Abridged open letter to a refuser
Apr 3, 2016 18:18:52 GMT -5
Dan, GeekGoddess, and 11 more like this
Post by Deleted on Apr 3, 2016 18:18:52 GMT -5
Abridged Open Letter to a Refuser (SmartKat, 2/2/2015)
[Background: My friend "Amy" has a lot of problems, to say the least. For purposes of this post, I'll just tell you these:
1 - She is very unhappily married- has talked about divorce with her husband. She doesn't love him and dislikes having sex with him.
2 - She's madly in love with a man (also married) whom she knows only through Facebook. He has not given her what I consider to be strong encouragement, so she's really going out on a limb emotionally.
3 - Because she's a born-again Christian, she thinks it's wrong to have sex outside of marriage. She even thinks it's wrong to have online sexual friends, or be too close friends with members of the opposite sex. So for her FB man, who she believes she is in love with - even if he propositioned her, she would say no. I think she's hoping that magically, he and his wife will split up; and magically, an easy divorce for her will just drop out of the sky; and magically, she and FB Man will fall madly in love and get married and live happily ever after.]
-------------------
Kat:
I have to warn you - your email about you and Hubby pressed some buttons for me. Remember, Mr. Kat is a Refuser, and he is withholding sex from me. So, I have spoken here as a Refused. Try to keep this in mind as you read.
Amy:
So Hubby hit me up for sex last night, and it was completely disgusting... again. You know what? I don't ever want to have sex again with a man I'm not in love with again.
Kat:
So, if you never love a man again - or if a man you love won't have sex with you - that is a lifelong sentence of celibacy. Are you sure that's what you want?
Amy:
As I was going pee ahead of time, I pictured how much (well, this was before FB Man's most recent, annoying email) I'd like to do it with him,....
Kat:
OK - but you don't know for sure what FB Man is like in bed. Any more than I can know for sure what M or N would be like. Our imaginations can be quite different from reality. (And note - I include myself in this.)
Amy:
Anyway, I decided I should probably keep Hubby happy or else he was likely to suspect more stuff was wrong with the marriage, which was another thing that felt shitty. But the worst was that, when we started having sex, he said to me, "we need to do this more often" (something he commonly says), but then he followed it up with, "or I might just have to fuck other women."
Kat:
Amy - THIS IS A WAKE-UP CALL.
Take it from a Refused - we have to be very close to the end of our rope before we will admit to our Refuser that we are thinking about sex with someone else.
I have been thinking about it for 2 years. I STILL haven't said so to Mr. Kat.
We refused usually [start out] loving our refusers. When Mr. Kat first started withholding sex from me, it broke my heart.
I thought it meant he didn't love me any more.
I thought maybe there was another woman. (I asked - he said no - and I believed him.)
I thought maybe I was getting fat or old-looking.
I thought maybe I had such a bad personality that my looks couldn't make up for it.
I thought maybe he was disgruntled because I'm not Suzy Homemaker. (Although I never was, I never pretended to be, and he knew that when he asked me to move in with him.)
During one of the times we Talked About It(tm) last spring (2014), he mentioned that he had been angry and resentful with me when I was working a lot of overtime back in 2009 and 2010. [I've posted about that before, so no need to tell it again.]
IMHO, he needed to fucking get over that at least 3.5 years earlier. If he was still withholding sex because he was holding a grudge over that, he was being a dick. He should have either fucking gotten over it, or else broken up with me, if it was so unforgivable.
But anyway. Where I'm going with this: As a fellow Refused, I can empathize with Hubby. You have told him straight out that you want a divorce - and what clearer way is there to say, "I don't love you?"
But you still stick around. By sticking around, you're sending him mixed messages.
You're quick to tell him when he does something wrong. How often do you tell him something good about himself?
You insist on monogamy, but then you want a LOT less sex than he does. It's an extremely unfair double standard.
Of course, it goes without saying that nobody should ever be allowed to force another person to have sex.
But to be fair - nobody should be allowed to force another person to be celibate, either. By refusing sex but insisting on monogamy, that is what refusers do to their mates. Refusers force their mates to be celibate. AND they get all butthurt if we say anything to show that we don't like being celibate.
