Apocrypha - a lot of wrong assumptions you made about me and my wife. I’m sorry you have that general view. I know how people in general are with our imperfection, but a person is not “people in general”.
I've responded - as everyone else here has - to WHAT YOU WROTE.
You've come to a general advice forum in which people share their personal experiences, observations of anecdotes shared here across years. Things they've seen, things they've tried, and various results. Similar to what you wrote. Similar to what I initially wrote when I also thought my case and my methods of responding were unique.
You can proclaim that people's responses to what you wrote are way off base (when you have not offered anything specific about why you think that), and proclaim the indignation and offence you've taken (as in "wow... just ... wow"), but unless you quit fighting everyone who tells you bad news - WHICH YOU CLEARLY KNOW YOU ARE IN - and instead focus on the problem in your marriage, you are likely to continue to get the same results while turning off anyone who wants to help you.
No one here caused the problem you are in, so please don't direct the understandable and obvious frustration with your marriage at us.
Is that why you wrote "wow... just wow?"
Please cut the bullshit and get to truth. You don't write things like that
except to express indignation and offence taken. It's not helpful and isn't meant to be.
I get that you love your wife and want to defend your marriage.
Do you think that by attacking others here that you are going to earn her love - like there's some cosmic justice that's going to step in and resolve this in your favour? Do you think that by denying the observations of others who have been through similar accounts to yours, that the problem will go away? Do you want it to go away?
Did you want us to tell you this is no problem at all, and we failed to do that?
You wrote your own account.
In my experience and that of those of others who have been part of this forum for years, there is nothing especially unique about your testimony.
There's much that is familiar. Hundreds if not thousands of similar testimonials. unless you have left out something vital about it - I'm not sure of your basis for thinking your perspective and experience is utterly unique in this most common of dysfunctional marital symptoms - but maybe it is.
If there is something unique, and you want different perspectives on it, then maybe explain your unique circumstances.
If you don't yet know what's unique or isn't, you might get better results with humility. If you are new, you have no idea how your story is or isn't special.
Right, because anyone else who has found themselves in a celibate relationship and either chosen to stick or divorce, didn't love their spouse and wasn't broken hearted.
@
coffeeachiever , 99.5% of people who have found themselves in your position, myself included, loved their spouse and their spouse said they loved them back.
You aren't unique because you loved your spouse and tried hard, and the suggestion that you might be the only one who did, comes across to me as unbelievably sanctimonious.
If she was your girl, she'd have sex with you. She'd WANT to have sex with you.
She's not "your girl",
coffeeachiever . She might not be anyone else's girl, but she's not coming to you for those needs -- and it would be easy for her to do so if she was inclined.
Insight from a guy who has dated A LOT, post-marriage. It's a cliche in the post-divorce dating world that those new to the dating world from a celibate marriage (no matter if they were willingly or unwillingly celibate) are all about the sex once they are outside of their former relationship.
I don't think anyone suggested you give it up.
I think I and others have suggested you treat this seriously and with the gravity it is due.
Most people come here thinking it's cancer stage 1. I'd warrant that if it's gotten to the stage that aversion to sex with one's spouse has reached such intensity that's it's overridden their natural drives and is risking the marriage, that it's stage 4.
If you have reason to think a drug caused it, then great.
What I've seen from medical diagnoses though, is that the boner pills and changes to meds are rarely followed up on. And also that it's the abandoned spouse who is the one who is constantly the impetus to book appointments, tell them to take the meds.
This is also generally writ large outside of medical interventions. How many appointments and advice columns and relationship advice books have YOU looked up for this problem, vs her?
The reason framing it as a medical issue doesn't often result in success even when meds are prescribed is that the person who chooses celibacy doesn't regard it as a problem, or rather, doesn't regard it as a worse problem than remaining celibate in their relationship. There's no consequence attached to not taking the pills. The ONLY time they get serious about the relationship is when there is a clear and present danger to it (ie separation papers, affair discovered, open relationship proclaimed).
It's generous to frame this as a medical issue that you face together. I get it. I viewed it as an opportunity for us to not be oppositional. I looked at the apparent loss of my wife's libido and her sexual difficulty as I would an external force acting on our marriage - something we'd face together - and in which my duty as a faithful husband was to help her in whatever way I could. Like a car accident or cancer. I split off the sexual aversion to me as being something separate from the relationship itself, rather than being an accurate description of how she really felt about me and/or the marriage to me.
In some ways, I really even built myself up to be the hero/martyr. Like, she'd realize one day, "Who else would stick with you for 4.5 years of celibacy and reluctant sex? Isn't that evidence that I'm a great guy and an understanding husband? Doesn't that show how PERFECT I am for you?" I was able to pretzel twist my thinking into believing that the evidence of our fundamental disconnection was actually evidence of how perfect I was for her, and how much I deserved to be loved as a husband. I thought, one day she would surely realize just how great a guy I was, the longer I endured the feeling of being abandoned and unwanted by even my own wife. After a few years of that I began to flip that script to the extent that I felt myself lucky to be in a relationship because of how hideous I must be that no one else would have me. I later even began to have dark thoughts about that - disgust or anger with my own sexuality.
Yes, it's not just depressing. It's absolutely
devastating - and can drive people to even suicidal thoughts about the cosmic injustice of it all. Please don't think that by observing that this is a very common result at the end of a tortuous effort - that it is a dismissal of it as easy or hopeful. It isn't a characterization of it at all. It's simply an observation of it.
