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Post by holdfast on Jan 16, 2023 16:33:57 GMT -5
Hello. I'm still in love with my wife after 33 years of marriage, and choosing to stay though it has been sexless for the past 8 years. Have been working with a therapist since waking up to this reality about 18 months ago, couples therapy too for about a year so far. Found this forum a few weeks ago and have been lurking. It has been eye-opening to realize the breadth and depth of experiences. Some of it has been very helpful as I consider alternatives and untangle my feelings. Thanks to all for sharing thoughtfully, honestly, with humor and humility in a painful journey. Welcome. Looking forward to hearing more of your story. I'm new here also. Like you I have found this place to be a good source of information and knowledge. (I'm 37 years of marriage; 30 of them meeting the sexless definition). Thanks blunder8, I'll post further in the "choosing to stay" board.
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Post by holdfast on Jan 16, 2023 16:41:27 GMT -5
welcome to the forum holdfast,...For many of us the staying option was out 1st choice. But for many if became untenable as not only the intimacy vanished but also the respect needed between couples. And you are right about eye opening. I have seen all sorts of couples and relationships, that ended up sexless. it seems no one is immune. I wish you wee as you continue to educate yourself and as you find your way to what will work for you going forward. Thanks worksforme2 for the welcome and reflection on how things change over time. I took find that people and relationships change in unexpected ways. So far, emotional intimacy and respect seem okay if not great...somewhat better than the low point, which I credit to the therapy and a lot of effort. I'm going to bounce over to the "choosing to stay" board for further posting.
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Post by mirrororchid on Jan 17, 2023 6:46:25 GMT -5
...I took find that people and relationships change in unexpected ways. So far, emotional intimacy and respect seem okay if not great...somewhat better than the low point, which I credit to the therapy and a lot of effort.... Hm. Perhaps Mrs. Holdfast is waiting for "the mood" to sneak up on her? Lots of ILIASM members are fans of Dr. Psych Mom. She is of the opinion that emotional closeness is frequently not enough to spark physical connection. www.drpsychmom.com/2022/01/28/sex-needs-to-be-worked-on-at-the-same-time-as-emotion-for-couples-counseling-to-work/This may fit your situation? She has a podcast you can listen to in the car, if you like what you read.
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Post by holdfast on Jan 21, 2023 3:55:29 GMT -5
...I took find that people and relationships change in unexpected ways. So far, emotional intimacy and respect seem okay if not great...somewhat better than the low point, which I credit to the therapy and a lot of effort.... Hm. Perhaps Mrs. Holdfast is waiting for "the mood" to sneak up on her? Lots of ILIASM members are fans of Dr. Psych Mom. She is of the opinion that emotional closeness is frequently not enough to spark physical connection. www.drpsychmom.com/2022/01/28/sex-needs-to-be-worked-on-at-the-same-time-as-emotion-for-couples-counseling-to-work/This may fit your situation? She has a podcast you can listen to in the car, if you like what you read. Thanks mirrororchid, that's an interesting resource. It is aligned with some other things I've read and noticed. Dr. Psychmom makes a lot of sense and her videos kinda crack me up for some reason...maybe the accent lol. Mostly it seems like Mrs. Holdfast prefers to spend her time, energy, & attention doing other things besides making love. Done with sex, negative body image, childhood abuse, menopause, grief...so many interleaving factors!
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Post by greatcoastal on Jan 21, 2023 9:59:57 GMT -5
Thanks mirrororchid , that's an interesting resource. It is aligned with some other things I've read and noticed. Dr. Psychmom makes a lot of sense and her videos kinda crack me up for some reason...maybe the accent lol. Mostly it seems like Mrs. Holdfast prefers to spend her time, energy, & attention doing other things besides making love. Done with sex, negative body image, childhood abuse, menopause, grief...so many interleaving factors! You're right, there can be lots of intervening factors. Sadly,it's normal to be skeptical of many of them and wonder if they are just lame excuses for our partners selfish, sexless need for control? (voice of experience) medium.com/@drpsychmom/are-you-low-libido-or-just-selfish-a-quiz-aa6d975e1ba5
Are you low libido or just selfish a quiz
Many low libido partners confuse having physiologically low levels of desire for sexual and physical touch with plain old being selfish. If you’re curious or even angered by this remark, take my quiz below! 1) Your partner’s love language is physical touch but yours is [insert another one here]. How frequently does your partner do your love language (e.g., for words of affirmation, how often do they say anything nice to you?). How frequently do you have sex? Put the weekly ratio of these in this format: how many times you have sex per week/how many times per week your spouse does your love language. Example for acts of service: spouse gets up to get you a snack every night and you have sex every other week. You would get .5/7= .07. 2) While you may not always be in the mood for sexual contact, since your spouse’s love language is physical touch you give them massages, stroke their hair, hug and kiss them unprompted at least for a combined total of 1 hour per week. Add 5 points if true. 3) You have thought deeply about ways your spouse could do different things in bed that might be more exciting to you: Add 5 points. 