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Post by h on Jan 4, 2022 14:11:14 GMT -5
My wife and I have been married for twenty nine years with one child. The marriage has been technically sexless (less than ten times a year) for all except perhaps the first year and actually sexless (zero) for twenty seven months. After the first couple of years we’ve rarely managed more than twice and most years it has been once. We were both active Christians when we got married and had abstained from sex before marriage. I have stayed married because I love her very much. Some time about four or five years in we considered breaking up, but after spending a month apart we got back together. I’m the biggest fool in the world because I keep thinking something will change. Occasionally she says she wants to change, but nothing ever comes from it. You would think after 29 years I’d get the hint. I crave intimacy. I’ve said I’d like for us both to just get undressed, go to bed naked and cuddle. No pressure for anything more to develop. I love the feeling of intimacy from full body to body skin contact, but this never really happens either except post the very occasional sex. I never see her naked either. She doesn’t even get changed in the same room as me. If I’m in the bedroom when she is getting changed she takes her clothes into the bathroom to change. We have a great relationship otherwise and for her everything is good, but for me the lack of sex is like a wound every day. We don’t talk about it often but it’s always there in my mind. I feel like a failure. Like a better man than me could arouse her interest, but my approach, or appearance or something about me is such a turn off. I feel like a stronger man would have left the marriage much earlier (before our son was born). I feel like after twenty nine years I have left it too long to have any legitimate reason to hope or expect anything to change now and I should just make peace with the fact that I won’t have sex. I also made the mistake of waiting for marriage to have sex due to my family's religious brainwashing. Worst mistake of my life. If we would have started having sex before marriage, we would have figured out that we weren't compatible and never gotten married. It didn't help that our church didn't speak about sex or marriage at all other than the typical "don't do the former until after the latter" so I had no understanding of what was reasonable. I haven't set foot in a church since I got married. You're right about one thing though. It won't get better.
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Post by heelots on Jan 4, 2022 15:23:31 GMT -5
My wife and I have been married for twenty nine years with one child. The marriage has been technically sexless (less than ten times a year) for all except perhaps the first year and actually sexless (zero) for twenty seven months. After the first couple of years we’ve rarely managed more than twice and most years it has been once. We were both active Christians when we got married and had abstained from sex before marriage. I have stayed married because I love her very much. Some time about four or five years in we considered breaking up, but after spending a month apart we got back together. I’m the biggest fool in the world because I keep thinking something will change. Occasionally she says she wants to change, but nothing ever comes from it. You would think after 29 years I’d get the hint. I crave intimacy. I’ve said I’d like for us both to just get undressed, go to bed naked and cuddle. No pressure for anything more to develop. I love the feeling of intimacy from full body to body skin contact, but this never really happens either except post the very occasional sex. I never see her naked either. She doesn’t even get changed in the same room as me. If I’m in the bedroom when she is getting changed she takes her clothes into the bathroom to change. We have a great relationship otherwise and for her everything is good, but for me the lack of sex is like a wound every day. We don’t talk about it often but it’s always there in my mind. I feel like a failure. Like a better man than me could arouse her interest, but my approach, or appearance or something about me is such a turn off. I feel like a stronger man would have left the marriage much earlier (before our son was born). I feel like after twenty nine years I have left it too long to have any legitimate reason to hope or expect anything to change now and I should just make peace with the fact that I won’t have sex. I also made the mistake of waiting for marriage to have sex due to my family's religious brainwashing. Worst mistake of my life. If we would have started having sex before marriage, we would have figured out that we weren't compatible and never gotten married. It didn't help that our church didn't speak about sex or marriage at all other than the typical "don't do the former until after the latter" so I had no understanding of what was reasonable. I haven't set foot in a church since I got married. You're right about one thing though. It won't get better. I will echo this, consider your wife a room mate, it will make it easier for you.
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Post by stephen on Jan 4, 2022 15:34:05 GMT -5
I also made the mistake of waiting for marriage to have sex due to my family's religious brainwashing. Worst mistake of my life. If we would have started having sex before marriage, we would have figured out that we weren't compatible and never gotten married. It didn't help that our church didn't speak about sex or marriage at all other than the typical "don't do the former until after the latter" so I had no understanding of what was reasonable. I haven't set foot in a church since I got married. You're right about one thing though. It won't get better. I will echo this, consider your wife a room mate, it will make it easier for you. She’s still my best friend and I still love her very much, but sadly I think you’re right.
