Lack of Intimacy in My Marriage & What it is leading me to do

[Snowy]

I have to agree with DN.

 

Some people are born a certain way and will never change (at least not significantly). It's part of who they are. It's their identity.

[lavenderdove]

I think there is always an issue when someone says they want to 'pretend something didn't happen' and then just go about their business... i think your wife really isn't enjoying sex for whatever reason and she is trying to bury this issue and hope it goes away.

 

the problem with the idea of massage parlors and strip clubs and cheating as a sexual outlet is that eventually those things get found out, and once that bubble is burst, she may well leave you and there will be so much bitterness and alienation among your family members and kids. You have to ASSUME you will get caught because over time it happens, and imagine how your entire family, wife, and children will behave towards you if it gets around you are cheating and frequenting places for sexual gratification. Your world will collapse in an instant and in a very painful way and everyone will hate you.

 

So you need to try to resolve this in an honorable way rather than taking the line of least resistance. Your wife needs to understand that if this doesn't get better, you WILL leave because you don't want to humiliate her and the family by cheating. Sex is a normal function that should bond couples, and if she unilaterally decides sex is not important, by default she is depriving you of it and it is a natural drive that demands to be satisfied in normal people who don't suffer from sexual inhibition or low hormones. So she needs to understand how really critical this is to your happiness, and go to a counselor with you to get to the root of why she can't even manage it happily once a week. Either something is wrong with her (hormones or inhibitions/repressions) that should be fixed, or else there is a dynamic happening between you as a couple that is turning her off and needs to be fixed.

 

If she refuses to address this in therapy, then you need to work towards an amicable parting. If you are good friends, then if you both work on it, you can be good co-parents in spite of the divorce if you decide to do so. Perhaps you are indeed better as friends than lovers. And you have no chance of being friends at all if you end it badly by getting caught cheating or soliciting hookers/strippers for sexual activity. So keep that in mind, and rather than going 'underground' with various kinds of cheating, instead bring the depth of the problem to light with your wife and let her know that you cannot and will not go the rest of your life without sex or such rare sex that you are constantly frustrated, that you want a normal sex life with normal frequency and go to a counselor to fix that, or else you both need to accept that perhaps you are better as friends than as a couple and move towards divorce.

[DN]

Sorry but this one forum and a couple of others are not the benchmark for millions of people and their behaviour.. If we all think negatively and that the whole world is against us and that no one can ever change and they will follow the same pattern of behaviour for the rest of their lives, no wonder none of us will change, we are told by others we never will.

It's not just this forum and a few others - it's a pattern repeated over and over in newspapers, magazines and, more importantly, reported by those in the counseling business in overwhelming numbers.

 

Of course it is possible to change but this seems to be one area where the vast majority people are not willing to do so. Those who continually hold out hope to people in that situation that they can do something about it are offering a false hope with a tiny number of exceptions.

[benton88]

Sex lives rarely improve with time. It may happen occasionally. But, for the most part, once your sex life starts to decline, the best you can hope for is that the decline will level out at some point you can live with.

 

The problem is that women are often very energetic in this area early on in the relationship. Perhaps men are too easily led on. But we believe that our mates will be into sex once we get married too. No one should assume that they will have sex five or six times a week for the rest of their lives. For most, that level of sex is unsustainable. But to go from five times a week to once a week is not fair for the guy who likes sex. When it drops to once a month, it's unbearable for many guys. The OP is 40 years old and he is "settling" for once a week. His wife probably thinks she is making a concession by having sex with him four times a month!

 

To me, this is no different than if a woman married a guy who told her he wanted a big family and then, after they were married, he decided he doesn't want so many kids after all -- say, with all the stress in his carreer, saving for a house, saving for retirement, maybe kids just aren't as important to him anymore. Let's say at this point, the guy has changed from wanting four or five kids, to just one or two kids. Then a couple of years later, he changes again -- now he only wants one kid and he wants to wait five more years before having the kid. Fast forward five years and say he changes again - now he wants no kids at all.

 

Is it fair that this woman is stuck in what she now realizes is going to be a childless marriage? She married him believing he wanted a lot of kids like her. But now she knows she will not have that in her life because her husband has decided that kids are not that important to him. Should she try talking to him, try counseling? Sure. But for how long? How long should she wait while she watches her childbearing years pass by?

[TheVP]

I might be wrong here, but if the OP does the daily chases, does the back massages, plans endless dates, sure he'll end up getting lucky a couple more times a month, but it'll probably lead to even greater resentment on his behalf.

