I am recently back on the wonderful site. I am thankful that it is here but sad that I am back. Right now I am posting on Newbies but I thought I would stop in here and talk about my SSM.
Right now I have a WAH. We have been together for 15 years and its been 15 years of a rollercoaster. I knew very early in our R that he watched porn. I really didn't know how much, but it did not really bother me. There were times we used to watch together until he started telling friends what turned me on ect... He has always had mags around and I have on quite a few occasions walked in on him masturbating. It made me feel embarrassed and I would turn around and leave the room. I have never said anything negative about it or gone out of my way to be mean. At that time all the porn he was looking at seemed to be "normal". (I will explain that part in a bit)
As our R progressed and I had 4 pregnancies, 2 which were successful. My sex drive during my pregnancies dropped a lot. When we had sex it was just for his purpose and usually only lasted a few minutes. He complained all the time that he wasn't getting enough sex. I usually ignored what his complaints were during this time. Most of the time I was tired or very sick. Being pregnant did not agree with my body.
Moving ahead a few years. SO the complaints of not enough sex continued. it was a weekly fight. But the more we fought the more he belittled me the less sex we had. And when I say less sex I mean it was down to once a week. So eventually H had an A about 4 years ago. We seperated for about 5 months but continued to have sex during most of the seperation. We even went on a holiday together and had 17 rounds of really good sex in 7 days. When we got back from our trip I recieved an email from him asking for a divorce. By this time I was DBing so I went dark. About a month later he came home wanting to work things out and admitted to the A. She was a friend and I was caught off guard.
For the first 6 months of H being back things were pretty good. He was understanding when I was having issues about the A and would just hold me and tell me how much he loves me. Eventuallyhe just expected me to forget about it and when I didn't he would get mad. And I guess that is where things started to go really wrong.
I noticed that his porn usage was starting to increase again. We had to move from our home and rent a crappy house in another town. Work was not going well for either one of us which escalated our fighting. But the fight s always went back to sex. Now by this point we were having sex at least 3 times a week. But I don't start it very often. And it is not minding blowing crazy porn sex that he is looking for.
So last year we bought a house because he said it was what he needed. Ever since we bought the househe has tried to leave. He will go away for a weekend and not tell me where he is. So again the fights starts. And it always comes back to sex.
Well I did some real soul searching and tried to figure out what was going on with me. What I came up with was I didn't trust him. So I sat him down one day and tried to explain what was going through my head and how I was feeling. That i was trying to work on trusting him but everytime thimgs were rough he would just walk away. so as soon as I felt I could breathe for a minute he would be gone again.
Sorry this is so long, I will try to wrap it up. So after our talk I started to discover his weird porn. I was on the computer one day and he had forgot to empty the history. And there it was...it was stuff like grandmas, very obeese women and a whole lot of she-males. This has completely freaked me out. I really just don't know what to do with this.
Anybody have any idea where to start?
Me:35, 2 kids from PR H: 37, 2 kids with me T: 15 years M: 8 years in Feb. Second walk out: 14-01-2011 H had PA: 2007
You sound like you have done so much right and made such great progress.
I have not had to deal with an affair, so I will let others advise you there.
My thoughts would be to try to get some professional conseling, say with a sex therapist. Ask them to help the two of you to work through some of the trust and porn issues that are of concern to you. Also ask the therapist to help the two of you work on learning to enjoy touching each other and to bring playfulness back into your sex life. While that may not be "crazy porn sex," it will probably bring the two of you closer together emotionally.
As to the grandmas, obeese women and she-males, porn can be addictive and things that are taboos or self punishment can be even more stimulating to some. You might want to talk to him about his sexual fantasies and see what he has to say.
Good luck to you.
>43 years of marriage--My wife and I are now closer than we have been in decades. I believe that my SSM is over.
I have tried to get him to go to C or MC and he refuses. He thinks it is a waste of time and money. The thing is, is that here any C is paid for in our province if you are refered by a doc. You have to pay for MC. He could go on his own but does not think it is a problem. I have tried to force the issue but he just feels the whole SSM is my fault. There is nothing wrong with him.
Kind of at a lose with this one. I just know in my heart that I would love to have a wonderful sex life with someone I trusted. I don't know if I will ever have that with H. he has told me that my trust issues are my problem and he really doesn't care if I trust him.
This is so hard some days.
