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Post by elkclan2 on Dec 31, 2017 11:16:17 GMT -5
I am sooo much happier than I was this time last year. Yes, I do despair about the state of politics in my home and adopted countries. But these were things I was despairing about last year! I finally see some hopeful solutions for getting out of my marriage (i'm out, but not legally) and I'm with a man I adore. I feel more settled with the current custody arrangements and the step-parenting thing is going soooo much better than I expected.
I didn't get to spend xmas with my son or stepsons, so that was a bit of a downer, but I had a lovely quiet Christmas in a big rambling farmhouse in the mountains of the south of france with my partner - we got this amazing house sitting opportunity so are having a vacation we could never have afforded otherwise. It has been so relaxing and hopefully next year we get a big, noisy non-relaxing Christmas with all the lads. Both are good in different ways.
I'm having some health problems, but hopefully they are fixable. Job is a bit stressful but I think this could be good this coming year.
I'm really looking forward to next year.
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Post by elkclan2 on Dec 31, 2017 11:06:25 GMT -5
heavyheart - this sounds similar to my story, in some ways -right down to entertaining a house full of people without much help. My refuser wasn't big on helping either. Holidays were on me. All kinds of stuff was on me.
I'm late 40s and fat. I know there are a lot of people who wouldn't find me attractive. But I also knew some did.
My marriage is mostly over (bar some legalities) and certainly we haven't lived together for 2.5 yrs. I have a new partner who I ADORE. He is hotter, smarter, nicer and fitter than my ex. He is helpful, loving, good company and highly sexed.
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Post by elkclan2 on Dec 31, 2017 10:52:46 GMT -5
Afrogofhope - believe it or not- I think your story is one of the most hopeful here I've seen in a long time. and the reason I think it's hopeful is because of the joyful, playful sex life you once had and had to work for. It shows you can work at it and that both of you are willing to do so.
Do not feel too bad about feeling sad and depressed about a series of miscarriages. I've only had one pregnancy and it went to term with a healthy child so I don't have any idea what this is like, but it has to be hard. I do know what a toll pregnancy and breastfeeding can take on your body and your psyche and that's hard enough.
1. Talk to each other, really talk - without distraction of kids. Get a therapist if you think that would help you bridge communication difficulties. 2. Lots of pregnancies and breastfeeding, etc. Always gonna be a damper on sex even in the best of circumstances. 3. Really think about whether you guys are done with having kids - and if you are, vasectomy sounds good. My current partner and my previous lover both had the snip and I absolutely love vasectomy sex. Yay!!!
My sexless marriage was grim and frankly hopeless, though it took me a while to see it. Yours sounds possible to overcome, but it won't be easy. And I think you have to prepare yourself for accepting it may NOT be fixable and thinking about what you do about that.
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Post by elkclan2 on Dec 20, 2017 5:59:03 GMT -5
Thanks for your response. The difficult thing is she is amazing in every other way. This is the only issue we have. I struggle to comprehend how you wouldn't want to have Sex with someone you love. Would leaving someone who is so perfect in every other way be reasonable? I ask as although it gets me down when imagine being with someone else I feel they wouldn't be as perfect but may have a higher sex drive - is it worth the trade off!? I feel isolated, rejected and undesired - and that ultimately we are flat mates - perhaps ending it is the thing to do? You struggle to understand how you wouldn't want to have sex with someone you love. SHE struggles to understand why you'd want to impose that kind of activity on someone you love. Some people are sex people who want and need to have a physical expression to romantic love and some people are not. Yes, leaving someone who makes you feel isolated, rejected and undesired is ENTIRELY reasonable. You may or may not find the perfect partner who has all the other characteristics your current partner has and still wants sex. You may find someone who is not quite so perfect, but who desires you and you WILL think it's a worthwhile trade-off. I regret marrying someone who could not desire me or fuck me as I wanted and needed. I stuck with it for way, way too long and it poisoned all the other 'perfect' aspects of our relationship (in retrospect they weren't so perfect, but there you go). The end of our relationship was filled with bitterness and resentment and anger and we have a child and property and legal divorce to contend with. On the upside, since getting out, I have found a wonderful partner who loves sex and is better than my previous partner in every way but one. (The new one is a bit of a picky eater...but I can live with this - this one at least eats something the other one wouldn't touch)
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Post by elkclan2 on Dec 19, 2017 4:35:15 GMT -5
The one thing you need to know is that you can't turn it around by yourself. Without your husband coming to some understanding and concern about the pain the SM has caused you and your need to have a loving, physically affectionate relationship it cannot change.