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Post by stephen on Jan 4, 2022 16:20:28 GMT -5
I also made the mistake of waiting for marriage to have sex due to my family's religious brainwashing. Worst mistake of my life. If we would have started having sex before marriage, we would have figured out that we weren't compatible and never gotten married. It didn't help that our church didn't speak about sex or marriage at all other than the typical "don't do the former until after the latter" so I had no understanding of what was reasonable. I haven't set foot in a church since I got married. You're right about one thing though. It won't get better. I will echo this, consider your wife a room mate, it will make it easier for you. But wait. Does that mean I should give up on the thought of ever having sex again?
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Post by mirrororchid on Jan 4, 2022 20:08:19 GMT -5
I will echo this, consider your wife a room mate, it will make it easier for you. But wait. Does that mean I should give up on the thought of ever having sex again? With your wife? Maybe. With anyone? Probably not. Lots of ILIASM members have resumed normal sex lives after 27 months of sexlessness. Just not with their refusing wives. Some had affairs, some divorced. One sexless wife here opened their marriage. Most marriages that become intimate again belong to wives that reignite their refusing husbands. We have gents here who are more committed to their marriage than to the idea of having sex again, if it means their marriage will end. If you're ready to risk your marriage, your chances of sex again aren't bad. Keeping your marriage? That may be the price. But maybe not. It is an important question though. Are you willing to risk the marriage for sexual intimacy with another? It has been hypothesized not infrequently that without that willingness to blow the world apart, permanent refusal is nearly impossible to vanquish. Where are you in your struggle?
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Post by stephen on Jan 5, 2022 5:39:37 GMT -5
But wait. Does that mean I should give up on the thought of ever having sex again? With your wife? Maybe. With anyone? Probably not. Lots of ILIASM members have resumed normal sex lives after 27 months of sexlessness. Just not with their refusing wives. Some had affairs, some divorced. One sexless wife here opened their marriage. Most marriages that become intimate again belong to wives that reignite their refusing husbands. We have gents here who are more committed to their marriage than to the idea of having sex again, if it means their marriage will end. If you're ready to risk your marriage, your chances of sex again aren't bad. Keeping your marriage? That may be the price. But maybe not. It is an important question though. Are you willing to risk the marriage for sexual intimacy with another? It has been hypothesized not infrequently that without that willingness to blow the world apart, permanent refusal is nearly impossible to vanquish. Where are you in your struggle? I honestly don’t know. There’s so much that is good about the marriage and we have a 13 year old son and as I said I still do love her despite everything, but with every passing year I regret more the lack of sex and this is the longest dry spell ever. Who was it whose deathbed words were the only regret they had was not having had more sex? I don’t want that to be me. Maybe asking for an open marriage would satisfy us both? She wouldn’t feel like she owed me something and I wouldn’t miss out on sex. Is that a pipe dream?
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Post by baza on Jan 5, 2022 6:47:39 GMT -5
If one is going to give the open marriage a shot, one really needs to have one's shit together - as a starting point.
And, one's spouse needs to have their shit together too.
All parties involved need to have their shit sorted out.
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Post by stephen on Jan 5, 2022 7:10:51 GMT -5
If one is going to give the open marriage a shot, one really needs to have one's shit together - as a starting point. And, one's spouse needs to have their shit together too. All parties involved need to have their shit sorted out. Sound advice. I’m not going to start down that path without being very sure and doing my homework. There’s an extent to which it feels like the only way to satisfy all we both seem to want. I don’t think either of us is ready for the marriage to end, I’m not built for extra marital affairs, she doesn’t seem to want sex at all any more, and I seem to want it more every day. I’m struggling to see another option except accepting my sexless fate.
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Post by csl on Jan 5, 2022 8:48:53 GMT -5
I will echo this, consider your wife a room mate, it will make it easier for you. But wait. Does that mean I should give up on the thought of ever having sex again? Yes. As I say on my blog, "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you always got." Keep doing what you're doing, it's working for as least one of you.
