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Post by baza on Oct 31, 2016 0:56:51 GMT -5
On this very day, at this very moment, we are ALL writing our history.
Your history doesn't begin with a dud marriage, nor does it end because you are in a dud marriage.
Your history doesn't end if you get out of a dud marriage, nor does it start if you get in to a new relationship.
Your history is your history, and you add a new page to it every day
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It is what you do today that makes the next chapter of your full history, the history that started back when you were born and has been expanding day by day ever since. Every choice you made - with its' good and bad outcomes - every choice you didn't make - with its' good and bad outcomes. It is all part of the picture that exists for you today
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Today, you write "more of the same", or you write the beginnings of something quite different.
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Your choice.
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Post by lwoetin on Oct 31, 2016 0:59:00 GMT -5
But being a good team is not the same as an intimate marriage. I've come to realize this. Now that I'm demanding an intimate marriage, I see another side of my wife. The one that does not like loosing the control. I never thought of her as controlling. But now things are being brought out and she has been forced into a decision. She is no longer in control of the relationship, hence the shitty moods lately. Which brings up another question: "If your spouse feels forced to meet your needs, should you stay?" I'm okay at this point about her giving me the sex. I told her I need it at least twice a week. She forced me into celibacy, so I'm not feeling too sorry right now for her. How long will it be okay with me if she feels forced to give me sex. It's not a question I can answer right now. My thought is that my wife will begin to embrace the idea of intimacy the more she does it. I could be deceiving myself. It seems like only time will tell. The idea of waiting is what bothers me the most because of the time I've already wasted in my relationship. It's been about three years of misery. The other 20 were not so bad and there were good times. If I'm honest there were rocky times during the twenty years but the good outweighed the bad. My wife is embracing the idea of intimacy more. And I don't think it is self-deception. I have been with her for 22yrs. I am lenient with frequency if she can make up with enthusiasm. And I'm also responsible for her enthusiasm too. Re: "Would you remarry your spouse now?" - I will check the Yes! box. |
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Post by iceman on Oct 31, 2016 10:25:32 GMT -5
Just curious, when you say you're getting your sexual needs met do you mean that your wife is fully engaged in sex, as in she also has desire? Or, is she allowing her to use her body for your sexual pleasure but she's not so much into it? In my case for the last several years of the decline of our sex life, our sex life was the latter. She'd allow me to 'use' her but she wasn't into it much at all. I guess I should be grateful that she was willing to do that but somehow it seemed to make me feel worse. Why you should be grateful?! Grateful probably isn't the best word. Maybe appreciative. I don't feel that she's being purposely cruel or malicious. She is who she is and I'm who I am. We see and feel things much differently. I appreciate that she made the effort when she had no desire to do so. The only reason she did is to try to give me some happiness, or if I was cynical, maybe to placate me enough to quit bugging her, though I've long ago stopped that. However, the fact that I'm having sex with her and she isn't at all into it gives me no sexual or emotional satisfaction. I guess there's the physical release of pent-up sexual energy but that's about it. After it's over I just feel worse. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2016 16:59:24 GMT -5
iceman,
I can understand how you feel. I would not want to have sex with someone who just laid there either.
I came out and asked my wife if she enjoyed sex. She told me she liked it. We did not start having sexual problems until about three - four years ago. So my situation could be different than yours.
My wife enjoys sex but I've noticed her preferences have changed now that she is older. She likes to be dominated which was something that was not in our early marriage. Maybe she's more comfortable with it now. She may be embracing a different role in our marriage. I let her become leader in our house thinking that is what she wanted. It wasn't. So now I've taken over the role of leader in the house. Maybe that's why she is embracing sex more now.
Did you ask your wife how she wanted to have sex? Does she desire other men or women? I asked my wife if she was attracted to women or wanted to sleep with another man. I was asking these questions when I was not getting sex.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2016 18:00:21 GMT -5
But being a good team is not the same as an intimate marriage. I've come to realize this. Now that I'm demanding an intimate marriage, I see another side of my wife. The one that does not like loosing the control. I never thought of her as controlling. But now things are being brought out and she has been forced into a decision. She is no longer in control of the relationship, hence the shitty moods lately. Which brings up another question: "If your spouse feels forced to meet your needs, should you stay?" I'm okay at this point about her giving me the sex. I told her I need it at least twice a week. She forced me into celibacy, so I'm not feeling too sorry right now for her. How long will it be okay with me if she feels forced to give me sex. It's not a question I can answer right now. My thought is that my wife will begin to embrace the idea of intimacy the more she does it. I could be deceiving myself. It seems like only time will tell. The idea of waiting is what bothers me the most because of the time I've already wasted in my relationship. It's been about three years of misery. The other 20 were not so bad and there were good times. If I'm honest there were rocky times during the twenty years but the good outweighed the bad. My wife is embracing the idea of intimacy more. And I don't think it is self-deception. I have been with her for 22yrs. I am lenient with frequency if she can make up with enthusiasm. And I'm also responsible for her enthusiasm too. Re: "Would you remarry your spouse now?" - I will check the Yes! box. You're responsible for her enthusiasm? Maybe to the extent that you should be attentive to what turns her on, but her enthusiasm or lack thereof is ultimately something only she can determine. |
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2016 20:00:14 GMT -5
I probably would.
Keep in mind - our problems started when he developed some health problems (mental and physical) - and got magnified by the way I handled that.