My ex simply had no interest in addressing my needs - and not just sexually. So we could NEVER turn it around. And frankly the sex was never that good so there wasn't much to turn around.
However, I consider myself a success story because I'm mainly out of the marriage and I've found an amazing post SM lover (took me a couple of years) who is everything I could have wanted. I don't just have an amazing sex life, I have an amazing relationship.
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Post by elkclan2 on Dec 18, 2017 4:13:09 GMT -5
My SM spouse did like cuddling in bed. I was the one who put an end to it, because it almost never led to sex. I was so frustrated I couldn't deal with it anymore and my body and my head were telling me different messages. Head - don't get too excited, you'll only be disappointed. Body - want sex. Head - wouldn't sex be nice. Then eventually, body - nothing - hard to get aroused because I no longer saw him as a sexual partner. I left the marital bed which led to him being very angry. Whatever, I was angry, too.
My post SM partner loves cuddling, affection, etc and while it's no substitute for sex, we have a whole range of 'touch expression' from hugs to sex and cuddling sits in there somewhere. We have enough sex in our relationship, so when we do just have snuggles (as we did last night and this morning as he's too tired/busy for a couple of days running an event with 16hr days+ 2 hrs travel) it's not frustrating - it's just nice. And I don't have to wonder, I know we'll have sex again by Wednesday latest. He also knows I'm still scarred from my SM, and so we had a chat about the lack of sex for a three day period beforehand. I told him any sex was a bonus.
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Post by elkclan2 on Dec 11, 2017 8:15:35 GMT -5
I think the biggest pitfall of outsourcing is that while you're getting those needs addressed, you're not getting out and finding something stable and available.
I did outsource and I don't regret it, but I wonder if it kept me stuck. I'm so very happy with my current partner, that in a way I can't regret the timing of the end of my SM, but still I think my long term affair gave me more comfort than was possibly good for me - well, after a while anyway. It was a necessary thing though to help me feel desirable again.
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Post by elkclan2 on Dec 9, 2017 4:01:54 GMT -5
Lonelywifey - I think suffering the loss of the child - I imagine, because I have one living bio child and that's all, is BOTH unexpected intense suffering at the time of the loss AND ongoing grief and pain that is apparently bearable, because you keep on living day to day but you never, ever get over it. Otherwise I think he's right. Anyway, I'm sorry for your loss - I can only imagine what it's like and it, of course, terrifies me even imagining it.
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Post by elkclan2 on Dec 8, 2017 0:28:38 GMT -5
I think there are some women who don't have a lot of spontaneous desire, but still have responsive desire - and scheduling might work for them. I have read articles about women who say they don't FEEL like having sex, but commit to doing it anyway and then get into it. Scheduling might work there. Personally, I have a lot of spontaneous desire as well as responsive desire and I hate schedules so not sure if scheduling would really work for me, but then again, I'm not in a low sex relationship now.
Scheduling didn't work for me in my SM partly because, well, I hate schedules. But my ex wouldn't agree to anything in advance (let's see how I feel) so I'm sure he wouldn't have agreed to sex. He'd have agreed to think about possibly having sex. He could forestall scheduling by saying that he was too busy during term time (semester) so best not to think about having sex at all til it was over as he viewed sex as a leisure activity and he was too busy for even the hobbies he liked. (So like an idiot I waited til Christmas break after he'd said that, then I waited, and waited, and waited...and still no sex)
My current partner - 10 times busier than my ex - is also an academic and he has plenty of time for sex during term time, except for Tuesday mornings when he leaves the house ridiculous early to teach. When I told him about the term time thing he thought that was the funniest thing ever and helped me see the ridiculous side of it, too. On Tuesdays when he leaves the house early we sometimes laugh about it. Sometimes we even have sex on Tuesday mornings...but not often!
