Waiting More Than a Dozen Years

[Walking]

"Women do not like controlling men. They respect and are attracted to men who control themselves. They ultimately are repelled by men who allow themselves to be controlled." -S&A

I love your quote Spellfire.

As a 39 year old woman, divorced for 2 years, living a new fulfilling life, where I meet lots of men, but not one I like enough yet to get serious with - this is one of the biggest issues I run into with men.

My observation is that the men I meet fall into 1 of 2 categories

1. Control freaks - who usually haven't recognised the extent of their controlling behaviour; and
2. Men who want to be controlled - some to the extent that sometimes I think they want me to be their mother - believe me there is nothing less sexy than a man who wants to be mothered.

I firmly believe there are men out there who understand how to control themselves and are able to bring that controlled, but uncontrolling self, to a relationship ... I'll let you know if I fall over him!!!

What's S&A?

V

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

"Second, what do you consider "stellar feedback and advice" and by what measure or yardstick do you make that assessment?"

LOL! The fact that you would even say this tells me all I need to know about your situation.

Tea, this will be my last post to you. Good luck with whatever it is you are trying to accomplish.

DQ

DQ:

That certainly is your choice. So, trusting that you are true to your word, I close and complete with you with the following:

It was a question, and a question, by it's nature cannot and does not tell you anything. It is are quest for information and is an opportunity to tell the requestor something.

The fact that it you stated that it told you "all I need to know about your situation" is incorrect. You read what I wrote and you had one or more feelings about it and gave what I wrote some meaning. You added to that by carrying out an internal conversation (a monologue) about the meaning and decided that what you say and feel about it is THE TRUTH, not what I said or asked.

This is a characteristic operating procedure for many people and they are largely unaware that they treat their feelings and the meanings/assumptions they assign to "what is happening" as reality, not what is actually happening.

Is the problem that I asked a question? Or is that by providing an answer and engaging in conversation, you might find that the everything that you are sure you know might be called into question? I don't expect you to answer that, just something for you to reflect upon.

So, the first time your new husband asks a question and you have a reaction that starts with "the fact that you would even say this" and ends with your reaction telling you "everything I need to know" you might wish to check-in with yourself on the answer to this question: How is that working out for you?

Or alternatively, in making yourself "right," and him/me/everyone else "wrong," how much connectedness is present in that moment? And has there ever been a time in your life when, in your rightness (or righteousness), you've experienced an occurrence of being connected?

There is nothing to figure out.

Good luck.

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

Several points.

In your Zen example there are several items worth noting. First, the cup was empty to begin with, Second, and this is really the important point, the reaction of the professor is rooted in the following: "there is something wrong" and by extention whether something should or should not "be" a certain way. Third, the reaction is that there is something to be "fixed."

I am aware that the title of this forum "The Sex-Starved Marriage" embodies, by implication, these three parts: "there's something wrong," it should not be this way and there is something to be fixed and a way to fix it.

While my sexless marriage is not a future that I foresaw or one that I overtly sought to create, it is the marriage that I have. I stand here in the present looking to the future and ask is this present (and being informed by the past) one that I wish to continue; literally do I remain true to my word? Do I accept the doctor's information that 30% of all women who go through the cicumstances that my wife went through, ending in a hysterectomy, end up with no sex drive and a sexless marriage and that she is part of this category. (~50% display reduced to much reduced sex drive and the remainder show no change or an increased sex drive). For medical reasons, my wife is not a candidate for hormone therapy. I've been to those forums and read the complaints of the husbands ( no or little sex) and the wives (ranging from feeling guilty over the lack of sex even though they still love their husbands to complaining about the affairs that have occurred as a result, to "I wish he would just leave me alone"). I know what that road looks like.


Or standing in the present, do I create a future that has sex included as part of a marriage or a relationship. I can "fix" my sexless life, that' easy. It's in the context of this marriage where it does not seem probable or likely. What do I choose for the rest of my life /our lives.

I've done enough coaching and had enough training in coaching to have an openess and awareness that there can be unexpected "wax on, wax off" possibilities or the reminder that I already know what I need to know and do and the reminder is just a way of remembering.

I will address the specific issues raised by Bagheera in a separate post to Bagheera a little later.


To love someone unconditionally is not to care who they are or what they do.

Unconditional love, on the surface, looks the same as indifference.

