For the record, I don't believe in therapy, lots of talking, vacations, candlelight dinners, dancing, high-drive spouse doing housework, and gifts to solve a sex-starved marriage. In fact, in years of studying the issue -- and being in a 20+ year SSM myself -- I have to see ANYTHING that works, unless BOTH spouses are willing to work their azzes off at it.
I've heard too much of the, "No sex -- I'm outa here". Or, "My spouse cheated -- I'm outa here." Like those are solutions. Yeah, right. That's just running away from the problem.
sometimes getting away from the 'problem' is the solution.
remember not all marriages can be saved. not all couples should have gotten married in the first place. and sometimes people just fall out of love, or in love with someone else.
you can scream into the wind the rest of your life, but if you are continually unhappy who really is going to consider you a martyr? the tumbleweed?
Puppy Dog Tails, though therapy doesn't work for all people, it does work for some people in some situations. It just hasn't totally solved my problem, and probably never will.
Steve McQueen, I'm not unhappy in my marriage. The only problem is that it's sexless. As for the virtues of staying in the marriage, we have a whole bunch of kids. So it very much matters to a whole lot of people, not just the tumbleweed.
As for the virtues of staying in the marriage, we have a whole bunch of kids. So it very much matters to a whole lot of people, not just the tumbleweed.
Hey Ssmguy, I understand and respect your position - but the thing that worries me (mostly from a woman/your wife's perspective) is what happens when the kids are grown, the house is paid off, your career is bubbling along .... and there are not a whole lot of people who benefit from you and your wife staying married?
Will you still be prepared to stay in a ssm? Particularly if some bright young thing with great legs at the office notices you?
I understand your position and agree there are enough reasons to stay married if you've got kids and a house etc etc, however in the years I've been reading about marriages/relationships/life transitions etc I've noticed a consistent theme around people who got married young or have been in marriages that were OK - but not fantastic - who reach a particular age or point in their life where they just crack and leave their marriage and the left behind spouse (LBS) is completely shocked.
I've heard women shattered when their husband tells them ILYBINILWY after 15 or 25 years of marriage - saying things like "we haven't had sex in 10 years - so why is he leaving now, why not 9 years ago?" or "I knew he'd like to have more sex - but I didn't know he'd leave me because of it".
To be fair, those husbands probably didn't think they would leave either early in the SSM - but often the kids are older, there's not so many reasons to stay married, men are more confident, so less concerned with what family and friends will think of them/say about them etc etc.
Around here people call it a mid-life crisis, I refer to it as life transition. I worry about your wife - because even though you guys have been in therapy etc, it seems you've let her off the hook for now in relation to working on this part of your marriage - so it's possible she's in denial about how big an issue this is for you.
for what it's worth ....
V
Never make someone a priority, who makes you an option.
Walking, what you say makes perfect sense. But I'm an optimist, and I naively believe that I can make it all work out. My wife is not the jealous type, and neither am I. And any bright young thing that might come into my life would also likely not be the jealous type. In which case we'd all be one big happy family and everybody gets their needs met. Now, sure, I'd agree with anybody who says it doesn't usually happen that way. But then again, I've a track record of more unusual things than that in other areas of life.
You call it a mid-life crisis? Gee, I didn't think of chosing to becoming a sexually active heterosexual as being a mid-life crisis! I usually think of that term as being reserved for the guy who is getting plenty of sex with his wife, and in spite of that goes out and buys a red sports car and sleeps with the young thing he picked up at the bar.
I sometimes think of myself as a closet heterosexual. In order to become a sexually active heterosexual, I'd have to come out of the closet and upset some people. A lot of people would ask questions and I would have to explain that well, that's who I am -- I'm a sexual person and I'm sorry if that upsets you. But I have to be who I am.
SSMGuy, just out of my own curiosity, can I ask how you know that your wife doesn't want to know about your other sexual partners? Has she said that to you?
