SSM: Putting it Back Together Part 2

[Accuray]

True that! Can you identify many people who don't have this problem to some degree?

In the context if feeling inadequate, the MC asked my W that if she was in the kitchen standing in front of the fridge and I asked her to bring me a beer, if she would feel inadequate. She said of course not. He then asked how that's really different from any other request I would make.

She said its different because if she doesn't get me the beer, I can get it myself and still have the beer. I can't have sex with her by myself if she refuses. (she kind of stumped him there)

Captain, if my problem is that I can't be happy when my W is upset or worse if I feel I'm making her upset, what do I DO about that?

If I could just snap my fingers and be happy, even if my W cheats on me, calls me an @ss and kicks me in the crotch, I would do it? Who wouldn't? Can we, as social beings, not be impacted by the moods and attitudes of those we love? If we distance ourselves enough that we're not impacted, is that still love? Are we even in a relationship at that point? Through your own writing you imply that your happiness has been diminished by your W's no sex decree. Can you truly be happy and smile in the face of that, or are you in fact doing the best you can to cope with your hurts?

Accuray

[oldtimer]

"Therefore, when we woke up this morning I decided to give it a try. W initially seemed willing, but half way through had a breakdown, started repeating "I don't know what to do" and ran away into the bathroom and started loudly crying. I hadn't done or said anything in the moment, it was very confusing."

"Needless to say, it left me with the feelings of rejection, angst, uncertainty and anxiety that I was trying to avoid with my abstinence period. Since we left for work without talking about what happened, it's been a really hard morning for me. Having your wife run away crying in the middle of sex is a hard thing to take, it feels like a bad joke."

Wow. This is so all about you. Even her being enthusiastic about sex is all about you. You you you. I don't see anyway your W has room to experience an authentic sexual awakening in the context of your R, seriously. It is all about you. I'm not trying to be harsh here. I'm really at a loss. Can you not see this?????

What happened when things changed during sex? Did you continue? Did you try to comfort her? Did you back off and say "Whooaaa, are you OK?" What happened exactly?

[Accuray]

Oldtimer,

She told me quite bluntly and in no uncertain terms that our sex life will be about me, and she will not allow it to be about her.

I don't know how to change that dynamic, or I wouldn't be here. That's why I went to MC last night. The two IC's I have spoken to and the MC have not said that I'm making this all about me, or that what I expect is unusual or unreasonable. I'm not trying to be selfish, but I am engaging in sex, and sex requires two people. Within that context, there is "doing", "being done", and "joining". W told me that all she's willing to do is "doing", so please tell me how that can not be about me?

When things changed during sex the change happened very quickly. One minute she was on top of me and the next minute she was gone and crying. It was surreal in that it happened so fast. Here's what I think happened -- she didn't want to do it but "pretended" that it was ok. After a few minutes I think she caught sight of the clock and realized it was later than she thought and/or heard my daughter downstairs and the combination of "I don't want to do this", "It's late" and "My daughter might hear us" made her snap in the moment.

When I saw it happen, I was in shock for a moment, then followed her into the bathroom, told her that whatever happened it would be ok and tried to hug / console her. She couldn't get a handle on herself so I didn't want to push her to explain. She made it clear she wanted me out of there as she was getting increasingly frantic so I left and let her calm down. Half an hour later I told her again whatever happened was OK, I just wanted to talk about it and she said we can discuss it tonight.

I'm guessing she felt trapped in that she didn't want to do it, didn't want to say no, and that got the best of her. Don't know what to do about that. I think she has to tell me "no" in those scenarios or better yet "later" and my job is to make that perfectly alright, which I will.

Accuray

[Cyrena]

Accuray,

With regards to the not being able to be happy when your wife is upset, one of the most useful skills I learned on this site was to stop allowing the emotional states of other people to upset my own emotional equilibrium. Here, it's called detachment, and is a crucial step in ending codependent attitudes. So, yes, we MUST learn not to be "impacted by the moods and attitudes of those we love"--and once you can self-sooth yourself in this way, you will be much better able to "be there" for your wife and really listen to what is behind her words without getting emotionally overwhelmed. It's definitely still love, albeit with healthy boundaries.

[Accuray]

Cyrena,

How did you learn how to do that? I completely understand it intellectually. Thoughts are one thing and emotions are another. How did you learn to control your emotions so effectively?

Accuray

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

Cyrena,

How did you learn how to do that? I completely understand it intellectually. Thoughts are one thing and emotions are another. How did you learn to control your emotions so effectively?