I panicked. All I could see was the prospect of him being that way *forever*. I thought we were doomed to 30 more years of him being healthy enough to go to work - but too sick and depressed to do anything else except lie around the apartment.
The trouble is - I feel now that I didn't handle this well. But I still don't know - what would be a *good* way to handle it? What do you do when your mate will not do his part to solve his health problems?
And - assuming I could go back magically knowing how to behave to encourage him to help himself - the next question is, how long would it take for him to get back to normal? How long would be a reasonable time for me to wait?
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Post by unmatched on Oct 31, 2016 20:10:30 GMT -5
I probably would. Keep in mind - our problems started when he developed some health problems (mental and physical) - and got magnified by the way I handled that. I panicked. All I could see was the prospect of him being that way *forever*. I thought we were doomed to 30 more years of him being healthy enough to go to work - but too sick and depressed to do anything else except lie around the apartment. The trouble is - I feel now that I didn't handle this well. But I still don't know - what would be a *good* way to handle it? What do you do when your mate will not do his part to solve his health problems? And - assuming I could go back magically knowing how to behave to encourage him to help himself - the next question is, how long would it take for him to get back to normal? How long would be a reasonable time for me to wait? SK don't fall back into the trap of thinking, 'If only I had done something different he would have made different choices in his life.' That is what keeps people enabling alcoholics, it is what keeps battered wives in hell, and it is what keeps a lot of people in sexless marriages forever. He made his own choices. He is still making them. And you eventually chose not to sink with him. How long is a reasonable time to wait? I don't know, but it certainly didn't feel like you bailed at the first sign of trouble. |
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Post by baza on Oct 31, 2016 20:43:58 GMT -5
From time to time, events from my past seep back in to my thinking, and I idly speculate what might have happened had I taken *this* course of action rather than *that* course of action.
Career moves, friendships, family, marital issues, finances, all sorts of things.
And inevitably, I conclude that I don't know, and never will, how doing *that* instead of *this* might have turned out.
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And boy, have I made some monumental fuck ups in my choices (and non choices) up to now.
And I doubt that I am now immune from making further fuck ups in my choices (and non choices) from now on either.
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One common element I find in my past.
The situations where I made choices generally produced pretty good outcomes.
The situations where I made non choices, generally produced pretty bad outcomes.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2016 20:51:15 GMT -5
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2016 22:06:55 GMT -5
baz,
I agree about the non choices. My marriage started to slide when I was no longer making a choice. I just started to exist in the relationship. I was taking things for granted. Of course my wife had started to do the same thing. We stopped making an effort to take care of one another. I believe now it takes a conscious choice to remember and take care of your spouse. I know how easy it is to let life just slide by.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 31, 2016 22:18:54 GMT -5
smartkat,
You should not feel guilty about your husband's health. A relationship needs two people working together. It sounds like he did not want to take care of it himself. And ultimately, it's up to him to make those choices. If he truly cared about you, he would have made an effort.
It's taken me a while but now I realize it's actions that count not words or ideas. You were smart not to continue on. Why should you stay in a unhappy place when he was unwilling to change?
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Post by lwoetin on Oct 31, 2016 22:23:48 GMT -5
My wife is embracing the idea of intimacy more. And I don't think it is self-deception. I have been with her for 22yrs. I am lenient with frequency if she can make up with enthusiasm. And I'm also responsible for her enthusiasm too. Re: "Would you remarry your spouse now?" - I will check the Yes! box. You're responsible for her enthusiasm? Maybe to the extent that you should be attentive to what turns her on, but her enthusiasm or lack thereof is ultimately something only she can determine. Partly. If I am lazy, smelly and selfish then she probably would not be too enthusiastic. I have to be sensitive to her needs too so that she will be sensitive to mine. |
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Post by beachguy on Nov 1, 2016 9:28:11 GMT -5
I probably would. Keep in mind - our problems started when he developed some health problems (mental and physical) - and got magnified by the way I handled that. I panicked. All I could see was the prospect of him being that way *forever*. I thought we were doomed to 30 more years of him being healthy enough to go to work - but too sick and depressed to do anything else except lie around the apartment. The trouble is - I feel now that I didn't handle this well. But I still don't know - what would be a *good* way to handle it? What do you do when your mate will not do his part to solve his health problems? And - assuming I could go back magically knowing how to behave to encourage him to help himself - the next question is, how long would it take for him to get back to normal? How long would be a reasonable time for me to wait? @smartcat , you're slipping back into the idea that you were responsible for fixing him, and that his failure to fix himself must have been your fault. Please don't go there... |
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Post by Deleted on Nov 1, 2016 9:34:29 GMT -5
I probably would. Keep in mind - our problems started when he developed some health problems (mental and physical) - and got magnified by the way I handled that. I panicked. All I could see was the prospect of him being that way *forever*. I thought we were doomed to 30 more years of him being healthy enough to go to work - but too sick and depressed to do anything else except lie around the apartment. The trouble is - I feel now that I didn't handle this well. But I still don't know - what would be a *good* way to handle it? What do you do when your mate will not do his part to solve his health problems? And - assuming I could go back magically knowing how to behave to encourage him to help himself - the next question is, how long would it take for him to get back to normal? How long would be a reasonable time for me to wait? You waited long enough. It's his responsibility to address his problems. It wasn't up to you to handle it. It was up to him. |
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Post by jim44444 on Nov 2, 2016 23:39:54 GMT -5
Certainly an interesting question.
I would not marry my spouse as she is now. But I would marry the woman I married 47 years ago or the one she was even 15 years ago.
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