 

It's basically as if his wife were to tell him "I am worthy of your all your attentions and affections, and you are not of mine." A compromise on a calendar of picking dates sounds like a slap in the face to the guy. It's be like saying "well, I enjoy this as much as taking out the garbage, but I'll endure what I can." A guy wants to be desired even more then being physically relieved.

 

I'm not married, and most of my relationships are not long termed, so I don't know what advice to give, other than to let your wife know your wife know the gravity of the situation and hold off going to those places.

 

I've been celibate with the woman I've been dating since October (although I'm still hoping and planning), so I can somewhat related to your frustration, but it's a very different situation, so it's not like I'm feeling bait and switch, or feeling rejection.

 

Maybe I'm naive, but a massage parlor, that's basically a place of prostitution? Is that even legal?

I'm not sure what going to strip clubs are doing for you either. It's like if you are starving, so you go downtown to stare at a juicy steak from a window for the night.

[im_the_undead]

She might be suffering some sort of depression and doesn't even know it.

Depression pretty much ruined my life, now I'm trying to get out of this rut and get my groove back!

Therapy sounds like it's def. needed.

[PhilliesFan001]

I think you are missing my point: is it better for me to cheat on her then with a woman not from one of those "types of businesses"?

 

You shouldn't be cheating, period. I agree that nobody should put all the blame on you and that your wife is equally responsible for a satisfying sex life, but the bottom line is you're also responsible for your behavior and it's frankly wrong.

 

It could be a number of things with her - depression, hormonal issues, feeling unsexy, being too tired from the child rearing, stress, a lack of emotional connection in the marriage, etc...BUT If she absolutely refuses to go to counseling to figure this out, and she wont even discuss the issue, I don't see it getting better. It's led to five years of infidelity and frequenting massage parlors where you could be picking up God know's what, so maybe it's time to think about leaving the marriage.

[Oitopolegadas]

Wow, so many great responses: some very optimistic and some very pessimistic. I thank you all and have been in deep reflection on them and my marriage over the last 24 hours.

 

First, let me say that I think this thread is the kick-in-the-ass I needed to just stop the cheating on my wife. I really just needed to hear it out loud by some real person, and several of you have done the equivalent of that here. you are absolutely right, it is wrong, unfair and I am very ashamed.

However, I do know better than to let myself be overcome completely with my guilt and then be honest with her about this shameful behavor because I know that I would send shock waves through my marriage on an entire other scale.

It is a secret I will keep from her and carry with me to the grave.

 

Now that that's said and I'm done with it, let me get on with some feedback on various suggestions/ideas presented:

I guess I'm an optimist. I think the reason why it's so commonplace in today's society where these things never get worked out (as many of you say) is because of the cultural and generational differences between me and what seems to now be commonplace in society where now most people don't think divorce is such a big deal: for me and my wife it is a HUGE deal, enough to keep us together forever even if it means one or both of us has to be unhappy. (yes, for life...although I'm not 100% sure she would say that). But let me be honest, overall my life is not that bad apart from this issue.

This belief and virtue is instilled more so in me than in her (albeit, strong in her as well) largely because of my strict Catholic upbringing and also just because as I mention I could not imagine becoming a divorcee. Neither of our parents got divorced, and her and definitely not I could imagine it happening to us.

 

On the topic of counseling: I might be naive, but it seems that if and once we were to seek out professional counseling...suddenly it would be like a black mark on our marriage because we would be "one of those couples that had to go to counseling and couldn't figure things out on their own, in secret between each other, like all good marriages should handle their issues". Now to be fair, I have suggested counseling in the past when we had a really rocky part about 5 years ago...we were very close to divorce at that time, but she just flat out refused to go to counseling, saying she felt we could work things out on our own. I agreed.

 

I guess I'm not ready to just go seek counseling before her and I give this one more shot like I described in my first few posts (i.e. she was the one who asked me if we could just "start over again").

This was spurred on by a very serious conversation I had with her a few days ago (which I initiated), where in not as many words as some of you have suggested, I essentially told her that I had decided some time ago that I would need to ignore my frequent sexual desires because if I didn't it would lead to big problems for us (I meant infidelity and/or separation/divorce, but didn't use those words). I told her for me this was old news (keeping my sexual desires at bay), as it had been a couple years at least where I had made up my mind this way, and I told her that I had to make this decision for myself because if I didn't then it would lead to problems for us. A couple days later in another, less serious (but still serious) conversation that she partially initiated, she asked if we could just start over, and forget that we haven't been having sex that often (obviously meaning she had maybe understood my sacrifice...finally understood it seems and is now willing to address it for real maybe?).