And we refused are not always pitiful and heartbroken. Sometimes we become volcanically angry at our refusers. Sometimes we HATE our refusers.
Like me towards Mr. Kat - Hubby has probably been heartbroken over you. He probably feels unattractive, unloved, unwanted. I personally don't find him attractive, but some woman might. If he's into bicycling and martial arts, he's probably in decent shape and pretty good health.
And I would bet money that he has been very, very angry at having to obey the monogamy rule.
This arrangement has NOTHING which is good for him. He brings in the money, and according to what you've told me, he also does a lot of the household stuff.
And he might very well meet a woman who finds him attractive. Somebody who likes some of his characteristics, or thinks he's good at something - and SAYS so. Constant criticism can break people's hearts and ultimately kill their love for you.
And if he has a normal sex drive (and I believe you once told me that the average frequency of sex for most couples is twice a week) - and you guys are doing it less than, say, once a week....he's probably going crazy from horniness.
So, hypothetically, he could meet a woman who finds him attractive...who praises him instead of criticizing...and whose sex drive matches his.
You think it couldn't happen? Well, maybe Mr. Kat would be very surprised to find out that not all men find me as undesirable as he apparently does. In the past 2 years, I have had men tell me that they thought I was sexy and they wanted me. So, I'm not as undesirable as Mr. Kat seems to think I am. Maybe Hubby isn't as undesirable to every woman as he is to you.
Amy:
....and I reminded him that I'm not just some piece of meat that exists for him to have sex with, and he can't just come up to me and treat me like that.
Kat:
Well, if he is anything like me, or the other Refused that I know - sooner or later, he'll stop approaching you. If every sexual encounter you two have is like this one - he can't possibly enjoy it. Sooner or later, he's going to decide that what he gets just isn't worth the hassle.
Again, speaking from my own experience: the last time Mr. Kat and I tried to have sex the last week of December, it was awful!
[Description of most recent attempt by me and Mr. Kat to have sex. I posted about it in ILIASM and PMed with a couple of people, so will not rehash it here.]
So even though I'm this horrible slut who wants to have sex with her boyfriend - this sex was so bad that I don't know if I even WANT to try with him again.
But that doesn't mean I never want to have sex again. It just means that I'm fed up with trying it with Mr. Kat. If our last encounter is the kind of sex I'm going to get with him - then forget it.
And about a week later, I told him I would back off and quit bugging him about sex - that he should let me know when he's ready. Unfortunately, I think he interpreted this to mean I was going to continue to be sweet and patient. Um, no. What I really meant was, "I quit trying to make this happen. If you ever want it again, let me know."
Clearly, Mr. Kat and I need to have a Talk(tm). And somehow, I need to make him take me seriously. I need to set a deadline by which I want us to be having decent sex about once a week, that he WANTS, not just does to make me shut up. And I need to set a consequence that will happen if this does not take place. There's the rub...
....A breakup could be a consequence of his refusing. (If I could mean it, and make it stick.)
Or - I could ask him for an open relationship. But if I do that, I have to be prepared to lose him. He might decide that if I won't settle down, be a nice old lady, and accept celibacy - that he wants to break up with me.
So - putting this back in your situation:
What would you do if Hubby told you that if your sex life doesn't improve by X date, that he wants to end the marriage? Break up with you?
Or - what would you do if he asked for an open marriage?
What would you do if he had an affair and you found out?
I'm telling you this as a Refused. We Refused rarely stay obedient forever. Reject us enough, and we WILL take ourselves away from you, in one form or another.
Even Refused who decide to stay "for the children" and not outsource. The Refuser thinks they are getting a compliant servant/ATM machine/platonic roommate without having to have sex.
But trust me on this - the Refused now has a very jaundiced view of the Refuser. We may move out of the bedroom. We may start spending hours on work or exercise or hobbies or something. Our marriage no longer brings us any joy, so we look for it in these activities and time-fillers.
But we still fantasize about good, affectionate sex with a willing partner. We may have celebrity crushes. We may have online-only affairs. We may secretly pine for a coworker or neighbor.
