An End/Beginning of Year Update (Section 2)

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

You pick some amusing examples. Yes, I play chess, ride bicycles, ski, and run marathons. And I certainly never had a problem with my own sexual functioning, but I have not had all the facets of a good partnered experience which might be considered normal for most people.

You're right, I wouldn't truly know what divorce is like until I have it. But I disagree with what you seem to be implying, namely that if I did A, then it would result in B which I haven't experienced.

Just as an example of my point, not everyone handles or reacts to a situation the same way. Several people in my extended family had apparently open marriages (I say because everyone knew about, it though they didn't announce it) and nobody divorced anybody, nobody was angry, nobody felt betrayed, and everyone was on very good terms, including my own parents. So you could say I wouldn't know about the effects of extramarital sex because I haven't seen the pain of betrayal and divorce. And my answer would you're wrong because those aren't always the effects.

In my own sex-life, before it all went south with my first wife with the birth of our son and then a couple of years later with her affair, and then with my second wife as the need for a radical hysterectomy became more urgent, my sex life was good and what I would consider normal, even adventuresome in their own ways. Its the contrast of such a good sex life to absolute zero that was the challenge.

And I'll be perfectly blunt about it, I see no reason to hope that there will ever be ANY sex in this marriage for as long as we remain married. And so I've given up on my sex life and gone on to pursue other things that she cannot. She is in total control of the absence of the sex life and it is something that she is unwilling relinquish.

I've traded an intimate relationship in a marriage for a legal marriage with a housemate where we share responsibilities for a household and occasional time together for dinner, or a trip to the beach. It not that these are unpleasant times, they just aren't intimate.

Actually, you do know that B follows A. You see it all around you and you know better. How do we know? Well, if you really believed that the limited case of open marriage and affairs did not cause any problems and would not cause any problems in your own marriage, it wouldn't even be an issue for you. You'd be married and having a wonderful sex life...it just wouldn't be with your wife.

And the point wasn't that B follows A. The point was that you lack both A and B (or C, D, E, or F which may follow from A) as personal experiences from which to discuss your experience with either affairs or divorce. The example you gave is like knowing the moves of the chess pieces from the outside without actually "playing the game."

The Captain