4) You have read books about rekindling the spark or sex within relationships with the purpose of making your sex life better, without your spouse begging you to do so: one point per book 5) You have consulted a therapist to figure out why you find it difficult to have sex with a spouse that you feel committed to and love. One point per session that focuses on this issue. 6) You have consulted a medical doctor about low libido and discussed options. Two points 7) You expect your spouse to say I love you in words even if you don’t say I love you with touch, and when confronted with this say something indicating that physical touch is not as important of a love language as verbal expressions of love. Subtract 1 point per time that you convey this. 8)You have actually now that you think of it not given your spouse a massage lasting more than 5–10 minutes this year. Subtract 5 points. If your spouse regularly does this for you without expecting sex, subtract another 5 points. 9) You blackmail your spouse with “if I felt closer than maybe we would have sex” but you have not given your spouse any tangible concrete measures of how this may be accomplished. Subtract one point per remembered episode of this type of crazymaking. 10) You are open to discussing every single idea that could improve your sex life when your spouse brings them up. Add one point per idea that you have had open discussion about. If you stonewall on this issue subtract one point per stonewall. Tally it up and see which category you fall in: Negative points: this is more of a “you don’t do what you don’t want to do” issue than a libido issue. Zero points: Still pretty self-centered, tbh.5–10 points: You are trying here. Couples counseling could really help you guys figure out how to come together on this issue even more. 10 points and higher: If you’re trying this hard and still getting nowhere then there may be deeper issues at play. If my experience with couples is any indicator, you are either deeply unhappy with your spouse on multiple levels but scared to admit it, having an emotional affair, or have unresolved childhood trauma. All of these could benefit from individual therapy even prior to couples work. There you have it folks! As I tell people in couples counseling, for someone (especially a woman) in a multi-year monogamous relationship with kids, stress, jobs, etc to not have a high libido is not exactly headline-making news. The issue is whether you attempt to get yourself in the mood to be a good partner, or not. If it’s consistently “not,” then you have some work to do introspecting about whether you can tend to be selfish in this regard and likely others as well. Note that depression is one thing that makes people very unintentionally selfish, definitionally because you cannot see outside the deep pain that you are carrying around internally every day. If you think that your depression is causing you to focus inward in this way, therapy and meds and other things may help and you deserve to feel better. And till we meet again, I remain, The Blogapist Who Says, Sometimes People Need A Wake Up Call To Realize They May Not Be As Generous As They Think!
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mattj
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Post by mattj on Jan 22, 2023 15:11:45 GMT -5
Hi everyone, my name is Matt. I’m 42 years old and have been married for 16 years to my lovely wife. We have two children, 9 and 7. My wife was diagnosed with a possible life-threatening organ disease about 5 years ago. To say things have been rough is an understatement. Partially because of her condition and partially because of the surgeries, our sex life slowed way down. We had sex about twice a week in our late 20s and early 30s to once every 5-6 weeks the last several years.
About 9 months ago it came to light through her individual therapy that her teenage sexual trauma had driven her to be very promiscuous and view sex as something women are supposed to do for men. She has come to realize she’s always had an impossible time ever saying no or sticking up for herself with sex. I had only had sex with two other people before her and I, she had sex with 15 people. That “never being able to say no” has driven a lot of our marriage. I viewed her as being sexually free and always up for anything, but as it turns out, she just had no idea how to have a healthy sexual relationship with give-and-take.
So now we find ourselves in a therapist-instructed/recommended sexual hiatus. We have only kissed a handful of times since April 2022, no sex of any kind, no being naked together, nothing. Her therapist says we must build a foundation of trust and safety with healthy sexual boundaries before we should move on to sex or physical intimacy. So here we are, 9 months later and nothing. Even the occasional kiss is awkward. My wife wants to eventual get to sex, but is following the guidelines of her therapist in a very regimented matter. It’s created a lot of friction in our marriage, and so it’s very hard for us to progress.
I also think at the core, my wife just doesn’t have the drive like I do. I just want to be close to my wife. I tried to explain to her how difficult it is because I’m still madly in love with her and find her very sexy. She replied, “can’t you just jack off so you feel better??” That hurt me deeply. I even asked her if I do masturbate to relieve myself, would she be open to doing it together or in her presence so we could be close. She just said she doesn’t think it would be good or helpful for us and rebuilding emotional trust and security in our marriage.
It’s very hard not to feel rejected. Even though she says it has nothing to do with attraction and everything to do with working through her trauma, it makes me feel very unloved. I’m a very giving lover, always making sure she’s satisfied first, but she doesn’t even want that anymore. Trying to cope and not turn away from her. I love her, want her by my side. It’s just so hard to feel connected.
