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Post by RumRunner on Apr 1, 2019 18:38:51 GMT -5
It had been many years since I had done anything, and when I had the chance with a one and only affair, it just didn't work out for many reasons. Having this one experience convinced me that I am too old and too much time has passed. This is why I say that. Dude. You are younger than I am. Would you tell ME to give up on ever having sex again? Of course not, I would never tell you that nor to anyone else. For myself, I have come to accept my situation for what it is. From my perspective, I no longer have the will to look elsewhere. If I were in my 20s, 30s, or even 40s; I am sure I would feel very differently and my decision could very well be different.
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Post by baza on Apr 1, 2019 19:39:59 GMT -5
This is not a suggestion or advice or anything of the like Brother RumRunner - I got out at 57. The case for me to leave stood up all by itself and was, I believed, to be in my best longer term interests. If the case to leave had not stood up all by itself, then I wouldn't have done it. These ILIASM situations are very individual circumstances dependent. For me, the circumstances and sums added up to "leave" which I think was a perfectly legitimate choice. For someone else, the circumstances may have added up to "stay" which I think is also a perfectly legitimate choice. 9 years down the track I have no regrets about what I chose. It doesn't look like you have any great regrets about your choice either.
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Post by Vijay.. on Oct 17, 2019 18:40:20 GMT -5
This is not a suggestion or advice or anything of the like Brother RumRunner - I got out at 57. The case for me to leave stood up all by itself and was, I believed, to be in my best longer term interests. If the case to leave had not stood up all by itself, then I wouldn't have done it. These ILIASM situations are very individual circumstances dependent. For me, the circumstances and sums added up to "leave" which I think was a perfectly legitimate choice. For someone else, the circumstances may have added up to "stay" which I think is also a perfectly legitimate choice. 9 years down the track I have no regrets about what I chose. It doesn't look like you have any great regrets about your choice either.
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Post by Vijay.. on Oct 17, 2019 18:40:57 GMT -5
This is not a suggestion or advice or anything of the like Brother RumRunner - I got out at 57. The case for me to leave stood up all by itself and was, I believed, to be in my best longer term interests. If the case to leave had not stood up all by itself, then I wouldn't have done it. These ILIASM situations are very individual circumstances dependent. For me, the circumstances and sums added up to "leave" which I think was a perfectly legitimate choice. For someone else, the circumstances may have added up to "stay" which I think is also a perfectly legitimate choice. 9 years down the track I have no regrets about what I chose. It doesn't look like you have any great regrets about your choice either.
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Post by Vijay.. on Oct 17, 2019 18:45:18 GMT -5
I think I am in your path... Actually I am replacing sex with mastrubation... As time goes on, I feel it is better to mastrubate then have sex... WISH ME GOOD LUCK... I hope I will be happy and content like Many others
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Post by ScottDinTN on Oct 18, 2019 8:47:46 GMT -5
What makes me sad is when I watch loving couples on TV or in real life who show loving affection for each other. I don't feel that way at all right now. I know H is trying but I can't seem to get past all the past hurts and being so angry with him that I lose respect for him. I even asked my H once if watching sex on TV shows (The Americans, for example) if it makes him feel bad about the Peyronies and that we aren't having sex. He always says yes. But he will NEVER bring it up. I am the one who has to drag it out of him. The experts say that communication is crucial. They are correct. And one sided communication sucks even more. The anger is the reason I finally ended all physical contact with my spouse. I told her I would never have sex with her again because I just can't live as this angry person with frustration that builds up from continual rejection. It doesn't help with the lonliness but I'm not as angry.
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Post by worksforme2 on Oct 18, 2019 9:06:53 GMT -5
I think I am in your path... Actually I am replacing sex with mastrubation... As time goes on, I feel it is better to mastrubate then have sex... WISH ME GOOD LUCK... I hope I will be happy and content like Many others What age are you Vijay?
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Post by RealMustangGuy on Oct 21, 2019 10:59:39 GMT -5
I haven't replied or posted here for some years, mainly I have trouble figuring out this site. But I can certainly relate to this post and to the replies. I am sticking out my sexless marriage too, for various reasons but mostly due to my wife's very poor health and that I am her only caregiver. I have the serious low self esteem and doubts that comes with being old and having been so very many years in a sexless marriage. Even when I get out of my sexless marriage, which I know will happen at some future point due my wife's declining health, I doubt I'd have the courage to even try to date. I know I need to get past that feeling, but will not be easy.