Me:35, 2 kids from PR H: 37, 2 kids with me T: 15 years M: 8 years in Feb. Second walk out: 14-01-2011 H had PA: 2007
...I have tried to get him to go to C or MC and he refuses. He thinks it is a waste of time and money.
....The thing is, is that here any C is paid for in our province if you are refered by a doc. You have to pay for MC. He could go on his own but does not think it is a problem.
....I just know in my heart that I would love to have a wonderful sex life with someone I trusted. I don't know if I will ever have that with H. he has told me that my trust issues are my problem and he really doesn't care if I trust him.
Again, there are probably others with more experience on this, but if it were me, I would tell my spouse just what you said up above that you "would love to have a wonderful sex life....." I would tell my spouse that you know that they have been hurt due to the lack of sex in the marriage and that you want to change yourself so that the two of you can enjoy the sex that you both deserve, but expecially that you know that your husband need. Then I would say that to accomplish this you need his help and support in the changes you are going to have to make in your life and attitudes. The both of you attending MC and especially MC with a sex therapist is what you feel you need to to have the "wonderful sex life" that you feel the two of you deserve.
As to cost, it is clear that you are probably from Canada and not use to paying for medical care. Let me say that I found several months of 2hr sessions a week at about $140/hr USD a bargin compared to the cost of paying two divorse attorneys (which tankfully I never had to pay for). My advice would be for you to view your marriage as an important asset worth investing one or two thousand dollars in, especially if the alternative is likely to be be divorce, which will cost both of you emotionally and financially a lot.
Again, you sound like you are really trying and making progress. I pray that you find the love and happiness you desire. Good luck.
>43 years of marriage--My wife and I are now closer than we have been in decades. I believe that my SSM is over.
I actually have had that conversation with him. More than once. He really thinks that it is just all me. He thinks I hate sex, which I have told him so many times that I don't. When I started to look at myself and what I was doing wrong I really did try to make some changes. I stoppped saying no to him. I started being more willing to have sex. i did not however make the first moves very often. I did, but it was usually after a couple of glasses of wine. But my couple glasses of wine was very little to the amount H is drinking. So if we did have really good sex he didn't remember in the morning.
Of course this started to hurt. I was putting in an effort to try and it never got acknowledged. the other thing I started to notice was that the more I was into it the less he was. And again I tried talking to him about it and he just said that we are just not compatible.
Guess I am just really lost with this part of our M. I just want an H I can trust with all my heart. But for today I AM going to dance like nobody is watching, sing like nobody is listening and love like it is forever!
Me:35, 2 kids from PR H: 37, 2 kids with me T: 15 years M: 8 years in Feb. Second walk out: 14-01-2011 H had PA: 2007
Good for you in working to find happiness through dancing and singing. My heart goes out to you. Celebrate life, as it is worth enjoying.
I want to assure you of something. First, I feel that in a SSM both partners own the problem it is absolutely not a problem that one has. Let me repeat that in a different way. You aren't the sole problem and getting just you "fixed" isn't going to cure the problem that you have as a couple.
What I tried to say to you was how I would approach my spouse in a way that made them think I was taking responsibility for the problem so they would be more likely to work on a "joint" solution. You are not the problem and I hope you didn't get that from my post or if you did, I apologize as I didn't intend that to be the message.
Since you have tried what I suggested already, not sure what to offer, so I will revert to what worked for me.
I found that the Chapman book the Five Languages of Love, Sue Johnson's Hold Me Tight, John Gottman's the Seven Principals for Making a Marriage Work, and MWD's the SSM really helped me figure things out (NMMNG also was important for me but you are a woman so probably don't need that book). These books gave me the tools to understand what I was feeling and what some of the problems were in my marriage.
I was able with the help of these books figure out some ways to make my wife feel loved by my doing multiple things for her everyday in her languages of love so that she started to feel loved again. That partially allowed her to let go of her anger toward me and offered her space to start to physcially and emotionally heal and offer me the love that I had needed.
Once that happened, she felt like less of a failure and things in our relationship started to improve. With the help of our sex therapist, she also knew that I would divorce her if she could never find it in her heart to actively love me again. She know that I would not stay in an SSM. Our sex therapist also helped us learn to touch each other again and communicate physically and helped us learn to laugh and play together. Our insurance did not cover the sex therapist, but it was the best money we ever spent, far better than a vacation or home improvement.
