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Post by choosinghappy on Mar 3, 2018 19:22:20 GMT -5
ballofconfusion - Thank you, as always. I am very grateful you are willing to share, since we have such similar circumstances. Hard to hear, of course, but so necessary. Thank you.
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Post by ted on Mar 3, 2018 19:59:02 GMT -5
He truly is a loving and caring husband in all ways he is able to be. He just is incapable of being the kind of lover I want and need and has intimacy issues. [....] But my issue is that I have no idea when or IF we will get to a point where he IS able to work on our marriage. [....] I don't want to waste precious years waiting around and supporting him still without getting my needs met, just to possibly discover that it can't be salvaged anyway. Been there, done that, including the same core question: Of what is she "capable?" I waited through five years of her therapy and saw zero visible progress. Zero. Zero indication that she had even begun to understand the extent of her intimacy issues and how it affected our marriage, let alone what caused them or how they might be fixed. For her sake, I hope she made some kind of internal process, but I never saw or heard about it. And to think, I was so excited when she finally stated therapy after years of me asking. Dashed hopes suck. I hope you fare better.
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Post by ted on Mar 3, 2018 20:11:07 GMT -5
Wow, ballofconfusion, that response is destined for the best-of! Thank you, I needed that too, and I second your advice. So happy for you and shamwow.
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Post by baza on Mar 3, 2018 22:16:32 GMT -5
It is your spouses job to sort their own shit out. It is YOUR job to sort YOUR shit out. And, it is NOT obligatory that your spouse even tries to sort their shit out. Same for you. You don't HAVE to do so. You can support your spouse in their efforts (if they are making any) to sort their shit out. Your spouse can support you in your efforts (if you are making any) to sort your shit out. Joint therapy ?? A fine thing potentially - PRESUPPOSING - that you and your spouse are pretty well advanced in your individual shit sorting, and are thus bringing the best possible versions of yourself to the joint table....and to dig down to the truth. But if you, your spouse, or jointly going in to therapy to "save your marriage" then you've got it all wrong. The mission is, to uncover your truth. A consequence of finding that truth may possibly be getting your marriage back on track, or could just as easily reveal that in truth your marriage is fucked. I agree with all of this baza . My concerns in this are: -Is he truly working on "uncovering his truth"? -If so, what kind of effect, if any, will it have on our marriage? -How can I support him in his efforts to sort his shit out if he doesn't let me in? -If he continues to not let me in and I continue working towards exiting, will I even be capable of trying to see if our marriage can get back on track once he is ready to try? It is hard for me to say that none of these things should matter and I should just focus on sorting my OWN shit out. I've got my shit pretty well sorted out. But the big gaping hole here is what he is capable of in our marriage. I don't want to pull the plug until I know that, OR, until I can't take it any longer. Sadly, the latter seems to be coming more quickly than the former and this is my desperate attempt to get any ideas of how I could find out what he is capable of in our marriage as soon as possible before I pass the point of no return in my thinking. Q1 - Is he truly working on "uncovering his truth"?
A1 - That is unknowable. But let's assume he is. Q2 - If so, what kind of effect, if any, will it have on our marriage?A2 - It will either kill it or cure it. Q3 - How can I support him in his efforts to sort his shit out if he doesn't let me in?
A3 - You can't. You'd have to assume he is incapable and/or unwilling to sort his shit out. Q4 - If he continues to not let me in, I continue working towards exiting, will I even be capable of trying to see if our marriage can get back on track once he's ready to try?A4 - In the highly unlikely event of him wanting to & having the capability to do his part, it is indeed highly likely that you will have moved beyond being interested Sadly, not all things are fixable. He may truly wish to fix it, but he may be completely incapable of fixing it. These issues are ones over which you have no control whatsoever. There is nothing you can do about them. They are not yours to own. You have your own choices to make Sister choosinghappy , and that's a hard enough to do all by itself. There's not much value in trying to take on someone else's burden of choice as well. He has some very challenging choices ahead of him. You have some very challenging choices ahead of you too.
