My DH and I have been married for 23 years. For most of our marriage he was the LD spouse. I begged, pleaded for him to get help. Well, he finally did and it turns out his Testosterine was extremely low.
In his mind, he is doing everything he should be doing to help our marriage. While I am grateful that he has taken this step, it still doesn't help me get over the hurt and feelings of low self esteem that I've carried with me now for most of our marriage.
My desire was probably way above average, now that I am on AD, that has dropped dramatically. To be fair, we were never a couple who went months w/out sex...maybe six weeks?? I don't really remember. I just remember him rarely approaching me, and when I approached him, at times (a lot of times) he would reject me. I once read here, that you are in a sense being rejected twice. The funny thing is, that our love making was always satisfying...I mean I think we would both agree that it was good (at least up until I started on the AD)
I am in counseling, but he, so far, has refused to go. Going through this has brought up insecurities I've had regarding his past. He is three years older than me, and I'm certain he had more sexual partners that me. I always wondered if that was part of the problem?? Was I not good enough.Do I measure up to these other women? He says I think too much and he doesn't think enough...so true!!
For the most part, our marriage has been good. We have a lot of fun together (both have a crazy sense of humor) and share a lot of the same values. I will add that another dimension to our marital problems is his binge drinking...he has curbed this in the past six months. He has held the same job for over 20 years and is a very kind and loving father.
When I try to talk to him about the hurt he just gets defensive or clams up. I don't know what to do anymore. Oh, something else. I have a chronic illness and am on disability (this has just happened the past five years, so probably doesn't have a whole lot of bearing on our ongoing problem).
Lost and confused...welcome and sorry no one has answered you sooner.
Just so that I can really understand your post, will you please elaborate a bit more? For instance, it isn't clear to me if you are wanting more passion and intimacy from him, or if you are asking how you can let go of your resentment?
I can say that the combination of low testosterone and binge drinking can defintely cause a man to have a very low sex drive, so its not about his previous partners - or at least I would doubt that very highly! Also, given that you feel that you would both say that the sex is good when you do have it is a very good sign that you can probably recover your SSM with enough effort.
Another thing is this: I think that in general, people who are HD and feel that they are missing out on sex, are actually missing out on intimacy. As you probably know, physical intimacy is only one type of intimacy. But the other types of intimacy can be much more meaningful than the physical, so if they are missing it can be more painful than if the physical is missing. Do you have a clear idea in your mind of what exactly you want/need more of? Starting with that piece would help you a lot. Getting it clear in your own head what you want and need will help you move forward and then be able to tell him the same.
In answer to your question, I think I'm wanting it all! I do think that if I let go of my resentment, my words and actions may help him want to be more intimate.
I think besides the lack of the physical connection, I missed the intimacy. He doesn't share his feelings, or much about himself or his past, love making was, and is, one of the few ways I felt close to him. OK, it's funny I just went back and read your reply again and I saw where you basically said the same thing about intimacy. So, I agree with what you said.
He has cut way back on the binging and he just had his T checked again. It is up to over 700 now! I think we are moving in the right direction. I'm hoping that there will still be improvement over the coming months though. I can see some improvement, but it's not exactly where I want it to be. But, I know I have to be patient.
I had a major break through in therapy this past week. I was adopted as a toddler and although it was a positive experience in many ways, I am realizing the sense of loss and feelings of rejection I have felt over the years has shaped much of who I am. While I think my DH could certainly have done things differently, I know I have been difficult to live with at times and am not without blame. I think I felt the rejection even harder that many people when he didn't approach me sexually, or didn't share some of himself with me.
I don't know why I have obsessed about his past. I mean, I guess I just feel jealous of his old lovers. I don't know how many he had, he's never told me. I'm trying to figure out why that matters.
