Quote: I've been lurking and waiting patiently. Where's the book?
I have read all your posts and I so identify with what you say. I picture NOPkin as a caped crusader; complete with tights and a cape. There's a big A on the chest with a line through it, like the no smoking sign!
I might be the one who gets the prize for the longest SSM. 33yrs and counting. Admittedly, it would be a booby prize! My experience is that it never gets any better and my heartfelt and worthless advice to those of you who are not yet committed to your sexless significant others is simple. Pack your panties and run! Like the wind!
It's too late for me to follow my own advice. I am old now. If we split up over this it's not likely I would ever find anyone else. So, I would just end up sex starved and poor. I have never had an affair of the head or the heart. I have been the most loyal(or stupid) person I know. In a last-ditch effort to change things, I told my husband I had no intention of dying without having sex and I would have oral sex at least once before I tipped over. I got his standard response that things would get better and we would work on it. Yeah. Right. Sure. IN WHAT DECADE? Yup, I am old, bitter, and angry. With myself more than anyone else.
My apologies to NOPkin but if I ever have the opportunity to have an affair, I will. Everyone deserves sex a few times in their life and I'm just human too. I even told my husband in advance.
So why did I stay married all these years? Other than his sex/intimacy issues, my husband is a wonderful man. People think we have a perfect marriage. We have traveled and seen the world. We are the best of friends. We enjoy each other's company. But for me, it's not enough. Should it be enough?
I don't think my husband has ever wanted sex. We once spent 2 weeks in Tahiti, the most romantic place on the planet. No phone, no TV, no computer, no work. No sex either! What's it like to be wanted and desired? I'll probably never know.
My best wishes to all of you. I hope you are successful and happy.
Quote: RE virginwife
33yrs and counting. It's too late for me to follow my own advice. I am old now. If we split up over this it's not likely I would ever find anyone else. So, I would just end up sex starved and poor
virginwife, I have been married 38 years. Do you think a guy my age in not interested in sex??? Think again.
I might believe the poor part but depending on the guy, the sex starved part is not a universal outcome.
I am not advocating you do anything but want to point out the myth that once past a certain age, everyone becomes sexless. Not true.
It's not age that is the culprit, it's medical condition.
Do you want to start a thread? We could use some more posters like you. Lillieperl is 57, I am 62.
Lou
Welcome, Virginwife! Your thread scared the out of me. The years keep on piling up and one day you notice it's been XX years since you had any ... whatever.
Does your screen name mean y'all have NEVER had sex?
Unless you married when you were 50, a 33-year marriage entered into when you were 20-ish or 30-is would put you in your 50's or 60's. You know darn well that 50-60 is NOT old these days.
It's not too late for you to find happiness. I'm not saying you should divorce, just that you shouldn't close the door on the future. That may mean a divorce. Or it may mean going off on a trip around the world by yourself, or going back to college to study something you love. Don't give up on yourself, even if you have given up on the sexual part of your marriage.
I hope you'll come back and talk with us for a while...
Quote: Ben Franklin and J. S. Bach were fathering children in their 80's. I didn't mean to infer that sexuality, capability, or interest in sex, 'died' at any certain age. I should have been more clear. Statistically speaking, an unattached female in her 50's doesn't have much chance of finding a significant other.
If I didn't believe in the whole GAL idea, I would be a basket case. I am 51yo, can run 10 miles, kayak the rainforest, and rappel down a cliff. I work hard and I am proud of my accomplishments. There's only one area of my life that's a total failure. It could be worse.
Lillieperl, I did have sex in 1998. I have had way too much time to think about all this. My theory is that 10 years without sex allows one to reclaim virgin status!
As far as the statistics about women over 50 meeting a man, are horribly invalid. The methods used in the study, (whichg terrified women over 40) were intrinsically flawed as are the conclusions. Ignore them.
Go on the internet dating scene--- I mean IF you decide to D. And for the life of me, I don't get how a "best friend" can't/won't do anything for you in this department, even WITH ED....just wondering. Good luck, j-
M: 57 H: 60 M: 35 yrs S30,D28,D19 H off to Alaska 2006 Recon 7/07- 8/08 *2016* X = "ALASKA 2.0" GROUND HOG DAY I File D 10/16 OW DIV 2/26/2018 X marries OW 5/2016
Over these past few months, I've learned a lot from all of you. I read everything and don't post much because after all, I've been a flaming failure.
