SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

All great suspects.

And a healthy analysis - many men come here secretly believing (secret from their wives) that ther wife wants sex, just not with them. The root causes you have listed here all rational explanations. That’s great to see you are not being ruled by an insecurity.

However, it’s natural and healthy to want sexual intimacy in your life. It’s one of the joys of a living relationship. It’s bonding, life affirming, and great for our health.

I think you have a sound realistic plan for yourself while you continuing to sort things out in therapy. And in the end, if this does turn out to be something she cat or won’t work on, it’s okay for the things you listed to be true and you still do not want to continue the marriage. I have spoken to many men here through my time here and most if not all did not think they should end the marriage over that. Yet, they are not and will never be happy with a sexless marriage.

I hope it doesn’t come to that for you, and that you and your wife begin a new journey together. I love to see things work out. But I don’t like to see people stay married out of any other reason than they want to. I do not feel the alternative does any favors to either person.

[This message edited by hikingout at 6:11 PM, Tuesday, May 5th]

Eric this is likely a bit too personal to ask on a public forum however I do feel it is an issue for you so I will try as delicately as possible.

How does your average sexual encounter look like?

Many partners react differently depending on how the approach to sex is done, it does turn them away because it hits the wrong emotional cords.

You have also something that you seem having trouble to express in this matter, as you struggle to be completely honest about your needs.

I can tell you that from my experience it is all reversible, even with a partner that is sort of turned off by it and her history.

But you have to be open to completely change your understanding and approach to sex eventually.
I would disagree with most about what is considered sex, most likely, before it was instinctive and now is more conscious. Would never go back though.

Maybe you can find a path for you and your partner as well if you really look into it from the ground up.

Post #61:

All great suspects.

And a healthy analysis - many men come here secretly believing (secret from their wives) that ther wife wants sex, just not with them. The root causes you have listed here all rational explanations. That’s great to see you are not being ruled by an insecurity.

No, I'm sorry, I can't. It may be true for some marriages and some women but it certainly is not true for all women nor even most women. In particular I am sorry to say but I do not think this is true here.

A bigger picture: A lot of SI's advice given by the "R is possible" crowd is based upon 3 or 4 assumptions, stated next:

A. You can heal from your WS's affair while being in their presence even if they are still wayward.

B. A WS never trusted their AP.

C. Your WS was in love with you when they married you.

D. If your WW doesn't want sex with you then she probably doesn't want sex with anyone. Or she has a block.

These A.--D. are all false, or at the very least IN MANY INSTANCES NOT TRUE. I spend so much of my time here calling these out in fact.

Eric, I can understand that it may be comfortable believing in A.--D. but if you do then you are FOOLING YOURSELF, my friend. I want you to have the sex life you deserve and the first step of this is disabusing yourself of things that may sound good but are just not true.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 2:01 PM, Wednesday, May 6th]

It’s okay for him to have a process you do not understand. What you aren’t getting is if he operates under this mindset, the benefit of the doubt, he can work towards clarity. He isn’t being led by emotions or insecurities. He is being led by logic, and process of elimination.

Approaching it as "she just doesn’t want to have sex with me" is an insecure posture. Using this non-attack approach he is using with his wife, she will either prove or so prove his hypothesis.

And I affirm and agree that he deserves to have a healthy sex life and encouraged him to divorce if those suspects do not pan out or his wife is unwilling to work through the issue.

I am not pro- reconciliation. I am pro-personal healing. And I think he is on a good path for that. He is in therapy. He is taking a rational and reasonable approach, he is not making her issues about him, and he isn’t disregarding his needs.

As for this rubbish:

A. You can heal from your WS's affair while being in their presence even if they are still wayward

.

You misunderstand - it takes healing for some people to leave. So we encourage that regardless of what the ws is doing. If the work on themselves they will be prepared to leave or reconcile. Codependency is a common theme and often the bs has to work to heal their tendency towards that to decide what is best for them. None of us think you should remain married to a wayward not willing to change in perpetuity. But someone isn’t going to be easy to leave just because some stranger on the internet insists that’s what they should do. Most have to have time to come to terms with their own situation and then through that determine the best outcome

B. A WS never trusted their AP.

No one says never, some of us do not feel we did. Some of do feel we did.I feel I have great clarity over my experience, whether or not you want to accept that.

C. Your WS was in love with you when they married you

.

Ha! I never assume that and I don’t read that from others. What I try and do is not make assumptions at all and try to help the person from the point the are. You are the one who speaks in absolutes and only see one way.

D. If your WW doesn't want sex with you then she probably doesn't want sex with anyone. Or she has a block.

I think it’s helpful not to encourage an insecurity that there is something wrong with the bs. That there must be some reason the person doesn’t want to have sex specifically with them.