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Post by Caris on Nov 7, 2019 21:53:42 GMT -5
RumRunner you say you feel that you couldn't make another woman happy if you divorced and tried to make a go of it with someone new. Why do you believe that? How do you know? Just wondering. It had been many years since I had done anything, and when I had the chance with a one and only affair, it just didn't work out for many reasons. Having this one experience convinced me that I am too old and too much time has passed. This is why I say that. As much as northstarmom will disagree with this, one can be too old to have what we yearned for all those years in a SM. It’s not even chronological age, it’s something much deeper...a knowing that too much time has passed. Too many changes in so many ways, including oneself, and even the culture. You just get to a point of knowing yourself very well, and also facing reality of what is, and the odds of it happening at this stage of the game become very clear to you. I’m not saying it won’t, or can’t happen for you, I’m just saying that I understand where you are coming from, as someone who has been single for 4.5-years, and know that getting out does not guarantee you’ll find a healthy relationship...or any relationship for that matter. For some, getting out removes a certain misery, although initially it can feel just as miserable because of the sense of loss. It’s no small thing to give up a huge part of your life, even if it was detrimental to your wellbeing. It’s what you know, and you have to let go of things you love, like your home, your pets, almost everything you’ve built up to make a life for yourself for decades. It can feel brutal to some of us, and quite a relief to others. It really depends on so many factors. On the other hand, we don’t really know what can happen. Even being out this long, I can’t say for certain that it wouldn’t happen for me, but my money would be on it not happening. Most of me doesn’t care anymore, although there’s a little part of me that still wants to be wanted and loved...who doesn’t...but most of me has just accepted what is, and that my life will revolve around other things other than intimacy with a special someone. I wish you well.
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Post by baza on Nov 8, 2019 3:25:09 GMT -5
I think this thread is very valuable. It hi-lights to me, that choosing and owning your choice has more going for it than not choosing and just floating on. Brother RumRunner has made his choice and is living that choice and doesn't seem to regret it. His choice being to stay. Several other posters to the thread have made their choice, and they don't seem to regret it. These members having chosen to get out. The common elements being (a) - making a fully informed choice (b) - owning and living that choice It seems a common theme in this group. If you make a fully informed choice, and you own it and live it, then you are on the road to a better future. And, it seems that if you don't make a fully informed choose, and just float on, then you're on a road to nowhere.
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Post by northstarmom on Nov 8, 2019 8:57:51 GMT -5
Caris said; “ As much as northstarmom will disagree with this, one can be too old to have what we yearned for all those years in a SM. It’s not even chronological age, it’s something much deeper.”
There always is luck involved in finding a good match. Luck, availability of potential mates, and one’s habits and attitude also matter. I remember when I was a cute 23 I couldn’t find a mate because in part I worked overnights and weekends and didn’t encounter single men around my age. Due to my schedule, there were no activities I could do to meet people.
At 68 and in a relationship, I’m not looking. Still, despite the proportedly 9:1 ratio here of women to men, I see women here my age and older who find matches. In general, they are fun, active women who keep themselves up. I think that if I become single again I’d have a chance of finding someone else. But if that didn’t happen, I’d still be happy and active.
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catsloveme
Full Member
Dwelling in the possible
Posts: 207
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Post by catsloveme on Nov 8, 2019 9:27:58 GMT -5
I think this thread is very valuable. It hi-lights to me, that choosing and owning your choice has more going for it than not choosing and just floating on. Brother RumRunner has made his choice and is living that choice and doesn't seem to regret it. His choice being to stay. Several other posters to the thread have made their choice, and they don't seem to regret it. These members having chosen to get out. The common elements being (a) - making a fully informed choice (b) - owning and living that choice It seems a common theme in this group. If you make a fully informed choice, and you own it and live it, then you are on the road to a better future. And, it seems that if you don't make a fully informed choose, and just float on, then you're on a road to nowhere. In the immortal words of the band Rush, “if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.” baza, I can’t like what you’ve said in this post enough. (We really do need more emoji options.) The key to a happier, or at least more content, existence is being intentional about what you’re doing. That applies no matter what stage of the ILIASM journey one is on.
