OK kunstler, after accidentally posting the wrong message to you, I have moved that message over to the correct thread, and now here's my message intended for you...
You said: "It used to be different. She used to love me and love to have sex with me - but that was when I was still with someone else and shouldn't have been there at all. So I've got my comeuppance."
Its not really comeuppance. What it is is that, when affair partners try to become true partners, they quickly realize that they didn't actually know each other that well. There is a false sense of intimacy that happens during an affair. This is why most affairs burn themselves out at the 2 year mark at the longest. And this is also why affair parterns who then become "out in the open" life partners rarely make it in the long term. There are some statistics out there which would suggest that affair marriages only have about a 20% chance of survival.
So you are living out that statistic, and although that sounds maybe cold, I think that you will benefit from realizing that you are climbing and uphill battle. This way, you can begin to learn what you specifcially need to learn, which may be much different than what other couples who did not start out as affair partners need to learn.
Seems first of all, you need to admit to yourself and accept that you didn't really "know" your wife in reality, you only knew her through the lens of your fantasy and affair. Once you can just admit this to yourself, then you can begin the process of truly knowing her as she is, not as you thought she was from the affair. Getting to know her truly will then give you the knowledge you need to have in order to know how to deal with the current lack of sex.
Seems also that maybe you need to do some healing from whatever happened that caused the affair and then whatever reasons you two "came out" in the open. If there was a messy break up or divorce on your side or her side or both, in order for you two to be together, then this again is some built in baggage you really need to deal with completely. If you - for instance - just both left other long term partners or spouses and then immediatley got together expecting it to be seemless, then you are now realizing the backlash, and that there is no way it would be seemless.
When I was married before, I had affairs. However, luckily for me, I never really "fell" for any of my affair partners. I feel very fortunate for that, because if I had fallen in "love" with any of them and if I had pursued a divorce to be with them, I can see very clearly now that it never would have worked out. The people I had affairs with were NOT people I would want to have a long term relationship with, which is evident to me now very painfully. I feel very blessed that I didn't fall into that mindset, because it would have been disastrous. No matter how well I felt I "knew" any of my affair partners, I actually didn't know them in the least. All I really knew was that they were playing a part in a fantasy I was having, and that none of their true selves were ever really there for me to know. The same was true for me. None of them really knew me either, they only knew the amount of me that was set aside for this wacky fantasy we were involved in. The "real" me was something that doesn't get revealed to someone in that situation, and never will.
None of that is really relevant to you necessarily, but I hope it helps give you insight into the reality you are dealing with: affair partners rarely make good spouses.
