Never thought I would be sharing my life with so many people but here goes...My wife and I have been married for 32 years and nearly the whole time I have lived in a sex starved marriage. We have two grown sons 30 and 26. One is married with our first grandchild on the way. I am 58 and my wife is 59. We have had a great family life with 2 well rounded and educated sons, I have been the primary breadwinner, my wife no longer works, we both have mutual respect for one another and have shared equally in raising our sons and taking care of our house and all other domestic chores over the 32 years. We don’t fight or argue, we have a great circle of friends, we are very secure financially and enjoy a lot of the fruits of our labor. We live on the beach in our future retirement home and I am set to retire in 4 years. As I said, our sex life has been nearly non-existent for 25+ years. I found myself fantasizing about other women over the years, even some close friends, but never acted on the urges until 5 years ago. A co-worker 12 years younger and I began an affair. It was a textbook affair. It began as friends and innocent conversation and grew into an emotional attraction over a longer period of time before it became sexual. My wife knew I was spending lots of work related time with this woman and even mentioned once "where are you and your girlfriend going for dinner" while we were on a business trip together. The affair has been ongoing for the last 5 years. I disclosed it to my wife 5 years ago at the outset thinking we could work things out with the help of a traditional marriage counselor but to no avail. Nothing changed. My wife has had some type of hang up/phobia about sex ever since we were married. I thought things would eventually change, but they never did. I stayed in the marriage to keep the family together and put on a "happy face" for so many years. The excitement and the intense sexual experience of the affair and the emotional attachment to the OW has scared me into thinking I must do something...NOW. With a grandchild on the way and future retirement on the horizon I felt I must make one last effort to salvage my marriage. I am not naive enough to think that great sex is the only answer, I realize the OW comes with other baggage that could change our current relationship dramatically for the worse. As I researched on line, I found Marriage Builders which we have just had our first session with. However, I recently discovered Michele's book, Sex Starved Marriage and have read half of it...which led me to this website. My question and dilemma is...If the underlying problems are sex related issues with my wife, do we need the services of a marriage coach or a sex therapist or can they be one in the same? Is Marriage Builders a place we can get the help we need? Are there better resources available. Please help me; I'm confused and do not want to waste any more time or money.
