You people are missing the point regarding CeMar’s POV regarding happiness, which I think is correct. Sure a person can be happy by his/herself, just as they were before marriage. All that needs to be done is somehow forget the higher level of happiness they enjoyed while the marriage was good. But once you take a bite of that forbidden apple, you can’t go back. That’s the thing about happiness. Its relative. People who decide they have to move on from a sexless marriage can become happy by avoiding comparisons of the happiness they once had in a loving relationship. Do this and your current state doesn’t look so bad and you can be “happy.”
What CeMar wants is to have the state of happiness he once knew. The gap between that memory and where he is now is what makes him unhappy. I see nothing wrong with wanting to reach a higher level. The problem is not that this higher level of past happiness is not attainable, because in theory it is. The problem is that one partner does not feel comfortable at that level. So CeMar’s task is to find a way to make his wife comfortable at that “higher” level.
Some people want to get to this level but don’t understand how to do it. Learning, training, counseling can overcome this. Others, like CeMar’s wife and many others her, including my wife, have bigger issues that make it way to scary to want to go to this level. They need to have enough motivation to overcome that fear and push on to become acclimated to the higher air. That might mean the spouse needs to make the new level more inviting. But with CeMar’s wife (and mine), even that does not seem to be enough. That is what trauma will do to a person.
So the one alternative is to just sit by, wait, and occasionally try to cajole the traumatized spouse to step up. That takes a lot of patience. The other way is to push, which is what Choc is now doing. Make the current status quo so uncomfortable that the spouse will see moving to the higher plane of happiness as the easier path. The risk is that the spouse will not see it that way, will see the status quo and the higher plane as both threatening, and leave the marriage. So you better know what you are up against, or you may shoot your self in the foot.
CeMar, do you have any idea on how your wife views this higher plane? From what little you have said, it sounds like it will scare her, that she cannot handle intimacy. Is this correct, and just how scary do you think that is for her? Is it really a matter of life or death in her eyes, or just a discomfort that she has not gotten around to addressing?
