Hi. this is my first post here. I have been lurking for a while. I guess I finally want to tell my story where it will be understood. Me: Male 40 HD (or possibly normal D) W 34 Married 15 years - no kids We have SSM big time. Over the past 10 years we have had intercourse about twice per year. twice it was 2 years without. Sex without intercourse was about as infrequent. I feel that i got the bait and switch as well. After two years of marriage the frequence of sex had really dropped and continued to go downhill. After the early years of rejection i just backed off. Pretty much all sex has since has been initiated by her. Intercourse is painful for her. She has some medical problems which will cause her serious hip joint pain from most sexual positions. Knowing that it would cause her pain, i tried to be good and understanding and not force the issue. Many times i tried to see if we could do something to change things. I think i've not been the best communicator. It seems that all she heard from me is 'I want more sex' and all i ever got out of our discussions was that it's my fault that i'm feeling bad and upset and that I will need to change to fix that. After feeling blamed this way for so long i stopped trying to talk about it. Over the course of time i was becoming angry and frustrated. I did not know where these feelings were coming from (until i read SSM). Daily i was becoming very short tempered with my wife. I let them build up and build up and did not know where to turn. Even seeing a passionate kiss on tv or a movie wwould get me upset because all i could feel is that i wasn't being loved. I have read the love languages book, and I think for me i need the sex to feel loved...unless the total lack of it is masking my true needs. For her ithink it is acts of service. (sorry for rambling, there's a lot inside and its tough to get out in a coherent manner). Well things built up inside of me to the point where i just could take it any more. I could not stand her, i could not be around her, and i was unable to talk to her. I had to get out of that environment. I've moved into my own apartment now. This was enough to get us to try and communicate again. She did read the SSM as i had asked her. During our communications she also told me (and supposedly had been telling me but i never heard) that intercourse also makes her feel like her guts are being ground apart. As far as she's concerned, SSM doesn't apply to her because she physically can't have sex. She refused to accept my additional posit that she was also LD. In fact i suspect the pill is partially responsible for her LD as i am convinced that oncce she started upon it was around the time the sex started to go away. Additionally, several of the sexual encounters we have had have been after she had not started on the pill for the first 3 days of a cycle. She doesnt' see how empty and hurting I am and does not understand that i need intimacy. it is still 'my problem' and that i need to sort things out. Additionally, I have completely broken her trust by leaving, she has even less desire to even pursue intimacy. I feel completely unloved and empty, which leaves me no energy to put into this relationship. I don't know how to try and fix it, i'm not sure i want to. Maybe there is a way that i can be happy, but i can't see it right now. I feel like i am only hanging on because i am scared to leave completely, and that leaving is so against what i believe (morally not religiously) and what i promised.
As so often happens when I read someone's first post, the post where it all just tumbles out, I see my story as well. I was reading your post, nodding my head at most of what you said: "bait and switch" "twice a year" "not the best communicator" "at her initiative", "it's always my fault that I feel bad" and my favorite, "even seeing a passionate kiss on tv" would get you upset because you didn't feel loved.
The only differences between you and I are that you have no kids (I have one with W); your W has medical problems that are related to sex; and you moved out.
I guess the first question that sprang to my mind is what has she done to address her medical issues? Were they always an issue, even early on? (Because if they were, you kind of ignored that red flag, didn't you? Not trying to be a jerk here, I certainly ignored my share of red flags, too.) I'm sure the others will chime in with questions and suggestions of their own, but I just wanted to let you know that one of the best things about this group is that you realize that you are not alone, that others are out there who share your pain, and, as most will agree, someone on here has it EVEN WORSE than you! :^)
I guess the first question that sprang to my mind is what has she done to address her medical issues? Were they always an issue, even early on? (Because if they were, you kind of ignored that red flag, didn't you? Not trying to be a jerk here, I certainly ignored my share of red flags, too.)
She has addressed the medical issues of her body in general but not anything specifically about the sexual part. She is convinced that it is all the responsibility of her genetic makeup and that's that. The that the joint problems were causing pain with sex became known to me about 5 years into the marriage. Not sure whether this is when they started to manifest or when I finally new about it. The internal pain was recent news to me, although i have been told that i have been told about that for years as well...I will take responsibility for not hearing that as such an extreme thing as it seems to be. OF course because of her pain (the joints) was another reason that i backed off too. I didn't want to cause her pain. I think we devolved into a situation where she avoided sex (and intimacy because of fear of sex) and I avoided rejection, thereby making our problems worse.
I think what hairdog is asking you is: has she seen a doctor about these ailments?
That would be my first condition upon re-entering the marital home. The second one would be a sex therapist. Under no circumstances do I believe you should go back because of guilt--after all, she doesn't seem to be feeling one lick of guilt over abandoning her position as your wife.