My sexuality is really a dichotomy and I'm not sure how much this plays into our problem. I love sex, but I have guilt about my past. I always felt I would stay a virgin until I got married. Well, I went with this guy for six years starting at age 16. We had sex when I turned 18, within 4 years we broke up (six months before our wedding date). I was so depressed. I ended up being with two other guys before I met my husband. I think I must be transferring some of my feelings about my past onto him. I find myself wanting to know (then not wanting to know) everything about his past. There's no way he can change his past any more than I can.
Well, that's all I've got for now. I hope I've made sense. I'm not sure that I have.
His past lovers matter because when you're feeling rejected by him, you have nothing but time to wonder why and look for reasons. I know how this goes from personal experience.
If it weren't a comparison to his other lovers, it would be something else--your mind doesn't want to accept that there isn't some explanation, and when you seize upon something really negative, like "I'm not as sexy as his old girlfriends," you're afraid to dismiss it because dismissing something you're afraid of feels like you're fooling yourself.
But . . . the trap in that is that it's easy to start believing the worst every time simply because you think it's the most honest approach.
The biggest difference between you and those other women, if they did actually have a more sexual relationship with him than you do (and it doesn't sound like you know that for sure) is probably simply that he didn't try to sustain it for 23 years with them.
I met my wife in college, and I was a virgin. She wasn't. I made her wait a long time before we went further than petting over clothes. I was bursting as much as she was, maybe more, but I wanted to be sure. She had never been with anyone who wanted to wait for any reason. A couple of short years after we began to have sex, her drive for it tapered off. Honestly, it happened before we were married, and I asked her to promise me that if we got married as planned, she would work on it with me. She didn't, for years, but I took her promise and we got married. Looking back, I think I was stupid to try to extract such a promise and stupid to accept it, but now that we're finally moving in the right direction, I can't be sorry that I did. For years, though, I agonized over this, and I analyzed endlessly why she'd been so sexual with her other boyfriends and nothing for me. It seemed unfair (and it was, but maybe not the way I thought.) It seemed like proof positive that she found them attractive and me unattractive. I felt like I was just her paycheck/handyman/roommate, while they had been her lovers. Unable to find a man who could satisfy her in bed and still be a loving husband, she had simply chosen me over them because having a loving husband who would buy her things and do things for her was more important to her than having a satisfying lover. I knew she loved me, in a way, but I vacillated between thinking she loved me like a brother and thinking she loved me like a cherished family pet.
None of that was true, and my attitude only made things worse. I went through all that analysis you see above and more without ever asking her whether I was on the right track. By the time we really talked through our sex-starved marriage and why it was not OK, I had years of her reasons and thoughts in my head, and most of them weren't real. They were the reasoning I'd come up with to explain to myself why my wife was punishing me by freezing me out of our marriage bed--why did she hate me so much? What had I done to be rejected and despised? She had actually been wondering, when she bothered to think about our lack of a sex life at all, what the big deal was and why I seemed to take a perfectly normal end of a sex life between two married people so personally. It wasn't exactly a healthy attitude, sure, but it wasn't the same as "Oh, how I wish my old boyfriend Fernando were here so I could remember what it is to be ravished by a Real Man!"
(Wow . . . I hit Preview and read through this post, and it brought the tears right back to my eyes. I'm not far from those days.)
Sillyoldbear thanks so much for taking the time to reply. It sounds as if you and I have been through the same thing in a way. I will go back and read some of your posts to see the path you took towards healing your marriage.
I have to say that the sexual partner thing (his past) was something that I struggled with in the beginning of our marriage. I don't know when I finally came to terms with it, but I did. It was probably within the first year or two of our marriage. I think it's crept back in again because of the fact that I hit a breaking point with the SSM issues. Our kids are nearly grown (two in college and one a jr in HS) and I'm finally devoting more time to our marriage. I'm just not willing to settle anymore.
