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Post by Apocrypha on Mar 22, 2023 15:10:58 GMT -5
As a dating man, an uncomfortable truth I often observed is that "sex averse" spouses often discover sex with subsequent partners and relationship scenarios. I've encountered this when dating post-divorce women, who were just as astonished as anyone.
This week, as I was discussing plans and some shared expenses with my ex-wife, somehow we ended up in some kind of thin-ice disclosure that I don't think either of us wanted. She shared that she was using some of "her own money" to fly across the country - across time zones, in the summer to visit a guy she'd been corresponding with. It was for, basically, a booty call.
At this stage of separation in which we are finally unwinding finances and planning much more substantial extraction from each others' lives, I have no particular designs or longing for her; however, I didn't love hearing that.
I consider the unwanted celibacy I endured in marriage, for how long I endured it, the effort I put in to fixing every possible complaint she had made about myself, about our relationship, years of counselling, lowering our expectations of each other, and even the format of our relationship, and the heartbreak and inconvenience that happened from then to now, including the end of the marriage - over what she termed as our differences in sexual appetite, posing it as marriage/family vs sex. And now, she's flying to different time zones for a booty call with a pen pal. That's an investment.
It wasn't even apparent to her why I seemed caught off-guard.
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Post by northstarmom on Mar 22, 2023 16:36:00 GMT -5
Apocrypha, your posts is a reminder of why in many cases the sooner the refused realizes that their refuser likely just isn't interested in sex with their spouse, the sooner the refused can move on. It's not possible to make someone lust after you the way you want. But letting go of such a marriage can open the door to finding someone who would delight in having sex with you. Took me years to realize that.
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Post by greatcoastal on Mar 22, 2023 18:28:05 GMT -5
Your ex W sounds like a very confused person. Now I'm just guessing/speculating from my own experience with my past ex girlfriend, but it sounds like she too has/had commitment problems? I wouldn't call "flying to a different time zone for a booty call with a pen pal much of an 'investment'? It sounds more like the right, very short term, investment for an ego boost, loaded with built in barriers to end it quickly for both of them. Distance, time, money, other people, jobs, etc...
Sadly she is probably doing herself more long term damage than good. Fortunately YOU know better and have a much firmer realization of the meaning and value of a commitment!
Yes, hearing these things DOES hurt a lot. Reflecting on all the effort you put in ,in the past and having it just discarded, treated as worthless cuts deep. Another 'life lesson' on how not to treat others, and how to handle it in future relationships!
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Post by heelots on Mar 22, 2023 18:29:01 GMT -5
As a dating man, an uncomfortable truth I often observed is that "sex averse" spouses often discover sex with subsequent partners and relationship scenarios. I've encountered this when dating post-divorce women, who were just as astonished as anyone. This week, as I was discussing plans and some shared expenses with my ex-wife, somehow we ended up in some kind of thin-ice disclosure that I don't think either of us wanted. She shared that she was using some of "her own money" to fly across the country - across time zones, in the summer to visit a guy she'd been corresponding with. It was for, basically, a booty call. At this stage of separation in which we are finally unwinding finances and planning much more substantial extraction from each others' lives, I have no particular designs or longing for her; however, I didn't love hearing that. I consider the unwanted celibacy I endured in marriage, for how long I endured it, the effort I put in to fixing every possible complain she made about myself, about our relationship, years of counselling, lowering our expectations of each other, and even the format of our relationship, and the heartbreak and inconvenience that happened from then to now, including the end of the marriage - over what she termed as our differences in sexual appetite, posing it as marriage/family vs sex. And now, she's flying to different time zones for a booty call with a pen pal. That's an investment. It wasn't even apparent to her why I seemed caught off-guard. Man, that had to be a real gut punch for sure! Talk about a lack of sensitivity. Do you suppose this was part of her just being a vindictive bitch?