[ssmguy]

Tea, I'm in a very similar situation. The difference is that when my wife wanted to stop having sex, I told her I took that as meaning I can have sex with other women, because being a nonsexual person is NOT an option for me. I suggested we could divorce, but she didn't want to. So I let it be her choice, with the consequences spelled out beforehand. And my choice is also to stay in the marriage because we have many positive other aspects to our marriage.

So far the positives have outweighed the negatives, but I'm not entirely happy with the limitations of friends with benefits. I miss having the old-fashioned kind of romantic sex within a marriage, in our bedroom, in my own home, with the mother of my children, not to mention the security, safety, convenience and social acceptance of the traditional arrangement. I miss the integrated feelings of love and sex all being facets of the same thing, or so it seemed long ago when that was my love life. I envy couples where they seem to have all the sex they want within their own relationship. I've lost the perspective of what that's like.

I'm not recommending my situation to anyone, as I think it's highly dependent on both partners and the compromises they are willing to make. But Tea, my question to you is, have you brought this up with your wife in any way? It's one thing to tell your spouse that you're not going to have sex with them anymore. Like you say, anybody has the right to refuse to have sex. But it's quite another to demand that another person not have sex with anyone! And that's where I've drawn the line. But hey, at least we busted the divorce, and we're both getting what we want sexually.

[Bagheera]

Good morning Earl Grey;

I'm going to go back to something you wrote in your first post here, regarding your current sexual arrangement as of 11 years ago:

After 8 months of back and forth (and still no sexual intimacy) she finally said that she was not willing to be sexually intimate with me nor was she willing to make any commitment to any future intimacy with me. There was never any reason why, just that it was her choice. That meant that I was not to make any further attempts at sex with her, anything suggestive in any form or fashion, and although she was not happy about the fact it placed the responsibility of initiation of anything sexual squarely upon her, she was not willing to have me initiate with her constantly turning me down. No more lingerie, no more romantic evenings or weekends for the two of us.

I would ask that you truly consider the inherent unfairness in her unilateral decision to cut off ALL sexual intimacy, her medical issues notwithstanding. Michele Weiner-Davis wrties the following in The Sex-Starved Marriage:

I also urge you [the low-desire spouse] to consider the unfairness of the tacit agreement you have had with your spouse so clearly pointed out in Dr. Pat Love’s excellent book, The Truth about Love. It goes something like this: “I know you’re sexually unhappy. Although I don’t plan on doing anything about it, I still expect you to remain faithful.” Hello, can you see what’s wrong with this picture?

Personally, I think that this can rightfully be viewed as your wife breaking one of your marriage vows, especially since you put a lot of stock in your own ability to keep *your* word, promises, and vows. A friend of mine on another board wrote the following:

Just because you are married does not mean you have to stay and take whatever the other person says. A lot of LD people will look at their spouse and say... "you'd actually divorce me over lac of sex?" And that tends to halt a lot of HD people in their tracks because the question puts a one dimensional spin on the situation... and a sordid physical one on it at that... that shuts the HD person right up and makes them feel guilty.

But an HD person takes the spin. This is NOT an accurate spin. The answer can be... "no, I won't divorce you over lack of sex. I will move on with my life in a way I see morally fit because we vowed to create a life together. A healthy sex life is part of that. By not having sex with me, you are forcing me into a moral dilemma that was not part of our original agreement. YOU are forcing me to break my vow, either to myself, to you or to God. I am left without any options whatsoever, and THAT I will leave you over. So no, it isn't about the sex. It's about our vows to one another."

Which applies to your situation perfectly. As you've said:

[Your wife told you:] "NO MEANS NO! NOT yes, NOT maybe, but NO! Isn't that what we teach our children?" Well, she was right, but celibacy in our marriage was not something I expected, asked for, or even bargained for. I already had one sexless marriage, why would I want another one?

No, you didn't expect it or agree to the sexless-marriage arrnangement, but it got handed to you anyway, irregardless of your own thoughts and desires. SHE broke the marital arrangment, SHE broke your marriage vows, and yet SHE expects you to just keep on, hangin' on.

At what point do you finally say "Enough is enough!" and put your foot down? At what point do you ask her, "Alright -- if not with you, just WHO am I supposed be intimate with and have sex with? Because I absolutely refuse to live out the rest of my life without it: this issue is now a NON-NEGOTIABLE item to me. I've been patient with you for a long, long time, but my patience has now run out."

