Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2019 15:43:38 GMT -5
"I feel ashamed and embarassed that my husband of 20yrs has never really wanted to have sex with me."
Those are the correct and valid feelings to have about this situation. You have properly identified resentment as your new primary issue. My resentment built in my late '40s and then I ended up here when menopause became the ultimate and final "we're now too old to have sex" which was also a huge "whew. finally a permanent excuse" for her and a "oh, no I'm never going to have the marriage I wanted now, ever" for me.
The end of hope, the end of working-on-it, is often the end of the marriage. Your choice is now clear. Accept your new and permanent normal (which will help you let go of the resentment) or spend your remaining time on endeavors that don't include your spouse.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Posts: 0
|
Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2019 16:06:19 GMT -5
As a follow up. This board often uses language like, "if they loved you" or "if they truly cared". Letting go of the resentment requires that you not think of it that way. People with intimacy avoidant issues may love you very deeply but they can't (CAN'T) love you in the way you may want. Being more intimate, more vulnerable, isn't something they can do. Every fiber of their being fights it. My W is in that camp.
|
|
|
Post by Apocrypha on Jul 31, 2019 13:11:33 GMT -5
Do you forgive your partners for their lack of sexual interest and just take whatever you can get? I think I am too bitter and would like to be able to forgive him otherwise there really is no hope for us.
But forgiveness is a very big ask isn't it.......?
How do you do that?
Because I was in the relationship, and because I had not imagined a future life in which I was no longer in it, I accepted it because I felt I had to. That it was as good as it gets. I framed it as "progress" and better than nothing, and a portent of hope. I viewed each disappointment it as an event, from which I would correct our course, rather than as an established pattern in a series. I viewed it as a sickness, with her attraction to me being natural or assumed, and with an assumption that the mojo situation was evidence of some kind of wiring going off - a problem we could solve together, or that I could solve for her. She helped with this, by building a narrative that our libidos were simply mismatched - and so it had the appearance that we were at least both experiencing the same problem, if I squinted my eyes and zoomed out enough. That made it easier to forgive and accept the nods to acquiescence she was able to endure when she mustered resistance to her aversion to me. By removing my consideration of her own agency in producing our celibate marriage, I was able to forgive and accept whatever scraps were offered, and see it in the manner of a recovery after a car accident - as something external that happened to us. There were other benefits in it for me as well. I also began to frame my own tolerance and tenacity in working at it (and in working toward it much more than her), as evidence of my own virtue and suitability for her as a partner. After all, who else would put up with this? I clung to the hope that a reward would be at the end, studied as much about pleasure, kink and opened and familiarized myself and listened carefully for whatever peccadilloes she might have felt to ashamed to admit, so I could jump in with skill and enthusiasm. I wanted her to discover on the rare occasions she was up for it that when she thought she hated sex now, that actually it was great! I read as much as I could to up my game, and became astoundingly open minded. I realized later that I did not see the problem with the appropriate scale, cost, and causality. I did not consider appropriately what it means if my partner is so averse to me that she'd override her natural sex drive to avoid the intimacy. I was so fixed on the result that I missed her anger, and her efforts to obfuscate it. And that this would never change, because the plaster had set with a crooked bone - whatever the hurt or mistake was - it was so far in the past that it wasn't fixable. It was about how she viewed me as a person - who I am. I trained myself to not create situations to expect sex. And then I learned to align my lifestyle increasingly, toward that of a person who is not married - such as sleeping in separate beds. Now, post-separation by a wide margin, though still a close separation due to children and economics - my forgiveness is aligned to my present view of our story. Some forgiveness suits me as an intent, because she's going to be in my life as a family member, and I can't really change, erase or undo that at a cost that is acceptable. So, I imagine her perspective, trapped in a marriage to a person I don't want to be married to, for over a decade - and how that might affect my behavior toward that person, or in general. I imagine I'd not be the best version of myself - at the very least - and if it went long enough, I could feasibly get pretty awful. So when I consider or am reminded of the horrible way she treated me, of her deplorable behavior and torture across years - I consider that, and that I've taken measures to change that circumstance. So when I find I need to contend with this person who is still a big factor in my life - and I feel the anger or hurt overwhelming - I fix on imagining that scenario, and it humanizes her enough that I can contend with her as need be without an unbearable cost to my well being.
|
|
|
Post by Apocrypha on Jul 31, 2019 13:23:05 GMT -5
As a follow up. This board often uses language like, "if they loved you" or "if they truly cared". Letting go of the resentment requires that you not think of it that way. People with intimacy avoidant issues may love you very deeply but they can't (CAN'T) love you in the way you may want. Being more intimate, more vulnerable, isn't something they can do. Every fiber of their being fights it. My W is in that camp. I love and care for my sister, and several friends. When people say "If they love you..." they are likely referencing a specific kind of love, and a particular expression of it. Letting go the more attractive and less resentful fiction that my partner was "intimacy avoidant" - a story we both clung to, even after her emotional and physical affair - was extremely difficult to do. Getting more comfortable with the reality that my partner did not see me as a viable sexual partner, due to the way she felt about me, or about marriage, or about marriage to me specifically - was a thunderclap of clarity. Once I got that, I was able to quit my part in actively fabricating the fiction that was not helping us. At that point, I was able to consider letting go the resentment I had of her "denying" me the kind of relationship I wanted with her. It wasn't going to happen because she didn't feel that way about me and had never wanted to be married to me. Carrying that thought in my head, I was able to see why she thought she was the hero, and why sex (with me) was so onerous on her (but so easy and desirable with others). It wasn't that she was doing marriage wrong; it was that she was doing platonic friends wrong (by having chosen marriage, or by marrying someone she didn't really see as husband material, or marrying when she just wasn't up to it - the reasons don't matter that much). Then it was up to me, what I chose to do with the relationship we DID have.
|
|
cobweb
Junior Member
Posts: 52
Age Range: 51-55
|
Post by cobweb on Jul 31, 2019 13:30:06 GMT -5
Wow - definitely a few lessons in these two posts for me to take on board, especially regarding resentment and letting it go. Thank you apocrypha.
|
|