82 percent of women have experienced unwanted sexual advances ranging from harassment to abuse. It’s not crazy to believe that can impact the sex life to some percentage of these.

It’s better to not assume the bs

carries any blame and work through what the trues reason is. I haven’t suggested these things must be true. I have said they can be true and are often reasonable things to suspect. But I enou age them to forgive that out. If the ws doesn’t want to work through things to have a healthy sex life my inclination is they should divorce.

[This message edited by hikingout at 3:31 PM, Wednesday, May 6th]

I said what I said, in particular about A.--D. being the underlying assumptions for too much of the advice given here. It is why so many BHs here seem to remain stuck years after the fact.

Yes hikingout, you are clear on your own experiences I respect that. You give advice using your own situation as a model, but from what I've seen, not all affairs or even MOST, are anywhere similar to that. This one certainly does not seem to be. I must say, I don't know if/how much you truly acknowledge that.

There are an awful lot of sunk costs that our friend Eric may have to part with. The unmistakable harsh truth of the matter here--shown by events--is that Eric's WW *does* want to have sex though, it just has not been with Eric. He has basically been friend-zoned by his own WW, from the very beginning. This does NOT mean that there is anything fundamentally wrong with Eric as a man, but this is the reality. It is definitely not "insecurity" to acknowledge this, and it doing Eric a huge disservice to look the other way from this.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 4:08 PM, Wednesday, May 6th]

You give advice using your own situation as a model, but from what I've seen, not all affairs or even MOST, are anywhere similar to that. This one certainly does not seem to be. I must say, I don't know if/how much you truly acknowledge that.

I do give my perspective about my affair because that’s the experience I have.

What you miss is what I mostly do is give my perspective on healing which is far more universal than you recognize. There are very defined processes that can help people reach self awareness, self empowerment and clarity, and when someone has been deeply traumatized the last thing that is helpful is the refrain "oh your wife loves sex just not with you" which is a HUGE Assumption. Sometimes it can turn out to be right, but often the issue is more complicated than that.

And regardless of your intent to not demean him as a man it can still add shame to a bs who is already struggling- it lacks great empathy over the overwhelming feelings the various posters are trying to navigate.

You just think telling someone to leave is the answer. But you can’t recognize the things within them that do not allow that to happen immediately. Encouraging them on their healing path is what most of us do here.

I do recognize that not everyone has a ws like me. However, I also believe after talking to hundreds of ws both privately and publically I do think I understand what makes most of them tick. I realize a lot of them will not be brave enough to face themselves When I don’t understand them I do not try and help them - most of the time it’s male ws who I do not relate to but sometimes it can be a female. I give them clues from my history to investigate with theirs.

I have actually not drawn any conclusions about Eric’s wife. We do not know anything about her other than they have a dead bedroom and these was an affair in her past. And that he has lived this way long enough. What I am affirming for Eric is this isn’t normal, follow a logical process because Eric is the type of person who is careful in his decisions. This is a big strength. Because once he goes through his process whatever he decides on the other side of it he will be at peace with because he made the efforts he felt were needed.

Your advice is always one thing and one thing only, so this is a little like the teapot and the kettle situations. You have misinterpreted what people are saying because it doesn’t match your narrative about the only logical step you think the can make Eric is finally taking steps to heal, he is saying he isn’t happy and he is going to give it a year to see what progress he can make before pulling the plug. There is nothing wrong with that at all. He is giving her an opportunity to change because he knows it’s not realistic to say "put out or get out" nor does he want to achieve intimacy this way as it would never work.

And for the record I do not care if he divorces or they reconcile. I care about Eric becoming happy. It sounds like he hopes they can work through it, and that he has limits on what that looks like. Eric is doing great.

[This message edited by hikingout at 4:40 PM, Wednesday, May 6th]

A bigger picture: A lot of SI's advice given by the "R is possible" crowd is based upon 3 or 4 assumptions, stated next:

A. You can heal from your WS's affair while being in their presence even if they are still wayward.

B. A WS never trusted their AP.

C. Your WS was in love with you when they married you.

D. If your WW doesn't want sex with you then she probably doesn't want sex with anyone. Or she has a block.

That is way, way off the 'R id possible' proposition.

A. You can heal from your WS's affair while being in their presence even if they are still wayward.

By and large, that's absolutely true, but it is not part of why R is possible.

A toxic WS can make their BS's healing impossible, and separation is probably a good choice in those cases. At the same time, some BSes who don't heal may be - and some probably are - trying to shift the blame onto their WS for something they're responsible for.

Betrayal dumps a lot of terrible stuff on the BS, but the BS is the only person who can heal the BS. Sure, if the WS is unremorseful, the sooner the BS dumps the WS, the better.

