As a lot of folks have read my story and I don't mean to repeat myself (but I do a lot of times), I have always went to bed alone. It started just a few months after we were married. My H was a night owl and would set up and watch TV. This was the very first step in the breakdown of our intimacy b/c I needed the sweet talk and the cuddling etc. That was my security and the foreplay to sex for me. I never could make him understand that point. So, over the years when he came to bed at the same time as I did.....I knew it was b/c he wanted sex. After sex, he would get back up and watch TV. After trying for so many years to explain to him how this made me feel and would ask him to compromise with me on this one issue......and he wouldn't....more and more resentment grew. I just tried to push it down inside of me and tell myself that that was just the way he was. When our first grandchild was born, he lived with us the first two years of his life. After he got too big for his baby crib, he wanted to sleep with his grandpa. Even though our GS stopped living with us permanently, he was here most of the time. So, my H would make out the hide-a-way bed and they would sleep together in the room with the TV. That worked great for my H b/c he could watch TV until he fell asleep on the couch. This developed a very bad habit. Well, it has been 22 years later...and he is still sleeping on the couch every single night. He has not slept in our bedroom since. So, I know a little bit about what it is like to go to bed and not have anyone to hold you, cuddle with, talk intimately to, or make love with. The times that we had sex grew farther and farther apart....but I was always to blame in his POV.....and I could never make him understand that he was not helping my emotional needs and that it made me feel almost like a prostitute for him to go to bed, have sex, get back up and go about his usual nightly routine that did not include me.
I guess I'm the one venting today. CBK, it was March of 1996 the last time I was touched intimately. So, I can understand the loneliness and feeling all alone.
When I came to the DB Board, after a while I was talked into going over to the SSM forum, but it didn't work out too good for me and I finally just settle down in the "Piecing" forum. In many ways, my H and I are like "room mates"......or friends or companions. I don't know how to really describe it. We are like an old couple that no longer has any intimate touching, etc. I never wanted to see us end up like this. My grandfather was still having sex when he was 80 until he got cancer and was too sick. However, I think my H has gone so long now without having sex that he may not be able to perform.....I know he was having some problems the last few times we did tried to have sex. I know this is personal.......it really gets personal over in the SSM forum (lol). But, I am telling you this b/c I understand the loneliness. I understand your need for physical touch. After my dad passed away, my mother said something one day about the only time she felt another human touch was when one of us kids hugged her or when she went to church and someone hugged her. It really made me think about that and how we forget that older people that live alone need that touch of another human being. That is the way we are made.
Back to your stitch, I can see you as a man working hard for his family and being away on trips that your job required. Even though you said you ate in nice restaurants and stayed in nice places while your W was home raising the kids (basically alone), that was part of what you had to do on your job. Perhaps she became slowly resentful over time due to being alone and feeling that the raising the children was basically on her shoulders.....and I'm sure she also felt the loneliness when she went to bed alone while you were gone on your business trips. So, I can see both sides to that situation. It was what it was at that time and both of you had to do what needed to be done. Men get very involved in "making the living" for the family and depend on the W's to take care of the home and kids. But in the society we live in today, I personally think that women have too much on them. They go out into the workforce, plus have to go home and do everything they would have done if they were SAHM. Then the kids get old enough to be in sports or other activities that just run the parents to death getting them to all their stuff and the thing is.....the H & W are so exhausted with the lifestyle they are living until they often don't realize that over a period of time....their M is breaking apart. Then, the kids are grown and suddenly their lives have shifted and there they are and they discover things are very different. This is what I'm reading in so many stories here on the board.....not just yours. I am seeing where couples that have been married 20-25 years are breaking up more and more and in MHO I believe it is b/c they have grown apart over those years and can't find their way back to what they once had. So, one of them finds another person that fills that void in their personal need and the first thing you know....there is an EA and if not stopped it usually turns into a PA.
Why people can't see earlier what is happening to their R! Just as I described in my own. We had been M less than four months when my H was choosing to stay up to watch TV instead of going to bed with his bride at the same time she did. But yet, he always blamed me for not wanting to have sex as much as he did. My sex drive in the fist few months was fine, but over a period of time, it did get lower and lower b/c of my resentment. Over the years, other resentments about his mother & family issues would happen that were never resolved and I would try to push it down further and further inside of me and go on and try to fill my life up with church work or whatever to stay busy and try to find some type of fulfillment in my life. But nothing can replace that need for "closeness" with the one that you are M to.
