Waiting More Than a Dozen Years

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

First, I am not into Tolle (I had to look him up just to know what you are referring to). No, my being present and my awareness of being is a home-grown approach to life that I developed over the years. Part of it is observation with intuition, part of it has been been influenced by various things I've heard and read. It certainly hasn't been something "taught" within my family. I've refined it a bit over the years, reorganized the tools I have in my toolbox from time to time, and my view is not based on any particular approach by any particular person.

Do you love your wife? (whatever love is?)

Are you prepared to have an affair - and if you do will you tell your wife - or deceive her?

If you are in life transition and you plan to leave your wife, on the basis of a conversation about sex you had several years ago is that really fair to her in the here and now? (acknowledging it wasn't really fair for her to ask you for the no sex rule to start with)

The short answer to your first question is "yes." I was considering this while I was away at my conference. My love for her has never felt (to me) as "strong" as it I felt for either my first love so many years ago (the first woman I gave serious consideration to asking to marry me) or for my first wife.

Still, when I look at my wife, I still have affection for her, there is still recognition (on my part) of that which I feel as love. And I also idnetify and relate to that expression as more akin to a housemate. Our relationship feels like it operates at just about the same level of relatedness as the relationship that I retain with my ex-wife (and I haven't seen or talked with her since April).

Am I prepared to have an affair (and I would tell her if I did. I would be true to that promise). No, not really. I've been on the receiving end of an affair and I know my experience of that was not what I would call fun. I maintain my boundaries as I know how tenuous they can be when intimacy goes missing (real or perceived). I am certainly not out there looking. Am I in someone else's crosshairs? Possibly, but I'm not easily persuaded.

So, an affair for me looks pretty much out of the question. My ex-wife did that to me. My current wife did that to her second husband (by routinely sleeping with her first (ex) husband). The mess that creates looks like more than I'd like to deal with.

The last question about walking away is something I'm still considering. What's the probability? About 25%, about 1 out of 4. My guess is that it would hurt her badly and the thought of her crying at the reaction (if that's the reaction she would have) is not one that I relish. By the same token she's not going to change.

So, where I am is the same place that I was when I arrived here. Kobayashi Maru. Which leads me back to my original intuition...I should have never gotten involved.

I appreciate you sharing your sense of loss. I can related to it from the "receiving end."

More later. It's time to go share some time with a friend whose mother died this weekend, something I went through earlier this year.

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

I left him.

It was the most stupid thing I've ever done.

4 years later, I'm still really sad about it.

I have great adventures now, my whole life is an adventure and I have a great sex life whenever I want it, my career has just gone from strength to strength ... but it's lonely being free my friend.

I miss my husband, my friend, my mentor, my (at times infrequent) lover.

I have a couple of questions about this. I haven't tried to search through your previous posts and you may have answered this before.

Question 1: Knowing what you knew then, was it the best choice you could have made with the information and view you had at the the time?

Question 2: Knowing what you know now, would you do it again? Or would you choose a different path?

Looking forward to you reply.

[Walking]

I don't know why Earl, but I've been thinking about you all day.

I've been thinking about you in the context of life transitions and how your story has highlighted to me that I, and probably most of us on this board make a lot of excuses and articulate a lot of reasons for leaving a marriage or being left from a marriage - but call it Midlife Crisis, call it transition, call it whatever you like - what we are talking about is one partner making concious decisions about their personal ambitions, goals and aspirations and analysing if our current relationship (and all of it's unique circumstances) will be able to adapt sufficiently to provide us a safe base to grow from. Sexually, professionally, emotionally, spiritually - whatever.

This is a board with the express intention of keeping marriages together - but in reality Michelle WD's philosophy,- is that we only have control of ourselves. We can't change, manipulate, bully or overpower our partner or anyone else to make our life what we want it to be. We have the responsibility for making our life what we want it to be.

That also means, we are responsible for the relationships we end up in - and I really respect the way you take responsibility for that in your own relationship. It's taken me a few years, but I understand that now too!!

Question 1: Knowing what you knew then, was it the best choice you could have made with the information and view you had at the the time?

Question 2: Knowing what you know now, would you do it again? Or would you choose a different path?

A year ago, I would have answered no to both questions unequivocally. For several years I grieved and regretted my decision and couldn't for the life of me understand why I'd felt so compelled to leave when I really had nothing to go to. He repartnered very quickly - so I was jealous too. It was horrible.