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Post by Apocrypha on Mar 23, 2023 12:09:53 GMT -5
As a dating man, an uncomfortable truth I often observed is that "sex averse" spouses often discover sex with subsequent partners and relationship scenarios. ... Man, that had to be a real gut punch for sure! Talk about a lack of sensitivity. Do you suppose this was part of her just being a vindictive bitch? Not really. While she's often insensitive to me, I think her intent was to assure me that she wasn't drawing from the pool of shared money to finance her trip, and the rest was an unfortunate disclosure. And it's not unfortunate because I'm still carrying a torch; I'm not. I'm in a long term relationship now and it's serious and wonderful. I share this anecdote only because I think it illustrates a recurring motif about how many of us, including myself, often frame the celibate marriage situation - treating it almost like a medical or psychological malady that you are facing together. "My wife doesn't like sex!" No, you don't know that. Presumably she enjoyed it at one point. She doesn't like sex with you, or within the circumstance of being married to you.Maybe she doesn't like it at all, but in most cases I've read on here, I don't see evidence strong enough to make that claim. Framing it that way makes a difference, and that difference is helpful in responding to false dilemmas posed like "Would you end your marriage for something like sex?" If your partner doesn't want sex with you, it's for a reason. That reason is upstream of the sex that isn't occurring, and that reason is the actual epicenter of the conflict. This is a pain that is additional to the lack of sexual expression. Knowing, for example, that my partner wasn't averse to sex in general (which she is clearly not) but rather that she was averse to either me, or the circumstance of being married to me, would have shifted the focus of the interventions we used, and I would likely have cut bait much earlier before going years longer through heroic and foolish efforts.
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Post by Apocrypha on Mar 23, 2023 12:20:03 GMT -5
Your ex W sounds like a very confused person. Now I'm just guessing/speculating from my own experience with my past ex girlfriend, but it sounds like she too has/had commitment problems? I wouldn't call "flying to a different time zone for a booty call with a pen pal much of an 'investment'? It sounds more like the right, very short term, investment for an ego boost, loaded with built in barriers to end it quickly for both of them. Distance, time, money, other people, jobs, etc... Your comment is right on target and illustrates how misguided our years of therapeutic intervention were. So much of it was posed (BY HER) as difference in appetite for sex. The issue wasn't about sex, but rather more closely aligned to her resistance to commitment or commitment to me specifically. Here I was going on about the sex for years, and hating my own libido because it meant the end of my family. But, here's a person who would fly across the country for a booty call, but wouldn't sleep with the guy beside her in bed even if it meant a divorce. It's just amazing to see it so clearly.
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Post by Apocrypha on Mar 23, 2023 12:27:17 GMT -5
Apocrypha, your posts is a reminder of why in many cases the sooner the refused realizes that their refuser likely just isn't interested in sex with their spouse, the sooner the refused can move on. It's not possible to make someone lust after you the way you want. But letting go of such a marriage can open the door to finding someone who would delight in having sex with you. Took me years to realize that. Me too. I think she just never wanted to be married to me but said "yes" anyway. Or that maybe she didn't like or respect me. She felt trapped by a terrible mistake, I think. She should have said "no" and let the chips fall. If someone doesn't like or respect me, or doesn't want to be married to me, there's really only so far I could have gone with that, and only so much responsibility I could assume for fixing it. At some point, it's just the way she/he feels about me as a person, and the sex is but one of many symptoms of it. It's a totally different scale of problem to solve.
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Post by heelots on Mar 23, 2023 12:51:18 GMT -5
Man, that had to be a real gut punch for sure! Talk about a lack of sensitivity. Do you suppose this was part of her just being a vindictive bitch? Not really. While she's often insensitive to me, I think her intent was to assure me that she wasn't drawing from the pool of shared money to finance her trip, and the rest was an unfortunate disclosure. And it's not unfortunate because I'm still carrying a torch; I'm not. I'm in a long term relationship now and it's serious and wonderful. I share this anecdote only because I think it illustrates a recurring motif about how many of us, including myself, often frame the celibate marriage situation - treating it almost like a medical or psychological malady that you are facing together. "My wife doesn't like sex!" No, you don't know that. Presumably she enjoyed it at one point. She doesn't like sex with you, or within the circumstance of being married to you.Maybe she doesn't like it at all, but in most cases I've read on here, I don't see evidence strong enough to make that claim. Framing it that way makes a difference, and that difference is helpful in responding to false dilemmas posed like "Would you end your marriage for something like sex?" If your partner doesn't want sex with you, it's for a reason. That reason is upstream of the sex that isn't occurring, and that reason is the actual epicenter of the conflict. This is a pain that is additional to the lack of sexual expression. Knowing, for example, that my partner wasn't averse to sex in general (which she is clearly not) but rather that she was averse to either me, or the circumstance of being married to me, would have shifted the focus of the interventions we used, and I would likely have cut bait much earlier before going years longer through heroic and foolish efforts. I see what you are saying and in fact can agree that like as not for many unfortunate souls here this would apply. That said, I am not one your description would apply to due to the fact that from the very first days of my marriage the sex was broken! Why a woman would marry a man and have no desire to be with him physically is beyond my comprehension. But that was exactly the case here. Money certainly was not the motivation for marrying me as I had little. Perhaps the reason I stayed was that I married late in life and thought if I worked at it I could make our marriage normal in the sex dept that just never happened though. I suppose in one regard there is not as much pain involved for a person that never did have good sex with their spouse. Really nothing of value was even lost right? Then consider the couple that started out ĥaving a strong and active sex life that deteriorated over time, now there truly is a loss with a lot of pain. Well, I guess I strayed a bit here. Anyway, I was trying to say that I do not fit the profile of someone who once had a good marriage with a vibrant sex life. Mine started off shot to hell and only got worse with the passage of time. I am only in this situation because I was too stubborn and stupid to call it quits when the problems began right at the beginning!
