He who has the gold makes the rules.The summer I turned eighteen, I was newly released from some truly pathetic loser boyfriend and got hooked up with a new guy. That same summer, so quite early in the relationship, he said to me "I am willing to meet your needs. All you have to do is ASK."
That is one of the reasons I married the man.
And THEN he spent the next seventeen years telling me "no" anytime I ASKED. Not only that, but he consistently added insult to injury and told me it was MY FAULT he would not meet my needs because "you don't know how to ask" or "you have bad timing."
This occurred in a context where I had been sexually abused as a child, he bought the lying mountain of manure his family sold him about how PERFECT they were and we both ENTHUSIASTICALLY agreed for years and years and years that ANY problems in the bedroom were ALL MY FAULT because, you know, he's PERFECT and I was "damaged goods."
Pro Tip: Don't get with some guy telling you that a loser piece of crap like YOU should feel LUCKY that such a perfect man would want your sorry ass. Repeat after me: "IF you are so perfect, go date a perfect woman and STOP BOTHERING ME."So I never got the attention I needed and other men were all too happy to take advantage of that fact. The first one to do so was my EX BOYFRIEND which made it easy for me to be unfaithful because I had slept with HIM before I ever got with my husband, so it hardly felt like something actually "bad."
Having done it once, it was easier to do a second time with someone else. It was a slippery slope that I had set foot upon without realizing it and didn't know how to get out of because nothing I did remedied the fact that my husband couldn't be bothered to meet my needs, contrary to the PROMISE he made me UNPROMPTED very early in the relationship.
I'm honest to a fault and I told him the first two times. After the second time, he told me "That's it. If you are unfaithful again, we are done."
I was a homemaker and already had a child. I and my child were financially dependent on him. He just made a unilateral pronouncement and expected me to simply OBEY him because otherwise I would be out in the street with a kid and he had the power to UNILATERALLY decide that because he was employed and I was not and he's a narcissist who never actually cared about anyone but himself (which is why our adult sons don't speak to the man).
No, he did not say "Honey, let's see a couple's counselor and sort this."
No, he did not say "What do you need to stay faithful to me?"
No, he did not go "I have An IDEA! I will say YES when she asks for sex like I lyingly told her I would the summer we were eighteen!"
Nah, he had me by the short hairs. He paid my bills. He could just make whatever shitty demands he felt like and expect me to comply.
Right, sure. That worked about as well as when he kept lyingly telling me that it was MY FAULT I never got any money spent on me because I "approved" all his buying decisions, so I began telling him "no" and he stopped asking my approval because asking wasn't really intended to give me veto power. It was a head game to have an excuse to blame me.
What's good for the gander is good for the goose.
When he made it clear that he still would not meet my needs but I was expected to be faithful anyway, I just stopped being honest with him about it. The next affair was one he did not get told about and it went on a lot longer because it was a secret.
Way to go, dumbass.
I once had a conversation with Genevieve about the tendency for men in hetero relationships to say stuff like "Well, I like it like this." and not want to budge and not want to discuss it further and how the implicit threat there is "I make the money. So you have no choice but to put up with my shit or you will be out in the street."
To my surprise, she said "They don't HAVE TO say it."
Most people I discuss such things with don't want to see the obvious. They want to believe men really love them or something, I DUNNO.