You are right that when one is feeling rejection you look for answers. I am a very analytical person and want to figure out why something is happening, fix it, and move on. He, on the other hand, just stuffs his feelings. To be fair, I'm sure this isn't the case all of the time, but quite often. I figure it goes hand in hand with the drinking. You know, drinking to forget. A perfect example of this is what took place last night. I really wanted to talk about the effect my AD is having on my sexual functioning; he, on the other hand, just wanted to sleep. He said I was thinking about it too much. That could be true, but I didn't admit it. Even if it was, it still doesn't solve the problem. I should know by now not to talk to him when he is tired. It gets me no where. I was in the mood to ML and he wasn't. It brought back some of those old feelings of hurt and rejection. We nearly had a fight, but talked through it and we went to bed.
It's funny that you said that you felt as if you were a room mate, etc to your wife. I told my DH something similar. I said I felt as if I was just there to cook, clean and take care of the kids (of course I enjoyed those things, but I wanted us to have a true marriage too). That I was like his mother, not his wife and lover. I also knew that he loved me, but felt it was more like the love you have for a sibling, not a wife. I guess there's some truth to some of this, I mean it was my perception of the situation, so it was true in my eyes, but from his point of view it wasn't true.
I know my attitude and constant need to analyze and talk things through drives him crazy. I know I need to back off and be happy for all of his good qualities. It is so easy to focus on the painful things that you start to overlook all of the good. It seems to me it's like a vicious cycle. I know that I can only change myself. I can't change him.
I appreciate your willingness to share your story with me. I'm sorry that it triggered sadness. But, it helps me to see that there's hope for me and my DH.
I'm going to go on posting here even if I don't get much of a response. I think it is therapeutic to get it out. I think it's the quality of responses not the quantity anyway. Plus, maybe what I write can help others.
I'm at the point now where I know I have to change my way of thinking. I need to work on making myself a better person. I need to focus less on him and our marriage and more on myself.
I read a few of your posts and a few things stood out. You mentioned your wedding night. Well, I had something similar happen. We didn't ML because my new husband was too drunk. After throwing up, he went straight to sleep. Talk about being hurt.Your wedding night is something you can never get back again.I doubt he realized just how much this hurt me. I also believe this set the stage for our married life.
You know, I know as marriage partners we need to forgive, forget and move on. This is what he wants me to do. And, this is what I need to do. But, it wasn't just a one time occurrence. It was years of hurt and rejection over and over again. That is what's so hard to move on from. This, coupled with the years of binge drinking and knowing that at times he was getting behind the wheel of a car, is so hard to put behind me. I will do it though, or I will drive myself crazy and ruin my marriage.
Something else you mentioned was the fact that you would never have an affair, but did find it hard not to look at other women. Sorry if that's not the exact wording, but close enough. I am the same way.I have to admit, I told him that I was very lonely and that I didn't want to live out the rest of my life that way. I guess it was a threat. Not a good thing, I know.
One of our other issues, which really was part of what set this healing in motion, is my DH having female friends. Now, in my present state of mind I realize these few women are really just friends and nothing more. But, when I was in my "crazy woman" stage, I felt real threatened by them. And, honestly, I still do from time to time. These are women he talks to on the phone every so often. He doesn't go out with them or anything like that. One is widow of one of his close friends, whom he checks up on from time to time. Another one, is someone who is close friends with another friend of his who is dying from cancer. The know a lot of the same people and give each other updates. When we got married I let all of my male friends go. I guess I just thought that was what you were suppose to do. I wasn't particularly close to anyone at that time anyway, so it wasn't difficult to do. But, what I do think happened is that,over the years, I purposely shut myself off from the opposite sex. Maybe I was afraid to allow myself to get too close for fear of crossing a line? I don't know. I found myself being angry and jealous that he had these friends and I didn't. I think it's easy to let your mind wander when you are already feeling so inadequate.
Well, that's enough of my ramblings for now. Thanks for listening and helping.
The more you read here, the more you'll realize that everyone's marriage is different, but many of the themes of an SSM get repeated over and over. Other people will vent about their own marriages, and it seems like they're just venting, but as you've found, it's a good idea to read those posts because you'll find that you're not alone.