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Post by baza on Jan 23, 2023 1:04:20 GMT -5
I'm not sure that the therapist is a good fit for this situation Brother mattj . Anyway, welcome to the group, hope you get something out of it.
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Post by mirrororchid on Jan 23, 2023 7:31:16 GMT -5
It sounds like you have two major obstacles before you, mattj . Both awful in their own rotten way. 1) Medical issue. No one's fault. Angry at the universe stuff. Maybe better with time? But.... 2) No, not better with time. Even as your wife's physical health may allow her to find sex a good idea, you have a therapist slamming on the brake pedal. Your wife wants to work her way around to greater frequency, but she has an outside party telling her to not perform this marital bonding activity. The first one, you can unite in common cause against. The second one, they unite against you. Just a few posts ago, Jan 17, 2023 at 6:46am, I sent a link to a psychiatrist's blog. www.drpsychmom.com/2022/01/28/sex-needs-to-be-worked-on-at-the-same-time-as-emotion-for-couples-counseling-to-work/It says almost the opposite of what this marriage counselor is saying. I'd be curious if this sexual hiatus has made your wife feel closer to you, or more distant. Prioritizing pleasing a "therapist" more than your spouse is an interesting choice of priorities. Not always wrong, but not a decision to take lightly. Does this living wedge have good reviews online? Recommendations? Or she accepted your insurance, and she was accepting new patients. (needs fresh marriages to kill) A marital counselor encouraging less sex between husband and wife. What could possibly go wrong? On other posts, ILIASM members point out that not "having and holding" your spouse is a break of marital vows. It is forsaking you. Congregations are often told "What God has put together let no man put asunder". Is this therapy approach strengthening the bond, or tearing it asunder? Maybe you married at a courthouse, so those words weren't spoken. It's still not supposed to be done. It may be necessary for a specific duration and reason, but the therapist trying to fix childhood issues with boundaries by potentially crushing a key support structure of hers strikes me as reckless and plausibly unnecessary. Telling you "no" some of the time should be evidence of her power over her own body and mind, to tell her to say "no" when she doesn't want to is coercion by your therapist, not strengthening boundaries. She's making a boundary that wasn't there. Being unable to say "No" was her concern, the therapist has manufactured a psychiatric "problem" out of saying "Yes", even when she means it. Asking you to relieve your tension with solitaire, for an unknown duration, maybe forever, is not hostile. Just misguided. Can she climax? How much of the quality of sex rides on seeing her achieve bliss. (If she doesn't/can't, that may be a ripe field for exploration once this lovely "hiatus" is over, if it ever is.) If her bliss is strongly valued, she needs to know that. Her pleasure is yours as well. Her pleasure is never a part of that minimal experience you have by yourself. It is in second place and you need binoculars to see it, it's so far behind. (Or is it? I'm just going by the vibe I get from fellas here at ILIASM) Without anger, you may need to know if this project that she's executing to demonstrate respect and friendship towards the therapist (being a good patient, maybe to be "liked"?) can be a permanent thing? What are the signs she's looking for in this ill-defined "trust" level. (Unless it is defined by observable metrics, in which case, please share! That'll be intriguing!) If you become celibate, like roommates, or brother and sister, is this outcome desired but cannot be admitted out loud? Is it the goal and the therapist was the vehicle to get there, even unconsciously? This can be a sympathetic thing; sexual abuse causing this desire not to have sex, but pressed into it by expectations of marriage that was, itself, expected of her. Exclusive sex is what defines marriage beyond a close heterosexual friendship. Before that, you're dating. It is possible it was a mistake for her to marry anyone. If that's the case, it's important to know and smart actions can be executed, be it opening the marriage or releasing her to a more appropriate destiny and celibate life plan. (networks of friends, family, and other linchpin people in her life [doctors, therapists, other trained professionals that fill needs you provide, but with inconvenient needs along with it]). The therapist has reprehensibly included you in your wife's exercise of self-examination. Her boundary building, even to those things she thinks she wants (does she really?) impose hardship (accidental punishment) on you through no fault of your own. (Unless there is some fault. I can't know). The collateral damage is severe and potentially not worth the price. Has the cost even been recognized? Is this therapist someone you see together? If not, maybe you need to attend too and the therapist can hash out whether she's doing more harm than good, or if she's indifferent to your experience. There's so much to unpack here. Medical AND sexual trauma. You are coming into the marriage hospital shot through with shrapnel and a seeping gut wound. It's great you're here and we're sorry you are. Welcome. Sending you a big 'ol digital "bro hug" here.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2023 0:07:24 GMT -5
Hello ... this is a big step for me. I've been married for 38 years and haven't had a physical relationship with my husband for at least 10 years ... I lost count a long time ago. I guess I'm here just to reassure myself that I'm not alone and that there's nothing wrong with my feelings of loneliness, frustration, and anger. Hoping that I can learn to live with the lack of intimacy in my marriage
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Post by baza on Feb 4, 2023 0:31:47 GMT -5
Welcome to the zoo Sister @want-to-wanted .
