Well, as SSMGuy found out (and I did, too, if you go read my original thread) if you bring up divorce without the resolve to do it, then you haven't really given an ultimatum. You only reinforce that you're weak and you'll put up with anything.
If you genuinely will not divorce under any circumstances, it would be better not to bluff.
I don't think of my tolerance of my situation as a weakness, and I will not allow myself to force divorce out of a fear that I'd otherwise be "weak". That's the sort of thing people with great insecurities do -- they do the most extreme things (violence, guns) to try to show they're not afraid of taking "risks" and to "get resolution" quickly.
As for allowing my wife to manipulate me, you could see it that way. But I'm not in a game of power struggle and figuring out how to come out on top.
There are a lot of other innocent people involved in my situation, and I pretty much automatically resist and view with suspicion the typically American advice to "just divorce" to show them you're boss, etc. I've heard way too much American advice about how divorce is clean and such and how the kids all get used to it and it's good for them too. My wife is a child of divorce, and her parents even did it very cleanly, and are still all on good terms. But the effect of that divorce is still baggage my wife has to deal with, and that too came up in therapy.
I "love" the way Americans have lined up a lot of psychologists to put parental self-realization as a priority ahead of their kids in recent decades. And when parents pay for therapists to tell them they should go ahead and divorce because the kids will be happy as long as the parents are happy. Talk about a load of BS. And might that have something to do with who's paying the shrink? I'll bet it would be a different advice if the kids were paying for the shrink! The fact is, kids DO NOT automatically feel OK about their parents sleeping with other people JUST BECAUSE they have divorce and re-marriage paperwork that makes it all official, kosher, and holy. To a lot of kids, it feels wrong that parents sleep with new people, sometimes regardless of whether they do it in a marriage, or after a divorce. I know I'll get pushback from people on this, and I'm familiar with all the circumstances, but the fact of the matter is, I can quote you from a lot of people, like a female friend of mine who is still in a rage over her step mother and the way she wormed herself into her father's life. The way she talks about it, now even 15 years after the divorce, is virtually identical to the way she might have talked about it had her father had an affair on the side. In her case, a divorce did not make it nice and tidy and clean at all.
Ssmguy,
This thread is developing very quickly.
I would be very interested to hear what your own parents example of marriage looked like to you.
My own parents separated when I was about 6.
It was very far from being the worst thing to happen to our family. In fact, I am grateful it did happen, because my mother and father were completely incompatible and if they had somehow stayed together, I think I would have had a traumatic childhood as opposed to the merely difficult or awkward one I actually had. I'm thankful I was spared a truly appalling example of marriage at such a young age, and with a blank canvas, was able to make up my own mind about what a marriage should look like.
You said: "As for allowing my wife to manipulate me, you could see it that way. But I'm not in a game of power struggle and figuring out how to come out on top."
IMO it is a very big mistake for I, or you, or any man in a sex starved marriage, to kid himself that marriage is not a power struggle. Two different people, with different gender, different upbringings, different experiences, values and ambitions. Given that reality, how can a fulfilling marriage not involve struggle? It is a power struggle, quite clearly. Not in the sense of having to prevail over another or face defeat oneself, but certainly in the sense of desires and values having to be asserted, recognised and upheld.
From what I have read, Ssmguy, there was indeed a "power struggle" in your marriage. It pitted your wife's discomfort/ stress at dealing with sex, against your desire to be a sexual man in a sexual marriage. Her fear of growing beyond her trauma against your desires. And her fear prevailed. Your desire to have a sexually fulfilling marriage was weaker than her fear of painful but rewarding personal growth. She knows that, and I would be surprised if on some level she doesn't resent you for it, for tolerating her laziness.
Have you read The Road Less Travelled by M Scott Peck? I would strongly recommend it. His central thesis is that the great truth of human existence is that "Life is difficult." If we accept that, we transcend it. If we confront problems as and when they arise, through thought and discipline and hard work, we overcome them and become stronger in spirit. Love is about extending ourselves, and about encouraging those close to ourselves to extend themselves. Another important point he makes, is that we all have within us an "inner laziness", that would rather we didn't confront problems, that would like things to stay nice and easy and comfortable. But if life is difficult, that inner laziness must be overcome, so that issues are addressed and overcome, and so that our spirit evolves.
Does any of that make sense in the context of your marriage?
I take it you and your wife had sex on at least several occasions, as you have a good few children? She was able to bring herself to have sex for that purpose, but not in order to have a close relationship with you?
Something else that strikes me, Ssmguy, is this. I can see how an Open Marriage can be an alternative in certain situations. But this isn't an Open Marriage. She still doesn't know you have sex with other women, does she?
In order to have sex, you are having to be furtive and secretive about it. Why? So that her "feelings" are spared. Do you see how lop-sided your marriage really is? Your wife and her "feelings" run the entire show: (1) She doesn't like sex. (2) So no sex in the marriage. (3) No divorce either. (4) And no discussion of sex or sexuality within the marriage. (5) You mustn't let her know you have sex.
!!!
And the fact that you have let her rule and marginalize your sexuality in this way - pushing it right out of the marriage bed and the marital home - tells me that you too have received some very bad messages about sex somewhere along the way. From her or your parents? Part of you (though not all of you) agrees with her premise that sex is unimportant, repulsive even, and has no place in a marriage.
You understandably want this marriage to stay intact for your children, Ssmguy, as a father myself I can see how weighty a consideration that is. But how old are they? Because I really do wonder what messages they are getting from all this? About love and sex, intimacy and honesty? About marriage. Would you want your son to be in this kind of marriage? What would you say to him if he was? If your primary concern is indeed your children, you should be asking yourself these kinds of hard questions. Because from what I've read, there must be a hell of a lot of suppression and eggshell-walking going on in your home.
I'm still in the process of working a lot of these things out for myself in my own marriage. All I can say at this stage is that DanceQueen's perspective on these issues was very illuminating to me. That in her own first marriage what she truly needed was to be really pushed to confront her own issues, to be led by a man willing to face his own and unwilling to tolerate hers.
I have seen great progress in my own marriage, by being completely open and unashamed about my sexual wants, by no longer tolerating my wife's "excuses". I have learnt to see that her excuses are usually her inner laziness talking, and to push right on through them. In order to have the momentum to do that, I have had to confront my own ideas about sex; to recognise how I think about it and why and where those messages came from.
S&A
"A man can be destroyed but not defeated" - from The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway.
Which I take to mean that every man has within him a spirit of relentlessness and optimism. Its already there; he just has to cultivate it.