But our Refuser has not neutered us. And by refusing just one time too often, he or she has lost some of our love. Even if we still love you - we no longer believe you love us. That makes us less vulnerable.
So - when things are at this point - all the refuser has to do is make one wrong move - and the refused will be DONE. You'll threaten to break up, and we'll no longer cling and cry. We'll say, "Maybe that would be for the best." And you will be flabbergasted. You will have pulled out what used to be a nuclear weapon, only to find that now, it's just a squib.
Amy:
The last four sexual interactions we've had, with one exception, have all been completely disgusting because of how he's acted. He rarely approaches me for sex, and, when he does, he does it at shitty times, like super late at night when I've NEVER wanted todo it, even when we were happy earlier in our marriage. There have been times I've been reasonably in the mood but NOT when I'm treated this way.
Kat:
OK - what needs to happen in order for you to be willing to have sex with Hubby? You know the conditions under which you DON'T want sex (for example, late at night.) What conditions need to be met before you will have sex with him? If you have never told him this, you need to do so. You need to be specific.
Amy:
So now he's just consigned himself to another 3 months without sex... at LEAST.
Kat:
That is using sex as a weapon. Is that what sex is meant for?
Amy:
He was super apologetic this morning but fuck that. It was an absolutely disgusting and degrading experience. I hate this fucking marriage. I'm disgusted having sex with somebody that I don't love, don't want, and who is acting like a pig.
Kat:
Amy - you and Hubby need to get some honesty around this.
If you never want to have sex with him again, TELL HIM THAT. Stop letting him get his hopes up. If Mr. Kat would just honestly say to me, "I've decided I'm ready to give up sex for the rest of my life. So no, I'm not going to ask my doctor about testosterone or Viagra. I'm not going to therapy or couples counseling. And, I'm not going to give you oral sex or use my hands on you," - then I could break up with him and that would be that.
I don't understand why he DOESN'T just tell me that. If he did, he would be rid of me - the annoying pestering nympho girlfriend.
I'm not going to magically morph into the nice little old lady he wants, and start liking museums better than sex.
Similarly, Hubby is not going to magically morph into the kind of man you really want.
So - why not just honestly tell him you will never have sex with him again? It would cut to the chase and save both of you a lot of time and trouble.
[Background: My friend "Amy" has a lot of problems, to say the least. For purposes of this post, I'll just tell you these:
1 - She is very unhappily married- has talked about divorce with her husband. She doesn't love him and dislikes having sex with him.
2 - She's madly in love with a man (also married) whom she knows only through Facebook. He has not given her what I consider to be strong encouragement, so she's really going out on a limb emotionally.
3 - Because she's a born-again Christian, she thinks it's wrong to have sex outside of marriage. She even thinks it's wrong to have online sexual friends, or be too close friends with members of the opposite sex. So for her FB man, who she believes she is in love with - even if he propositioned her, she would say no. I think she's hoping that magically, he and his wife will split up; and magically, an easy divorce for her will just drop out of the sky; and magically, she and FB Man will fall madly in love and get married and live happily ever after.]
-------------------
Kat:
I have to warn you - your email about you and Hubby pressed some buttons for me. Remember, Mr. Kat is a Refuser, and he is withholding sex from me. So, I have spoken here as a Refused. Try to keep this in mind as you read.
Amy:
So Hubby hit me up for sex last night, and it was completely disgusting... again. You know what? I don't ever want to have sex again with a man I'm not in love with again.
Kat:
So, if you never love a man again - or if a man you love won't have sex with you - that is a lifelong sentence of celibacy. Are you sure that's what you want?
Amy:
As I was going pee ahead of time, I pictured how much (well, this was before FB Man's most recent, annoying email) I'd like to do it with him,....
Kat:
OK - but you don't know for sure what FB Man is like in bed. Any more than I can know for sure what M or N would be like. Our imaginations can be quite different from reality. (And note - I include myself in this.)
Amy:
Anyway, I decided I should probably keep Hubby happy or else he was likely to suspect more stuff was wrong with the marriage, which was another thing that felt shitty. But the worst was that, when we started having sex, he said to me, "we need to do this more often" (something he commonly says), but then he followed it up with, "or I might just have to fuck other women."