Over the past year, and in particular during the past couple of months I've come to understand why it happened, why it was important for me and how lucky I was, in hindsight, that he did move on to someone else so quickly - because that helped his sense of loss - and it meant I couldn't be wishy washy about if I wanted to be with him or not - he wasn't available to pine for and that was that.

Now I know I was right to trust my instincts and my judgement. The past few years have been incredible years for me. I've learned so much about myself, the universe, life. Stuff I could never have learned being in any relationship and definately not one with my xhusband(it's probably worth noting that I'd had boyfriends since I was 16 years old - and I just went from one boyfriend to the next, ... I'd never found peace in myself and I'd never really had to look after myself). I've certainly learned through this whole experience that we are born alone and we die alone - at some stage through our life we probably need to learn how to BE alone.

So in answer to question 1 it's yes and no - what I knew then was that I was looking for something - and I didn't know what it was or where it was but I didn't think it was in my marriage. All I knew was that I had this strong instinct to shake my life up because it wasn't working for me. I didn't know why. For the next couple of years though I thought I had been very wrong.

In answer to question 2 - Knowing what I know now, would I do it again? Or would I choose a different path? That's a really hard question. I'd like to say that if I knew then, what I know now, I would have realised that what I was looking for was respect and development of my self. With the information and tools I have available to me now, after several years of learning and growing as an individual and building the resilience that has carried me through my separation and divorce I know I could have found my self no matter who I was married to or sleeping with. The thing is - I had to go through the pain, indecision, horror to get that information and most importantly to really KNOW it.

I'm sad that I wasn't mature enough to fulfil my marriage obligations, but I'm very very grateful that I had the courage to trust my instincts and make the very hard decisions that did in the end teach me more about myself than I could ever have hoped to learn in the safe world I was living in when I was married.

Thanks for the thought provoking questions. The thing about this journey to self awareness is that it never ends!

Cheers, V

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

Thank you for your reply and your consideration of my questions. I keep thinking about where I am with my life and what, if anything, has changed for me that this situation has occupied my thoughts in many of my waking hours. I have sensed I am in transition from one phase of my life to the next. It certainly feels that way to me and maybe that is all that I needed.

I generally say that I'm pleased with who (and how) I've turned out. And part of that includes this sentiment: if what I've experienced is and was the only way to become who I've become, I would do it again without hesitation. That does not mean that my life is without disappointment, as some things have not turned out the way I expected.

I also look to see what I can learn from the past, not to relive it, but to observe my life to see what occurred and how it might inform me in the present and the future. For example, my ex-wife and I really are good friends after everything we've been through. We maintain a certain distance in our relationship. And we've explored, both individually and together, what could have been done differently on either of our parts that would have had our marriage succeed. Other than a matter of poor timing and having a greater awareness (in 1980)of the hormone flood/imbalance, neither of us can come with anything that would have made any difference. (she can offer nothing, and anything that I have come up with she has told me that would not have done it).

What she knows (and knew then) was she underestimated my love for her. But once she felt she was committed to carrying through her affair ("to see where it goes"), she didn't turn away from it. She vascillates on whether it was ultimately the rigth choice (it depends upon what she's talking about and with whom she's talking). But as I pointed out, all the things she blamed me for in her life are still there, unaddressed.

She looks at how my life went after she left and what I was doing and willing to do (which I told her I would, not to spite her but to be her partner in getting frompoint A to point B in things like career, areas to expand our lives together, the sharing of the joys of parenting. There have been times when she has expressed that it should have been her and I that were doing those things sharing that life.

She has apologized to me for what she did (apology accepted AND not really necessary for me) and yet, she does not go so far as to tell me that she made a mistake because I think there is a mixed set of feelings.

In my case, my intuition told me (not right away in the shock of the discovery and her desire to leave me and move out of the house, but months later once I realized I was going to survive, the thoughts of suicide subsided, and I was rebuilding my life after on the "journey of a discarded husband"), that I just should not be involved with anyone else. The struggle I felt in this relationship kept reminding of that intuitive thought. Yet, I ignored it (I ignored it over a new job I took and after that experience, i realized that I really needed to start listening more closely. It wasn't that something did not feel right, I would take the time to think things through, examine that sense of things critically.). Hence, my sense today is I neither heeded my own intuition and I would probably make a different choice today.

