This is long, so there’s a TLDR at the bottom.

Some detailed background info that you can skip if you want: My husband (31M) and I (32F) have had issues for about 5 years due to what I feel are incompatible attachment styles… I have relationship anxiety and need a lot of emotional/physical intimacy to feel loved and secure. When I’m not getting that I’m pretty direct about pointing out my frustrations and clear when it comes to stating what I want/need. My husband is straight up avoidant and the more I express my discontent over the lack of connection, he gets defensive and pulls away from me… He disassociates often and will pretty much avoid and ignore me after I’ve tried to express how I feel. He knows he does this, but claims he can’t help it, he just gets overwhelmed and shuts down… The problem is, anything slightly negative from me results in this sort of treatment from him. Now it’s just become a habit and his default mode is to avoid me for the past few years. Lately he’s been under more work stress and when I try to calmly talk to him about things he says he just doesn’t have the mental/emotional capacity or energy to deal with it right now… He admits to being depressed, but doesn’t want to seek treatment even when I’ve offered to make all the arrangements for him. He spends all of his leisure time playing video games upstairs on the opposite end of the house and will be up there from the time our daughter goes to bed until very late at night. We very rarely spend time together outside of family things and there is little to no physical touch or intimacy happening for months on end. I think right now we’re at around 3 months…even up to 6 months or longer isn’t out of the norm. I think since I became pregnant with our daughter we probably have sex 2-3 times a year.

Despite this, we have a really strong friendship and he knows me better than anyone ever has. We also have a young child and rely on each other heavily for support with parenting our neurodivergent kiddo (age 4) and managing the household. Were both neurodivergent as well, so parenting is taxing and overwhelming for us both at times and we give each other breaks as needed. I definitely don’t want to get divorced until our daughter is older, able to understand the changes, and we won’t need each other’s support as much in the day-to-day parenting responsibilities.

My current dilemma: A week ago I finally told him that if he doesn’t have the mental/emotional capacity to be there for me, work on our relationship, and spend time with me, then I don’t see the point in continuing the romantic aspect of our relationship. I still consider him family and have a great deal of love for him and care about him… I want to stay married and keep our family together for the time being, but I think removing the expectations of a romantic partnership and having hope of anything changing is what I have to do at this point because I’m just tired of feeling hurt and emotionally abandoned. He accepted this and told me that he didn’t have any “fight” left in him or the ability to give any more than he currently is/has been giving to the relationship…which is basically nothing. I have suggested multiple different things in the past in an attempt to improve/rebuild our romantic connection and he has not followed through or held up his end of the agreement on anything or put in any effort to meet me in the middle.

I then asked him what he thought about ethical non-monogamy if we are going to continue to stay married, but will no longer have a romantic relationship and he said, “Do what you want, just don’t bring it here.” (Here being our home). I asked him if he wanted to discuss additional parameters and he said, “No, not right now. I have enough to process already,” which is understandable. When I asked him if this was something he was really okay with he said, “It doesn’t matter. It’s your choice.” I told him it does matter and my first choice would be a romantic relationship with him and that I don’t want to hurt him, but I don’t want to continue feeling lonely and hurt either and I’m not going to be celibate for the rest of my life… I also told him that I wanted it to be a joint decision and for him to have the same freedom to see other people if he wants that. He didn’t have much of a response to that. I ended up telling him to let me know if at any point something changes and he feels like he has the mental energy and emotional capacity to try and get our relationship back on track and he said, “Okay, thanks for being honest,” and that was that pretty much it… We ended the conversation on good terms, hugged (also rare for us), and he’s been pleasant with me since then, but hasn’t brought it up again.

I have been wanting to see other people for a while now and have been working towards proposing ENM, but now that he has agreed to it, I feel weird about it. I meant what I said about my first choice being a romantic relationship with him, but I’m human and have physical and emotional needs that he hasn’t been meeting for years now. I guess a small part of me was hoping that this would give him a bit of a wake up call and make him want to try harder…

How would you proceed? Should I give it a little time and then go ahead and start seeing other people? Does anyone have any experience with non-monogamy in a relationship where there is no physical intimacy or romantic connection with the primary or married partner?

TLDR: I recently suggested ethical non-monogamy to my husband due to unmet emotional and physical needs and 5 years of no improvement or change. He agreed, but I still feel unsure of how to proceed.