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Post by elkclan2 on Dec 7, 2017 5:44:35 GMT -5
@awake - I have one and he has two and they are all about the same age and all boys!!! And they get along TOO well - they plot against the grown-ups! :-)
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Post by elkclan2 on Dec 3, 2017 4:10:13 GMT -5
Update:
I spoke to my mother on the phone last week and she wanted to buy my son a tv for Christmas. I said no. She argued with me a little about it and I revealed that part of the reason I don't want another tv in the house (we have 3 already) is that I don't know what the situation will be in the next year... (My boyfriend and I are talking seriously about moving in together some time in 2018 and then we'd have two big and two small tvs together). So she jumped on that and said "Are you thinking of moving in with M?" and I said yes. She said "I think that would be a great idea, but is everything ok. I mean he seems so nice, I worry he might be a secret serial killer or something... Every time the phone rings I worry it's you calling to tell me you've found out something terrible about him" WTF???
On the plus side - I did 'meet the family' on his side this week. His father is dead, but I met his widow (M's stepmother) and his brother and stepbrother. Woahhh! Are they perfect? No. But I had a great time and they were welcoming and lovely. And they all said how disappointed they were that my son wasn't there (it was a dad weekend for him). I also met my stepkids' mother this weekend, which went ok. She seemed a little intimated by me, which isn't what I wanted. I was a bit worried about leaving my stepkids as they usually give me a big hug on the way out, sometimes initiated by me. So I was a bit worried about it and didn't ask for a hug as I was leaving. But my older one, gave me a big long lingering hug... Mentioned it to M and he said he hoped his ex didn't take that out on him. :-(
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Post by elkclan2 on Nov 28, 2017 12:10:33 GMT -5
agree with Shamwow 100% -also I strongly, strongly suggest that you do some therapy about your attitude to relationships. I don't think I could have been ready for my boyfriend without undergoing therapy and having a better understanding about how I don't deserve to be treated like shit.
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Post by elkclan2 on Nov 28, 2017 4:39:21 GMT -5
My SM-ex accused me of being shallow for wanting sex. He said he loved me despite the fact that he wasn't attracted to me and that made it a purer love. WTF? I felt deceived.
My current lover - we've both said that if the sex wasn't so good we'd still be together for all the other things in the relationship. And that if all we had was the amazing sex life we have we'd be still hanging around each other, even if the other things weren't so good. But happily, we have a great relationship AND a great sex life and they feed each other in a virtuous cycle.
What the woman in the article doesn't get is that her boyfriend wants the whole package and I think true 'sex people' get a lot of pleasure from pleasing and for me it's so important that I'm pleasing my partner. With my current boyfriend, I'd still have a good time if the mechanical acts were as they are, but it wouldn't be amazing sex unless I knew he was happy, too.
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Post by elkclan2 on Nov 24, 2017 4:03:13 GMT -5
Caris - when you feel ugly, you look ugly in selfies. When you feel low, you look for the bad in your own picture. I don't know what you look like, but I can guarantee you that you look better than you think.
I'm fat. My ex told me I was basically too fat to fuck. Because I was in an affair, I knew that wasn't true, but it didn't stop me from thinking that I was too fat to find love. I now have a super hot boyfriend* who finds me attractive and tells me I'm gorgeous. I'm still fat. Right now I look like shit, I've been sick, I have a nasty zit on my nose from kleenex overuse. He still tells me I look gorgeous. It's hard for ME to believe that, but I'm coming to believe that he thinks it's true. Now, I'm not saying that I feel gorgeous, but I know that I'm attractive enough and he thinks I'm a catch.
_____ *I think he's super hot. He's a geeky, long-haired scientist and possibly not everyone's cup of tea, but my own mother told me "You didn't tell me how good looking he was..." after meeting him. Which was kinda creepy and grossly inappropriate in a way, but there's no doubt that I traded up in every way.
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Changes
Nov 23, 2017 10:07:17 GMT -5
Post by elkclan2 on Nov 23, 2017 10:07:17 GMT -5
Ha ha! And yes! That's me. So, the "2" affixed to the moniker Elkclan2 is intended to indicate a new version? Like ElkClan Professional Version 2.0. That's really neat. I figured that username was too unique for someone else to have just stumbled on it. ....errr no - I originally signed up here as Elkclan, but forgot what email and password I used. Unintentional, but happy coincidence!!! And year, elkclan is pretty original, but it was a family name from the 'old country' translated into English.
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