There is a characteristic pattern to my life and specifically in my love relationships...it is that they ultimately are sexless. Or as I sometimes say of myself, I seek out women with whom I desire to be sexually intimate and related, whose defintion of "success" is if they don't have sex with me.

Lunchtime over. Back to work for me.

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

There is an observation I have made (about myself) about when my life goes the smoothest, but I wan't to reconsider it before I share that here. I just note it in this message so I don't forget it in the future.

When I said that I would have been better off not getting involved with anyone and just being a father, I really meant it this way: no short-term or long-term relationships where sex is involved in any way whatsoever. Now, my son has long since graduated high school and the university (11 and 6 years, respectively) and has gone on to complete his Master's and is working on his Doctorate. He's also had some time to work in the engineering field, as I have, and has come to realize just how much I "sacrificed" to be there and be involved as his parent in the joint custody arrangement my ex-wife and I set up at the outset. That being said (and he has discussed this with me) he is also very thankful for the way I managed that.

So, when does my life run the smoothest? The observation is a simple one; whenever I have nothing to offer, i.e., that there is nothing I have and nothing I do that is the least bit interesting to someone else. This is not to say that I act inappropriately, I don't. Rather, it is a way of being that acknowledges whatever might be found likeable is an illusion and that there is absolutely nothing for me to do with those feelings or actions of another.

Beyond being a sperm donor, there is absolutely nothing (unique) that I have to offer.

This POV that I have nothing unique to offere is not the source of the problem. The source of the problem is the expectation that there should be something that I have to offer and that there should be (fill in the blank) , e.g, sexual intimacy. So, as I cross this boundary or transition into what I consider my last stage of life, what I am dealing with is my own expectation that there should have been and in the future that there should be sexual intimacy in my life. When I think critically about that, there is no bais for what should have been.

My life runs smoothest when there are no such expectations (and therefore no disappointments) in how people choose to be. They are just being who they are and in my presence, who they are in the space that I allow them to do that "safely." Sometimes that brings forth the best of themselves, sometimes the worst. In choosing not to be involved, I would know that there would be no expectations of intimacy because I had chosen that path for myself. My completeness and happiness would not depend upon someone else.

The question that is coming into focus is do I do this alone, or do I stick with "'til death do us part." There is a large degree of certainty sticking with the marriage and waiting for life's clock to run out. For me, I realize the default position is to let the clock run out. Is that the choice I wish to actively rather than passively choose? Now that I have asked that question, it can no longer be a passive choice.

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

TSHTF today. Still sorting the pieces.

[Bagheera]

There is a characteristic pattern to my life and specifically in my love relationships...it is that they ultimately are sexless. Or as I sometimes say of myself, I seek out women with whom I desire to be sexually intimate and related, whose definition of "success" is if they don't have sex with me.

On the one hand, it may be true that you are sub-consciously attracted to women who are either inherently low-desire (sexually), and who therefore lose much of the sex-drive following the dopamine-laden, "infatuation" stage of the relationship, or perhaps women who have "attachment disorders" of the kind that cause them to avoid intimacy and close physical contact in general.

If you have read through my threads, you will know that I married a woman who was sexually abused in her childhood and who therefore suffers from intimacy-avoidance issues herself...and that there is a psychological link between the woman that I married and a similar history on my mother's part. From what I understand, it's a common phenomena for people to recreate the relationship problems of their childhood within their own pairings/marriages: a subconscious effort to continue the "fight" and finally solve what they were unable to "fix" growing up.

On the other hand, it may be that you have failed to understand and develop the personal attributes and behaviors that keep you sexually attractive to your partners. Sexual attractiveness is not, generally, a function of conscious thought (although it can be affected by it). It is, instead, largely a function of our primal, subconscious drives and reactions to stimuli which have roots going back millions of years in our evolutionary history. Men are naturally attracted to women who have the highest potential for successful child bearing and child care-giving (physical and personality attributes). Women are naturally attracted to men who have the highest potential for successfully fathering offspring and then defending them and providing (food, shelter, clothing, etc.) for those children, and her...again, these are both physical and personality attributes. Even today, in our modern, relatively easy-survival societies, we are still largely driven by old, deeply-rooted primal "instincts" when it comes to what we find sexually attractive in a member of the opposite sex.

