Just picked up SSM, and was about 100 pages into it, when W took it from me, saying she didn't want me reading it with the kids around, and went into bedroom & locked me out. I remembered the website from the book, and after reading some of the posts I decided I would post as well. Primarily just to talk, but if someone can help, even better. WARNING: long text follows! Bail out now if you're afraid of crt-induced eyestrain.

Have been married for six years (my first, her second), and had our anniversary two days ago. We have two girls, both from her previous marriage, who were 7 & 9 at the time of our marriage. Met through AOL chatting, dated for about a year & a half. While we were dating, we had a great sex life and were very affectionate. I would describe myself as HD, and it wasn't a major issue initially. However, we've been having problems for about three years now, and it's at the point now where we have sex yearly - as in once a year.

Some background:
About a year after our marriage, my father was arrested on charges of inappropriate sexual contact with a minor. This was a huge shock to all of the family, and was very traumatic. Although he denied (and still does) the charges, he was involved with the mother of the girl and (IMO) probably did the things he was accused of. After the arrest, I went to his house and discovered a large collection of pornographic materials, some of which certainly looked like they were child pornography. I didn't dare open the covers of the magazines to find out. After months of depositions and tests, my father finally agreed to a plea bargain which resulted in him being sentenced to seven years in prison (the state-mandated requirement). He had always been very into porn (he had a home VCR in the mid-Seventies, long before anyone else I knew of, and used to take it to the No-Tell Motel to tape the in-room porn movies) although I wasn't aware of it until I was 10 or so. It also turned out that he and my mother had an "open" marriage, and had been involved with that lifestyle when I was still a child. I don't know when it ended, but I can't believe it would have escaped my attention as a teenager.

After graduating from high school, I joined the Navy, and served 10 years. For nearly all of it, I was in the Pacific, and traveled to most of the countries in that area. While I was in the Philippines & Thailand, I had sex with prostitutes (once in the Philippines, twice in Thailand - protected sex at ALL times!). It's not something I'm proud of, but I was desperately lonely (I barely dated the entire time I was in the Navy) and it was something that was practically considered to be a requirement as a sailor. This occurred about 7-8 years before my marriage.

As I mentioned, I left the service, met & dated, then married. After my father's trial, we just wanted to get out of the city we were living in and get away from the whole nasty mess. I kept getting pulled into dealing with the situation while he was on house arrest and then on trial. We also were having trouble finding a house we could afford, and I had a great job opportunity in another state. So we moved, and tried to start our new life together without that cloud hanging over us. In some amazingly bad luck, the state sentenced my father to a prison in the very farthest corner of the state (about 700 miles from the city we had lived in) - which turned out to be only about an hour's drive from the city I had moved to! After some initial reluctance, I decided to start visiting him, and my mother began making trips every 3-4 months to my new house to visit him as well (using my house as a place to stay for the two days she visited, then returning to her home). After my father began writing to me at my home, we realized that the kids would wonder who was writing us from prison if they happened to get the mail before we did (we had decided not to tell them anything at all about what had happened, and have no plans to ever tell them). I wrote to my father and told him that I could no longer accept letters from him, which infuriated him. He accused my wife of turning me against him, of being an unfaithful son, and then proceeded to threaten to tell my wife's ex-husband about his situation. While I wasn't worried about what he could do (he never saw the girls, and my wife has full legal custody), I didn't want him to cause more pain in our lives. I cut off contact with him completely, and have not seen or heard from him since (it's been about 3 years now since the last visit/letter). He was always a very cold, distant father who was more concerned with making sure we did as we were told than with anything else, so we didn't have a very strong relationship to begin with. My older brother (who had never been close to our father at all) simply never saw, spoke to, or about our father after the day he was arrested. He also moved to another state, where he's doing well with a wife and three kids, but does not stay in contact with any of the family except me through an occasional phone call.

Still with me? I just realized that I've written a short novel, and probably only started touching on stuff I need to say. I promise I'll get to the parts about my current relationship woes, but without the other stuff, you wouldn't have the full picture. Like I said, I really just need to get this all out, and if you read it and it helps you or me, that's even better.