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Post by Apocrypha on Nov 18, 2019 14:40:35 GMT -5
I had discovered that affairs are not for me, and I realize that I would never be able to make a woman happy after all this time. It is great when you can think you can do all these sexy things that you really would love to do, but when it comes to practice; fail miserably. So.... that leads me to acceptance of my current situation. Indeed. Affairs are really not for many - or at least - they serve a specific role. I can say from experience that affairs tend to be their own, specific kind of relationship, and while the skills, mindsets and behaviors needed to make them satisfying have some overlap with fully-invested relationships, they also have unique attributes that don't overlap at all. This is often discovered the hard way when people change the status in their primary household relationship, making the married person fully available. They sometimes find that what made them attractive as an affair partner was their unavailability, and their change in status presents a potential for more responsibility than their partner is ready to sign up for. I pay attention sometimes to what people write when they aren't looking, and I noted the turn of phrase you used, which I italicized - " I would never be able to make a woman happy." As baza often notes - and I share his thinking - being deeply invested in presenting a married relationship that really isn't, can get people thinking strange thoughts. I note the familiar framing of the central problem as " making a woman happy" rather than first fixing on your own happiness. I see that a lot, the exterior focus of happiness being in the service of another's. When we encounter our partners first as strangers and are attracted to our discoveries about each other, it's often in the context of two distinct people, each with their own agendas, passions, desires and needs. We bring two distinct people to a marriage. Sometimes in the course of correcting dysfunction or desiring to please, we start ejecting and grinding off the parts of ourselves that we think are most objectionable, removing our own happiness and distinctness from the equation. I see this a lot with husbands who step back from exterior relationships - their own friends, social events, hobbies, and what they might see as vanities (like going to a gym, updating clothes etc, to be more appealing). The result backfires because they aren't present in the relationship either. The more they try to please their partner and (correctly perceiving their partner's objection to their presence), the more absent they become, until their whole sense of the worth of a relationship is measured by how happy they make the other person.There are two people invested in a functional romantic relationship. I totally understand the pleasure that results from making another person happy. A functional relationship has both sides of it feeling and seeking out that happiness, and their own. I'd add, looking back at my own marriage. When the fog lifted, I realized I had come to believe a narrative that offered a false hope and that did not actually mean I accepted my lot. I came to think of the suffering itself that I endured, as proof of how well-suited I was for my partner, because no other partner would ever endure something like that for love. I clung to either a future reckoning that one day she would realize this and, like the end of a romantic comedy - finally SEE me - or, worst case, it helped me feel better about myself as a moral, good person.
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Post by sadkat on Nov 18, 2019 15:11:22 GMT -5
I had discovered that affairs are not for me, and I realize that I would never be able to make a woman happy after all this time. It is great when you can think you can do all these sexy things that you really would love to do, but when it comes to practice; fail miserably. So.... that leads me to acceptance of my current situation. Indeed. Affairs are really not for many - or at least - they serve a specific role. I can say from experience that affairs tend to be their own, specific kind of relationship, and while the skills, mindsets and behaviors needed to make them satisfying have some overlap with fully-invested relationships, they also have unique attributes that don't overlap at all. This is often discovered the hard way when people change the status in their primary household relationship, making the married person fully available. They sometimes find that what made them attractive as an affair partner was their unavailability, and their change in status presents a potential for more responsibility than their partner is ready to sign up for. I pay attention sometimes to what people write when they aren't looking, and I noted the turn of phrase you used, which I italicized - " I would never be able to make a woman happy." As baza often notes - and I share his thinking - being deeply invested in presenting a married relationship that really isn't, can get people thinking strange thoughts. I note the familiar framing of the central problem as " making a woman happy" rather than first fixing on your own happiness. I see that a lot, the exterior focus of happiness being in the service of another's. When we encounter our partners first as strangers and are attracted to our discoveries about each other, it's often in the context of two distinct people, each with their own agendas, passions, desires and needs. We bring two distinct people to a marriage. Sometimes in the course of correcting dysfunction or desiring to please, we start ejecting and grinding off the parts of ourselves that we think are most objectionable, removing our own happiness and distinctness from the equation. I see this a lot with husbands who step back from exterior relationships - their own friends, social events, hobbies, and what they might see as vanities (like going to a gym, updating clothes etc, to be more appealing). The result backfires because they aren't present in the relationship either. The more they try to please their partner and (correctly perceiving their partner's objection to their presence), the more absent they become, until their whole sense of the worth of a relationship is measured by how happy they make the other person.There are two people invested in a functional romantic relationship. I totally understand the pleasure that results from making another person happy. A functional relationship has both sides of it feeling and seeking out that happiness, and their own. I'd add, looking back at my own marriage. When the fog lifted, I realized I had come to believe a narrative that offered a false hope and that did not actually mean I accepted my lot. I came to think of the suffering itself that I endured, as proof of how well-suited I was for my partner, because no other partner would ever endure something like that for love. I clung to either a future reckoning that one day she would realize this and, like the end of a romantic comedy - finally SEE me - or, worst case, it helped me feel better about myself as a moral, good person. I couldn’t agree more with this! I lost myself trying to please my h. I’m “finding myself” again, albeit in small incremental steps.
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