Help me figure out last night's conversation
Nov 22, 2016 4:24:15 GMT -5
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Post by Lithium92 on Nov 22, 2016 4:24:15 GMT -5
Last night my wife and I had a long, perfectly calm and amicable conversation that I think might be the beginning of the end for us.
Brief background: I'm 48, she's 54, no kids. Sex was on the slide after the first couple of years of marriage, but really plummeted post menopause. She's effectively asexual - physically it's not painful or pleasurable, just meh. She also has lupus which leaves her in chronic, but managed, pain, and on HRT but it's limited because it interferes with lupus meds. Obviously there's more but that's the relevant stuff for now.
So, this conversation. I'm still processing so this is going to be a scattershot, and I'd really appreciate fresh eyes trying to put the pieces together.
She's told me before she never had any kind of emotional involvement in sex - 'it's just plumbing' - even when we were having sex, and she enjoyed it. But last night it became clear she's totally happy with a complete lack of ... not even passion, but energy or fire in our relationship as a whole. The whole idea is alien to her. She actively likes it being what I feel is emotionally comatose.
But she does love me. She wants to be with me because we 'get' each other. And we do, on a functional day to day level. And she does things for me - she's created a herb garden purely for my benefit as I love to cook with them and she hates spicey foods. There are times when she's been amazingly supportive to me, and I do my best to be supportive of her. We both acknowledge that.
I asked her once how this kind of stuff was different from a friendship and she gave the example that she'd move cities with me, which she wouldn't for a friend.
The level of physical contact/affection she'd go for is handholding, briefish hugs, and *very* nonsexual spooning. I asked her about stuff like cuddling on the sofa of an evening (currently we tend to use different sofas), and she said she would, but our sofas were the wrong shape, not big enough. I can see why this would make it not the default, but that's a reason for never? It just seems like such a trivial reason for not doing it, compared the upside. About a year ago, I made a point of sitting and cuddling with her on the sofa frequently for a couple of months. She seemed entirely neutral about this, and after a couple of months, I stopped. She didn't mention it, or *ever* come over to me for a cuddle.
I said I wanted to us to talk more - really talk, because in the past, we've both made wrong assumptions about what was going on that have been incredibly damaging. Me, that her lack of interest in sex was because of an affair/some massive underlying resentment of me. Her, that my detachment from her and our life together was because I had a second family (obviously not, but gynae problems mean she can't have kids and she thought I'd found someone who could. No kids has never been an issue for me). And to me having those conversations an intimate, bonding experience, which I like, however painful they are in the moment. She doesn't see them like that, she just sees an exchange of information.
She said stuff like reading the papers together and talking about the stuff in them makes her feel closer, intimate, etc. She has no need of more.
She does try. It's slow, and it takes superhuman handling on my part to keep her on track with what she's claimed she wants to do, but she does try.
Is she guarding her heart from me? Or is her heart of an alien kind I don't recognise?
I came up with an analogy... she's like a cat, with no need for any real interaction. If it's there, they'll take it, and if it suits, they'll give back. I'm more like a labrador. I find the give and take of contact deeply satisfying, and I grieve when I don't have it.
She agreed.
This is the incompatability I mentioned. It feels like the conversation hass opened up something that goes far deeper than the absence of sex, or getting past the post-menopausal/lupus stuff. It's a profound innate difference in what we need from a relationship, and it's scary as hell.
Brief background: I'm 48, she's 54, no kids. Sex was on the slide after the first couple of years of marriage, but really plummeted post menopause. She's effectively asexual - physically it's not painful or pleasurable, just meh. She also has lupus which leaves her in chronic, but managed, pain, and on HRT but it's limited because it interferes with lupus meds. Obviously there's more but that's the relevant stuff for now.
So, this conversation. I'm still processing so this is going to be a scattershot, and I'd really appreciate fresh eyes trying to put the pieces together.
She's told me before she never had any kind of emotional involvement in sex - 'it's just plumbing' - even when we were having sex, and she enjoyed it. But last night it became clear she's totally happy with a complete lack of ... not even passion, but energy or fire in our relationship as a whole. The whole idea is alien to her. She actively likes it being what I feel is emotionally comatose.
But she does love me. She wants to be with me because we 'get' each other. And we do, on a functional day to day level. And she does things for me - she's created a herb garden purely for my benefit as I love to cook with them and she hates spicey foods. There are times when she's been amazingly supportive to me, and I do my best to be supportive of her. We both acknowledge that.
I asked her once how this kind of stuff was different from a friendship and she gave the example that she'd move cities with me, which she wouldn't for a friend.
The level of physical contact/affection she'd go for is handholding, briefish hugs, and *very* nonsexual spooning. I asked her about stuff like cuddling on the sofa of an evening (currently we tend to use different sofas), and she said she would, but our sofas were the wrong shape, not big enough. I can see why this would make it not the default, but that's a reason for never? It just seems like such a trivial reason for not doing it, compared the upside. About a year ago, I made a point of sitting and cuddling with her on the sofa frequently for a couple of months. She seemed entirely neutral about this, and after a couple of months, I stopped. She didn't mention it, or *ever* come over to me for a cuddle.
I said I wanted to us to talk more - really talk, because in the past, we've both made wrong assumptions about what was going on that have been incredibly damaging. Me, that her lack of interest in sex was because of an affair/some massive underlying resentment of me. Her, that my detachment from her and our life together was because I had a second family (obviously not, but gynae problems mean she can't have kids and she thought I'd found someone who could. No kids has never been an issue for me). And to me having those conversations an intimate, bonding experience, which I like, however painful they are in the moment. She doesn't see them like that, she just sees an exchange of information.
She said stuff like reading the papers together and talking about the stuff in them makes her feel closer, intimate, etc. She has no need of more.
She does try. It's slow, and it takes superhuman handling on my part to keep her on track with what she's claimed she wants to do, but she does try.
Is she guarding her heart from me? Or is her heart of an alien kind I don't recognise?
I came up with an analogy... she's like a cat, with no need for any real interaction. If it's there, they'll take it, and if it suits, they'll give back. I'm more like a labrador. I find the give and take of contact deeply satisfying, and I grieve when I don't have it.
She agreed.
This is the incompatability I mentioned. It feels like the conversation hass opened up something that goes far deeper than the absence of sex, or getting past the post-menopausal/lupus stuff. It's a profound innate difference in what we need from a relationship, and it's scary as hell.