Kat:
Amy - THIS IS A WAKE-UP CALL.
Take it from a Refused - we have to be very close to the end of our rope before we will admit to our Refuser that we are thinking about sex with someone else.
I have been thinking about it for 2 years. I STILL haven't said so to Mr. Kat.
We refused usually [start out] loving our refusers. When Mr. Kat first started withholding sex from me, it broke my heart.
I thought it meant he didn't love me any more.
I thought maybe there was another woman. (I asked - he said no - and I believed him.)
I thought maybe I was getting fat or old-looking.
I thought maybe I had such a bad personality that my looks couldn't make up for it.
I thought maybe he was disgruntled because I'm not Suzy Homemaker. (Although I never was, I never pretended to be, and he knew that when he asked me to move in with him.)
During one of the times we Talked About It(tm) last spring (2014), he mentioned that he had been angry and resentful with me when I was working a lot of overtime back in 2009 and 2010. [I've posted about that before, so no need to tell it again.]
IMHO, he needed to fucking get over that at least 3.5 years earlier. If he was still withholding sex because he was holding a grudge over that, he was being a dick. He should have either fucking gotten over it, or else broken up with me, if it was so unforgivable.
But anyway. Where I'm going with this: As a fellow Refused, I can empathize with Hubby. You have told him straight out that you want a divorce - and what clearer way is there to say, "I don't love you?"
But you still stick around. By sticking around, you're sending him mixed messages.
You're quick to tell him when he does something wrong. How often do you tell him something good about himself?
You insist on monogamy, but then you want a LOT less sex than he does. It's an extremely unfair double standard.
Of course, it goes without saying that nobody should ever be allowed to force another person to have sex.
But to be fair - nobody should be allowed to force another person to be celibate, either. By refusing sex but insisting on monogamy, that is what refusers do to their mates. Refusers force their mates to be celibate. AND they get all butthurt if we say anything to show that we don't like being celibate.
And we refused are not always pitiful and heartbroken. Sometimes we become volcanically angry at our refusers. Sometimes we HATE our refusers.
Like me towards Mr. Kat - Hubby has probably been heartbroken over you. He probably feels unattractive, unloved, unwanted. I personally don't find him attractive, but some woman might. If he's into bicycling and martial arts, he's probably in decent shape and pretty good health.
And I would bet money that he has been very, very angry at having to obey the monogamy rule.
This arrangement has NOTHING which is good for him. He brings in the money, and according to what you've told me, he also does a lot of the household stuff.
And he might very well meet a woman who finds him attractive. Somebody who likes some of his characteristics, or thinks he's good at something - and SAYS so. Constant criticism can break people's hearts and ultimately kill their love for you.
And if he has a normal sex drive (and I believe you once told me that the average frequency of sex for most couples is twice a week) - and you guys are doing it less than, say, once a week....he's probably going crazy from horniness.
So, hypothetically, he could meet a woman who finds him attractive...who praises him instead of criticizing...and whose sex drive matches his.
You think it couldn't happen? Well, maybe Mr. Kat would be very surprised to find out that not all men find me as undesirable as he apparently does. In the past 2 years, I have had men tell me that they thought I was sexy and they wanted me. So, I'm not as undesirable as Mr. Kat seems to think I am. Maybe Hubby isn't as undesirable to every woman as he is to you.
Amy:
....and I reminded him that I'm not just some piece of meat that exists for him to have sex with, and he can't just come up to me and treat me like that.
Kat:
Well, if he is anything like me, or the other Refused that I know - sooner or later, he'll stop approaching you. If every sexual encounter you two have is like this one - he can't possibly enjoy it. Sooner or later, he's going to decide that what he gets just isn't worth the hassle.
Again, speaking from my own experience: the last time Mr. Kat and I tried to have sex the last week of December, it was awful!
[Description of most recent attempt by me and Mr. Kat to have sex. I posted about it in ILIASM and PMed with a couple of people, so will not rehash it here.]
So even though I'm this horrible slut who wants to have sex with her boyfriend - this sex was so bad that I don't know if I even WANT to try with him again.