As for taking into account individual persons - what do you expect?
This is a public form, offering general advice, with people sharing perspectives. The people here have read your account, and shared their own.
What exactly is it that you have left out or that you believe people are missing?
Was it as above - where you insinuated that you are unique in that you loved your wife whereas others don't? Or that you were committed to marriage whereas others here were not?
As opposed to the ones who responded so far to you, who clearly showed no concern for you and the testimony you provided.
No one - as far as I can tell, has made a recommendation of what you should do.
They have offered observations of what usually results. There has been some urging to get to the truth of your relationship, but a difference in the emphasis of where that truth lies.
You want to know why doesn't she want you or what the long term intention is.
Others here have advised you that -despite nearly 100% of people starting there- that it's usually unhelpful in terms of what you need to do.
All of us valued our marriages and loved our spouses.
I certainly valued mine and made similar arguments to yours - I wasn't just "going steady" - I didn't get married to get divorced. I waited a long time to do it.
I even kept it going after my celibate wife was revealed (in the last year) to have been having an affair. Or I tried.
Celibacy was not part of your marriage vow, though you have clearly staked your stance on it though.
You have made your decision.
I have known many women who got a lot of unwanted sexual attention in their teens and twenties, and married the first guy who seemed not to care about sex with them, only to discover in their 30's that what they had wasn't necessarily a higher love, but rather - the guy simply wasn't interested in sex with them - wasn't interested in them sexually. It wasn't a sexual love.
In all cases, there was love. I love my friends, my father, my mother, my children. But it wasn't a kind of love that included a mutual attraction.
In my case and many others, the promise I made when I got married was based on an assumption of what a marriage IS - and that assumption included a kind of love that is specific to
man and wife, and not the kind of love or investment I might have in other kinds of loving relationships. That's me though.
In your case, you have made your stance clear.
You aren't seeking advice (even when that advice is about getting to the truth of your relationship, discovering it, and then deciding what to do together, armed with the the truth that you've both named).
Forgive us all please - most people come here asking for advice or perspectives.
You've shared yours. It's familiar to me - not unique at all - unfortunately.
And you've said what you plan to do.
What I'd suggest as an approach to make your decision easier, is to look toward resources available to people who consciously make a decision to commit to celibacy.
For example, how do nuns and priests find support within their faith to overcome their bodily urges?
At the very least, they make a conscious decision to pursue that behavior and view it in a wider context of tradeoffs. There is ceremony observed around the decision to do so, and I imagine a support network for it.
That's different from what's happened to you - because it's been done to you or snuck into your life without choosing it.
Priests CHOOSE celibacy as part of their deal.
I'd advise that you seek help in that regard, rather than trying to solve whether the woman you live with wants to have sex with you, or whether she's going to come to clarity as to why she won't and also share that clarity with you. It's very, very rare, to have such clarity when people are in the relationship, but once the fog is lifted and after it is over, it commonly becomes very clear. That's not going to be the case for you, given your choices, so you need resources to help you stick.
I'm curious about what you mean when you say this, specifically.
It's obviously important to you to say it to us, or to yourself.
What does it mean?
If someone is "your girl", what does that look like, as opposed to someone who is not "your girl?"
I don't think anyone said that knowing the "why" is simple.
I'm not clear on what you mean. You clearly were asking why. Are you saying that you misspoke and that you don't want to know why?
Questions of why might or might not be simple. The point people were making wasn't that something is simple or not; rather, it was that the answer, when discovered, rarely (if ever) changes the problem.
"Why" is about knowing what will happen next, and sometimes about knowing if you should do something different to fix a problem.
So, if you know the why - let's say that she was never attracted to you sexually... then you'd have no reason to think that it would ever be any different and you could then prepare for that future.
But it's been 4.5 years and I assume it's been raised already and your distress is known.
4.5 years out of your adult life is a reasonable course to plot to project the future. so what's different? It doesn't change the problem in terms of what you should expect will happen next. At minimum - it's unlikely that there will be sex whether she confesses to a reason for you, or whether you let it slide and find yourself celibate a decade from now. It's not likely she knows why she isn't attracted to you that way, and saying it out loud isn't likely to be a conversation that would result in a better marriage at this point after 4.5 years. It would hurt you, and you are still deciding to stick.
The "why" is about hope - the hope that whatever the reason is, it's something within your domain to control or fix.
What's shown time and time again here is that even when the why is fixed, the why is about past tense. This is why I lost my attraction to you X years ago... Fixing that why sometimes makes one appealing and a better person objectively, but rarely to the person who already lost their attraction to the point they overrode their own libido to survive and perpetuate the relationship.
Is it though? Even in this very thread, you've reacted very strongly to deny even information that people have offered in good faith to you about similar circumstances to what you've written. Then you've gone and spiked the ball to disparage them for it, while making yourself to be a better person. I'd warrant that if you do that here and aren't consciously aware of it - with strangers and nothing on the line - blaming others for responding and sharing based on what YOU wrote to them - that it's likely much worse when there are genuine stakes involved, from your wife's perspective.
I think you should post what you've got here to the "Staying" forum on this board, where there are people who have also made their decisions and really aren't seeking input or a sharing of observations and perspectives. You'll likely feel better about the responses there, and there may be approaches (as with priests) and resources for you.