I never thought of an A all those years. Never looked at another man or had sexual thoughts of anyone in real life. I could watch a movie and fantasize about the hero (lol) but that wasn't real life. I have told the story of how I kind of "fell into" a world of temptation of flirting and finding out that other men thought I was attractive and sexy. Yes, it was a choice that I made and I don't mean to say it wasn't....just that I was very vulnerable at that time and didn't have enough strenth or sense or whatever to stop it. This was right before I was facing my 60th birthday, and it was an ego booster for me. That surprised me that it even bothered me, b/c birthdays had never been a problem for me before. However, I think it was b/c I felt like I had missed an important part of life when I was young. This OM that I met on line.....he had been divorced for many years and like you, he had put his job first and finally his W had enough and left him. So, his entire life had been centered around his work.....which he loved, but he would go home and be alone and the loneliness caught up with him. Then we met and started talking over the Internet and was flirting and then it became more sexual and when my H discovered the IM's he confronted me about it. As I told you before, I saw a side of my H that I did not ever want to see again. Unfortunately, it pushed me toward the OM even more and it really became an full blown EA after that. Thank God it never was a PA and I never met him face to face other than the web cam.
Gee whiz, I don't know why I got off on all of that. I woke up at 4:30 this morning after being up past midnight last night, so I haven't had much sleep either. Guess I just needed to talk.
I wanted you to know that even though I was the "wrong party" in my stitch.....I think I can understand how you must feel. My heart goes out to you and I have cried when I have read some of your posts b/c of your pain. I know that I have caused my H the same pain, only he kept it from me and wouldn't really open up and talk to me. He told me how he almost had a heart attack when he discovered my IM's to OM, and how disappointed he was in me and he tried to lay a big guilt trip on me about how my dad would be so disappointed in me, etc. (b/c he knew that I always wanted to please my dad and that made me almost hate him for trying to make me feel guilty about that.) It was more "preaching" to me......and it was not what I needed from him. He did like so many other H's when he first discovered the IM's.....and he started the over-kill with trying to tell me he loved me and show attention, etc. Well, it was too late as far as I was concerned and it just turned me off from him. I didn't want him to touch me and I didn't want him telling me he loved me b/c I could not or rather did not want to tell him I loved him too. I always had until that time. I felt so turned off where he was concerned. Everything about him was a turn-off to me. I didn't understand why I felt that way toward him, but it was like all the resentment over 40 years came to the surface and I did not want to be around him. I was in a fantasy world with the OM. He seemed to be everything my H wasn't. That is how it usually is. The WW or WH finds OP that is totally opposite from their S.
So, again.....I think I understand and this has been a terribly long post and may lock your thread and you'll have to start another one....but that's okay (I hope). I will be known on the DB board for writing longer posts than anyone else....lol.
Detachment for your part will be so hard b/c you still feel the "in love" feelings for your W. When the WW stops feeling the "in love" for her H and it turns toward another man......that is what she is craving....that fresh "in love" experience again. When I came on board and people started telling me how this was actually a physical chemical thing that happens in people's brains, etc. I couldn't believe it! I had never heard of that before. They explained how I was addicted to the feelings that the OM was giving my ego.....which I could see that but didn't want to admit it. Then they told me how it would fade away.....even if I left my H and went to OM....in a few months or even after a year or two at most....I would be in the same shape (or worse) than I was now. That really got my attention! I started reading books that said the same thing!
I was not financially able to support myself and knew my H wouldn't help me and he told me if I left.....there would be no going back. So, I had to make a decision. I wanted my freedom so badly b/c I just wanted to escape from everyone and everything. I think that is where your wife is at this time only for some reason, she is refusing to leave the house.
Gosh, I've got to stop and get ready for work. Sorry for the long post. Just needed to talk.
Sandi
It is not about what you feel should work in your M. It is about doing the work that gets the right results. Do what works!
