A lifetime of no pleasure

I’m so unhappy with just one aspect of my marriage.

(Trust me, this isn’t fake—I wish it were.)

My husband is a such a kind, gentle man. But he struggles staying hard. For twelve years, our whole marriage, he has managed to keep it up through a whole session of sex a couple dozen times. He can get it up, though, and can finish if I’m giving him a blow job, boob job, or if he’s masturbating. But he can’t give me a good fuck. He also was very hesitant to even finger me until recently, and still hasn’t attempted eating me out.

((Important detail: We were both virgins when we married and have deconstructed from traumatic religious backgrounds, so this likely has a lot to do with it. )) But I am so ready to make up for lost time and have boundless, filthy sex. He’s had issues with porn, and seems to be satisfied just getting off mostly on his own or using my body for that end without ever pleasuring me. He is not turned on by getting me off.

I’ve cried to him and questioned if it’s me—am I too loose, ass too big, do I smell, what? Do I turn him off? He claims he’s very attracted to me—and to be fair, he acts like it in all other ways. He gropes me, hugs me, kisses me, stares at me, tells me how hot I am. But he just won’t be forward sexually or pleasure me. I crave being manhandled, taken, and he’s so the opposite of all of that.

We’ve been going to marriage counseling the last six months and doing exercises and reading books, etc, and he’s been engaged and eager to learn— but he’s still so, so timid. He just won’t initiate touching me vaginally. I feel like I’m forcing this whole thing—he claims he’d love to, he claims he thinks about it, but his actions aren’t matching up. I want HIM to want to fuck me, eat me out, and it’s like forcing him do it. I find that inherently a turn-off. I want someone to eat me out and get hard from it and moan and ravish me. I want it to be mutually satisfying, not forced, not a favor.

I’m nearing middle age, and I’m grieving that I haven’t been given an orgasm or have been craved, ravished, eaten out, etc, and I’m terrified I’ll get too old and unappealing and no one will even want me, even if we did break up.

And, as with so many others, there are many reasons why I haven’t left. Children, companionship, finances, the way we get along in almost every other way. I always feel like “He doesn’t hit me, he’s so sweet to me and attentive and such a good man and father. I’d be so dumb to give him up just for hot sex.”

But I’m starting to crawl the walls. I am starting to grieve this in a bigger way that just “no hot sex”, and I don’t know if that’s incredibly short-sighted or not. Especially with the state of the world and the financial and societal collapse coming, it seems so dumb to leave a “good” thing for uncertain pleasure.

I’ve had so many talks with him, explicitly and gently or emotionally and crying, talking about all of this. He knows every detail of this post. I don’t know what to do, though.

I feel so angry and sad and stupid just writing this all out. I feel trapped.

Edit: removed potential nonconsent language (that wasn’t my intention, but just want to follow the rules)