So to shorten this up...me and wife have been married for a little over 7 years...known each other for 11 years...We have a had a great loving relationship...Up until this past summer and she was having an affair and admitted that she had been unhappy with me for 4 years....tells me it was nothing I did...she just did not think her life is where she wanted it to be and that made her unhappy with me...we have 3 children and our youngest 2 actually came during her periods of being unhappy with me....Now that the affair is over and she says that she wants to be with me and it was a huge mistake..Our marrigae has lacked intimacy for the last 2 years..and she admits that it was on and is on her part that the intmacy has gone...Just the other day she tells me that she does not think that Intimacy is something that should not be a factor in a marriage...She must not know the meaning of being married...Every marriage needs to have intimacy...She has admitted to me that she had been with the guy sexually on at least 20+ occasions during there month and half affair..and was on an average of 3 or more times a week...and one day they had done it over 6 times in a day..Something my wife has never given me...I always try to keep our sex life spicy...by offering new positions and different places...I get none of that...But was able to do all those things in the affair she admitted me to me...The only place she will make love to me is our bedroom..which is fine by me...but I always get the complaint that she just does not feel in the mood cause she is afraid that the kids are going to wake up...With a door and lock on our bedroom door..its not something that we need to worry about...and our children rarely ever wake up once they are asleep...Im just at a loss...I dont understand if this is what she really wants to do is be with me why she does not want intimacy to be in our marriage..If i gave her the option and said that it would be fine by me she would be fine having no sex at all...but to me sex is something that should be in a marriage...to me its not just sex...its that speical passionate intimate connection that brings you closer to one another...I just dont know what to think about this anymore...and she does not like to come back to bed with me because she fears I am going to bring up the talk about having no intimacy in our life and she does not feel like talking about it anymore...everytime I try to do things to her to try and get her in the mood..she pushed me away...even if we are in bed and I touch her very softly she pushes me away...I just dont know where her head is anymore...any advice
Have you two gone to counselling? Also, there are some great books on recovering from affairs, have you read any? I just think after reading your sitch and the pain in it, that you are going to need some help.
My other question is whether you think your wife has been totally honest. From what I have seen in the affairs I have witnessed, often the spouse that has the affair but returns remorseful to the marriage, then goes overboard the other way trying to move past it (lots of ml, lots of affection, trying to be an overly good wife/husband) and thinks that will make up for the past. Your wife is not doing this and it makes me wonder.
Hang in there, you will hear from some people on here with great perspective on this issue (paging Cinco...) CB
Me; 42, W; 43 M; 16 yrs S12, D9
3/13 - "I want to move to XYZ City (four hours away) and it might be without you, not sure" 5/13 - "Not sure I meant that"
Exactly...and I have been trying to make her realize that if she really loves me that we need these things to make our marriage stronger...they used to be there up until now...Maybe its the guilt...but she reassures me its not the guilt cause she has moved on all together from the affair...but I can believe that...espcecially since they have lied 3 times about having no communication with each other...that was 2 weeks ago the 3rd lie floated up and out...so its really hard to believe them right now...They have tried to find different ways to keep it hidden that they were still talking...So who is to say that its not gonna happen again...Im trying so hard to believe her...but its gonna take her a long time for the trust to build back up...and she says she is very understandable of that...
Look, I'm not great at giving advice in these matters. There are people much better at advice in these forums than me. What I can offer is this: an acknowledgement that your situation has many similarities with my own, which offers the meager consolation that you're not alone. That other people are experiencing something similar to your situation. If you read the SSM forum, you'll encounter many other people, both male and female, who are going through the same struggle as you. By reading what they've attempted to do to remedy their situations, maybe you'll learn better how to deal with your own situation.
Here is what insight I can provide, all gleaned from my own situation (an admittedly small test sample and not necessarily representative of how these things progress). My wife has little interest in integrating her sex life with her marriage. I think before we met she had a fairly accomplished sex life, with people she liked and people she didn't like. She feels like she's been there done that. Plus, in her mind, sex is sort of dirty. No, she's not a prude, but she thinks sex is decadent. Which she is capable of enjoying when she's in the mood for decadence. Problem is, this type of attitude doesn't fit very well into family life. So my wife is almost never in the mood for making love. Although, yes, we've had a problem with her then looking for sex outside of the marriage.
Is this sounding at all familiar? I don't want to drone on if what I'm saying doesn't apply to your situation. In short, marriage itself can sometimes have the same effect as saltpeter. All the responsibilities, all the working together, all the unromantic stuff, all the etc. etc. etc. This can sort of dampen your love life. And some people are just better at integrating their love life and their family life. Some people, like my wife, aren't particularly interested in integrating these two things. Or rather, it's very difficult for them.
Okay, so how does this help you at all? Where do you go from here, what do you do? Well, one refrain you'll hear over and over in these forums goes something like this: The only person you can change is yourself. So if you want to change your situation, look within yourself. If you want your wife to desire YOU, you need to be desirable. Are you moping around the house? Stop it! Are you giving her the silent treatment? Stop it! Are you etc. etc. etc.--Look at your own behaviors. You want to solve the problem, right? You don't want to compound the problem.
If you want to be desirable, you need to present your best image. You need to be confident. The more you seem confident and assured, the greater the chance your wife will actually find you attractive. When was the last time you bought new clothes? Do you exercise?
