Background:

Married 15 years w/4 kids, work part time outside the home.

We have strived for a traditional looking marriage over the years and mostly failed at that (me submitting to him mostly which caused a lot of anger towards me, understandably). He had gotten into redpill ideas a little bit on the last few year, but he saw how angry it made him and it was feeding his bitterness so he stopped listening to them as much. He still holds to some of the ideas redpill offers. We’re both Christians so some of it is the overlap of gender roles and differences between men and women.

The lack of sex has been going on for 5 years. The first few of those years were due in part to him having a severe OCD “episode”. And then gradually we drifted apart in that regard due to lots and lots of arguing. The last 2 years we’ve been really working on our relationship. Sex still being something I would like more of (if it were up to him, we’d have sex maybe once a month). He has told me he just isn’t interested in sex and does not look at me sexually anymore (we used to have a very active sex life prior to 5 years ago).

We are not long distance.

As for the problem: I’ve had a hard time with emotional regulation for most of my life. My son has ADHD and I often wonder if I’m the same. I’ve started therapy and medication.

It’s fluctuated in my adult life (for most of which I have been married). When things are relatively calm - throw something emotional at me and I can handle it like a pro. Pile things up (kid tantrums, lack of sleep, PMS, etc) and I’m a mess.

One other thing I have trouble with is tunnel vision. I tend to see things as either/or and have trouble seeing different options.

One pattern in my marriage is this no sex/argue/sex repeat. There are a myriad of reasons we aren’t having sex. I know my husband is bitter toward me (as per him telling me) because of this disregulation of emotions which was especially bad at the beginning or our marriage.

The pattern goes something like this. We go a week (or two) without sex. And no sexual overtures/flirting from him. And typically multiple rejections of any initiation from me. And usually because of schedules we just don’t have much time to have any emotional connections either. This has been going on for 6 months+ in varying degrees and time spans.

This begins building up on my side. And then I feel like a pressure cooker of emotions and I crack. I go way overboard with my emotions where I just feel like I emotion vomit all over him. And I’m typically not kind which leads to some sort of big argument.

Then the next day or two we have sex.

And repeat. It’s been a week now. Multiple rejections and 1 attempt which didn’t pan out because reasons…

And I’m feeling rejected, depressed, sad, etc. Which feel like they’re just building because of PMS.

I’ve decided to stay in our marriage in the state that it is in. And I’ve been working on a lot of personal healing and growth (hence the therapy and medication). One piece of it is staying open and soft toward my husband in spite of this sex thing. Which is so f-not hard. I’ve been working on forgiveness toward him and being a better wife.

Any thoughts on not letting these emotions control me and regaining control?

I’m not asking about how to increase our sex life - because 99.99% of advice has not helped. Once my husband gets his mind set one way, it rarely changes. And he get more stubborn the more someone tries to change him.

Thanks ❤️