 

Ironically, she is away at her parents' for a few days with the kids, but there have already been some texting exchanges between us that show that she is ready to make a change (i.e. promises of getting some private time together once she gets back). Now, this is where my pessimistic part kicks in: I've been down this road before, and usually once we have sex once, it'll be weeks before we do it again because she figures I've had my fix for a while....it HAS to be different this time and I am willing to do ANYTHING to ensure that it is different this time (much I have been thinking over from many of your advice in this thread).

 

Finally, here is my plan: To throw everything I have into making this "new start" work, including all of my sexual energy which I usually exhaust on masturbation (or a couple times a year on strip clubs/massage parlors). She wants me to chase after her again, which I don't mind doing so long as I'm not continually rejected which what was happening in the first half of our marriage. This will also hopefully lead to her also chasing me sometimes, and then maybe we can keep up an acceptable cadence?

 

_________________

 

Also wanted to give you some more background info:

1. 8 months ago she stopped working to spend more time with the kids: financially we can hack that, so she has much more free time with much less stress. The frequency of intimacy only picked up mildly for a while when she stopped work, and like you know it's been 3 months now of nothing.

2. So even when we were dating, and at the start of our marriage, we never really had sex as frequently as I wanted to (which is why I chased her all the time for it back then). She was content with once a week or so, but we never ever even while dating had sex on a daily basis. It was couple times a week at best.

3. We've never had sex twice in a row in one session. I used to have sex with past girlfriends (in my younger years) 2-4 times a night, but we have never done it. It's like when it's done it's done, time to cleanup and go to sleep, shower, etc.

4. Now, many of you may be saying "so it's my own fault for marrying someone that I knew didn't meet me on a sexual drive level", and you are right. Ours has always been more a cerebral relationship. You see, we are BOTH only children, and so just having a companion in life seems like a great thing to us. It's really a shame our sex drives couldn't naturally just match more.

5. I find myself often seeking pleasure in material things and I'm not sure if it's an accurate association but believe that it may be because I'm not getting the fulfillment in immaterial things. I buy toys, and hobbies to keep myself happy but I think if I was happier in my marriage I wouldn't do that that much....just a final side thought.

[Oitopolegadas]

Forgot one key thing to I mention: she has recently been claiming in our recent conversations that she does not have a low sex drive (or at least not as low as I think it is), and that she just thinks it has become too much of a "game" between us recently about who initiates it. Thus, the suggestion that we "start over".

[PhilliesFan001]

I don't mean any disrespect but you say your Catholic views keep you from getting a divorce in an unhealthy marriage...what does your Catholic upbringing tell you about frequenting massage parlors when you're married?

 

Just seems strange to pick and choose but I truly hope you're genuine in saying this thread was a kick you needed and I hope you can save your marriage. I hope your wife is willing to do her part as well.

[Oitopolegadas]

I don't mean any disrespect but you say your Catholic views keep you from getting a divorce in an unhealthy marriage...what does your Catholic upbringing tell you about frequenting massage parlors when you're married?

 

Just seems strange to pick and choose but I truly hope you're genuine in saying this thread was a kick you needed and I hope you can save your marriage. I hope your wife is willing to do her part as well.

 

 

You are right, it is strange to pick and choose: which is why the extracurricular behavior is now officially over-with. It's not that I'm a religious person, it's just that my upbringing was very religious and somehow it's been ingrained into my thinking patterns, along with the fact that I have a guilty conscience over things that usually most people wouldn't care about.

 

Frankly, this thread is the next best thing to someone I know and trust (ideally not my wife lol) telling me the same thing, that it's cheating and I should stop.

 

And finally, thank you for the well-wishes....I'm pretty excited about the prospect of making my marriage the best it can be.

[PhilliesFan001]

I think it's commendable that you've taken all the comments in stride - a lot of people get very defensive and argumentative when they hear things they don't like so it's refreshing you're owning up to the wrong doing.

 

Best of luck with your marriage, truly.

[OptomisticGirl]

In all fairness, my husband and I have not had sex more than once a night since we've been together and I have a huge sex drive - think 16 year old horny teenage boy and that's MY sex drive. It's great to be able to do it more than once but a lot goes into play with that - girl sometimes takes super long to get rewet, guy has to have a break, or the simple thing is you aren't young anymore. I can't pull some sex positions I could a few years back and I'm 23!

