OK, why does she make you happy? What about her makes you happy?
I'm not trying to get you to admit that she doesn't make you happy, you just need to have a clear statement of what exactly is at stake for you here. For both of you, really. The reason I'm only asking about the first one is that the other three were very clear.
Don't make the mistake of thinking that the way a man and a woman relate sexually necessarily makes any logical sense. There's a hole in my wall from banging my head against that particular spot. But there are reasons why she doesn't want sex, even if neither of you see all of them. It DOES make sense to her in some way, but that doesn't mean that she would be proud of her reasons or even able to face up to them honestly.
Quote:
I asked myself if missing that one thing was grounds to end the marriage and decided absolutely not.
Think about this carefully. Was that true? Or were you just determined that no reason would be enough to make you end the marriage? It's not so much a matter of whether it's worth ending the marriage, but whether it's a dealbreaker for you or not. If it is, then you betray your integrity by accepting a sexless marriage. But not accepting it doesn't necessarily have to mean your marriage ends . . . it might, though, mean taking that chance. I can tell you that nothing changed for real in my marriage until I abandoned my "I would never, ever leave you for any reason, ever" stance and told my wife that I would not live in a sexless marriage (with the anger and resentment and lack of self-respect that carried for me.) I had to face the fact that our marriage would either change so it could continue or end in divorce.
Notice that this is not a demand that she has to have sex . . . it's just acknowledging that we both have a choice, and that I've reached a point where I can't keep pushing that choice aside anymore. To have self-respect, I have to do what I can to get what I want in life, and I want to be married to my lover, not my roommate, sister, or employer. The problem with that, from her point of view, is that as long as I was afraid to force the issue, she could coast along in low-level misery in our sexless marriage and had an excuse to defer her choice indefinitely, too. Once I made my choice, she had to make hers, and that was scary. I didn't understand all this as well at the time as I do now--Schnarch explains it well, and I hadn't read him back then. Bottom line, though, I was slowly losing my wife and my marriage by keeping quiet and trying to go along, hoping I'd find a way to make her happy. What made her happy was finding herself married to a man she could respect, which was impossible until I stood up for what I believe and want.
Last thing, because I'm no longer on call tonight and I've got to get to bed: It doesn't seem from the little reading I've done about your situation here as if your wife believes you when you say the sex doesn't matter to you. It seems from your description as if she doesn't like her lack of desire, doesn't think you're as resigned as you say you are, and doesn't respect your choice to set yourself aside to try to serve "her needs."