Humans, in particular, use sex *primarily* as a way to keep couples pair-bonded together for the many years necessary for child-rearing. From an evolutionary standpoint, this appears to be a relatively recent phenomena, however, and not yet fully developed and "automatic," at least not in a robust sense. Sex-drives in a bonded pair are easily derailed, especially once the infatuation stage of the R is complete (the brain-chemical boost goes away) and the demands of child-care begin to apply stress on the couple. It takes work and effort to keep the "desire to couple" alive and healthy in a long-term relationship.

Might I suggest to you, TEGH, that you begin to make a study of human sexuality and how it functions? There are been a large number of modern studies on the topic, and also on the basic differences between males and females of our species in general, that may help to shed some light on how your relationships have developed in the manner that they have.

-- B.

[Walking]

I generally say that I'm pleased with who (and how) I've turned out. And part of that includes this sentiment: if what I've experienced is and was the only way to become who I've become, I would do it again without hesitation. That does not mean that my life is without disappointment, as some things have not turned out the way I expected.

And I think that is exactly the point you come to in a life transition ... this is what I am now as a result of all the experiences, good and bad, I have had to date. Is this who and how I want to be - or do I want to be something or someone more authentic? It's like you get to a point where you've stumbled through your life and you look around you and say is this what I expected? If the answer is no – then you need to go to the next box in the flow chart – Is it acceptable as it is, or do I want more/something else?

Beyond being a sperm donor, there is absolutely nothing (unique) that I have to offer.

As a statement, that is perhaps true – but as a reality that’s all over to you. You chose to have nothing unique to offer. How’s that working for you apart from providing you with periods of smoothness in your life?

My life runs smoothest when there are no such expectations (and therefore no disappointments) in how people choose to be.

And that my friend is the kicker. Do you want your life to be smooth – or do you want it to be fulfilling? Do you want to live without expectations, uniqueness, highs and some lows?

In my experience, taking the risk to make authentic decisions about the life I aspired to was a really important thing for me to do.

I think it’s about what your vision for your life is. When you look at the next period of your life how do you want it to look? The point is - that’s all up to you.

You can’t get your happiness from someone else or from a set of circumstances. Happiness doesn’t come from money, security, marriage. The quality of those all contribute to our comfort but true happiness comes from finding the authentic self. The authentic YOU.

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

On the one hand, it may be true that you are sub-consciously attracted to women who are either inherently low-desire (sexually), and who therefore lose much of the sex-drive following the dopamine-laden, "infatuation" stage of the relationship, or perhaps women who have "attachment disorders" of the kind that cause them to avoid intimacy and close physical contact in general.

Statistically speaking, a population of three different women (for me) is not much of a statistical population. The thing for me to notice is that I am the common element beyond the three. But it was also written very much tongue-in-cheek.

My first love, and the first relationship that I thought of in terms of being "in love" with this girl, then woman, occurred in my last year of high school (I was 17, she was 16) and over my first couple of years at the university (she briefly reappeared in my life right after I graduated from the university). The year difference in our ages played a role since I was a year older and meant that I left home first. We tried to maintain a relationship from 300 miles apart over my fisrt-two and her first year in our respective univerisities. At the level of personal communication and connectedness it was wonderful. At the level of sexual intimacy, she would be up to a point and then she would kinda freeze up or just lose interest. We never were sexually intimate. Oh, there was lots of petting and foreplay that went on at different times and to look at from outside, it looked very warms and probably quite sensual and sexual. But it wasn't that way. We eventually went our separate ways, me wondering just what that was I was fighting. But we left the relationship on "hold."

Eight years ago, she contacted me. Seems she was thinking about me and wanted to apologize. She graduated from her college, married someone she had met there (I met him once), and a few years later their marriage came completely undone because she had an affair....with a woman. It was a bad scene according to her. To make a long story short, she divorced, found another partner and has been in a relationship with that woman for 25 years. But 14 years transpired between the time she and I met (as teenagers, and briefly in our early 20's) until she came out of the closet.

I'm not the first man to have fallen in love with a lesbian that was not yet out, particularly in those times and at that age.

My second love and I met 4 months after the girlfriend (above) and I decided that things just were not working out for us. This woman was my first sexual partner and eventually became my wife 4 years later. Although the two of us hit a brief rocky patch a couple of years into our relationship (her with her ex-fiance, me with the girlfriend noted above) our relationship was, frankly, spectacular. And the sex was, well, beyond anything I imagined and it just kept getting better, more sensuous, more satisfying (if that was even possible). We got married and almost two and half years later we conceived our son.

