Impossible situation??

[Bagheera]

Greetings HC, and welcome to the board!

No you don't have an "impossible" situation, but a very difficult one. It will take some hard work on both you and your H's part to work through things to a happy relationship again. Your enthusiasm and desire to roll up your sleeves and do something about it is a great start: like many others here, the hardest task in front of you is to convince your spouse that

(a) there is hope for salvaging the relationship and making it a happy one,
(b) you are dead serious about working hard to achieve that goal, and
(c) they need to step up to the plate also, realize their own contribution to the problems, and work hard too.

You wrote:

I was a virgin when I got married, and my husband was an out and out hedonist. Once we were married, I had great problems with sex....This really went on for 10 years....H was abused when young, and terrified of becoming an abuser, so me crying near the end of sex saying 'I can't do it...' affected him horribly. He said he turned off any sexual relationship with me then to protect himself.

You have taken a major step here, in recognizing the original source of the problem, how it affected him, and where he is now: deep inside of a very thick, protective shield. The abuse he suffered has saddled him with a huge amount of victim's guilt that he must overcome in order to allow himself to be sexual. Your previous reactions have, unfortunately, added to that guilt, so that now he has even more to overcome. It may take a period of regular (weekly) counseling with a good therapist before he is willing to make himself vulnerable to both you sexually (to your potential reactions/rejections) and to his own male sexuality.

Speaking from my own experience, male sexuality is a tricky 'tiger' to work with, particularly for a man who was brought up in a Nice Girls Don't and Nice Boys Don't either atmosphere. Most of us learn to keep that tiger on a very short lead, and only fantasize about actually letting it roam free, even within the boundaries of our marriages. Our wives, brought up in the same Nice Girls Don't atmosphere, can be both terrified and turned on by that tiger, and often at the same time. If you think that your emotions/desires are confusing to YOU sometimes, it's far worse for the poor guy on the outside, trying to figure out what the 'right thing' to do is at some given moment. Again speaking from my own experience, it takes confidence in oneself as a man, and a great deal of trust between the man and woman in the relationship to overcome these old Nice Girls/Boys Don't barriers and truly connect and enjoy each other as a couple.

Your husband has, in effect, locked his 'tiger' in a secure cage where no one can get hurt, either him or you. It's going to take some serious work to convince him that it is now safe -- for both of you -- to let it out again.

At the time we were both Christians, I still am, he gave up 2 years ago. I think he stayed with me because it was the 'Godly thing to do'.

As I did with NearTheEnd, I'm going to recommend a book to you, and hopefully won't be seen as 'advertising.' It's called The 5 Sex Needs of Men and Women, by Gary and Barbara Rosburg: a well-known pair of 'Christian couple' counselors. Their advice dovetails very nicely with Michele's The Sex-Starved Marriage (SSM), but is geared toward addressing specific gender differences and overcoming the old sex-is-sinful mindset that many Christians carry with them (and allow it to hurt their marriages).

In the last 5 years, I have discovered what it is all about, what to do, and have really started to get a libido! I'm quite adventurous now, and I feel my sexual side of me now matches the personality I had when I met him.

Most excellent! Keep exploring and enjoying your sexuality, even if by yourself --> your husband will benefit from it, either now or later.

Recently I have tried the underwear, nice meal beforehand, talking dirty, different positions etc etc but he feels I am being too desperate.

If he's seeing you as "desperate," then it's probably time for a course change -- this isn't the impression you want to make. Michele also talks about this in The SSM, where a pattern in which one of you is always the pursuer and the other the pursued (who usually says No), then you may need to back off and work to switch roles. I know it's hard to do, especially when you're trying to prove to him that you've changed your sexual stripes from that in years past, but appearing needy or desperate is the wrong signal to send right now.

In a very real sense, you will need to court your husband's attentions again, rediscovering and displaying the woman that he was originally attracted to 15 year ago, albeit a more mature, wiser version of that woman. This is a hard thing to do, especially when it comes to tossing out or at least burying the "baggage" that has since piled up between you, but Michele's books and these forums are a great resource for doing just that.

Again, welcome aboard -- I hope you can find some friends and good advice here.

Best regards,

Bagheera