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Post by northstarmom on Mar 23, 2023 13:09:32 GMT -5
heelots: "Why a woman would marry a man and have no desire to be with him physically is beyond my comprehension. But that was exactly the case here. Money certainly was not the motivation for marrying me as I had little."
I read a lot of advice columns, and here's what I've learned from them about why people marry folks they aren't sexually attracted to:
1. They think a person whom they find sexy will cheat on them or will otherwise not be a good partner 2. They feel that it's the time of life to marry and have kids and the person they aren't attracted to is their own option 3. They feel that finding a person with values, stability, the ability to be a good future parent, are more important than finding a compatible sex partner 4. Their family/friends think their prospective partner is a great catch 5 They think that sex isn't that important 6. They assume that sexual attraction will grow after they marry
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Post by Apocrypha on Mar 24, 2023 8:24:47 GMT -5
I see what you are saying and in fact can agree that like as not for many unfortunate souls here this would apply. That said, I am not one your description would apply to due to the fact that from the very first days of my marriage the sex was broken! Why a woman would marry a man and have no desire to be with him physically is beyond my comprehension. But that was exactly the case here. Money certainly was not the motivation for marrying me as I had little. Perhaps the reason I stayed was that I married late in life and thought if I worked at it I could make our marriage normal in the sex dept that just never happened though. I suppose in one regard there is not as much pain involved for a person that never did have good sex with their spouse. Really nothing of value was even lost right? Then consider the couple that started out ĥaving a strong and active sex life that deteriorated over time, now there truly is a loss with a lot of pain. Well, I guess I strayed a bit here. Anyway, I was trying to say that I do not fit the profile of someone who once had a good marriage with a vibrant sex life. Mine started off shot to hell and only got worse with the passage of time. I am only in this situation because I was too stubborn and stupid to call it quits when the problems began right at the beginning! Not necessarily straying. The focus I'm suggesting - and I get this is really really genuinely hard to parse (it was for me too) - isn't the sexual attraction; it's the wanting to have sex with that person. While it would have been tough to convince me I wasn't a troll after well over a decade of celibate marriage, I date and have been in relationships with exceptionally attractive women and have been at least flattered by partners who suggest that I know what I'm doing bed, and Mrs Apocrypha chased me for years prior to marriage. While it's fair to take various perspectives on the anecdote, the point of sharing it is the realization that while the dysfunction might be brought to light around sexual expression, the source of the problem is upstream. Let me put it this way: Are there people in your life who you might say are objectively physically attractive but that you absolutely never want to have sex with? We could start with the obvious, like a sister or brother. What about someone you hate? Someone who you found out something about that changed the way you thought about them? Maybe someone who did something wrong to you, mistreated you? Someone who showed up as a real person when instead you'd had a fantasy - like your friend's older sibling who you idolized, who you later got to know as a person, or a semi famous person. Or, maybe someone you'd carried a torch for for a while but then got into a circumstance with them - maybe working together or having them as a boss, or going camping - and the whole fantasy went poof? My relationship with Mrs Apocrypha was one where she chased me for a number of years when I was more inclined toward friendship with her, but in romance-comedy style, eventually was won over and got fully onboard. But, hindsight suggests that she may have picked me for my original ambivalence. The sexual aversion and obvious discomfort began on the wedding night and went from there, and included a pitch for her to move to another country right away (something that we'd talked about during the engagement as an absolute deal breaker). Mrs Apocrypha married someone she was very attracted to physically and in other ways, but I believe said yes to marriage when in fact she did not wish to be married to me. Sex became complicated because it was likely seen as a way of legitimizing her mistake. Here I was trying to solve the issue of sex and attraction, repairing it like it was a broken circuit. It's not like I was any different the day after the marriage from the day before. What was different was the feeling of being stuck inside a lifelong commitment when she didn't want to be. As in she didn't want to be married (to me, maybe to anyone). That's not really a problem I'd have stuck around long to solve. It's not even really my problem to solve; it's hers. But to her, it was just the way she felt.
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