The words to describe what that was like for me just seem so inadequate. Let me put it this way, if there had ever been any fear of losing myself with her, that went completely away. I was thoroughly, totally in love with her. We made love for hours on end, sometimes 3 or 4 times a day and mentally it was difficult to see where I ended and she began.

Even through the pregnancy, though our sex life slowed slightly towards the end (in the last month we might skip a day or night), it was absolutely incredible. In fact, the morning she went into labor (it was a Saturday), we were about to make love again when her water broke (though "leaked" might be a better description). In that last week, we had made love every night or morning and the weekend before, multiple times in multiple places in the house as we finished off the house for our child. That is all, except Friday (and we went well into Friday morning with what we started on Thursday night).

For seven years and two months, to the day, from the first time we made love to the last time before our son was born it was the most spectacular, most sexually fulfilling on the both a physical and emotional level, it never got stale, boring, or forced. Each time was like dicovering each other for the first time. I'm not making this up feom just my perspective, she says it felt the same to her. No book or wrting about the sexual experience did this justice.

And then it went away.

Not gradually, but suddenly. From the time our son was born to the time we went our separate ways 4 years later, the total number of times we had intercourse: 16. In our worst month in the 7 years and two months before that, it might only be 16 times. We'd typically make love 16 times over a two-week period. And all of a sudden I was confronted with this, seven years after we'd first become sexually involved with each other.

C'mon, Bagheera, this is not about me being attracted to low drive women. If a "sexless marriage" is one were sexual intimacy occurs less than 10 times a year, then I suddenly encountered one and it was completely unexpected. But the outcome is the same. I ended up married, for a while, to a woman whose reason for being with me was to not have sex with me.

Oh yes, in the middle of this sudden lack of sex (and her guilt over that as well as me trying to sooth her and keep the frsutration level down even though the intimacy gave hints that it was returning), at the age of 29 she meets a 22 year old university student on the bus that changed her life, who convinced her that I had walked away from her and I really did not love her, that I just wanted the sex, and that he was the one to give her happiness (of course, she had already had to have a POV about me and our relationship for this to take hold). It's a little like Dick Cheney saying that he found the best VP candidate and it was him.

She had another teenage rebellion as she approached the age of 30 and she discarded me (for that?)

As for my current wife, there is no doubt that I gave her the ammunition to kill the sex life. I gave her the choice or the option and I never expected her to take that route. In my discussion with Virginia (AKA Walking) I muse over the difficulties with expectations. When we met, even though we had other problems in the relationship, our sex life was one that "proved" that women at the age of 39 reach their sexual peak. And the first couple of years were good.

But then everything started to set in at once and I did not realize what the outcome was going to be. I did not realize how tough it was going to be as she went through menopause, I did not realize how much of a damper that a football sized fibroid on her uterus, and a softball-sized cyst on her ovary was going to play havoc on our sex life. When I said that she was "bleeding to death," I was not kidding. And then, trying to be adults and discussing this lack of sex and my request that there be some commitment, any commitment, to a sexually intimate marriage, I got a very definite no. In the middle of a family medical crisis (her mother had just suffered a debilatating stroke two months before), I got this "no."

As I have said before, I did not expect that to be permanent on her part.

A year later she had her hysterectomy to remove the uterus and ovaries and her sex drive is now "zero." As I have said now more than once, she is not a candidate for hormone replacement therapy.

In this second marriage, these factors have been magnified. I don't think it's because I attract or am attracted to low drive women. What I do say, is that I give and have given these women the space and the relative safety to be non-sexual if (and in my case when) they reach that point without dire threat of draconian consequences.

Again, in my wife's case, I know what the studies and statistics are. Ten years after her operation and 12 years after deciding against a sexually intimate relationship, the likelihood of any sexual intimacy returning to the relationship is effectively "zero" (at the 95% confidence interval).

I'm looking for how to deal with that in the future as well as right now. The prospect of another 12 and half years much less another 6-months of a sexless marriage does not thrill me. Now, if yo know where to point me with those facts on the ground, great. The other part I'm having to deal with is her domaneering nature and what it's going to take to take back the ground I've given up.

In the context that I've laid out, that will likely be down in the "no-sex" mode.

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

I will attend to your post shortly, I am going for a long walk to organize my thoughts.