There are legitimate claims towards pain during sex and most of these have been shown to be psychological in nature. As far as her feeling that her insides are being ground to bits, well, if she is laying there thinking that she hates having sex and she is so resentful of you for forcing her to do this...I mean, can you see how a person can start to focus on the sensations and give them a negative connotation, when they are doing something they don't want to do?
Most of the advice you will get here is to be compassionate and loving but to stand your ground. There is no reason to be hateful to her but you must treat her as an adult and stop accepting her inaction (in regards to her pain) as a legitimate course of action.
Quote: I think what hairdog is asking you is: has she seen a doctor about these ailments?
as i said above. she has seen a doctor and is taking care of everything except sexual issues. SHe feels she doesn't have a problem that way and will not talk to a doctor about it.
Quote: That would be my first condition upon re-entering the marital home. The second one would be a sex therapist. Under no circumstances do I believe you should go back because of guilt--after all, she doesn't seem to be feeling one lick of guilt over abandoning her position as your wife.
Yes. She doesn't see that that's what has happened. At this point it is not something that i will be able to get through to her. And yes, i feel and extreme amount of guilt about all this.
Quote:
There are legitimate claims towards pain during sex and most of these have been shown to be psychological in nature. As far as her feeling that her insides are being ground to bits, well, if she is laying there thinking that she hates having sex and she is so resentful of you for forcing her to do this...I mean, can you see how a person can start to focus on the sensations and give them a negative connotation, when they are doing something they don't want to do?
Yes, which is why i never pressed the issue, and i will not ever expect intercourse with her again
Quote: Most of the advice you will get here is to be compassionate and loving but to stand your ground. There is no reason to be hateful to her but you must treat her as an adult and stop accepting her inaction (in regards to her pain) as a legitimate course of action.
GOOD LUCK to you!
thank you. I'm still having a hard time dealing with this situation. I'm working on taking care of myself so that I then have the strength to deal with the marriage.
And to everyone on the boards, thank you so much for your postings..when i found this board (before i knew of the book), i started reading about things that i could identify and i started to understand what was causing me problems and what was going on inside.
I fully agree with Honeypot. Come on, intimacy has a GREAT DEAL to do with a healthy marriage. Yes, she does need to see a doctor, but it seems her heart is not really into filling your needs. Me? I would let someone go before I would ask them to spend a lifetime of no intimacy. You are only human and have one life to live.
i'm not sure that intimacy is still out of the question. I don't know if it has only disappeared because of the sex issue, or if its not there for her at all. She really seems to have no interest in it. I was able to tell her that i need the intimacy and asked if she could help me work it out with her. Tell me how to make it work for her too. The response was that i had now broken her trust and she doesn't see how she could be intimate with me. I'm not sure what it would take to get to that point..i haven't asked yet.
You broke her trust? How? By moving out? I think this is a cop-out on her part. I've been accused of breaking trust for some of the stupidest little things that when I hear this it just has no affect on me anymore. In fact, when I hear it, I tend to think to myself, "Oh, I guess she needed a new reason not to be intimate with me." My answer to that is, "I married you, trusting that you would love me, and that you would show that love by being intimate with me, touching me, letting me touch you, making love, etc. You stopped (or REALLY slowed down) that behavior. You broke my trust."
You have the chance to walk away, to seek to make yourself happy. There are a bizzillion of us guys in this boat, and once you have kids, then the choice to make ourselves happy is REALLY hard, since it will impact lots of lives. You have a tough decision to make. You proably want to exhust all your treatment options for "CURING" your LD wife, and then you have to decide if YOU want to be happy. I am in the same boat as you, and I know that intimacy and sex are the foundation of a great marriage. So you probably have a decision to make. The way I see it, if you ask your wife to help find solutions to this COUPLE problem, and she does not respond positively, then she is more interested in her then in both of you, and you will have to adjust your marital status accordingly. I find that fixing the problem is only secondary, it't the path to finding a solution that is even MORE important to the marriage. This is what will tell you if your spouse is really into staying a couple.
Good luck, it is a VERY long road ahead of all of us HD spouses.
Hairdog, She has lost trust in me because I have broken my promise to be with her forever and not to leave. That's her view and feelings. I still find it hard to put any of this on her. I still feel guilty for leaving and place or assume a lot of blame upon myself. I feel like such a bad person that all this has happened. I'm working on turning that around and doing positive things for myself.
CeMar - Ihave read your postings for a while now. I identify very much with the pain you have been feeling. I don't know if things can be fixed. In some ways i am afraid to make the attempt, fear of a lot of hard work leading to nothing. W will be out of town for a week, i didn't want to shake things up before she goes and ruin her trip so there has been no R talk for a week. When she gets back I will try again. It is tough. Every R talk we have had for years seems to end up with me taking all the blame and because i'm upset its my fault and i have to fix myself. I am not good when she starts to turn it around like that and flounder and just suck it up and feel bad. I need to find someone that can help us communicate and figure out if we can work this out.
