for 8 years and married 6.
Just before she attempts to initiate sex (mainly because I was being flirty and complementing her all day), my wife confesses the revelation that penetration doesn’t give her “any physical pleasure”. A little shocked by this, I ask her to clarify.
Now I’m not a fool and I don’t have a huge ego about it, so I know orgasm from penetration isn’t terribly common and I don’t expect her to say every time is this wild explosion of passion. I get it. I make sure I use other methods for her to get her orgasms via clitoral stimulation. I have given her g spot orgasms via penetration but she has to do a bit of work for those and so she doesn’t always feel up to it. Not a problem. I get it.
But “no” physical pleasure? Ever?! Ouch. The way she behaves in bed I thought all these years she was getting what she wanted out of it. So when I ask her what she means, she says it just feels like pressure.
Now, our entire relationship we have generally had what appeared to me to be a very passionate enjoyable sex life.
At this point I’m just sinking in my chair. My wife is a very intelligent and articulate woman, so she typically doesn’t have any trouble saying what she means. I’m now sitting here thinking “oh god has this woman just been faking it this whole time and I’m just an idiot thinking I was good in bed?”
Trying to pick myself up off of the floor, I ask her for further clarification. She says she doesn’t know. I can see she’s starting to panic. She starts getting visibly upset. I try to reassure her. She tells me that all of her emotional and romantic needs are so met by the rest of our relationship that sex is really just for me. I know she’s trying to help, but this part just shuts me down completely. I’m just in the phantom zone doomed to drift forever in misery in my defeated mind. Everything she said just made me feel worse and worse.
So I tell her I need some time to work all this out in my mind and that all of this has just scrambled my brain and my emotions. I assure her I’m not headed out the door or anything crazy, but I’m just really lost and confused. She starts tearing up and panicking more and getting frustrated with me. Her frustration is that I don’t feel that sex doesn’t need to be that big a part of our relationship (which makes me feel more soul-crushed), and that I’m having a strong emotional response.
Apparently I’m just supposed to be happy that we have sex for me and that I shouldn’t have any emotional response to being told that what I thought was going on in the bedroom was not, in fact, what was going on. I take pride in taking care of my wife in every way, so no, that doesn’t just fly right by me and not affect me.
Seeing that expressing my thoughts and emotions is fruitless and that I’m not going to get validation, empathy or understanding and that I’m actually just causing a bigger problem, I just put on a face until I can just suck it up and “be a man” about it and figure out how to feel and act moving forward.
Later on I’m informed what she meant to say was “it just makes her feel full, like I’m meant to be in there. Ok, great, that makes me feel a little better. What doesn’t make me feel better is being treated as though my emotions and mental processing (about feeling like I was a clueless idiot about something like that with a woman I’ve been married to for so many years) is unwelcome, unacceptable and somehow offensive to her.
I think this is why men just shut up and hurt and don’t say anything to anyone about it. I couldn’t ever imagine talking to a friend or my parents about it. So here I am, on Reddit. God save me.
Are men just supposed to shut up and deal with it so we don’t hurt your feelings or make you upset when you drop something like that on us?