But most BSes and WSes don't know what's best for them immediately after d-day. So many of us report going back and forth for months after d-day. That means staying in the presence of the WS for most of us.

When signs are ambiguous or vague, the way to a good D/R decision is to start healing ASAP. Jumping into D or R without looking at the actual facts of what is going on leads to big mistakes - it's the difference between 'ready - aim - fire' and 'fire!'.

B. A WS never trusted their AP.

Irrelevant to the 'R is possible' proposition. Healed WSes can restore their trustworthiness to an appropriate level, and a healed BS can chose to trust or not.

C. Your WS was in love with you when they married you.

Irrelevant to the 'R is possible' proposition. Love can grow where it didn't previously exist; love can die where it did. To R, partners need to ask themselves if they can build an M they want starting now and sustain it into the future.

D. If your WW doesn't want sex with you then she probably doesn't want sex with anyone. Or she has a block.

Irrelevant to the R is possible proposition. Besides, if sex is one of the BS's requirements for R, I think the vast majority of us would counsel D'ing any partner who will not agree to meet requirements.

*****

Some of the assumptions that go into the 'R is possible' proposition are:

1) Both BS and WS are heavily and negatively impacted by infidelity.

2) Both BS and WS have multiple options to choose from.

3) The R/D decision is about the future, not the past. Both partners need to look into their past for indicators of what the future might bring, but the real questions aren't 'What did ____ do to me in the past? The questions that need answering are ones like, 'Am I more likely to live a life I want to live by staying or going?'

Sure, past actions are the best available indicator of future actions, but life has certainly surprised me, and I've had to change my course a lot. Hasn't almost everyone had to change course multiple times in their lives?

4) If both partners agree on what will constitute their post-infidelity M, the partners have the ability to create and maintain that M, even as it changes over time. If they use that ability, R is possible, no?

5) Neither BS nor WS has any obligation to offer R or to work for R.

6) The relationship between WS and ap is what the WS and BS make it to be in their story. Both need to realize that the WS A'ed down with the ap, and the ap A'ed down with WS.

7) R is NOT possible unless both partners get and stay honest, committed to each other, committed to R, and transparent and work together to resolve issues in their lives.

8) 'R is possible' means just that - possible. Not ideal, not s 'should', not a 'must', not guaranteed to succeed or fail, not recommended ... just a possibility that should be considered as part of healing.

That's just off the top of my head.

IOW, the '3 or 4 assumptions' outlined in the quoted text above have virtually nothing to do with the possibility of R.

I've got to be honest: this discussion - and the whole process - is incredibly difficult for me. All the time, I'm fighting against things in my head: the sunk cost fallacy, obviously, and also not being able to see any comfortable way forward. But discomfort is what my WW and I have to get used to. Bemoaning past errors doesn't help, but I've made things many times more difficult for myself by supressing the feelings I had all those years ago - both when the affair came out, now almost sixteen years ago, and before that, when my wife made it clear through her actions that a meaningful sexual relationship was something she could do without.

I'm 59 soon, and I'm hanging onto the idea that my 60s should be a good decade. I'm in generally good health and financially comfortable. I have friends and interests. I've probably said earlier in this thread that I can't let this situation remain as it is past the end of this year, and I've no intention of waiting until 31 December to do something about it. I've already taken some tentative steps, but there's a lot more to do. In some ways, I've done nothing, because my wife doesn't understand this simple truth: I can't be celibate and happy (at least not in this relationship; things would be different if I were single.)

This is literally exhausting. I have periods of quite extreme lethargy because my brain is fighting itself. Tomorrow, we go on holiday and, when we do, there's always part of me wishing it was over so I can get back to normal. There's nowhere to hide on holiday. But of course 'back to normal' isn't a good place, because my normal for the past 16 years (or more) has been denial.

I am tempted to abandon this thread because it's painful. But I'm going to stick with it because the only thing that's keeping me going is the sense that I'm moving forward, no matter how slowly or laboriously. What I'm going through runs far deeper than "my wife had an affair." I keep telling myself, "We'll solve this problem together, or I'll solve it on my own," in preparation for telling her that.

I am tempted to abandon this thread because it's painful. But I'm going to stick with it because the only thing that's keeping me going is the sense that I'm moving forward, no matter how slowly or laboriously. What I'm going through runs far deeper than "my wife had an affair." I keep telling myself, "We'll solve this problem together, or I'll solve it on my own," in preparation for telling her that.

I am sorry if I in anyway contributed to this feeling. I promise from here forward I will only comment back to you.