Accuray

The first thing to know and to learn is this:

When someone else is "upset" (e.g., your wife) you are too. To recognize the upset of the other person, you tie into your own identification of what makes you upset.

The second thing to know is this:

You must first effectively deal with your own state of being (upset) before dealing with hers. Sometimes all it really takes for you is to just notice that you are upset by (fill in the blank) and then recenter yourself. It is not a one-time thing because you may have to keep going back (within yourself) to re-center).

It becomes a knowing that "being upset" in response may not be an effective way to deal with someone else whi si alos upset. It will look like cold detachment. It isn't about squashing down being upset. It is about NOT countering and "fighting" one set of upset emotions with your own. You will have feelings about this AND it is about noticing what feeds your feelings from your past.

Because the two feed each other there is the codependency aspect that isn't necessarily a good one.

The Captain

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

True that! Can you identify many people who don't have this problem to some degree?

Many people have this "problem" and in fact we set it up so that people somehow are "incomplete" without someone else to make happy or make you happy.

On beer and other things...

She said its different because if she doesn't get me the beer, I can get it myself and still have the beer. I can't have sex with her by myself if she refuses. (she kind of stumped him there)

Well, there is this: you can go get sex yourself and it won't be with her. You might want sex with her but you can find it elsewhere AND she gets what she wants....to not have sex with you. And this is at the heart of it because the cognitive dissonance that you share with us about her attitude (ambivalence) and her threat of permanent damage. I realize there are some issues for you about this approach concerning fidelity in the marriage, but this is what you are dealing with now.

Captain, if my problem is that I can't be happy when my W is upset or worse if I feel I'm making her upset, what do I DO about that?

Don't play into this game. Your wife knows she can do this to you...you've trained her extremely well. She knows what it takes to cause you to "have a tantrum" even if it isn't one of the head-banging, screaming fits so characteristic of two-year olds. OTOH, she also has her own version of tantrum throwing.

If she escalates to the point where she threatens suicide, you have something far more serious on your hands and you aren't equipped to deal with that. Most happy people have, at some point, probably thought about suicide and they chose a different course. But have you ever considered that she'll keep doing this because the reaction (your reaction) is so predictable? So, it's time to be unpredictable (compared to your past behavior).

This where you messedup in consenting to sex prior to your agreed upon deadline...even if she did not like the deadline (blah, blah, blah). Whether you realize it or not, you showed that you will not keep your word with regard to your sexual behavior and you showed a remarkable lack of restraint. I know, you though it might be worth the chance.

It does not seem so now.

Through your own writing you imply that your happiness has been diminished by your W's no sex decree. Can you truly be happy and smile in the face of that, or are you in fact doing the best you can to cope with your hurts?

Accuray

At age 58, I realize that I did not and would not allow myself, at 43 years of age, to consider that I was in a sexless marriage with an absolutely sexless woman. There was a past apparent enjoyment/satisfaction/closeness to sexual intimacy that was waning and I thought it was just a "phase" that we could work through. I never envisioned that she would withdraw permission to create a situation and marriage devoid of sex. Yet, that is exsctly and precisely what I have and exacy;y what she created. Not an LD woman, but a NO DRIVE woman.

She resents the characterization that she is a sexless woman and that she has gotten exactly what she always wanted...the security of a marriage where she did not have to deal with or participate in sex. AND she cannot explain why, in 15 years, she has never made any attempt to do and be something different. The fact that our sexless marriage is not right out there in the open for everyone to see is, perhaps, one reason she has felt "safe" to pursue a nonsexual life.

"Acceptance" of that withdrawal of permission did not come easily, yet I respected her wishes. I talked about what I was looking for in this marriage, including the sexual aspects. In the end it was her body and her decision not to be sexual with me. It was no longer a subject for discssion and had not been until last yeat. At least, at that moment, there was certainty and my happiness did not depend upon my sex life. And, more importantly, there is and was nothing I could do to change that though I did not realize that at the time. It is not the (sex) life I would have chosen for myself (and ironically the sex life I wished to share with her was indeed something I shared with her in words and fact before she ended it).

OTOH, my happiness is not pinned to a sex life. There are things I know she will never do (unless maybe her survival depended upon it) both sexual and non-sexual.

She will never strap on a 50-60 lb pack and set out on a 10-14 day hike on the Wonderland Trail. I have and will again...into the wilderness by myself. She'll never go hiking with me, She'll never go mountain climbing with me. The list is pretty long. I just did not know or expect that I'd include the phrase that she'll never have anything to do with me at a sexual level.

