An End/Beginning of Year Update

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

Honest conversations... thank you! That is the key. You don't know women by reading books or studying "women", you get to know ONE woman through intimate conversation, learning what she thinks, how she feels, and what she likes and doesn't like. It is really that easy. Whatever you know about "women" may apply 100% or 0% to the one woman who you're actually trying to relate to.

And to clarify why I said I missed sex "in theory," was because I was resigned that part of being married was having either no sex or lousy detached impersonal sex. Granted, I have learned there was a lot I didn't communicate, but communicating in that area seemed to really affect H's self esteem and there would be backlash, so since I "married for life" I just decided to be happy with what I had. But what I had was not what I miss, if you see what I mean.

Speaking of counting, and what you focus on expanding, when I was younger I took birth control pills, and I would get very depressed every time I threw away an empty month's case with the realization that we hadn't had any sex that month. And there were more months like that than the opposite. When I focused on it, it depressed me. That's where I was coming from with my questions here.

I'm learning to navigate between not feeling (what's the point) and obsessing or wallowing (how I feel matters). If it matters but you can't do anything about it...or have chosen not to...what do you do with those feelings. My background, which I'm trying to change, is to be cheerful and make the best of a situation WITHOUT LEARNING HOW TO CHANGE IT. I still wouldn't have D'd my H, and I had learned that he would not consider outside help, and trying to help things myself was making things worse. So I chose to not think about it, and focus on the good things as much as possible. I'm not saying that was the most healthy thing to do, but I'm trying to figure out what else there could have been.

Ultimately, this is a reasonable approximation description of what I have gone through. May real purpose in coming here several years ago was to see if there was something I missed (obvious or subtle) that could/would make a difference. Besides being a long, slow motion rant and storytelling, it also became more and more obvious that I really hadn't missed anything and sometimes there is nothing that one can do within the marriage to move the other partner from their entrenched position. So, it comes down to this choice: do I stay married without sex or do I divorce so I can possibly find a sexual partner. There is a third alternative: to much more broadly and openly publicize that she does not want sex and hasn't for more than a decade. I'm not sure bringing that sort of publicity would get me anything. I do know this. If I finally walked away because of this, I wouldn't paper over it.

I, too, miss the sex...the physical pleasure. And it was something I was really good at (I generally no longer dwell on this possibility: that one of the reasons why my wife started to just outright deny me was to take away something from my life that I was really good at, perhaps as punishment?) But it did leave me with a "why bother" POV. But it was more than that, it is the sense of closeness and intimacy that came from the total experience that is missed and ultimately lost.

Hence you end up with housemates rather than intimate partners.

The Captain