NOPkins, you articulate your disappointment well. I think we all want to question our motives and the other person's motives and why we held on for so long when we are finally confronted with the knowledge that it isn't going to change in a way that would offer us what we had hoped for. So, emotionally I think you are feeling the right feelings and asking yourself all the right questions.
I have always been the kind of person to "hope against hope." It's the way I survive any hardship in my life. My ex and I slept in the same bed. I'm not sure I could have ever excused someone who refused to at least share my bed for sleeping. I'm not sure which is more painful, someone who won't sleep with you or someone who sleeps with you and turns their back to you nightly. I was like you, I hoped it would get better, hoped he would one day want me, hoped for a sexual connection that would deepen our relationship. I never got it and when it was all over and he was gone I felt the same things you are feeling and questioned myself in the same way.
I was afraid to hope any more and afraid to loose my ability to hope. Not being able to hope for a problem to be solved, or a person to change or that I might continue to have the ability to desire certain things from others or that life would get better when it felt as if it were falling apart meant giving up who I was as a person. The ability to hope was something I was very proud of about myself. It meant I wasn't a quitter, someone who could walk away without trying or someone who could turn a deaf ear to the wants and needs of those who loved me. I knew that I had to find a way to continue to hope, to not loose hope that there was a life for me with someone who shared my desire for "normal" sex.
When my marriage ended I also new that I was going to have to be able to find hope in the fact that I might never marry again or might never find that person who understood my needs and felt the same.
I would think about the problems I had, had in my marriage and all the pain that caused. I thought about what it was I had hoped for in my marriage and how not getting it had caused such pain. I thought about the problems my divorce caused and how the way I hoped for resolution to the problems but no resolution ever came. I realized that all my hopes were being placed on particular events or how those events would be solved. I put hope in my husband, hope in the legal system and sat back and waiting for them to give me what I was hoping for. I was loosing hope and loosing it fast. I was feeling like a fool for continuing to hope when the things I was putting hope in were constantly letting me down.
It dawned on me one day that that is not what hope is about. Our greatest hope in life is for the experience of joy. That experience can be found no matter how someone else reacts to the things we hope for. I found that I wasn't as smart as I thought when it came to predicting what would bring me joy or make me happy. My ability to hope had to stop being attached to the actions of other people. It had to be something that came from within me and something I could attain on my own. When you attach the things you hope for to the actions of another person you are looking for pleasure but fishing for pain. To me, now, never giving up hope means always expecting to experience life at it's fullest. I have hope because I know, without a doubt that I can survive my life when things are at their best and when things are as bad as they can get.
Retaining your ability to hope isn''t about giving up when things didn't work as you had expected or feeling as if things will never work out or feeling that you are too old to find what you need out of life. It's about facing the sorrow and pain of where you are but knowing that you have enough hope in life to endure it. That is what hope is for me these days, knowing that no matter what, my ability to hope for happiness, joy and peace in my life is bigger than any problem I might ever face.
Does giving up something we hold as important as sharing a healthy sexual relationship with the person we love mean not being able to find joy and happiness in that relationship? I don't know. There are times I would sell my soul to have my ex back with me. There are hundreds of things that motivate me in that desire. When I look at it realistically though I know that it would mean more pain and to me it's easier to be alone than to be constantly rejected. I love him but loving him is too painful and I can't have the things I hope for in my life through a relationship with him.
I wish I could offer you comfort. You seem to be such an intelligent man. Oh, how I would have loved for my ex to be able to articulate his feelings the way you do and to have the desire for me the way you do your wife. There are woman who would give anything to have that in their lives. Put your hope and faith in yourself and no matter what you choose as far as your marriage things will turn out. Cathy~