Hope you get something out of the group.
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Post by worksforme2 on Feb 4, 2023 8:06:23 GMT -5
Hello ... this is a big step for me. I've been married for 38 years and haven't had a physical relationship with my husband for at least 10 years ... I lost count a long time ago. I guess I'm here just to reassure myself that I'm not alone and that there's nothing wrong with my feelings of loneliness, frustration, and anger. Hoping that I can learn to live with the lack of intimacy in my marriage welcome to the forum wanted to be wanted,.....if you feel so inclined please continue telling your story and experience on the "Staying" category. If not then hopefully your reading hear will bring you some understanding of where you are in the marriage and where you might be headed that might be some consolation to you.
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Post by angeleyes65 on Feb 4, 2023 10:21:30 GMT -5
Hello ... this is a big step for me. I've been married for 38 years and haven't had a physical relationship with my husband for at least 10 years ... I lost count a long time ago. I guess I'm here just to reassure myself that I'm not alone and that there's nothing wrong with my feelings of loneliness, frustration, and anger. Hoping that I can learn to live with the lack of intimacy in my marriage You are not alone, alot of like souls. Many are women. Welcome hope to hear the rest of your story.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2023 10:45:51 GMT -5
Hello ... this is a big step for me. I've been married for 38 years and haven't had a physical relationship with my husband for at least 10 years ... I lost count a long time ago. I guess I'm here just to reassure myself that I'm not alone and that there's nothing wrong with my feelings of loneliness, frustration, and anger. Hoping that I can learn to live with the lack of intimacy in my marriage You are not alone, alot of like souls. Many are women. Welcome hope to hear the rest of your story.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Feb 4, 2023 11:05:56 GMT -5
My married sex life used to be okay ... we would have sex a couple times a week and then it was a couple times a month, then only when he was drinking, then he started having problems staying hard and would use that as an excuse but drinking too much was always the issue. Then, as he got older and on meds for blood pressure, it was a problem even getting an election. Talked to a friend and he said he had the same issue so his doctor changed his BP meds and all was good. I can't even get my husband to talk to his doctor about it. A couple years go by and he's got a back injury from years of operating heavy equipment ... sex is non existent. A couple of years ago (October, 2020) I stepped out and had a night of passion with a friend that was very receptive to keeping a secret and it was wonderful ... he and I agreed that it would be just that once and, although awkward at times, we are still close friends. I felt guilt but also felt a little like I deserved it. I even tried to forget all of the rejections over the years and start fresh with my H by turning on my sexual flirtation and hints but, on my birthday that year, I got nothing and even a "you really need that?" response from him. The next night, I got pity sex and that was the end of my trying.
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Post by heelots on Feb 4, 2023 12:40:37 GMT -5
My married sex life used to be okay ... we would have sex a couple times a week and then it was a couple times a month, then only when he was drinking, then he started having problems staying hard and would use that as an excuse but drinking too much was always the issue. Then, as he got older and on meds for blood pressure, it was a problem even getting an election. Talked to a friend and he said he had the same issue so his doctor changed his BP meds and all was good. I can't even get my husband to talk to his doctor about it. A couple years go by and he's got a back injury from years of operating heavy equipment ... sex is non existent. A couple of years ago (October, 2020) I stepped out and had a night of passion with a friend that was very receptive to keeping a secret and it was wonderful ... he and I agreed that it would be just that once and, although awkward at times, we are still close friends. I felt guilt but also felt a little like I deserved it. I even tried to forget all of the rejections over the years and start fresh with my H by turning on my sexual flirtation and hints but, on my birthday that year, I got nothing and even a "you really need that?" response from him. The next night, I got pity sex and that was the end of my trying. Pity sex was the final nail in the coffin of my marriage. That was the defining moment when my wife was transformed into my roommate and and I ceased looking at her and thinking of her in a sexual way. I think she must have liked that too since from that day to this (several years ago) she has not once ever given any indication of interest in anything sexual, or even affectionate for that matter to include even a simple kiss on the cheek, or literally any physical contact of any kind! My wife has not laid a finger on me in any way for years. Seriously, zero physical contact of any kind. Just like things would be with any other roommate. That is where you wind up staying in a marriage like you described. The sooner you relegate him to nothing more than a roommate the easier things will become for you. It appears to me he has already silently defined you as a roommate. I finally told my wife outright during an argument that she was not a wife, she was a roommate. The comment did not seem to bother her in the least. It would appear you simply need to decide if you are going stay with your roommate, or cut bait and move on without him. We are 25 years and counting
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