What you described in this paragraph- I just want to affirm this is sane and logical. And being celibate in a relationship is far worse than as a single person. I totally see that and what you are saying. Your process is very sound and I am glad you are working on this. The woulda coulda shouldas are not helpful and I agree this about the future and where you see yourself going. I hope you will stay.

I am sorry if I in anyway contributed to this feeling.

The pain comes from confronting reality, not from anyone's choice of words. Your contributions are always welcome and valued.

Eric,
I don’t think you’ve mentioned it, but have you had a discussion with your wife regarding hormone treatment?
Especially with menopause, I’ve seen women who lost their sex drive completely and have it come roaring back like they were 25 again once they started. Although it does take around a month or 6 weeks for results to start appearing.

...have you had a discussion with your wife regarding hormone treatment?

Last year, I gave her to understand how celibacy was impacting me, and she did try to do something about it. This included a couple of visits to the doctor, who seemed to be saying there was no physical reason why intercourse should be painful (which it was, which is why the resumption of our sex life was very short-lived.) My wife used a vaginal pessary for a while, but stopped when she felt it wasn't working. So - the purpose of that treatment was to alleviate pain during intercourse, not to reignite her sex drive. I don't think she has investigated treatments which may have that effect.

I think most people here would say she isn't really playing her part. She listens when I talk to her, and she has taken some action, but it's not sustained, and she never brings the subject up (or, indeed, initiates sex.) Our next conversation is going to be difficult: there's a chance she may understand that we're at a crisis, and decide to pursue further treatment, or she may not. I can't force her to. But it's a perfectly reasonable thing for you to ask.

One last thought from what you just described- I think it would be better if you found the strength to help her realize this has reached crisis mode and suggest she work on it in therapy herself. That way she has about 6 months of time to sort through these things as well.

I have heard of instances where women who have been abused have psychosomatic symptoms including painful sex triggered by shame/tramua. If you google that there are some great articles about it. But it would be a process of healing that mental barrier so that her physical symptoms can disappear. I know that sounds awful as well but the reality is she is also missing out on the tremendous benefits and joy that healthy marital intimacy can offer.

Menopause can absolutely cause pain during sex. The fact that she did try something would lead me to believe that at least it’s not a situation where she’s just telling you that to "get you off her back"
Not all, but some women do lose quite a bit of elasticity leading up to and after menopause and it can cause quite a bit of pain I’ve been told.

I’m really just trying to give you advice outside of the infidelity, because to me, a relationship with no sex and no working on the problem is plenty grounds for divorce alone, without any other factors coming into play.
I would really encourage you both to read like crazy on hormones. ChatGPT is an excellent source of information on this. Really anything that is science and fact based it excels at.
And really, the hormones are not just an attempt to solve the sex issue, like I said before, it pretty much eliminates osteoporosis, restores your daytime energy, helps you sleep soundly at night like you used to, and improves mental clarity. Damn I sound like a commercial.

Our next conversation is going to be difficult: there's a chance she may understand that we're at a crisis, and decide to pursue further treatment, or she may not. I can't force her to. But it's a perfectly reasonable thing for you to ask.

If health allows it and she is open to it, hormone treatment can be an eye opener for. Usually the other half of the sky has no idea how the reciprocal works in those matters.

I know that apparently hormones can provide that insight, even if only a fraction of it, it is always mind blowing.

I would say consider it carefully because it might have drawbacks, but you seem the kind of guy who documents himself so it’s superfluous.

My hunch is that it might be a mix of many different issues, hormonal in part but also psychological and emotional. Infidelity just exacerbated it.

The things that are under your control though are a different story.

Do you think that the impact of this lack of intimacy {in addition to all the rest} affected your behavior in approaching it?

Speaking of self confidence here, because it could have taken a bit, and that is something you have agency to restore. A big part of the polarity you can act upon no matter where she is at.

Anyway Eric, just so we are clear, my goal is just for you to get out of this mess. My words are often misunderstood on here as being too strong or harsh or whatever, but I just want you to get yourself into a much better place, and I trust you are strong enough to handle the unvarnished truth. The words anyone can say on here, are NOTHING to the pain you have already lived.

You have a tough road ahead of you indeed. Thing is, it is human nature to get comfortable with a situation that has lasted so long, even a situation such as the marriage you are in.

You also have a responsibility to reconcile with--and then forgive--YOURSELF. This is actually your most important task I'd say. All this time you have not expressed your truth to your WW, you have done YOURSELF a disservice and I'd also even go so far to say that you have been **complicit** in your own betrayal. You have a great opportunity to do this self-reonciling, by putting your foot down and telling your WW that either the two of you are going to fix this problem together, or you are going to fix this yourself i.e., moving on.

[This message edited by WontBeFooledAgai at 12:29 AM, Thursday, May 7th]