Before you just decide to quietly become a Walk-Away Spouse, which is one of two potential outcomes that I see for you right now (the other is to remain in the marriage, silent and miserable), you owe it to yourself and your wife to confront her over this issue, so that she knows, without doubt, exactly why you are considering leaving. She may decide to do nothing about it -- in which case you can leave wiht a clear conscience. But she also might surprise you and decide that her relationship is worth saving. You won't know unless you directly share how you are feeling with her.

-- Bagheera

[ssmguy]

Bagheera, good points. But I'd guess that Tea has ALREADY done what you suggest, just as I have. I have already confronted my wife on the matter, in no uncertain terms. It did not produce a change.

But then what do you do if both partners prefer to stay together for other reasons? Get a divorce but continue being friends? Does a little paperwork alone "solve" the problem?

This is a situation where every option is unacceptable, but you have to choose one of them. I'm guessing that a lot of marriages are in this situation, but most people don't post about their personal situations in online forums. I suspect that in a great many of these marriages, the HD partner has quietly found other outlets for his/her sexual expression, and those "solutions" go on for many years. In these marriages I doubt the LD spouse spends much effort, if any, to snoop on their partners's extramarital activites. In many cases, they don't care to know, because, in a sense, they've already decided that sex isn't important.

[Bagheera]

But I'd guess that Tea has ALREADY done what you suggest, just as I have.

From what he's written here, he has NOT confronted her in the firm, "this is a non-negotiable item for me" manner that I outlined above. Instead, he has avoided conflict and agreed to a set of terms and promises that leave him silent and miserable.

-- B.

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

I'm between teaching a course this week and making a presentation and attending a conference next week. There are a number of items to cover here.

First, I took the test and naswered the questions honestly. Came up with a score of "29" though one question could have changed the score to "30."

Second, there was only one negotiation and that was over our sex life. And it did not start out so much of a negotiation as a series of accusations and complaints on my part. None of that changed the overall trajectory of our sex life...there might be some temporary alteration, but after a brief flurry (yes, the snow metaphor), the time between periods of sexual intimacy got longer and longer.

Third, the other things I described as giving up came about not because I was avoiding conflict, far from it. These were running arguments sometimes extremely loud, hurtful, seething, and they ran for days, weeks months, and years. Avoiding conflict? Not hardly, as we sometimes say here.

Worn down or worn out? Yes, but hardly a case of avoiding conflict. As I said, there is a feeling that has run throughout much of this that has me say to myself that love and relationships aren't this difficult. And it is possible that I made a really poor choice when I chose to remarry and this is the person that I chose.

Now, I realize that in my experience that I have not done everything possible. How do I know? We are both still alive. But if there is anything that you've missed in your rush to pronounce me, it is my level of exhaustion. As my own mountain climbing and backpacking experience has taught me, sometimes you have to know when to push on because if you don't, you're dead. But sometimes sitting tight and waiting it out is the smart move. As I said, it sometimes feels like I'm just running out the clock until...whatever comes next.

As for the other things, there are only three promises. I gave my word and my word is who I am. On the first two, I'm real solid. On threatening to leave, I'm solid on that, too. That was because I was threatening to leave and the therapist said and convinced me that it was not helpful. There will be no threat, no warning. Simply, "I'm done."

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

If life were fair, we'd all have the same name, the same "stuff," and the same life. There would be nothing different or distinctive about our lives.

It does not work out that way and our experience of life is simply a matter of geography, the where and when we are in spacetime. No exceptions.

It seems that my initial observation, that this is a no-win situation, remains accurate and there is little offered here.

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

SSMGUY:

I appreciate your sharing your solution to a similar situation. As I noted above, ending the sexless situation at my personal level is easy. Ending it within the sexual fidelity of the marriage is the situation that does not seem to provide any relief.

I can see that the choice to take a non-negotiable position is a case-by-case call. And with hindsight, I could probably say that the incident from 21 years ago that she brought up was probably the point where I should have packed my stuff into my car, drove my car the 35 miles back to my home. From there I would have gotten on the plane the next morning and flown on to my next assignment and ended this relationship. Instead, I did not go home, we mended the relationship, I got on the plane and rather than skiing at Tahoe the weekend after my assignment, I flew back. I can walk that chain of events back from today to that point or even further into the past where I just could have and perhaps should have walked away.

But in 1988 I had no idea of what was coming 10 years later. She was 41 and I was 34. Did I make the best choice I could given the information available to me at the time?

This is all past history and the question is what's next, what do I do now. That is what I am wrestling with.