As I mentioned, my wife & I had a pretty conventional relationship. We were very close, and I had a good (if somewhat distant) relationship with the two girls. As a step-parent, I had the usual troubles of establishing my role in the family, but we finally worked it out after a few rough spots. I think the problems with my wife began early on, but they didn't blossom into real issues for sometime. I have always been very demanding when it comes to physical affection. I have to hug, kiss, touch, etc. a lot, and have a difficult (my wife would say impossible) time feeling satisfied. A hug has to lead to a kiss, a kiss to passion, on and on. She told me that she was bothered by it about 1 1/2 years after we were married, but I didn't really do anything to change my behavior. I think that she just resented it silently for as much as possible, and began slowly pulling away from being affectionate with me because it was never enough for me. Of course, this only made me want MORE affection, so when we did share physical contact I pushed even harder. Our sex really started decreasing at this point.

Then, one night in bed, she told me that she had kept something secret from me, and couldn't do so any longer. She told me that she had genital herpes, although it very rarely flared up (I had never noticed an outbreak in the entire time we were married). I was not angry, although I was very shocked and moved by her admission. Since she had opened up and revealed her darkest secret, I told her mine - that I had slept with prostitutes while in the Navy. She didn't take my news as well as I took hers. She told me that she would never have married me if she had known that fact, and that I was not the person she thought I was.

Our relationship has been on a slow decline since that night, with sexual activity occurring less and less. She has had some health problems as well, including a thyroid problem, which definitely caused a big drop in her libido. Although she has tried hormone shots, she hasn't seen a restoration of her libido. Adding to the problem is the fact that I suffer from premature ejaculation, usually climaxing within five minutes of initiating intercourse. Obviously, this didn't help matters in terms of her having a satisfying sexual experience, so I tried taking anti-depressants (Prozac), which I had been told would assist the condition. When those didn't work, I tried Viagra. Unfortunately, it only helps with getting an erection, which I have never had a problem with (unless getting them too often counts!). After discussions which led to disagreements which led to fights, I proposed that we try counseling last year to try to solve our problems. She suggested that I go alone, and work out my issues with my need for physical affection and my twisted family history. Unfortunately, during counseling (without my wife being there), the therapist commented that my wife's blaming her low libido on my past was a smoke screen to keep from facing her own problems. Of course, being a stupid man, not only did I buy into this concept whole-heartedly, I repeated it to my wife. That was the end of any potential for her to try to treat both of us. I saw her for one or two more sessions, then just stopped going. I couldn't see the point if I couldn't get my wife involved, and there was no way in Hell that would happen with that therapist.

So, we've continued on in a pattern I'm sure many of you are familiar with. We live our lives, and go without intimacy for the majority of it. I've built up resentment at her for ignoring my needs, and we occasionally fought about it - with the only outcome being threats of divorce, screaming, and one or the other of us (usually me) sleeping on the couch for a few days.

The last time I can clearly recall having sex with my wife was last December (2003). Dr. Phil had done a show about marital problems, and focused on couples that were having sex problems. There were couples on who were complaining about not having sex more than once a month, which would have been a bonanza for us by that point. Apparently inspired by the show, we made love, and it was great.

As this past year went on, masturbation became my sole sexual release. I eventually found myself wanting more than just my imagination, and picked up a DVD from a local adult store. Although still miserable and frustrated, at least I was having some fantasy sex. It wasn't an ideal situation, but since the rest of our relationship was tolerable (even loving and pleasant most of the time); it was how I got along. My wife had no idea that this was occurring, although I'm sure she realized that I was masturbating without actually seeing me do so or asking about it.

Things finally reached the breaking point this past weekend, when we had our 6th anniversary. It was a really nice day, which she initiated with a hug & kiss and a "happy anniversary" first thing in the morning. I had surprised her with tickets for the family to see the Nutcracker ballet, which has become a family tradition since we moved to our new home. Normally we go later in the month, but this time the performance fell right on the anniversary, so it seemed like the perfect gift. She loved the surprise, and we enjoyed the show. Later in the evening, she & I went out to dinner, then came home to watch the DVD she had gotten me as an anniversary gift. During the movie, I started caressing her, but she pushed my hand away and told me to focus on the movie. I backed off, and we finished watching the movie. She normally falls asleep while watching TV, and that night was no exception.

