So a little backstory before I go into detail about what’s been going on. When I was about 9-10 years old my older brother began sexually abusing me in just about every way you can imagine. He would use threats and blackmail to keep me feeling like I couldn’t speak up and this went on until I was 14 and he got a long term girlfriend and joined the military. My mom remarried when I was 11 and we ended up with a step brother from the relationship who he also got involved with the abuse so for a few of those years I also had to deal with abuse from my step brother whenever he was around. I eventually told my parents about it after it had already stopped because I was dealing with serious emotional issues from the trauma of it all but long story short basically nothing was done about it. So, obviously, my life has been a long road of dealing with all of this baggage and making bad decisions and ultimately trying to push to be a successful and well rounded person in spite of this. My husband is the only one who ever truly supported me through all the ups and downs of working through these issues. So, into the issue.

Here lately(past couple weeks or so) I haven’t been as interested in sex, which isn’t abnormal for me, my sex drive tends to fluctuate but I feel it all balances it out in the end because I also have weeks when my sex drive is very high.

Well, during this time my husband has been feeling frisky but I haven’t been as interested in doing anything sexual. (I should also note I’m in a supervisory position, 3rd shift, at a manufacturing plant for car headlights/taillights/etc and working for this company is very stressful due to disorganization, poor management, etc so I tend to be physically and mentally exhausted coming home from work, he’s fully aware because he used to work there too) . My problem is that even though I’m obviously not interested in sex and even tell him when I get home that I’m tired and just want to go to bed, he’s been ignoring that and just pushing his way on me anyway. He will keep pushing himself on me and move me around and have sex with me anyway, despite me being obviously disinterested and disengaged with the idea, and to top it off he rarely seems to care anymore about whether I get off at all, just focused on getting himself off. It really bothers me because it dredges up a lot of bad memories. Him doing this makes me feel like he doesn’t care about my feelings and like I am just a toy for him to use to get off and heaven forbid I at least get to have an orgasm too. I’m struggling with how to approach him about how this makes me feel. I don’t want him getting overly defensive about me saying I feel used or forced into it and that it dredges up those issues from my past. He really is a great guy and I know he isn’t doing this maliciously and to be fair I haven’t actually said no to him when it comes to sex so I don’t know how obvious it is to him that I just downright don’t want to have sex sometimes.

He can be hot headed sometimes especially when it’s something that is related to the ego. I’m worried the conversation will just be a huge overreaction where he says something like “fine then we won’t have sex anymore I’ll figure something else out” or whatever. It’s not that I never want to have sex. I just want him to respect me on those days where I’m drained and sex is the last thing on my mind because he knows I have a shit job and plenty of other stressors in my life. I don’t want this conversation to sound like an accusation and I want us to be able to talk this out, but it’s such a sensitive subject that I would like anyones advice on how to approach this carefully but effectively.

Thank you all in advance.