The changes in me and how I treated her let my wife make the choice as to what would happen. Ultimately she decided that she would prefer to stay married and that she would need to make changes in her life, while I was making changes in mine, if we were to stay married.
I am sure this approach will not work for everyone, but you may try to not give up and keep trying to make your husband feel loved; even if there are problems with providing him physcial love and trusting him. You can also tell him that the two of you deserve, as you have said to him, "a wodnerful sex life."
Part of the MWD Nike, "just do it" concept (I believe) is to use sex to reestablish mutual physical communication and show love for your partner. I feel that Sue Johnson explains why we need touch and how powerful physcial communication really is between people. Touch is my primary language of love and a SSM was living hell for me. I realize that sex and touch are very different, but when there is frequent sex there is usually frequent touching. If there isn't sex, then there should at least be touching.
If you can talk your husband into it, try giving him a massage a few times a week or see if the two of you can practice sensate focus therapy exercises together. You may have to dream up an excuse to set it up so it can happen, but I would urge you to try it anyway. Most good sized cities have places where you can take classes in giving massage and you can sign up for it and ask to practice on your husband. He may even grow use to the stress relief. My providing my wife with a weekly foot massage cause emotions to rise within her that she had not felt in years. Our sex therapist negotiated very limited sensate focus exercises for us to reestablish physcial communications.
I am not sure about one of your comments. Alcohol is a very powerful drug and one that can cause sexual performance problems in men who drink too much. It can also lead to a host of liver problems that can be life threatening. Be careful.
Good luck and I hope you find happiness even if it starts by just singing and dancing.
>43 years of marriage--My wife and I are now closer than we have been in decades. I believe that my SSM is over.
Young at heart I did not take any offence to what you have said.
I guess what I was trying to relay to you was that I have tried different approches with H. Not at first. I used to avoid sex as much as possible because it was always short and I always felt he was so diconnected from me. So I put some effort in hoping that he would too. I was wrong. H has moved out now and I am not sure how to fix a SSM without there being contact.
Alcohol is a huge part of his life. It has been with his whole family and I don't think that will change anytime soon. I know for myself that I was starting to drink a lot more when I knew he was coming home or when he was home. He has been gone 6 days now and I have not touched it since.
As for C or a sex therapist he is not willing to do that at all. I have tried and tried. He saw a C a few years ago and said she did not help him at all. I saw a difference in him when he was seeing her. He doesn't believe me.
Thanks for all your advice. It is good to hear that I am not alone. And it is good to know it is not all my fault.
Me:35, 2 kids from PR H: 37, 2 kids with me T: 15 years M: 8 years in Feb. Second walk out: 14-01-2011 H had PA: 2007
Good luck to you. Both of my wife's parents were alcoholics, but functional. It is something terrible that can really destroy one's health. We are very careful with alcohol comsumption because of that.
You might look into a local chapter of Alanon as a way of finding support from people who have experienced what you are facing.
As MWD and many others suggest work on GAL (and improving your quality of life). Your comment about singing and dancing sounds like you understand the importance of saving yourself and making yourself happy. Ultimately, we all need to take responsibility for our own happiness.
That doesn't mean that you can't continue to offer your husband support or opportunities. Typically, one would expect that if he is drinking excessively, he will have some kind of crisis where he hits bottom and it sinks in that he needs to change his ways. At that point, you may be able to help him, if you so choose.
Good luck and take care of yourself. You can only change yourself and offer support for changes that your spouse initiates.
Thanks again Young at heart. I don't think I am ready to give up just yet so I will stand by for now. He will eventually, like you said, hit rock bottom. I know there is nothing I can do to save him from that. Where he is staying right now, both of the guys there are heavy drinkers. This is only going to make things worse.
But maybe, just maybe if he decides to come back I can use the advice you have given me. But I think only when he sees what is really happening and that I am not the only one at fault here will we be able to change it. Again thanks for taking the time to read and respond to my forum.
Me:35, 2 kids from PR H: 37, 2 kids with me T: 15 years M: 8 years in Feb. Second walk out: 14-01-2011 H had PA: 2007
As for the unusual porn in the browser history, you shouldn't necessarily take everything as a sign of something he was obsessed with unless you saw more of the same day after day, week after week. Goodness knows I've looked at some sites out of just morbid fascination at what OTHER people apparently find fascinating. But the difference is I wouldn't go back to the same type of site again.
