Sex was great, part 2

[GoatGal]

"GG,

I see you are an 9 year age gap with you the younger. I was wondering how that is working out and if there is any points of contention?

Thanks.

For all the sexless my only question is when you are near your deathbed, do you want to look back on your life and realize your spouse or long term relation partner "blocked" you from X years of a descent sex and intimacy in life or not?"

Not to hijack Grey's thread, but here's my answer.

I tolerated almost 30 years of a less-than-satisfactory sex life with my older husband because I LOVED HIM and took the good with the bad.
I knew he had "issues" that had nothing to do with me, and accepted that he had a lower drive, and some problems with being emotionally available on an intimate level.

One of the reasons I come off so angry here at times is that I found out that he has had a long-term relationship with porn SINCE BEFORE WE EVEN MET, which he preferred to indulge rather than being with me. My needs came second. This was hard to accept.

On top of that, when I would no longer submit to his "pornified" version of non-emotional lovemaking, saying that I was completely available to him, but that I didn't want to be treated like a blow-up doll or some porn actress one minute longer, he completely shut down on me, eventually finding some needy young woman who was willing to be used by him in that way.

(At the time, I didn't realize that was what was happening, I assumed all that he told me, low testosterone, stress at work, the usual excuses. And I didn't push the issue. I was going through menopause and often ML was the last thing on my mind, not because I didn't want to, but I was tired, sweaty, didn't sleep well, irritable. Like PMS all the time. That is mostly over now. But at that point I needed more than just the "same-old" that passed for ML for so many years. He wasn't willing to give that and I wasn't willing to keep trying.)

All the while I was loyal, loving, and put my desires on the back burner out of love and loyalty. I finally gave up. He didn't want to talk about it and he didn't want to deal with it.

Why that's relevant is because I felt I had a good marriage even with the sporadic and often unemotional sex. We had other things that made up for that. (I thought.) I felt like I was the one who made all the concessions while he had all these "rules". (When, where, how, how often....)

I could have lived the rest of my life not knowing that he cheated on me, or turned his back on me to visit Pornland several times a week, while leading me to believe he just had a "low sex drive" all these years.

And he waited until I went through menopause to mention how "unhappy" he was and how he felt I was "never attractive" to him. (Really? Why did he go out with me for six years, then eventually marry and stay with me for 22+ more?)

Love can overcome a lot of things.
I accepted it. I accepted who he was.
I believed he was DOING THE BEST HE COULD.

What upset me was not that he couldn't do BETTER, it was that he was NOT giving me what I deserved as his wife, and he was lying to me about it.

If it was really a case of sexual dysfunction over which he had no control, I would have been OK with that, as I have been all these years. Again, I love the guy.

That's why I keep getting on Grey's case!


PS: Don't believe that porn doesn't destroy marriages when it takes over. It absolutely DOES.

--GG