I have learned something about myself. I don't want sex I have to beg for. Somehow the idea just leaves me cold. I want to be wanted, not play let's make a deal. Perhaps it's the intimate connection I want as much as the sex itself. Begging for sex destroys my self esteem and diminishes me. I would probably rather pay for sex than beg for it. Not that I've ever done that either!
Next, I have come to the realization that I have always blamed myself for the lack of sex in my marriage. It always had to be my fault. I was too ugly, too fat, too thin, too smart, too dumb, and worked too hard or not hard enough. For almost 35 years, it has always been my fatal flaw. After all, everyone KNOWS all men want sex all the time. There must be something heinous wrong with me if the man who willingly married me wants nothing to do with me. And hasn't wanted anything to do with me in decades.
Newsflash....there is nothing wrong with me! I am as normal as any sex starved woman can be. It only took me a lifetime to figure this out. I have wasted an enormous amount of time and energy blaming myself for his problems. No more self loathing for me! I will never beat myself up over this again.
Thanks to all of you, I was able to identify more of his issues. He needs more help than I can give him. I am working on trying to find the right way to tell him what I've learned and it's not easy. If you folks have the right words handy, I'd love to hear them.
I think the bottom line is that he hates and mistrusts women. Women in general. He lives with me and loves me by defeminizing me. I'm one of the boys. Not a sex object. Several women treated him badly therefore all women are not to be trusted and deserve to be punished. His fantasy's are all about women being totally under his control and forced to do his bidding. The worst offender was his own mother. She was a party girl and was always out drinking and cheating. His father knew all about it and did nothing. Dad always took her back. He was a victim who buried his sorrows in alcohol and food. H told me a story years ago. When he was 8, he came home from school one day to find his mother playing piano in her underwear with a strange man. Right! I guess it would be significant that he remembers this. H and I had been married for 2 weeks and didn't have a place to live yet because we were waiting for him to get out of the military. I went to stay with his parents during that time. All his mom wanted to do was take me to the bars and use me as 'man bait'. I was married to her son and she wanted me to tell these guys I was single. It was an interesting 2 weeks. In retrospect, it's easy to see why my H is twisted. Why did it take me so long to figure it out?
Anyway, at this stage of the game, it's probably a death blow to my marriage. We don't have the time for the years of therapy this would take to fix. It's very sad.
Quote: ---------------------------------- My apologies to NOPkin but if I ever have the opportunity to have an affair, I will. Everyone deserves sex a few times in their life and I'm just human too. I even told my husband in advance. ----------------------------------
and
---------------------------------- Anyway, at this stage of the game, it's probably a death blow to my marriage. We don't have the time for the years of therapy this would take to fix. It's very sad. ----------------------------------
It's never too late, vw. Our marriage has lost decades too, but we have won back our relationship.
As for the affair, at least have the courtesy to tell him what your plans are and give him a chance to address the issues. Regardless of pop wisdom regarding ultimatums, there most certainly is a time and place for them.
Looks like it is time to include your husband in the process in a very real way. Make sure that he understands that you are serious by putting a time frame on the issue. "Hubby. I am too damn old and too damn tired to spend a year divorcing you. I am not going to lose half of everything I have worked hard for just because you won't have sex with me. It appears that my only recourse is to find a sex buddy. I need to know by the weekend if you intend to address the sexual issues in our marriage."
A sex buddy that you are not emotionally connected to, will rarely remain that way. Emotional connections usually emerge over time with a sex partner. That and the high likelihood of contracting one or more STDs makes an affair messy business. Caveat emptor.
All the best, -NOPkins-
I will ferret out an affair at any opportunity.
-An affair is the embodiment of entitlement, fueled by resentment and lack of respect. -An infidel will remain unreachable so long as their sense of entitlement exceeds their ability to reason.
No real words of wisdom here. Your post touched me and frightened me at the same time. I can easily see our current 6 weeks without sex piling up into months, then years.
I am familiar with the idea that something must be wrong with me. My communication of this line of thinking with my H has probably resulted in my seeming weak and unstable in his eyes and probably doesn't help his attraction to me. I am familiar with not wanting to have sex with someone who doesn't want sex with me and yet, desiring my H because I love him. It places me in a perpetual quandry. i have never seriously entertained the idea of an affair but I have entertained the idea of just giving in to my roomate marriage and having regular, planned solo sex instead of the usual mb due to desperation.