I did say I would never leave and never have an affair, but I did fantasize about other women. It wasn't "looking." "Looking" is more like what I do now--an appreciative glance, a thought or two, and on with my day. When I felt like my wife didn't love me anymore, the fantasies were elaborate.
And when it comes to leaving . . . this wouldn't be necessary for everyone, but the only thing that finally snapped my wife's head around and made her realize that our sexual problems were serious for me was when I told her that I didn't want to leave, but if nothing changed, I would. She was a child of divorce and had always been paranoid that I would leave soon; her mother doesn't commit to jobs, homes, or husbands for long, and she figured that's the way marriage goes--try to hold on as long as you can and then go be sad when it breaks up. My parents have been together nearly 40 years now and look happy to me, so that was my ideal--you choose a good woman and you do whatever it takes to make it work. But giving up on myself and accepting that what I want doesn't matter wasn't making it work. She knew I had always said I would never leave no matter what, and when I told her that had changed, she was devastated, but she decided to try to fix things with me.
One thing to watch out for is the "covert contract." For a husband, this happens when you clean the house, cook dinner and put the kids to bed, and she still won't make love with you. You feel like you did your part of the bargain, and she welshed . . . only there was no bargain. She didn't agree to trade sex for household chores! For you, I wonder if you had a contract in your mind, where you expected something in return for letting all your friends go. Keep in mind that he didn't know about that deal, so he can't be expected to keep his side of it.
Finally, yes, I'm sure he's right that you're overthinking things. That's almost unavoidable because you are the only one thinking about it at all as far as you know. I did and do the same. Some of it is probably due to an analytical personality. I know I analyze everything. But when you're left to your own thoughts, and your spouse won't talk to you about what's going on in your marriage, it's hard not to turn your thoughts in on yourself. Eventually you end up analyzing whether you should be analyzing your analysis of your tendency to analyze things too much . . . . it never ends. In my case, my wife rarely had to tell me she didn't want to talk about it over the years. She simply burst into tears every time I brought it up. I couldn't stand to watch her cry, so I'd drop it and comfort her. That was a BIG mistake. It wasn't until I was angry enough to bull right through her tears and insist that she listen to me that we started to make any progress at all. But by that time I was walking around in a fog of anger. Everything she did was wrong and I hated her, myself, and my marriage.
I'm not really someone who should be giving advice, but I'll give you this much: it all starts with being honest and insisting that what you want matters. You are not crazy. You are not abnormal. You are not being pushy. You can't have everything you want every moment, but you also can't be told that what you want isn't important. Talk to him and stick with it. Don't accept a dismissal. If you can avoid being angry and mean, you'll be better off, but you do have to be forceful.
Oh, one more piece of advice: as more of the "old pros" weigh in, they're going to be talking about things you can do differently to fix things. That means they're going to be talking about things you're doing wrong (and if you try to fix things, you're going to do a lot of things wrong, because you're hurt and angry.) It's not personal. They're not mad at you, and they aren't judging you. But you ARE going to feel defensive sometimes, and if you're like me, you'll spend a lot of time explaining why you did what you did. And nobody here is perfect; they DO have their own biases, and their advice sometimes will be colored by those. But they're all trying to help you, and many of them have been in your shoes almost exactly.
OK, one more thing: analysis can be as bad when things are right as it is when things are wrong. I still have a hard time not saying something like, "so, what happened tonight?" when she initiates lovemaking. It makes me want to know what went right. What did I do? What was different tonight? I just want to do it all again!
But it drove her crazy. She wanted me to "just be happy that it happened." Partly, that's the blase attitude of someone who still doesn't understand that the fact that she just initiated lovemaking is a Big Deal. But it also highlighted a difference in the way we thought. She thought sex should "just happen." And since it wasn't spontaneously "just happening" between us, that meant that it was meant to be over and we should move on to other things. I saw it very differently, of course.