There are times when the challenge of this marriage has been magnified (for me) by the lack of a sex life. I certainly might feel "happier" if I shared a marriage with a willing and engaged sexual marriage partner. Yet, I nedd to be honest and saying my satisfaction with my marriage and the intimacy is and has been diminished by 15-years of no sex. I realize that I have made a trade of sexual intimacy for a marriage that is more like a friendship between housemates. What I balance in self-definition is that it is more important to me to be faithful to the content of my wedding vows for they said nothing about being guaranteed any sort of sex life. There is a good deal of background for me to hold that view

Of course, I was always hopeful and optimistic for a long time that she might change her mind, that she might miss the closeness and intimacy that we once seemed to share and want to get some of that back. I wasn't and have not been a mean and angry sexless husband. Maybe I should have been.

And my "acceptance" was more or less complete when I finally realized that nothing I said or did would have any effect on her at a sexual level. "Being unhappy" and expressing that got me the end of my sex life. Oh, if I left (or if she did) it would affect our standards of living. It would not re-initiate our sexlife. Yet, I'm not going to threaten to leave if she doesn't have sex with me. I don't deal with things that way.

You might come to that realization in your own marriage; that there is nothing that you can say or do to resolve this situation. She's already threatened divorce and might be more than willing to have you go. I know you want a different outcome than divorce or that it might be a phase or it imight be something deeper (I suggest it is more the latter than the former). But given her entrnechnment in her rut (and the amount of personal capital she has spent in decorating that rut and defending it, you are going to have to find something that is more important of greater value to her than her enrtenched position about a medocre sex life.

My hope and my belief that, through love, my wife and I could somehow navigate through to a marriage that was once again sexually initmate was misguided. We will never know the level of love lost, but it certainly did not soar like I thought it might. If I knew then what I know now, I would have ended the marriage on the spot. And going back further, I would have never remarried (to her) in the first place. I am still here because I made some promises that I'm fairly determined to keep even at the expense of sexual satisfaction. That (for a long-drawnout moment) is who I am.

I share this glimpse of my life so that you have a sense of what it is like because you might end up on the very same path.

That choice is yours (and hers).

The Captain

[Accuray]

Thank you Captain,

That was, as always, inciteful and inspiring. With regard to me not keeping my word about my abstinence period, I struggled with that quite a bit. The fact is that a 3 hour marriage counseling session is emotionally exhausting. I felt we were in a place that we were drawing together, making compromises, getting to the root of things, and that continuing the "no sex" pledge was incompatible with the MC session we just paid for and were working to benefit from. As I lay in bed last night thinking about it, I felt guilty. Whereas my intention was relief from expectations, pressure and feelings of disappointment, I was afraid it would be interpreted as punishment or reprisal, and that did not seem to be in keeping with the discussions we had during MC.

So that was my dilemma. When my W made the comment that I was depriving her of the ability to make me happy, what I was doing started to feel silly -- I like to have sex, my W is saying she wants to make me happy, so what is it that I'm accomplishing?

On the topic of my W's sexuality, the MC said that it's not going to change. He said that she can't become high desire or engaged in love making any easier than I could decide to become homosexual. He said that sexual dysfunction due to depression, prior trauma, medical issues, etc. can be treated and "cured", but inherent low desire cannot be -- it defines the person like eye color or hair color and cannot be "treated" or changed. For me to continue to expect my wife to work on engaging in sex, or having a "sexual awakening" per OldTimer would do nothing but guarantee frustration and would be like banging my head against the wall.

I believe in my venting I've painted a picture of my W that she actively avoids sex. She did in the past, when she was feeling badly about our relationship. Since we've been piecing, and I've been working on my changes, she's no longer acting that way. Her current state is really more of ambivalence -- she spends no time at all thinking about sex, but she will provide it, and no longer in a passive aggressive fashion. She doesn't get out of it what I get out of it, and isn't looking to. She doesn't see improving that as an opportunity to be pursued.

So here we are, this morning I decided the abstinence was no longer productive and unfortunately chose a bad time to make that point. We had a very nice evening tonight, shared a bottle of wine, great conversation. Shame on me because I expected that she might finish what we started this morning but she was snoring within minutes.

What do I do now? Should I renew the abstinence pledge for the next 5 weeks? According to the MC, that will accomplish nothing but remove sex from my life. There is no message there that will be received, and if it was, there's nothing that's going to happen as a result. He painted it as less of a choice, and more a lack of capacity.

She did agree to read a women's sexuality book. That seems at odds with the MC's assessment (i.e. why have her read that if there's no chance of change?) Perhaps it's the symbolic effort that the MC was going for.

