[Update] Me [33F] and my husband [34M], together for 10 years – He is uncomfortable with how often I touch him

Hi Dating.mobi. A little while back I wrote here for advice. Here is my initial post. I didn’t expect it to be nearly as big as I thought it would be. I went into it trying to reply to everyone, because I expected a handful of comments. I tried replying to as many of you as possible but I did miss some, I’m sorry! Besides a particular comment that accused me of sexually assaulting my husband (which has since been deleted) most of you guys really had helpful responses and anecdotes. I really appreciate that everyone took time out of their day to read through my post and give me advice.
On to the update. This feels a little messy, because I'm having trouble organizing my thoughts, and I apologise. But this update did not go as I expected. A commenter said that it sounded as if my husband directing his emotions about unrelated issues onto me. I replied to be polite, but honestly kind of put it out of my mind. My husband has never really done anything of the sort, and I had no reason to suspect he would do that now. Well, turns out that commenter is clairvoyant.
It turns out my husband’s mother has been diagnosed with a medical issue and does not have very long to live. She was initially in the hospital about 2 weeks before my post, which I knew. What I didn’t know is that the doctors found some things that gave her a very short life expectancy; they weren’t sure what the problem was, but they knew what the problem would lead to. I, and my husband's siblings, were told it wasn't a big deal.
My MIL didn’t want any of her kids to know until she was diagnosed properly with the real source of her issues. My FIL went against her wishes and told my husband, who convinced my FIL not to tell any of his other children. He also didn’t tell me, out of respect for his mother’s wishes, until a couple of days after my post.
So obviously my husband had been going through a lot of emotional things, that he didn’t share with me out of respect for his dying mother. He felt he couldn’t disrespect her wishes after his father already did, so his worry and his inability to lean on me for support culminated in him struggling emotionally, which led to our minor argument.
We have been discussing that our communication suffered – and that it led to the conversation about which I asked for advice. That really hurt, and isn’t a good habit to have in a relationship. My husband had never done anything like this before, and he was quick to own up to responsibility about this. We’ve mostly been dealing with my MIL and trying to make her comfortable and happy, but we have spoken a little about what my post was about. As I said in my post, usually my touching wasn’t ‘too much’ for him at all. But if my touching is just too much right now because of everything else going on, that still needs to be addressed. My husband admitted that he usually loved it, but right now it felt like he was being overloaded with stuff and my touching contributed to that. He also admitted that he didn’t communicate that properly. We agreed that my husband would practice being more upfront and immediate about any discomfort I might bring if I helped him along by more regularly asking boundary questions when I do touch him, which I will of course be reigning in until he communicates that that can change.
We ended up agreeing that diversifying the way we show love would never be a bad thing. I showed him my post and we want to look through the love language stuff and communicate better about everything that I, and your advice, brought up in the post. But right now, we’re focusing on his mother, so we haven’t gone into it as deep as we’d like.
So… a lot of what was in my post is a problem, but not as big of a problem as my husband initially made it seem like, and potentially it might be temporary (or it might not be). I’m just happy my husband and I are communicating again, so we can tackle everything as a team. We will still be looking through all of your great advice, but right now it’s just not a priority.
Thank you guys again. It’s only one update per post, so I won’t be able to update further along in the future when we’re more actively putting all your advice into practice, but I hope this update suffices.
Tl;dr: My husband was going through issues that led to our communication suffering. We’re dealing with that now, and it’s going pretty well.


Source.