I am amazed to find this place. I've done google searches for years on "husband won't have sex," and this is the first time I've come across a message board with all kinds of intelligent, friendly, caring people -- who have so many of the same, devastating problems that I do.
My story, shortest version possible:
Even though we call each other "husband" & "wife," we are, in fact, only common law married -- if that tells you anything about the level of committment. We've been together since 2000, and have one child, who is three.
We have been through some miserable times. H and I started out, OK -- I was a "gorgeous" wandering malcontent with waist-length blonde hair, and a typically "good" body, and he was an aimless alcoholic. We had a very intense love affair -- four months of ML 15+ times a week...
Until I became pregnant.
Prior to meeting him, I'd just broken up with a good, but boring man, with whom I had lived for seven years. I had also lost over half my body weight, and had decided that I didn't want to risk having a child, and putting the weight back on.
After we found out, however -- I couldn't have an abortion, and the result is a very smart and beautiful son, over whom I have no regrets. However, with H, from the get-go, it was terrible. As soon as I had to stop drinking, and being "party girl," and expected him to sober up -- things went badly. He had promised, and I KNEW he was an alcoholic -- but he cried and promised that if I had the baby, he would be a good man, and work on his drinking.
But, sometimes, no matter how smart you are, you don't have enough life experience to recognize a potentially BAD situation. So we stayed together, and had the baby.
The early days, as I said, were horrible -- him lying, forgetting to pick me up, driving drunk, spending all of our money on booze, leaving me pregnant, alone, every night, while he drank and played pool. He even pushed me down, once, when I hid a couple beers from him.
To shorten this -- it eventually got better. Instead of drinking, every night -- he started to only drink 1-2 nights a week, held a steady job, started to be less introverted, selfish and in alcohol-poison mode. Relationship got better, but still with rough spots.
Now, the sex part: in my sixth month of pregnancy, (we were still having sex daily, to that point), he began to lose interest in me. It never started back up, again. I gained a lot of weight, with my pregnancy, as the result of depression, and a very depressed metabolic system from starvation dieting, the prior two years. I still haven't lost the weight, but I don't know that that's the primary problem. We're both kind of hippie-ish, artists, etc., though I still believe that, despite his best attemtps, he still has that constructed-male bullcrap about a woman having to be thin and "attractive." Same story, as the others -- he'll watch soft porn on the rot box and MB 2-3 times a week, but makes an advance on ME, once about every 3-4 months. When I initiate -- it's anyone's guess what the outcome will be: I'd say that, if I don't wait for some kind of subtle clue that he's in the mood, the rejection rate is about 95 percent. If he gives a little clue, it's about a 50 percent success rate -- partially because even though he wants to, he doesn't really want to put that much effort into it, and partially because I'll just get frustrated with him being such a wimp about it.
The worst part, however, is that there is NO affection. Certain times that I tell him about it, he'll work on it, for a while, but eventually fail. Other times, he doesn't give a crap, or respond.
I feel like once you get to the point where you have to talk about all this crap, that there's really no going back. That everything, past this point, is orchestrated, fake, forced, or whatever. When we do have sex, though, he's totally into it, will touch me, everywhere, have oral, lots of foreplay -- so that's good.
Other factors might be that he claims I don't shower enough -- which isn't everyday, but probably twice a week, and 2-3 baths a week, too, AND that he still has those two days a week that he drinks, and needs two days of recovery -- when he's too busy drinking to ML, or too sick to think about it. I also am sort of controlling, and have a hard time trusting him with watching our son, because of his drinking and general incompetancy -- and I've said some pretty mean things to him, as a retalliation for how he treated me during my pregnancy.
Anyway, despite the past strife, 90 percent of the time, our relationship is comfortingly boring. Usually, the ten percent it's not is when he has a bad week of drinking more, and it makes me angry, or suddenly, I forget that I'm in a loveless, affectionatless, sexless relationship, and cause a row about it.
And it makes me think -- why do I start to care? No love is perfect, right? And companionate love eventually takes over, anyway, right? If I just stop caring, or have a side affair, that might fix it, right?
But none of that really does seem RIGHT -- I have never really been in love, despite numerous boyfriends and sex partners. I truly yearn, as many of us do, for the whole package. Though, I'm not optimistic, I'm wondering if people on here feel like worrying about this is just a waste of life, when we could be meeting new people, and establishing, mature, adult connections, with people who have emotional maturity and no intimacy issues.
Just confused, I guess. Anyway, I'm 30, from the Midwest, and it's nice to read the posts of people, here.
Does anyone else have similar stories that involve a LD partner, because of a history of alcoholism?