I really set down the road of the abstinence pledge based on thoughts arising from reading the writings of you and Greenblue. One danger, of course, is that neither of you have met or spoken to my W, so you aren't really able to distinguish my crazy rantings from where the reality might actually lie.

That said, what would you advise going forward? Back on the abstinence path, or give up on that and follow the MC train and see where it leads? I can certainly just go back to not pursuing / not initiating and see what happens, but that leaves me feeling out of control and with expectations.

I'm a bit lost.

WRT your situation, I respect the decisions you've made and how you feel about them, and I certainly appreciate your willingness to share. I think I've said before that I could not make the same sacrifice. Although our vows did not include specific language to the effect that we would have a sexual relationship as part of our marriage, I do believe that it was implied and understood. Our vows also didn't say anything about not being mean or vindictive, about being financially responsible, or about working together as effective parents, but I feel like those things are also mutually understood and accepted as part of the marriage contract. Therefore, I would view revocation of a sex life as a breach of the marriage contract, and that's another issue I had with the abstinence plan.

If our marriage fell apart at this point and my W claimed that I had withheld sex and that contributed to our downfall, I would feel like an a$$, and in that context, I decided to let it go this morning. Please believe it was not a spur of the moment weakness, it was a carefully considered decision that backfired.

Accuray

[greenblue90]

You are right in that me and the captain do not know your wife.

I will say this though, if I'm commenting on your thread it means that I find your sitch to be somewhat similar to mine. I make it a practice to not comment in situations I can't relate to since I worry that I may say the wrong things. On self interested side I also comment in the hopes that between the two of us we can find something that may help us both. (that's why I was interested in your Counselors take)

That being said I find it sad that your counselor is taking that POV. Seems like a cop out from an unskilled counselor. Then again who am I to say.

I don't blame you for taking the advice of a professional over some frustrated guy on a message board.

Here's what I have to ask though....will that make you happy.

Does it seem your wife is happy?

As for the moratorium, how do you feel about it? Guilty, frustrated?

It's supposed to empower you so that you have the strength to work in other areas of your marriage.

If your wife is abusive it gives you the chance to stand up for yourself, since sex is no longer a blackmail.

If your wife feels like a limp doll it gives you the chance to show her you love her for her not her body.

If she took you for granted she can realize you don't NEED her sex.

Among other things.

How have those things come? Are you a much more strong and confident man because of it?

One last note I've been reading a blog by some guy named Athol Kay he has some interesting ideas. As usual the disclaimer that it's not DB or SSM, his ideas are different, but interesting. Worth checking out, if only to see a different take.

[Accuray]

Thanks Greenblue,

I meant neither of you any disrespect with the "you don't know my wife" comment. The point is that you're seeing her through the lens of my rantings. Some of this may have more to do with how I interpret things than what she's actually doing or saying and I realize that. If you read her rantings about me, you'd probably offer different advice to the two of us and I'm very aware of that dynamic in this situation.

I do not believe the counselor is unskilled, he's written over 13 books, teaches psychology, and does a ton of his own research, he really seems to know his stuff. What's impressive about him is he gets to the root of the issue very quickly and my W and I both nod our heads. The other IC's and MC's I've worked with were much more likely to go for the simplest textbook explanation of something and when I would protest, they'd basically give me the "I'm the doctor" routine.

The counselor gave me a hard reality when I met with him last time too. He said look, your W has these good qualities that you've told me about, she's a friend to you, she's giving you her love, and she's willing to have sex with you. That's really not such a bad package. If the sex or the sexual engagement is not to your liking, you need to decide if that is a "mission critical factor" to you or not. Are you willing to discard the rest of the package for that shortcoming alone? If the answer is yes, then you make an ultimatum and let the cards fall where they may, but you MUST be ready to walk. If the answer is no, then you MUST figure out how to accept her for what she is, be happy with what you are getting, and break off this quest to improve that aspect of how she functions, because all it will do is slowly tear the two of you apart.

I thought that was really good advice, although obviously not what we'd want to hear. The decision is now in my court -- is this mission critical? Is this a walkaway factor? I've been wrestling with that for three weeks. I read the cautions on this board not to accept a less than optimal sex life. It's not an easy decision, and how I'm thinking about it changes from one week to the next.

We have three kids together who are all happy and healthy, our finances are intertwined, overall we have a very good life together. There's a real cost to me of throwing that whole package out the window. I'm also educated enough to realize that the grass will not be greener. I can fall in love again, and I'm sure that will be wonderful, but eventually there will be disenchantment with any long term relationship. There will be factors I'm not satisfied with with a different person, and they may be worse. Finally, I really do love my W, and that's what keeps bringing me back to the path of acceptance.