Maybe you think it's your wife's responsibility to simply give herself to you. Obviously that isn't happening. Why isn't it happening? Because your wife is to blame? Because she needs to change? Well, these situations are rarely caused by just one person. If your wife wasn't content, then why not? You and she were content at one time, right? That's why you got married to begin with. So what were you doing then that you aren't doing now?
An example: as we fell into a rut of married life, my wife and I shared very few activities. We rarely went out together anymore. Of course, before we married, before we had a daughter, before we bought a house, before we etc. etc. etc. we went out to eat frequently at nice restaurants. We frequently went to hear live music. We frequently went to shows. We had stopped doing these things almost entirely. Part of the problem was my wife's unwillingness to leave our daughter with a babysitter. She was so focused on our daughter that I was sort of irrelevant, except as a helper in providing care. I was totally on a back burner. (And boy was I simmering.) We ended up separating, but the prospect of getting divorced and introducing other men into the life of 10 year-old girl sort of scared my wife. Meanwhile I was a known commodity. She loved me, yes, even if she didn't really feel passion or desire for me. So the fact that we had a family together gave me a huge advantage over any other man. She agreed to changes. Our daughter finally started sleeping in her own bed (!!!). We got a babysitter and established a bi-weekly date night.
Notice my demand wasn't simply "give me more sex." Rather I tried to create some changes in our marriage that allowed us to be together again as a couple, to re-experience some of the activities that we shared when we were courting. Sex would follow. Or that was the hope anyway. Was I successful? At first, yes. Although we have now drifted back toward old patterns and I'm becoming very frustrated again. But I think the plan is sound. Be a couple. Be a couple. Be a couple. Be confident. Look your best.
I could drone on and on. Maybe that's all I've been doing. I hope not. I hope this helps.
me: 50 w (waw): 45 daughter: 9 m: 16 t: 19 bomb: 9/26/08 status: physical separation for 7 weeks, then work-in-progress R
Being there myself at one point, it sounds as if your W is going through an affair withdraw. It was all so decadent, exciting, naughty, etc. It's hard to let go of that high she was feeling and it will take some time.
For you, it's also hard to compete with a fantasy. Affairs are fantasy. It's an escape. For that 2 or 3 hours you spend with your lover, you are leaving all of the problems of your life behind. No children needing something, no financial woes, no household chores, no mundane everyday marital problems.... It's just you and the lover, you can make as much noise as you want, take as much time as you want, do it again and again.
I'm not trying to depress you, just trying to get you to see things from where she probably is right now.
A very good book our marriage counselor recommended was After the Affair, by Janis Spring. It addresses healing from an affair from both sides. I agree with the others, if she is serious about repairing you M and counselor would really help you two.
Ok I'll have to find some of the old posts from DanceQueen on generating excitement again in your marriage. If your touching her is only happening in bed at bedtime there is no build up at all happening for your W. She wants to be seduced and that happens well in advance of hopping into bed together. The touching, kissing, flirty notes and all happen beforehand. I'll come back later with some links to DQ's old posts as she explains how women want this "buildup" much better than I do.
It will take hard work to recover from the affair and it will take time. It can be done though. She at least wants to stay with you and that is a start.
Cinco
Me49 W49 D17 M23 Sep01 Me PA 1 Jan02 filed D Mar02 ended A 1 reconcile Apr08 Me PA 2 May08 ended A 2 Aug09 A's revealed My latest thread Drive
What you are saying sounds something like this: my wife doesn't want to have sex with me, yet she had a wild sexual affair with someone else, and supposedly it is over, but I'm not positive its over actually, and even though she claims to want to stay married to me, she still doesn't want to have sex with me...what do I do?
First of all, please understand how this makes you sound, for lack of a better word, weak in your position. Why on earth are you not outraged? Why are you (only going from your one or two posts here) just calmly accepting what your wife has put you through? I am asking this very tough line of questioning because your answer is likely part of the problem.
When I was married, I had affairs. My husband never really put his foot down, never really showed me any backbone, never really made me face true consequences. Now maybe you would think I would feel I had been given a break because he is so decent and forgiving? But no. In reality, he was just too weak in his position in our marriage to do anything about it. He was too afraid to lose the marriage to actually stand up for HIMSELF and his right to be treated with respect. And this is key: he was too afraid to lose the MARRIAGE, not necessarily lose me. I am pointing this out to show you, its not that he actually even loved me that much. He just didn't want to be divorced (again, I was his second wife). So he didn't want to rock the boat or do anything that would end us up in divorce court.
But guess what?
We ARE divorced. And the sad thing is, I think if he had handled my affairs differently, by showing me he had self-respect and that he wouldn't tolerate my behavior, we might have actually remained married.
My guess is that your wife cannot find her attraction to you, because you have supplicated all of your need for respect, especially now where it seems she is possibly STILL having an affair and you are sitting back and just hoping she isn't, but not actually demanding that she isn't. You are showing her that she doesn't have to respect you on any level, and therefore, she doesn't.
Perhaps I have misread everything you wrote and perhaps you are handling things in a much stronger way than it seems. If that is the case, then I apologize. But if I am even a little bit close to the reality in my assessment, then I can offer you this: your marriage and sex life won't get any better until you can effectively cause your wife to respect you.