[Ellie2006]

I think your posts are quite contradictory; your OP seems to convey that the lack of sex is a huge issue for you, huge enough to justify your frequenting "massage parlors."

And yet in post #33, you acknowledge that overall your life "is not bad part from this one issue" and you appear unwilling to admit that this issues is serious enough to seek professional help.

 

This lack of intimacy either is a huge issue, one serious enough to threaten the continuation of your marriage, or it's not, and it's something that you can deal with -- be it through extramarital sexual OR material gratification.

 

Granted, life cannot be so black and white but honestly, the way you worded it in post #33 seems to portray the situation not so bleak as you did initially.

 

I know you said that you will no longer be cheating on your wife by going to these strip joints and I applaud you for that.

 

But I think you really need to ask yourself this: is the lack of intimacy really that serious or are you leading/deluding yourself (albeit unconsciously) to believe that this is the case because you want to somehow rationalize your desire to go to strip joints? I.e. is the lack of intimacy that bad OR is it just a "story" you tell yourself to justify going to strip clubs? [On a sidenote, I canNOT believe that you say you have been going to strip clubs for 5 years (half your marriage) and you are still saying, "oh things in my marriage are not as dire"... Sorry to be so blunt but I think you are in serious denial.]

 

IMHO, if it is as bad as you say it is, then I would think you would WANT to seek counseling, if divorce is NOT an option for you. Plus I dont think your unwillingness to seek counseling has nothing to do with optimism since believing that things will magically change without doing anything to make the change is NOT necessarily optimistic; rather it's unrealistic and delusional (sorry if this sounds harsh).

 

Honestly, if you can make things better for you and your wife, who really cares if other people think that getting counseling makes you seem like "one of those couples that had to go to counseling and couldn't figure things out on their own." I truly do not believe this is what people will say as marriage counseling has become quite commonplace now.

 

I dont understand why you are more concerned about "appearances" rather than placing all energy into making your marriage stronger and more satisfying for both of you.

I think you should do some soul-searching, if not with your wife, than alone with the help of a therapist, on why it is that you who have basically agreed to sacrifice your sexual needs, then proceed to place all the blame and resentment on your wife. She is not the only one keeping sex from you. You yourself are blocking you from having a satisfying sex life.

 

 

If you are basically agreeing to all of your wife's demands -- 1) to consider sex as NOT an essential part of your marriage, 2) NOT to see a counselor about how this lack of intimacy is affecting you and your relationship with your wife, 3) to pursue her in order to get sex, 4) to be intimate only when she is willing to be, etc. -- you have agreed to follow the rules SHE has set for intimacy and really, you, being an accomplice, dont really have a leg to stand on in making your wife out as the "bad guy" or the selfish one who refuses to meet your needs.

 

I wish you luck -- I hope you give some more thought to counseling bc I really think it will help.

[Oitopolegadas]

I think the answer is that I don't WANT it to be an issue, and neither does she. We just both want to start anew and pretend the past never happened. I'm willing to give it one more try in this way, and then if it fails I will urge her to go seek counseling with me...I hope it does not have to come to that, but you are right: if it does I don't really care what others think. Actually, the hesitation on going to counseling has never for me been about what others think (however, it may be that for her). Rather, it's more about how I will think about my marriage as one that needed to go to counseling: it almost seems like it may serve as a doorway or excuse to later end the marriage because we had progressed past the seriousness of having to seek counseling. It's like a milestone would have been passed, that now makes it easier to say "well, we tried everything so we might as well give up".

 

Finally, I certainly do not blame her: let me clarify...I certainly did blame her for a very long time, but in recent months have come to accept that physiologically it seems she just doesn't have the same sex drive as me and that is not something that I can blame her for.

 

The bottom line: I am a bit schizophrenic on this issue. On one hand I have this immense sexual drive where I'm not getting enough frequent satisfaction from my wife (although when we do do it it's great!); on the other hand I love her very much and could not imagine hurting her so deeply by getting a divorce (yes, yes I know what you are thinking about the extracurricular activity, but I always believed I would never be caught, and frankly now that's over and done with).

[pat1966]

I know it has been almost two years since this thread has been commented on. However, I just found this thread and it would be very interesting to hear an update. My situation is not far different than yours, although my kids are older. I have found that nothing I have done has gotten my wife to change. I have moved from the optimist to pessimist camp, although I would love to hear some success stories. Has your wife come around? Has she seen how important this issue is to you? Does she understand that a man cannot feel loved without physical contact with his wife's body?

 

I hope things are working well for you. An update would be great.