In answer to your questions:

1) Will that make you happy?

That's the million dollar question. I don't know, for now I'm willing to try. I think really the root of the issue is that I want to feel wanted and needed, that my W is not staying with me because I'm the path of least resistance. Having her make an effort at sex may be the area where I'm trying to have those underlying desires addressed. If I can get them addressed (or address them for myself) in other ways, then the sex could take on a decreased importance (or not).

2) Does it seem your wife is happy?

I think my wife will be unhappy in many ways regardless of me, someone else, or anyone else. She's not always unhappy, but has a tendency toward unhappiness that is easily triggered or exacerbated. When I'm happy and satisfied it helps her to stay on the side of happy. When I'm not happy or satisfied, it's amplified in how she feels. A small request on my part can be interpreted as a condemnation, criticism, or inadequacy, even if what I'm asking for is simple and topical. What the IC got from my W is that she's very content, and that's perhaps a better way to put it than happy. She is not seeking improvement from me, she has what she wants.

3) In terms of the moratorium, I felt liberated and in control for the first time in a long time. It felt very good in many ways, and I really like what it did for me. I guess my feeling is that I don't regret it. At the same time, it was "playing with fire" to some degree because it can so easily come across as passive aggressive, punishing behavior. Despite the fact that was not my intention, my W was increasingly uncomfortable with it. It felt like it was starting to slide toward counter-productive because my W felt that me abstaining from sex didn't represent a "normal" relationship, and if what we were doing was just putting off dealing with an issue, there was really no point in prolonging the inevitable.

I will say this -- we had sex this morning and my W started it by saying that she wanted it to be quick and didn't want me to do anything to prolong it, and if I wouldn't agree to that, we wouldn't go forward. That didn't feel good, that went right back to making me feel the way I did that lead to the moratorium. It would be easy to read into that that my wife was trying to control me or reassert her dominance, but I don't think it was that diabolical. I think she was just being pragmatic because the kids were going to wake up any minute and she had to get ready for work, and she didn't want to have the same thing happen again.

In terms of your other comments:

My W is definitely not abusive, she has a tendency toward unhappiness and inadequacy, it's a different dynamic. I would say that her "heart" is in the place of trying to make me happy up to the limit of where she draws her own boundaries. She doesn't want to make me happy at the expense of making herself feel badly.

I have never felt that she has blackmailed me with sex or used it as a power lever. She never said "you can't have sex because you did/didn't..." Denying me sex historically was always about her and how she was feeling, not about what I did or did not do.

She is also not a "limp doll" at all, she does engage. I often end the experience thinking she enjoyed it based on her physical cues -- it's the comments she makes that make me realize she's not getting out of it what I would hope she could. Limp doll to me is passive aggressive, and she doesn't do that.

I don't think she takes me for granted either.

Historically I was a very strong and confident man, this stuff was annoying but not a huge problem. It was the shock and destruction of being cheated on and left that did a number on me. A lot of my angst in this regard has been about rebuilding -- trying to convince myself that despite what she did, she really does love me. Why does she love me? How can she make it credible that she loves me?

I was destroyed, the rug was ripped out from under me. I had to DB which means doing all the work, putting your wants / desires / needs in the back seat and focusing on improvement and avoiding the things that will push W farther away.

Once W started coming back to the table, I wanted to be pursued -- I was desperate to find some way to rebuild my trust and self-esteem. The fact that W just wanted to go back to "business as usual" and refused to work on any of her own shortcomings symbolized to me that I wasn't worth fighting for or working for. That was my perception, not the reality. W did put in effort to come back to this marriage, within the limits of what she was capable of. The fact that I wanted to see more had to do with my own desire to be convinced beyond a reasonable doubt so that I wouldn't put myself out there and get burned again.

A lot of this crap I'm looking for, and what would be perceived as neediness is transitional, it's not part of who I am. I'm a burn victim who needs salve and bandages. That stuff feels good and helps me to recover, but once I get there I won't need it any longer.

That's my hope right now WRT sex, that the importance I'm placing on it will diminish as my wounds heal, and the virtues of the rest of the marriage will diminish any ongoing dissatisfaction I have with where I land. Perhaps wishful thinking, but I do feel like I'm married to a fundamentally good woman, who does love me, and is interested in my happiness and that's what I'm hanging my hat on for now.

--Accuray