When will things change?

[governmentboy]

I have been married for 12 yrs. Shortly before getting married we abstained from sex just to make it like special when we were married...Well guess what it never came back. My wife has no real desire for sex and I am not attracted to her in that way anymore. We are the greatest of friends but we don't have sex. I had something that resembled an affair(as I had to give her money sometimes) but when the girl found a guy who wasn't married she went with him instead. I have always had lots of sexual feelings and took care of myself all the time. Since breaking up with this girl my desire for intimacy has intensified. I have been trying to find another person but with no luck. I have regsitered on dating websites, gone to clubs but still nothing. I am not going to leave and sit all alone in an apartment waiting for something that appears will never come. I have a nice house and as I said we are the greatest of friends..why give that up to sit alone in an apartment. I have been in the same government job for 17 yrs. It pays well but I am bored out of my mind. Why give up the security the beneifits and the good pay..sounds kind of like my relationship. As a result of all this I have dropped many of the hobbies I had. I drink way to much. If I met the right women I would leave right away but no one seems interested. I am tall dark, fit, clean, stylish, intelligent, people say I am good looking. In the last 12 yrs I have probably had sex 15 times(12 with the affair person)..now that is pathetic. The pain a breakup would cause would be imense for a lot of people. I am getting older and fear my appeal to women is running out.

[shes2smart]

Things will change when you make some changes. Really, it's as simple and complex as that.

 

Change, by its very nature, will take you out of your comfort zone. If you are unwilling to step out of that comfort zone the only change you'll see is yourself getting older.

 

Why give up the security the beneifits and the good pay..sounds kind of like my relationship.

 

Have you no sense of adventure?

 

Seriously, are you going to hang onto things that are comfortable and familiar all the way to your grave?

 

If your relationship is not what you want it to be, then your choices are:

 

1. make efforts to get the current relationship where you want it

2. leave it and try to build a new life that is closer to where you want/need to be

3. do nothing.

 

As for your job, you have similar options.

 

Thus far it sounds like you've chosen "do nothing" and it also sounds like you're not real thrilled with where that's gotten you. Seems to me it's high time to make some other choices.

 

Will it be difficult? Yeah, changing things we have habitually done always is. Will it be painful? Probably...pain is necessary for growth, however, suffering and misery are optional. Will it be worth it? In my experience, it always has been.

 

You want your life to be different? That means you need to start doing some different things. Oh, sure if you keep doing what you've been doing, things will change around you, but there's no guarantee they'll change to your liking or put you in a better place.

 

So it's time to take the responsibility for creating the life you want.

 

A couple books about how to do that:

"Life 101" & "Do It: Let's Get Off Our Buts" both by Peter McWilliams

 

You might also want to look for "Feel The Fear And Do It Anyway" which I believe is by Susan Jeffers....I'd hazard a guess it's not so much your love of comfort/familiarity as your fear of the unknown that's keeping you stuck.

 

If I met the right women I would leave right away but no one seems interested.

 

IMO, that's called "putting the cart before the horse." FIRST, you need to make your life somewhere you want to be FOR YOURSELF before you can attract a healthy, lasting relationship. Try to do it the other way around and you'll wind up attracting partners who may be a little on the short end of the "whole, sane, balanced & healthy" scale. We attract who we are, so it only makes sense to become whole and complete unto ourselves before trying to create a relationship with someone else.

[sisterlynch]

What do you really want? the fantacies can only come true when they make sense. You can't count on some woman stealing you away, that just isn't going to happen!

 

Have you or your wife tried counseling?

[governmentboy]

Thank you for your replies. They are all very thought provoking. Except for the sex I have the perfect marriage. That is what is so hard to give up. I have gone to three different psycologists alone. My wife is kind of bearing her head in the ground and not thinking about it. She doesn't seem to see the need for outside help....I am not expecting to have some women come and say marry me but don't people have affairs all the time?. I couldn't find a women to have a relationship with, outside of my marriage, if my life depended on it. A relationship outside was one of the things the psychologist suggested but warned me it could be very hard to manage. I think it is true that the majority of men only leave when there is another women ready. I think it is all about the cooking and cleaning thing. I have lived alone before and it really sucks and am hesitant to do it again. ....My ultimate dream would be to live in Spain with a spanish women I found attractive, obviously, and doing some simple job. I am an Engineer and have a good brain but I have seen that money is not the answer to happiness and it never will be....Thats a big change from my life now......I have decided that if nothing has changed by the time I am 45 I will either kill myself or quit my job and dump my wife and move to Spain and to hell with the consequences...if I sink I sink if I swim I swim.

[Softmoonlight]

Why are you sticking around if you aren't happy bud? Just get the heck moving and then you'll find what you want. If she isn't willing to do counseling, and sex is that important to you, then she isn't the right one. Sometimes we can really love someone, but they are holding us back from what we want in life.

 

However, I should mention that many women aren't interested in sex after a while, and desire the closeness of a relationship instead of the physical intimacy. So maybe this could happen again with a different woman? All I am thinking is that if you aren't happy, the relationship isn't changing, and you have the desire to go cheat, it's time to move on.

 

Good luck.