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Post by northstarmom on Mar 3, 2018 22:24:21 GMT -5
"But being completely in the dark on whether he is making any "progress", whether he will even get to a point where we can try to work on things together, and if so, when that will be, and what it will look like, is becoming untenable for me."
He probably has no idea whether or not he's making progress. His therapist might, but the therapist's idea of progress might not be your idea of progress. For instance, if your husband is beginning to feel that it's fine for him not to want sex, that he's simply not a sexual person, then that might be progress, but it's not progress indicating that your husband ever will be the type of man you'd want as a husband.
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Post by elynne on Mar 4, 2018 7:02:13 GMT -5
Mine went to therapy for about two years, and my understanding the whole time was that he was talking about the issues between him and me that caused me to want to move out in 2015… A couple months ago, he announced to me that he had quit therapy because, according to him, he had “resolved “his issues… Then he went on to explain that he had side of the therapist, not to discuss our relationship, but rather to discuss an incident that happened at the school he taught it at the time, to the teacher in a classroom next-door to him . And this is what I'm a tad concerned about: That in his eternal therapy my H is not even addressing any issues that would make a difference in our marriage. I get that individual therapy is for HIM but time is ticking on whether or not I will still be willing to work on things with him once he is finally ready to. This is why I want to get involved in SOME way to know if there is hope here or not. I think a big part of whether individual therapy is going to help the relationship depends on how self aware your spouse is. When I discovered H was voluntarily starting individual therapy after the debacle getting to go to couples therapy I was shocked. It showed up in our joint calendar. I carefully asked about it. I told him was pleasantly surprised that he has taken this step. Asked him what his goals were, what he hoped to get out of it. The response was, “Well, you seem to think there’s something wrong with me.” And then he mentioned that he was going to a “real” therapist. That my therapist wasn’t a “real” therapist. That she didn’t have xyz qualification. My sister (a psychologist) said they’re not very good and can’t do much. But maybe that’s good enough for you.” Hubby forgets I have a masters in psychology. I’m a bit ashamed but I replied, “I don’t think I’m a very difficult client. I’m self-aware. I’m not repressing any childhood memories. I’m not in denial or projecting my issues on to others. And I find her objective opinion and my talks with her very helpful. Perhaps you need a therapist with more advanced training?” Oh. It wasn’t nice, but I’ve been on the receiving end of his digs for so long it felt good to give it back. But I digress. Whether or not your spouse being in therapy will improve your relationship is highly dependent on their self-awareness and willingness to work to change. My H scores incredibly low on both factors. I’m not expecting much of an impact from his individual therapy. In fact I suspect it will undermine our couples therapy. He said that his therapist doesn’t think our therapist is qualified to do couples therapy. Oh fuck. You lose some, you lose some.
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Post by ironhamster on Mar 4, 2018 7:57:47 GMT -5
I have come to the burnt out conclusion that, in most cases, couples therapy is just something you do to tell the judge you tried everything. My wife had a master's in counseling, and wanted me to go, but I could not bring myself to spend two hundred dollars an hour to be told to be happy in my misery.
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Post by elynne on Mar 4, 2018 9:09:31 GMT -5
I have come to the burnt out conclusion that, in most cases, couples therapy is just something you do to tell the judge you tried everything. My wife had a master's in counseling, and wanted me to go, but I could not bring myself to spend two hundred dollars an hour to be told to be happy in my misery. I respectfully disagree. I think if both partners are willing to listen and be honest, to be vulnerable, and to work together towards a positive outcome, therapy can make a difference. EFT couples therapy (Emotionally Focused Therapy) has a pretty good success rate. I think it’s around 70%. It’s based on attachment theory. The situations where it doesn’t help are where it’s not possible to develop a sense of safety in the relationship; where one of the partners isn’t able to be vulnerable because of the lack of safety. (ie. verbal abuse, physical abuse, threatening, threatening to leave, constantly bringing up an on-going affair.) In these situations I think a decent therapist should help the clients to terminate the relationship.