One difference that's really interesting to me is your reaction to anti-depressants. Those meds are a recurring element here, but usually they're mentioned because they exacerbated someone's low-desire condition. That was certainly the case with my wife. I can imagine your husband's reaction in his mind, though: "You mean I don't want to have sex, and that's a problem, but now you don't want to have sex either, and that's still a problem? If neither of us wants to do it, what's the problem?!?"
Have you talked to him about sexual issues lately? What's his take?
Hello, it's been a while since I've been here. I had surgery and haven't been doing do well. I did want to respond to your reply as I appreciate you taking the time to answer me. I find I am also learning a lot by hearing other's experiences.
I have learned that I am not alone. I think it is especially difficult for the HD women because so much of what we hear is how it's the men who always want it. I do think that that is changing though and more people are willing to talk about it openly.
I have to say that, at some point, I did feel as if my husband didn't love me. I think deep down I knew that he did, but I wasn't feeling it on the surface. Maybe I said this before, but I think I purposely didn't allow myself to associate with other men because I was afraid of developing feelings for them. I realize now that it is my fault for pushing my male friends away. Realistically, it would have been harder for me to make new male friends as I was a stay at home mom for many years.
It looks like I had the same talk with my DH as you had with your DW. I told him I didn't want to leave that I loved him, but that we needed to work together to fix our problems, or I would. That I didn't want to live this way the rest of my life. I don't know that I would have followed through with it though. Being disabled makes things a bit more complicated. I believe my husband, unlike your wife, believed I would stay with him no matter what. I think that's why our talk really made him think and start to make some changes.
I see what you are saying about the "covert contract". I agree with you too. I think I was so wrapped up in him, then our children started coming within two years of our marriage, that I did let my male friends go. I only had a few, and I wasn't very close to them, so it was easy to do. It is something I regret now.
I think I pushed things so far down inside...the anger, the hurt, etc that I finally erupted. We'd have these talks where he told me he didn't know what was wrong (we now know it was low T), that he loved me and that there was no one else. Yet,15 or more years went by before he got help. Then, my over thinking kicked in and I would wonder was it me? What could I do differently?
You made a good point about not being angry and mean. Thank God I got on the AD. I did not like the way I was. We can now talk without me yelling. My dh does still get a bit defensive, but I find that if I preface our talk with something along the lines of "I know I'm probably making a big deal of this, but...." It puts the focus on me and my feelings not him. He, then, is less defensive and is more willing to talk.
Thanks on the "heads up" about the "old pros". I can be a bit sensitive, but I have to say that I am one to admit when I've done something wrong. I'm willing to make changes, although I know they aren't always easy.
Thanks again for your help. I'll try and respond to your other post in a bit.
I know what you mean about the over analyzing when things are going well. In the back of my mind, I wonder "is he doing this because he feels guilty about something?" "Is he doing this because enough time has gone by and he feel as if it's his duty?"
I've tried to explain to my DH that it's important that we schedule time to ML. Of course, spontaneity is great. But, I think when someone has LD, they tend to believe they need to be really turned on and it will just happen (like in the movies). I'm not sure if I'm making any sense here. I once read that some people need to start ML before they get turned on. That if they wait until they are turned on it might never, or rarely happen.
I guess I need to explain a bit more, my problem with the AD isn't low desire it's that it takes me a very long time to orgasm. It has decreased my desire, but honestly, we are more evenly matched now. One thing that has always helped us is our sense of humor. We joke about our sexual dysfunctions now.
I haven't talked with him much about our problems because he was sick for a few weeks, then I had surgery. I have asked him if he feels as if the testosterone is helping and he says he thinks so. I don't quite know what to think about that. He does initiate more. In fact, I have not initiated in several months. I'm letting him take the lead. That's easier to do now that my desire is a bit lower. I'm going to try and have a talk with him in the next week or so.
I have found that my thoughts (really a bit of OCD) about his past have nearly stopped. When they come up, I'm able to let them go. My therapist has really helped me with this.
I know all of this is going to take some time. But, I am happy with our progress.
Well, I better go...the medication is taking affect...I'm getting very sleepy.