As I sit here I am thinking of you and have great sympathy for the position you are in. You will have to take some sort of drastic action in your M if you ever want the life you deserve. Nop is correct that there are times for ultimatums. Find strength where ever you can. I hope you have a church, a sister, a good friend, a therapist or all of the above to share this with.
I have great compassion for you and also for your H. My bf was raised by a very sexually inappropriate single mom, too, and was exposed to stuff in childhood that left him wary of women and wary of sex. I only found out about a month ago that his mom used to come in the bathroom when he was showering (at about age 8) and fondle him under the pretext of making sure he had washed thoroughly. When I heard that I burst into tears for the little boy who was naked, vulnerable and trapped. Where was he to go? What was he to do? All he could do was put up a wall to keep her and other women out. My bf's mom owns a bar and is STILL sexually inappropriate at age 89! Recently before we went out with my sister-in-law for T-giving dinner my bf had to sit his mom down and tell her not to use sexually inappropriate language at the table (e.g., no "pussy," "tits," etc.) It was the kind of lecture you give to your 17-year old, not your mother! Yes, this lecture was necessary. At my first T-giving with the two of them four years ago, I met her for the first time, but that did not stop her from telling us how every guy who comes into the bar notices how big her boobs are!
It was perfectly natural for you to blame yourself all of these years-- I too have fallen for the "all men want sex all the time" myth and assumed there was something wrong with me. Please do not call yourself a failure! You are on a path- you have gained insight about yourself and your H. This is not failure.
So. You've figured out that there's nothing wrong with you. Good.
There's also nothing WRONG with your H either. He adapted to what happened to him in the only way at his disposal back then. Unfortunately that adaptation is blocking any intimacy between you and him. Very likely in his other relationships with women he also unconsciously chose women who would treat him like sh!t in order to reinforce his unconscious beliefs about women.
But you're different. You aren't like the others.
You know that underneath the obnoxious man is a frightened, wounded boy doing the best he can to protect himself. You may be the first woman in his life to know that.
You still don't have to stay in this R. You can divorce him. I don't know how old you are, but it doesn't matter. You are entitled to happiness at any age.
You can also approach your marriage from the perspective of these new insights. You can look at him through these new eyes and forgive him over and over again. Also forgive yourself over and over again-- for putting up with it, for making it your fault, for being angry at him, for making the way you feel his fault.
There is work to do whether you stay or whether you go.
An affair is not the answer.
A new relationship might be the answer, if you first leave this one. Or possibly a separation so you two can get some distance and perspective between you.
It's been almost a year since I quite calmly told my H that I intended to have an affair if I had the chance. I haven't done anything about it. I live and work in an environment that would make extramarital sex difficult if not impossible. I work almost exclusively with men and I would never be taken seriously again if I had an affair with one of them. That's not an option. I would have to go way outside my norm to find a man to have sex with. Assuming that animal exists. It's not likely to happen unless I actively pursue it. In a way, I am scared to death to learn there are NO men out there who even WOULD consider having sex with me. At least just thinking about it gives me the option of hanging on to the dream. I think I threatened H with the affair in a nasty last ditch effort to get him to at least discuss our R and the lack of intimacy. I know threats rarely work but desperate times call for desperate measures. And I know I'm not the type who can easily go to the local bar and troll for fresh meat. If you folks really knew me, you would all be hysterical right now. I don't think the booty call would do a thing for me. Sex for the sake of sex isn't that interesting. There has to be more to it. I guess I am doomed to become a dry old hag. Probably sooner than I think.
H has no problems maintaining friendships with females. He likes women as friends. I can see him involved in an EA but never a PA. He would have to like sex for that. In a way, the other woman would be a relief. It would be easier for me to deal with an affair than a man who is asexual. Of course the grass is always greener on the other side. We always want what we can't have too.
Sometimes I'm angry. Angry with both of us. Sometimes I pity us and feel sorry for myself. Anger is probably good. It can precipitate change. Pity is for someone who allows themselves to be a victim.
Maybe I should just print this thread and let him read it??? I wonder if it would get any reaction?