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Post by Lithium92 on Mar 4, 2018 10:03:43 GMT -5
lonelywifey
I have a long distance, er, friend, in a sexless marriage whose husband also had a traumatic childhood (I don't know the details but it's cPTSDish issues). He's been in therapy for years with no change, he's very vague whenever she asks about it, and she's pretty certain he just doesn't discuss it in therapy, despite her making her needs clear, ultimata, etc. Knowing her, they would've been made kindly but utterly beyond ambiguity. If your husband doesn't bring it up as a Thing to his therapist, it's unlikely the therapist will focus on it, even to get him to addressing it as a tacit endpoint.
Meanwhile I've had a couple of shortish - a couple of months - bursts of therapy (I'm in the UK, that's just how the NHS organises things, and required me and my therapist playing the system a bit to get the second burst). It focussed on how my childhood issues have affected my adult relationships, even though I 'presented' with my issues being largely - though not entirely - based on my wife's utter lack of interest in sex or the pain it was causing me. We worked back from that, addressed the childhood stuff, and I'm now in an entirely different place when it comes to my marriage. I'm not out of the woods yet, but I'm able to deal with issues I was shying away from. My noticeable changes are so far pretty much 'under the hood' but when I'm ready to deal with the more drastic stuff, I'll be able to do it. During that process, I think I'd have been really uncomfortable with anything more than very generic, agreed, bulletins from my therapist to my wife - but she'd have reasonable to ask for something. I tried volunteering information but she seemed to be actively avoiding the discussion; I'm fairly sure in her head she's outsourced any emotional support to my therapist. Not her monkey, not her circus...
My wife refuses therapy, for herself, or us, jointly. I don't think that's reasonable, but since that puts the ball firmly in my court, sooner or later she'll have to deal with the natural consequences of my response. I wouldn't be at all surprised if when that day comes, she feels totally blindsided and wants to 'work on it'. It'll be too late.
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Post by shamwow on Mar 4, 2018 10:31:11 GMT -5
Wow, ballofconfusion, that response is destined for the best-of! Thank you, I needed that too, and I second your advice. So happy for you and shamwow. I don't talk about it much but my wife's situation is similar to both ballofconfusion and choosinghappy. Refused to get help. Never wanted to talk about it with anyone. Hers is still hidden since even now it could cause a great deal of pain to others so I sit on it. At this point no good could come in disclosure. But at some point I decided that I could no longer be a martyr for another man's sins. For me, if she had tried to get help as I wanted her to I would have been there by her side. But one cannot drag someone to salvation. On a side note, she also made up a medical condition for 20 years to avoid sex, so it has also occurred to me that her abuse may also have been made up (to some extent). But the amazing silver lining of both my and ballofconfusion situation is that we found in each other not just someone who understands what a SM can do to you, but someone who understands our particular "flavor" of SM. We are both amazingly lucky to have found each other, even though it took going through a combined total of 45 years of SM to get here.
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Post by obobfla on Mar 4, 2018 12:41:47 GMT -5
My situation is different in that my wife’s conditions were totally the result of the chemicals in her head, not some previous trauma. She suffered from schizo-affective disorder, which results in mood swings and delusions. Think a little bit of schizophrenia combined a spoonful of bipolar disorder, and you get schizo-affective.
Once the voices came, getting her to a psychiatrist was mandatory. We found a good one, and he got her medicines right fairly quickly. In Florida, however, psychiatric care involves 15 minutes of managing the meds. For counseling, we tried several depending on what insurance company we had at the time. Some were excellent, but others leaved something to be desired.