I couldn't believe that after the great day, on our anniversary, a year after our last sexual encounter, we were not going to have sex. I fumed for 15 minutes, listening to her breathing as she slept, then went to the den to sleep. When I woke up the next morning, I was furious. I snapped at her about getting 14 hours of sleep, trying to provoke a response so I could unload on her. Finally, she took the bait from something I said, and I let her have it about how unfair, wrong, cruel, etc. it was that we didn't have sex on our anniversary. She initially told me that it wasn't anything that I had done - it was a problem she knew she had, and that she wasn't saying I didn't have the right to be upset about it. That wasn't enough for me though, since all she was doing was admitting that a problem existed, but not doing anything to help solve it. We continued to argue, and left things on a bad note. I had ruined (in her eyes) what was a good anniversary by blowing up the next morning about not having sex, and we spent the rest of the day avoiding each other, exchanging looks, and only talking when necessary. On a trip to the store to get some groceries, I came across the SSM book. I picked it up, brought it home and stashed it in my nightstand drawer for later reading. I left the receipt for it on my desk, however, and upon discovering it she wrote "Yea - like that's gonna help" on the receipt. I ignored the comment, but didn't get to the book that night.

Which brings me to today. I recently started working at home, and was milling over the whole unhappy mess while I was on conference calls all morning. At lunch, I just decided to escape into my fantasies, watch my porn DVD and masturbate. I had been lying on the bed, watching the DVD on a laptop computer (instead of through the TV), and had gotten up to use the bathroom. While I was in the bathroom, my wife returned home. Shocked and embarrassed, I rushed out of the bathroom to close up the laptop. After she confronted me about it, I told her what I had been doing. After all, what did I really have to hide? The DVD was traditional hetro porn, nothing kinky or sick, and I wasn't doing anything that millions of other men (married and single) do every day. She didn't see it that way. She was furious about the DVD being in the house, and told me to get rid of it. We argued about why I had been masturbating in the first place, and why I would have porn in the house. Nothing good or productive came out of the fight - at one point she called me a pervert just like my father, and that I was on the same path he was on. I told her that if I was a pervert, then she was frigid, which pretty effectively ended the discussion.

Cut to this evening, when I started reading SSM. So much of the book seemed applicable, and I had only made it to the fifth chapter when she came into the family room and saw me reading it. After telling me that the book wouldn't work, that I was the one with the problems and not her (and some other behaviors that were straight out of the book!), she warned me against quoting to her from it or selectively reading it and using it to prove that I was right and she was wrong. She then grabbed it from me, claiming that she didn't want me reading it with the girls running around the house (even though they were both in bed, and I had made sure that I was keeping the cover folded over on itself so no-one could determine the contents without coming right up to me to see it), and locked herself in the bedroom.

I decided that things were about as bad as they could be short of lawyers getting paid, and decided to look into taking advantage of my company-sponsored counseling benefits. After getting my preauthorization, I was researching the list of approved providers when she entered the den and noticed what I was up to. She told me that I should plan on seeing the counselor myself, and that she would not be going. Furthermore, she would not even be married to me if it weren't for the financial obligations we've made. With that, she returned to the bedroom, where she's been since. I found this website, read through some of the funny, sad, and occasionally insightful posts, and thought I would share my story.

I have no idea what's going to happen to us - I love my wife and our daughters, as well as the life we've built together. But I have really reached the end of my limit with being in a relationship without physical intimacy, and have started questioning whether or not it is worth keeping. I'll be calling the counselor first thing in the morning to try and get an appointment ASAP, and will hopefully be able to convince my wife to join me in discussing our issues. I'm worried that she may be at least partially right - I don't want to turn into a porn-obsessed sexual pervert like my father, but I also can't live a life devoid of sexual contact either. I hope counseling will help, and I'm looking forward to finishing the book (provided she hasn't burned it or otherwise gotten rid of it!).

If any of you managed to actually read this far, I hope you've gotten something out of it - even if it was just a laugh or a shake of your head as you consider yourself fortunate to not have my problems. Personally, I feel a lot better just having gotten it all out (without shouting in the process!), and will welcome any thoughts, comments, or advice you may have to offer.