I (26F), and husband (28M) have been married for 5 years, together for 7. July will make 6 and 8.
TL;DR: Husband and wife argue, husband is handsy, wife wants to know best ways to set boundaries after arguments, and to understand each other.
It’s very late as I’m writing this. I’m open to any questions for better clarification.
We have a fairly active sex life.
We also tend to have a lot of disagreements, often him feeling like I’m attacking him or his character when I come to him with a problem or my feelings. Which is what happened the other night. He’d made a joke, that I didn’t take as a joke, to ‘get the f#ck out of the kitchen,’ that he’d cook, so I couldn’t ruin dinner.
It hurt my feelings, but I went to wash my hands to basically tap out of dinner, because I’d been handling raw meat at the time. He called me back into the kitchen and argument began. I was, admittedly, snappy myself because he’d just told me to leave and called me back. Not my best moment.
It progresses, he stops cooking, I’m trying to explain why the initial comment hurt my feelings, he apologizes in what I took as a noncommittal kind of way. I thank him for him apology and also apologize, ask him to bathe child while I cook, and ask if we can discuss this better later, he tells me to essentially ‘get the f#ck out of his sight’ and that he’s done with this discussion.
I finish cooking, he bathes our oldest child, things are calm. We’re both back to being kind. I plate his dinner for him, we eat and go to bed for the night.
I’m still, obviously, upset, but not argumentative. Not in the mood for sex or anything of the sort, but normally, when we spoon, we’re naked, and he does hold my breasts. That doesn’t bug me.
He asked for consent for this as we were going to bed, which I gave him, along with saying, “As long as it’s not for sexual purposes.”
He asks for clarification.
I flat out tell him that I don’t want to have sex tonight, but we can cuddle, spoon, and he can hold the tatas. This is nothing new, we often cuddle this way without intercourse.
I fall asleep that way.
I wake up at some random interval to him pressing a hard on between my butt cheeks and humping me roughly enough that it actually hurts my butt crack.
He does eventually ask me if I want to have sex, I reiterate that, no, I don’t, like I’d told him earlier. He stops when I say no this time and rolls over to sleep.
The previous day’s unfinished conversation comes into play the next day, with the newest complaint. It’s a bunch of back and forth, I tried explaining again how he’d made me feel, plus mentioning how uncomfortable the incident of the night had made me.
It’s gotten nowhere, or at least that’s how it feels.
For past context: Usually, I’m okay with the groping, even if I’m asleep. I also don’t typically mind being woken for sex. I actually have a higher sex drive than my husband, so I tend to be happy when he’s in the mood. I do not, hardly ever, enjoy sex after arguments.
I want to make these boundaries well enforced so that it doesn’t happen again. What can I do to phrase these issues without upsetting him? I don’t want him to think I’m criticizing him or anything. Is there something I’m missing that would make it easier for me to understand his perspective, and his mine?