I was fortunate that my wife was extremely cooperative - almost too cooperative at times. She not only agreed to give permission for me to speak with her therapists; she also wanted me to sit in on as many sessions as possible. I told her that she would have to go alone, and that she could bitch about me to her therapists if she needed. I had been through therapy enough to know that space of confidentiality was essential.
Those permissions she gave me were vital in her therapy. Under U.S. law, mental health therapists are legally barred from even acknowledging that someone is under their care, even to family members. Had my wife not given her permission, I could not call the psychiatrist and tell him my wife’s symptoms. The best I could do was send a letter to his office. All of us tell white lies to doctors and nurses (“I’m fine,” “I only smoke three cigarettes a day,” “I follow my diet”), and my wife liked to tell her therapists everything was fine when everything wasn’t. With the permission, I could be the doctor’s eyes and ears and mention that everything was not fine.
I was also able to mention the sexlessness of our marriage, and the psychiatrist did some adjustments to her meds. But these adjustments never worked. The biggest problem was that my wife never went to a gynecologist for that.
My wife passed away in December, so I stayed until the bitter end. I did outsource twice during the marriage. She was fighting her mental illness, so I had to be there to help her. Had she not gone to therapy, I would have no choice but to leave her. But she went, and she needed me there to help her with her fight.
In discussing whether to leave or go with mentally ill spouses, I always bring up the common cold. Excuse me if I have mentioned this in other posts. It’s not someone’s fault if he or she becomes mentally ill no more than if that person comes down with a cold. However, it is the responsibility of sufferers to wipe their own noses and cover their mouths. The same goes for mental illnesses. Just because someone close to you is mentally ill does not mean you have to endure the symptoms, especially if they are unbearable. I could bear my wife’s illness, but it was not easy.
As to timetables, I don’t know if any therapist can provide an accurate timetable as to when treatment will work or even if it will work. You have to take care of yourself.
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Post by northstarmom on Mar 4, 2018 15:22:09 GMT -5
Keep in mind also that treatment's "working" may mean something like the following results: your husband discovers that due to his past trauma he deliberately picked a woman he doesn't find sexually appealing; your husband discovers he is asexual; your husband discovers he is gay; your husband discovers that due to his trauma, he is so sexually averse that he would prefer a divorce to continuing to go through the pain of addressing his trauma.
Your idea of "treatment's working" may not match what your husband wants or needs. The purpose of his individual therapy is not to make him a better husband for you, but to make him a person who lives the kind of life that he finds most fulfilling. No matter why he thinks he went to treatment, no therapist is going to use a patient's treatment to make the person into what the person's spouse considers an ideal mate.
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Post by choosinghappy on Mar 4, 2018 17:44:15 GMT -5
Keep in mind also that treatment's "working" may mean something like the following results: your husband discovers that due to his past trauma he deliberately picked a woman he doesn't find sexually appealing; your husband discovers he is asexual; your husband discovers he is gay; your husband discovers that due to his trauma, he is so sexually averse that he would prefer a divorce to continuing to go through the pain of addressing his trauma. Your idea of "treatment's working" may not match what your husband wants or needs. The purpose of his individual therapy is not to make him a better husband for you, but to make him a person who lives the kind of life that he finds most fulfilling. No matter why he thinks he went to treatment, no therapist is going to use a patient's treatment to make the person into what the person's spouse considers an ideal mate. Yes I agree with all of this northstarmom and I am mentally prepared to accept and deal with whatever the outcome may be. I guess I’m just relaying my frustration at having zero clue of which direction this is taking and hoping there may be advice from this group on what I could do. I feel like with my H not opening up to me about any of this for the last 9 months I am just being strung along. I’d like to hope for the best but as the weeks and months tick on with nothing at all to go on, keeping any kind of optimism for our marriage is getting harder and harder.