But that doesn't mean I never want to have sex again. It just means that I'm fed up with trying it with Mr. Kat. If our last encounter is the kind of sex I'm going to get with him - then forget it.
And about a week later, I told him I would back off and quit bugging him about sex - that he should let me know when he's ready. Unfortunately, I think he interpreted this to mean I was going to continue to be sweet and patient. Um, no. What I really meant was, "I quit trying to make this happen. If you ever want it again, let me know."
Clearly, Mr. Kat and I need to have a Talk(tm). And somehow, I need to make him take me seriously. I need to set a deadline by which I want us to be having decent sex about once a week, that he WANTS, not just does to make me shut up. And I need to set a consequence that will happen if this does not take place. There's the rub...
....A breakup could be a consequence of his refusing. (If I could mean it, and make it stick.)
Or - I could ask him for an open relationship. But if I do that, I have to be prepared to lose him. He might decide that if I won't settle down, be a nice old lady, and accept celibacy - that he wants to break up with me.
So - putting this back in your situation:
What would you do if Hubby told you that if your sex life doesn't improve by X date, that he wants to end the marriage? Break up with you?
Or - what would you do if he asked for an open marriage?
What would you do if he had an affair and you found out?
I'm telling you this as a Refused. We Refused rarely stay obedient forever. Reject us enough, and we WILL take ourselves away from you, in one form or another.
Even Refused who decide to stay "for the children" and not outsource. The Refuser thinks they are getting a compliant servant/ATM machine/platonic roommate without having to have sex.
But trust me on this - the Refused now has a very jaundiced view of the Refuser. We may move out of the bedroom. We may start spending hours on work or exercise or hobbies or something. Our marriage no longer brings us any joy, so we look for it in these activities and time-fillers.
But we still fantasize about good, affectionate sex with a willing partner. We may have celebrity crushes. We may have online-only affairs. We may secretly pine for a coworker or neighbor.
But our Refuser has not neutered us. And by refusing just one time too often, he or she has lost some of our love. Even if we still love you - we no longer believe you love us. That makes us less vulnerable.
So - when things are at this point - all the refuser has to do is make one wrong move - and the refused will be DONE. You'll threaten to break up, and we'll no longer cling and cry. We'll say, "Maybe that would be for the best." And you will be flabbergasted. You will have pulled out what used to be a nuclear weapon, only to find that now, it's just a squib.
Amy:
The last four sexual interactions we've had, with one exception, have all been completely disgusting because of how he's acted. He rarely approaches me for sex, and, when he does, he does it at shitty times, like super late at night when I've NEVER wanted todo it, even when we were happy earlier in our marriage. There have been times I've been reasonably in the mood but NOT when I'm treated this way.
Kat:
OK - what needs to happen in order for you to be willing to have sex with Hubby? You know the conditions under which you DON'T want sex (for example, late at night.) What conditions need to be met before you will have sex with him? If you have never told him this, you need to do so. You need to be specific.
Amy:
So now he's just consigned himself to another 3 months without sex... at LEAST.
Kat:
That is using sex as a weapon. Is that what sex is meant for?
Amy:
He was super apologetic this morning but fuck that. It was an absolutely disgusting and degrading experience. I hate this fucking marriage. I'm disgusted having sex with somebody that I don't love, don't want, and who is acting like a pig.
Kat:
Amy - you and Hubby need to get some honesty around this.
If you never want to have sex with him again, TELL HIM THAT. Stop letting him get his hopes up. If Mr. Kat would just honestly say to me, "I've decided I'm ready to give up sex for the rest of my life. So no, I'm not going to ask my doctor about testosterone or Viagra. I'm not going to therapy or couples counseling. And, I'm not going to give you oral sex or use my hands on you," - then I could break up with him and that would be that.
I don't understand why he DOESN'T just tell me that. If he did, he would be rid of me - the annoying pestering nympho girlfriend.
I'm not going to magically morph into the nice little old lady he wants, and start liking museums better than sex.
Similarly, Hubby is not going to magically morph into the kind of man you really want.
So - why not just honestly tell him you will never have sex with him again? It would cut to the chase and save both of you a lot of time and trouble.
