Update: When things that will make you happy will make your spouse unhappy

(I added more info to the bottom of the post)

I’m in a sad place in which my husband and I want different things. Sometimes when we’re arguing he asks “what do you want from me?” And I don’t always tell him because the things that would make me happier would make him upset, sad, lonely, angry, etc. and I don’t know what to do about that. I wish he could just be content with my desires, but he could easily say the same about me. I know this is vague and maybe I’ll update this post with something more specific if people are interested enough to talk about it.

For instance, he does not like to travel long distances (for multiple reasons, some being that car accidents are one of the biggest killers and also the lifestyle of not using gasoline to constantly travel and destroy the planet). I, on the other hand, would love to go visit family. My mom lives 2.5 hours away and I want to visit her since she can’t always travel due to health reasons. It would make me happy, but it would upset him because of his reasons and fears to not travel and his morals say that people with more money (my mom) should use it to visit instead of poor people trying to travel. He also thinks that grandparents should want to be around their grand children so much so that they will visit us.

Another things that would probably make me happier or at least less stressed is to not have the pressure of having sex everyday. Regardless of the fact that I’m 25 weeks pregnant and we have a 1.5 year old, my libido has never matched his. Earlier in our relationship I told him this and he said I should try being more sexual. We’ve been married 5 years and he pretty much expects sex (or a sexual act like bj) daily. I’d be happy with it every few days, maybe 2-3 times a week. I’d like to desire him, but doing it everyday takes away the spark for me. He doesn’t understand this because he loves sex so much and it makes him so happy he doesn’t see why you wouldn’t want to have it everyday. He’s also literally not as happy (like I notice he’s groggy and get annoyed more easily) if we don’t do it.

I want our daughter to meet my dad. He doesn’t want our daughter to meet my dad unless my dad proves that he can be “a present father” since he was absent for a lot of my childhood/teen/adult years. It would make me happy but he would feel extremely disrespected. I want her to meet all of our family. The only person that she’s met in each of our family is my mom. These are vague details but there’s the gist of some of the things that would make me happier but would upset him.