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Post by heelots on Jan 5, 2022 22:00:41 GMT -5
I will echo this, consider your wife a room mate, it will make it easier for you. She’s still my best friend and I still love her very much, but sadly I think you’re right. Well, I don't know if I am right, but I know for me once I gave up on any hope of sex with her and began looking at her as nothing more than a room mate it reduced the level of my daily frustration and anger considerably. In a sense mentally it so put me back in the driver's seat. I cannot deny still holding great resentment against her for essentially robbing me of the wife I signed on for when I married her and leaving me with a frigid emotionally detached room mate as a reacement. But all things considered, relegating her to room mate status improved my mental outlook considerably.
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Post by mirrororchid on Jan 6, 2022 7:13:08 GMT -5
Maybe asking for an open marriage would satisfy us both? She wouldn’t feel like she owed me something and I wouldn’t miss out on sex. Is that a pipe dream? Not at all. Asking won't harm a thing. If she says "No." and drops the subject, it hasn't accomplished much either. The question is whether you are ready to tell her the marriage is going to be opened in ___ days/weeks/months unless an intimate bond can be restored. That can have multiple outcomes from great to meat-hanging-off raw. Important examples to mention are: she divorces you, she has a new fella and you feel cast aside, she does cast you aside and marries him, or you can't land dates because the ring on your finger marks you as "undesirable". Telling my wife we were going to be opened caused her to reset for over two years so far. That said, I could have done it better. Also, a great deal of my problem was co-dependency. My marriage was my life and that's not healthy. Building a social life puts less demands on the cozy, secure comfortable marriage you have. Meetups may be a start. Co-dependency, lack of communication, and feeble initiative are three themes of low-horsepower marriages over at Dads Starting Over. That may be a worthwhile step. They have paid seminars and forums but also free Podcast episodes. Their logo may make it obvious they have an advocacy bent for physical fitness, but the relationship advice can be taken, minus the machismo. I'm not a member, I just enjoyed his podcasts. The articles appear to overlap, if you prefer to read. Perhaps open marriage may be more change than you need. If you decide intimacy is indispensable, and open marriage is the way forward, there's a list of podcasts for both sexless marriages and polyamory here: iliasm.org/post/129671
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Post by heelots on Jan 6, 2022 9:22:09 GMT -5
Suggesting an open marriage would depend on the person you are suggesting that to and just how far in the toilet your marriage is when you ask in my opinion.
In my case, my marriage is already shot to hell. I know my wife well enough to know that if I asked her that question that would be just enough to finish the deal and would result in divorce.
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Post by Handy on Jan 6, 2022 15:49:07 GMT -5
People here on ILIASM talk about an open M or a FWB but I do not see it going that direction for most men. Yes a very small number of men succeed in an open M or a FWB situation, but most of the time that takes some extra time and money to play the lovers game. Do you have the time and the money to play the game? It also depends on the man's age, younger maybe a better chance of an open M or FWB.
At my age the best that I could progress to is a traveling or dinner companion relationship and no sex. Maybe if I was willing to be a "sugar-daddy" I might have better prospects.
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Post by saarinista on Jan 6, 2022 16:52:35 GMT -5
As a woman, if I were to be in an open marriage, it would take away time and money resources from current marriage. Alas, I'm not wealthy. I'm not looking for a sugar daddy, but most man are not wealthy either! So if I want an open marriage I'll probably have to pay for the guy's expenses too. That's not fair have to my current husband whom I don't hate... I just want to have sex!
These sexless marriages suck. There are no easy answers
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Post by Handy on Jan 6, 2022 18:06:56 GMT -5
Saarinista, I'll probably have to pay for the guy's expenses too.Saarinista, even if you needed to provide some of your own (25%) FWB encounter expenses would you have the money to do that? And then there is the time if the guy is not local and you agree to meet some place between where you and he lives? The idea of an open M or a FWB can sound easy but how many people actually do it if they do not travel for work and have an 8AM to 5PM job?
My next question is what is a reasonable amount of money to spend on an affair per month?
On a "cheaters website" one guy spent $500 a month.
OTH someone that lives alone and has a local FWB, the expenses will be very reasonable.
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