He Pressures Me To Make Love

“Richard is relentless,” says Pam, 32, the mother of two children, 3 and 6. “Whenever he wants to make love, the world has to stop. Forget about how I’m feeling. Forget that I might be tired or just not in the mood.”

If Pam says no, Richard, her husband of eight years, launches into an attack on just about every aspect of Pam’s character and abilities. “You know, sometimes I feel brutalized. I find it difficult to argue and fight back and I certainly don’t want to hop into bed,” she says.

Pam especially cringes when Richard accuses her of loving the children more than him. She says, “My parents were alcoholics and, night after night, they fought about money, bills and sex. I vowed that if I ever had children, I’d always make them feel wanted and loved.” When Pam and Richard first began dating, sex was never a problem, she reports. “Richard was sweet and gentle,” she recalls. But now there’s no tenderness.

“Richard never wants to sit and talk or cuddle after I’ve finally gotten the boys into bed; he never holds my hand while we’re out walking, or puts his arm around me when I’m feeling down.”

In fact, the only time he touches her is when he wants to have sex, says Pam. When she freezes up, that inevitably provokes another attack on her for being frigid, a terrible housekeeper or a shrew. These angry tirades are especially distressing: “I don’t know what to do when he explodes at me like that,” she says. If she says no to sex, Richard always takes it as a personal affront. “I just can’t make him understand that sometimes I’m too stressed out or too tired. It doesn’t mean I don’t love him.”

But for a long time, Richard has felt she doesn’t love him: “As soon as we had kids, sex became an afterthought,” grumbles the 32-year-old investment banker. “It hasn’t gotten any better.” In fact, he says, Pam seems increasingly withdrawn. “She’s never in the mood for sex. The other day, I walked into the kitchen while she was making dinner, put my arms around her waist and nuzzled her neck. She swatted me away like I was a fly.” “And every night, she has the proverbial headache. She always tells me ‘later,’ but later never comes. And I don’t appreciate being called a bully because I want to make love to my wife.”

Getting a bully to back off

“Sexual issues are difficult because they are bound up with our identity,” notes Jane Greer, a marriage and sex therapist in New York City. The more Richard wanted sex and the more he pushed Pam to make love, the more she pulled away. That set up a vicious cycle of rejection for both of them.

Like many sexual bullies, Richard didn’t realize what he was doing. His sexual needs were paramount and he couldn’t believe his wife didn’t feel exactly the same way. Like many women in a similar situation, Pam felt swamped, unimportant and demeaned by her husband’s relentless pressure for sex. She needs to regain her voice in the relationship, to learn how to set limits and how to walk away until the heat of anger subsides.

Here’s help if you’re living with a sexual bully:

1. Banish blame. Blaming yourself or your partner makes the problem worse. Eliminate the phrases “You always” and “You never” from your vocabulary. The idea is to try to express your thoughts and feelings in a way that allows your partner to keep his or her self-esteem intact, especially in the face of what they perceive as rejection.

2. Never tolerate verbal bullying. Like Pam, you must make it clear that you want to talk about a sexual statement, but only if a partner ends the barrage of criticism. You can say: “I do want to talk about this, but only after you’ve calmed down.”

3. When things are calm, explain that your needs are different in many areas, but that doesn’t mean you don’t love and respect him. It’s unreasonable to expect two people to always be hungry or sleepy at the same time. The same notion applies to sex. Sexual bullies like Richard need help making this distinction so their self-esteem remains intact.

4. Take the lead in rediscovering what makes you happy sexually. This is not to say that you should accept a partner’s pressuring, but you can ease the tension between you by thinking about what you want and need from your spouse and showing him, instead of waiting for him to read your mind.

5. When you say, “No, not now” - set a date for lovemaking. When you do this and follow through, your partner will begin to accept you at your word.