We had our second sex therapist session last night.
My wife is being forced to come to grips with some of her issues. She is not really enjoying her choices, but seems to be hanging in there and trying to move forward to the extent that she can.
I also have some real issues that I need to deal with. Many of the relationship books suggested by members of this website have really helped me understand myself, my needs and my weaknesses a lot. I have been working on me over the past couple of months pretty constantly.
The sex therapist, that we are also seeing has given me some suggested books that I should read, based on her observations of me. I expect that those will also help me deal with my issues.
All in all, I feel that I am doing pretty well. It is an emotional roller coaster, but I hope that it turns out well in the end.
The person who is struggling the most with change is my wife.
>43 years of marriage--My wife and I are now closer than we have been in decades. I believe that my SSM is over.
It has almost been a year since I made my last post on this thread. I thought that I would add a postscript to this thread.
My wife and I had about five sessions with a superb sex therapist who helped us a lot. We also attended a full marriage weekend workshop put on by John Gottman and his wife. Plus I read a ton of relationship books and changed the way I treated myself and my wife. Our sex therapist told us that she felt that we were "cured."
I worked very hard on getting a life and on making my wife feel loved in her primary and secondary languages of love (Chapman's 5 languages of love). I added hobbies to my life that did not include my wife, and I added some that included my wife. I am much more physically fit, healthier, in shape and have lost a lot of weight since the low point in my marriage. I also get weekly theraputic massages to help with stress and provide me with the touch that I need. My wife started to see me in a different light during the changes I made and realized that I could find another woman to love me, if I left her.
I also promised myself in 2009 that I deserved to be in a loving relationship and set a time line of about a year after the start of our therapy as when I either wanted to be divorced or have a loving wife. That promise to myself was one that I would not have broken. It took months for us to reestablish a sexual relationship. There was back-sliding and anquish and arguments, but eventually we have become close again.
Most of the time since mid-March of last year we averaged sex twice a week. Sometimes less and rarely more. It has been a long time since she has emotionally hurt me during or just after sex or intimacy, but the emotional scars are still there and sometimes I find myself getting defensive on ocasion even when she is not trying to hurt me. I need to work on letting go of the past.
I now recognize when she is saying she loves me in her primary and secondary languages of love, even if it isn't the way I want her to show me love. I make sure that I thank her when she shows me love in her languages of love and I always tell her about how wonderful I feel when she shows me love in my languages of love.
As much as things hurt me, my wife went through her own emotional hell. Most theapy sessions involved her crying and her needing to stop on our drive home to compose herself emotionally. But at some point she decided that our marriage was important to her and that she was also going to commit to doing what it took to try to make things work.
Each month we do more to rebuild our relationship. We are finding more and more time for each other, but also having separate interests and hobbies. We are much more thoughtful of each others feelings. We have each changed a lot in the past year. Change is difficult, but possible.
>43 years of marriage--My wife and I are now closer than we have been in decades. I believe that my SSM is over.
Congratulations, Young, that's a wonderful story. Your commitment and willingness to go beyond yourself and seek help from others is an inspiration. Too many people want it all to just fix itself, and it doesn't work that you. I hope many people will find hope for their own situations in your story.
I feel for you - I'm at pretty much the same place myself. We celebrated our 30th anniversary last year. We have a good relationship, I would say - but no sex, or almost none. And I can't face the thought that is the way it's going to be from now on...
Me: 65, Wife: 67 Married/Together: 34 years! No children Wife 'came out' as lesbian in May 2013
My wife and I are now having sex fairly regularly about twice a week or more, depending. She is a different woman and tries as best she can to show me the love I need.
It took quite a while, but things can turn around. The hardest things for me (once I reached my breaking point) was to go slowly and give my wife time to change.
We will be celebrating our 40th anniversary later this year. I honestly didn't think that I would be married to her when our 39th anniversary rolled around. I really would have divorced her had I not been in a loving relationship. During my transition I made a promise to myself that life was too short to not be loved in a way that I needed. I also promised myself that I would really try to save my marriage.
I was lucky.
I wish you luck and strength in finding happiness with your wife.
>43 years of marriage--My wife and I are now closer than we have been in decades. I believe that my SSM is over.
Thank you, Young at Heart, for your encouragement to keep hoping. Indeed hope, important though it is, is not enough. A practical next step for me needs to be writing down what I want/hope for, and then finding the courage and the right time to simply share it with my wife. What she doesn't seem to get is that I don't just want sex. I want to 'make love' with her. For that, there needs to be some desire on her side, or at the very least a desire to re-discover desire, to blow on the embers that are there (perhaps?).
May I be lucky too!
Strange business, this sharing some of the deepest things in our lives with others we don't know, we've never met...
Me: 65, Wife: 67 Married/Together: 34 years! No children Wife 'came out' as lesbian in May 2013
