WW ended EA 4 mos ago; trying to restore intimacy

[hoosjim]

Zeus, thanks. This is quite honestly one of the very best and most helpful and well-illustrated posts I have seen on one of my threads. The whole "quest for happiness" thing is, to all appearances, a HUGE deal for my W and I, for my part, certainly helped push her down that road by my role in making her very UN-happy for so many years. For whatever reason, however, that's where she is now and, as you said, until she decides to start being thankful, appreciative, and even happy for what she has, she is likely to continue to be a very unhappy person. Worth noting that her church attendance, where you will also hear that message preached from time to time, has gotten considerably more spotty of late, and she is visibly tense and ill at ease and short with everyone when she does go. Anyway, thanks for taking the time to write all of that.

I have not seen your "card game" thread but would love to read it and would be very thankful if you could provide a link or cut and paste the quote you wanted to add.

What you get to do is establish boundaries. What is a deal breaker for you? I get it, if she's with OM that's clear. But what if the marriage remains sexless? I get being patient during a difficult marital crisis, but at what point does it become a whiny child throwing a tantrum and punishing you by withholding affection because she is resentful your existence is preventing her from that fling with the waiter in Paris? I'm not suggesting you tell her to put out or get out.

This is a tricky angle and there are subtexts here that bear discussing. I am at a place now where I don't think I can in good conscience live in a sex-free marriage. I need that now... but that was not always the case. I was chronically poisoned due to a genetic condition and spent several years in declining health, one of the effects of which was suppression of the endocrine system and of, amongst other things, testosterone. I literally had nearly no to sex drive. In addition, even had the sex drive been there, pretty much every joint in my body felt like it had a red hot fork or icepick sticking in it 24/7. And that was even when I wasn't, as I did fairly regularly, contracting pneumonia or some other infectious illness. Sex was pretty far from the first thing on my mind in those days. The dynamic between W and I worsened to the point that, even when I finally began a return to health (a long and fairly miraculous story for another time), our relationship had become so damaged that we were kind of turned off by each other-- she was snarky and naggy (or at least so I thought) and verbally abusive to me and the kids at times, and I was cold and aloof and challenged or put down most every idea we had. By the time of BD last January, we really weren't even friends... let alone anything more intimate. We were definitely in what MWD would call a "sex starved marriage." We have not been intimate in probably 4 years or so at this point.

So, that's the status quo. It's not as simple as saying "she needs to be fulfilling my sexual needs or a I walk." We both bear a LOT of responsibility for getting to this point, and romantic and physical intimacy of any type is pretty far in the rearview mirror for us. She has even a more jaded view than I do (in terms of how often and how recently we have been intimate) and has still not (yet) relented in that view even as I know the truth to be otherwise. So, while NOW with a healthy glandular system pretty much restored I definitely WANT that relationship with my wife...It's not a simple matter to restore it. We both bear responsibility for where we are, but I definitely abandoned the masculine role of sexual pursuer and let that part of the relationship languish. And it has been a loooooong time.

What I'm really saying is 1) Be patient, today won't be what your relationship looks like in 3 months or 12 months, 2) Find joy in limbo, if you can't be appreciative of your life right as is you're just as far off track as she is and you need to be a leader, and 3) figure out what your boundaries are so you can protect yourself if she crosses them and you can stop mentally whining and let go of the expectations if she doesn't.

This is good advice, and I am giving it time. But it is hard. To kiss her like that, thinking it was invitation when in fact it was a test... hurts. Now, our MC has told us we are going to have to be deliberate, and kind of test the waters like that but... the way my W did it definitely left a bad taste in my mouth.

We've been having a lot of fun and nice times, its true, but the lack of any intimacy (and not just sex) is very hard to endure. And I am not sure that she gets to a point where she'll even have a chance of "feeling" that unless she gives up the fantasies and commits fully to making our MR a great one.

I honestly probably really effed up by not separating and/or giving her the boot or completely shutting her out until she absolutely came crawling back, completely humbled, like TxHubby did with his W. Mine did have what was a come to Jesus moment when she thought I was walking, but I think I let her back in to soon, committed to the MC with poor foundation, etc. and am now painted into a corner where I have to hope we can employ the "just do it" philosophy and regain that intimacy-- which is unlikely to happen with her current attitude. Can't exactly go dark and shut her off now without being a huge backtracking D-bag... because AFAIK and can prove she is not seeing OM and she IS going to MC. Even if I distance myself now from her, in house, she is going to wonder what's wrong, and I really have no basis other than "I'm not getting any"... but the course of action I committed to expressly included the possibility of "not getting any" for a while.