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Post by northstarmom on Mar 4, 2018 17:58:30 GMT -5
Lonelywife, it’s extremely difficult for someone to change who is intimacy averse due to child sexual abuse that causes them to avoid sexual intimacy as an adult. IMO it’s futile to be optimistic that therapy will cause your husband to ever become the kind of partner whom you desire.
How long are you willing to wait for him to change? How much more of your youth are you willing to invest in staying and hoping your sexually incompatible husband will finally change?
You have already futiley invested 11 years of your life in an unsatisfactory relationship with your h....
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Post by saarinista on Mar 5, 2018 3:02:11 GMT -5
Keep in mind also that treatment's "working" may mean something like the following results: your husband discovers that due to his past trauma he deliberately picked a woman he doesn't find sexually appealing; your husband discovers he is asexual; your husband discovers he is gay; your husband discovers that due to his trauma, he is so sexually averse that he would prefer a divorce to continuing to go through the pain of addressing his trauma.
Your idea of "treatment's working" may not match what your husband wants or needs. The purpose of his individual therapy is not to make him a better husband for you, but to make him a person who lives the kind of life that he finds most fulfilling. No matter why he thinks he went to treatment, no therapist is going to use a patient's treatment to make the person into what the person's spouse considers an ideal mate. Yes I agree with all of this northstarmom and I am mentally prepared to accept and deal with whatever the outcome may be. I guess I’m just relaying my frustration at having zero clue of which direction this is taking and hoping there may be advice from this group on what I could do. I feel like with my H not opening up to me about any of this for the last 9 months I am just being strung along. I’d like to hope for the best but as the weeks and months tick on with nothing at all to go on, keeping any kind of optimism for our marriage is getting harder and harder. I can appreciate your wish that someone-anyone-could give you advice on what to do. I wish the same thing. After years 8 of begging and finally now talking divorce, my husband has entered therapy and been diagnosed with PTSD. (I tried to tell him he probably had it for years-the last 8 sexless-but to no avail.)
But, there is simply no telling where his therapy will lead. I suspect childhood issues in addition to Vietnam combat stuff have contributed to his intimacy aversion. Even when we were having sex, it was not the most intimate, if that makes sense. I'm sure it's possible to be intimacy averse and/or asexual/low libido or just to discover that you've becoime incompatible with your spouse, regardless of the PTSD, childhood trauma, etc. etc.
And so it goes for all therapy. I've had plenty. I have depressive issues, anxiety, etc. diagnosed, longstanding and being treated. I soldier on to the best of my ability.
Guess what, though? When I'm depressed, some decent sex makes me feel better! Actually, even mediocre sex couldn't hurt. It releases endorphins! It burns calories! It's an ego boost! It boosts your heart rate and releases tension! Etc. etc. Gee, I think I'll have some pretend sex with myself as soon as i finish this post. (OMG. How did i GET to this point? 8 years, people!)
My point is this-your husband's issues may or may not have anything to do with your sex life. And if resolved, they might improve your sex life, or they might lead the two of you to conclude that you are totally incompatible. And there is no telling when his therapy will leverage his ability to make changes, or to have helpful insights. And insights and changes which are helpful to him may not be helpful to your marriage.
I am a big believer in therapy. However, it is often expensive and it can be difficult to find the right therapist. It can be painful. Your husband may or may not stick with it. And, in the end, he may just end up as a better adjusted person who simply has a low libido. That's successful therapy, in my book, but it sure wouldn't improve your life.
No one can tell you if or when your husband will change, with or without therapy. There are no guarantees with any of this stuff. However, your marriage has been unsatisfying for many years. It could change for the better due to DH's therapy-but the odds seem to be against it.
That's not the most helpful or uplifting thing to hear, but it's the best I can offer. The one thing you do know is that your husband's sexuality has been incompatible with yours for a long time, and he's been very reluctant to get therapy based on your complaints about it. I'm in the same boat. If I was a betting person, I wouldn't bet that either of our marriages will end up sexed up and satisfactory due to our H's therapy. Bummer, i know.
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