38 years & I need physical connection with my wife

[Young at Heart]

Thanks! I really do trust my sex therapist and am amazed at how skilled she is.

But I think it's good that you have an understanding of how frightened she is, because it's hard to to be bitter and angry in this situation. Again, there's a balance to be found between the kind of bitterness that slowly makes you hate your wife and want to walk away on the one hand, and the kind of weakness that makes you want to tell her it's OK and hold her hand when she's hurting you.

That is a really interesting comment. I do love my wife and I do feel that she is frightened and in way over her head. I think that she understands how serious this is, but has not yet realized that her old paterns of behavior are no longer going to cut it any more.

By not being in the "leadership" or "parent" role on the exercises, I can be supportive and "hold her hand" and be supportive as you say.

I also think that the therapist has seen this type of behavior before. If the therapist wanted to (or if it were ethical-which it may be) she could probably summarize what my wife is doing within a couple of minutes for me and explain the theory of what makes my wife tick. More frightening (or intriguing) she could probably dissect what makes me tick in about the same amount of time or less.

Really . . . I don't know if you realize how hard that is to find. There are no sex therapists within an hour and a half of my home, as far as I can tell, and I live halfway between two major cities and very near our state capital. If you've seen others talking about trying to find a sex therapist (or a marriage counselor who would rather save a marriage than guide people through a really aware, amicable divorce) you probably do realize it. I wish you could recommend this therapist, but I realize that might compromise your own anonymity (and what would your wife's reaction to that be?)

I have suspected that they are rare and I know the history of mine and how by a series of weird things she ended up in a city near where I live.

What was amazing was that I had researched sex therapists and had a list of them to give to my wife along with the female doctor and sex therapist who specializes in women with low libido and hormone balance issues. The female doctor recommended two marriage councelors, both of whom were sex therapists. My wife insisted we use one of the two. The two were not on my list, so I did some google searches and this one was was listed and published in everything. When I saw that and read some of her publications there was no choice in my mind. I causually told my wife that I liked this one (without elaborating) and my wife jumped at it.

If anybody lives in Washington State and is willing to send me a private message, I would be happy to forward them the therapists name. But I have to warn you that I don't really check to see if I have private messages, except on rare occasions. So it could take a while for me to respond.

Thank you for the support. I expect that the next couple of weeks will be interesting to see if my wife tries to avoid the therapy exercises or not. I am sure that will be her natural inclination, but I also think that if she does, she is going to be on the recieving end of quite a 5-minute chat after we send the email status update.

I think that my wife, whether she knows it or not is on a short lease and I have the freedom of being there to comfort my wife and reap the benefits of the short lease.

One of the really interesting things is how many passionate people there are out there, such as the members of this website, who are willing to share experiences and offer suggestions. The suggested responses, the books that have suggested and the sharing of things that haven't worked plus the support have really helped me a lot in the few months I have been a member. Thank you to everyone.

And yet how wonderful it is to find a professional sex therapist who really knows her stuff and is a cross between a drill instructor, a mother figure, and old friend.

I am truly luck and blessed. I know that no matter how this ends, that I will have tried to save my marriage through my efforts and the help of a lot of wonderful people. Again, I am hopeful for success, but realize that it is a marathon and not a sprint, and that I can only change myself.

I touch back in a while after I see how my wife deals with all that she was exposed to last night.