Mitigating Factors
I am writing for advice on a personal dilemma of the most personal nature. I am male, mid-40s, married 20 years.
After all these years, I still long to make love to my wife two or three times per week, while she seems to prefer two or three times per year, if ever. Best I can tell, she no longer enjoys making love whatsoever and hasn't for the last 10 years.
While all this seems dismal, the problem I am seeking advice on is more a moral issue. First, let me make sure you know that I have been faithful to my wife since the day I met her. I would never consider sex outside my marriage vows. That goes against every moral fiber of my being.
Additionally, pornographic materials and gentlemen's clubs go against my beliefs and would only make matters worse. I will say after all these years I do understand why some men succumb to weakness and fall prey to sex outside their marriage.
Please do not tell me to have a meaningful conversation with my wife. I tried that and failed miserably. In February 2000, after years of trying to get through to her, I felt I couldn't take it anymore. I told her I long for the intimacy only a married couple can share.
She offered no reason, except she is always tired and has too much on her plate. While I acknowledge that she shoulders plenty of responsibility with work and home, she can find the time to walk the dogs or work herself to the bone on something that can wait until tomorrow.
I pleaded with her to get whatever physical, medical, emotional or psychological help she might need to get our marriage back on track. I offered to attend any sessions she felt comfortable with me participating in.
I offered to do anything in our lovemaking that would make it more enjoyable for her. I told her I would not pressure her into making love, but would wait for her to let me know when she was ready.
For four weeks things improved as we made love three times. However, she never sought outside help and began to fall into her old comfortable habits. Over the next 17 months we made love only another six times with most coming at my insistence.
I finally gave up keeping track and gave up on her caring enough to change. Short of divorce, how do I relieve my sexual tension without compromising my beliefs and myself?
Marshall
Marshall, rules make sense in context. One rule most people believe in is "Thou shalt not kill." However, if you must kill a man to defend your wife and children, most people would say you haven't violated the rule.
If a robber breaks into your home, collects your valuables and asks if you have anymore money, most people would say it is okay to lie. Why? Because rules only make sense in context. Otherwise the person with the lower standard always gets to win.
From society's point of view, marriage is the best possible context for sexuality to be expressed. Marriage attaches sex to love and a caring, committed relationship, and two people are present to raise the children.
You don't believe in divorce, yet you have contemplated adultery. Why? Because something which belongs in your marriage is not there. "Keep thee only unto him" absolutely means don't cheat, but it does not mean "Don't let him have it either."
Your wife will not honestly tell you what is on her mind, and you have suggested every possible solution. As a result, you are estranged from the person you should be most closely bonded to.
It is time to apply your ideas about marriage and divorce to your current specific situation and decide what is right. Rules only make sense in context.
Wayne & Tamara
(From the column for the week of September 30, 2002)
Her Terms
I am in what I guess you would call an 85 percent marriage. We have a lot of small talk but little serious conversation. I always thought there could or would be more for me.
The biggest symptom of our questionable marriage is we have very little sex. Twice a year is the norm. We have been married ten years, are in our mid-thirties, and have no children. Before I was married I had an active and successful sex life.
I would like to have children but can't imagine sharing that with my wife. I go for months when I am okay, but the pressure of no intimacy, on all levels, gets to me and I am miserable. She keeps giving me different reasons and conditions. Heck, I even ended up cleaning the house more, which makes me laugh thinking about it.
When we first met, the spark was not overwhelming. Why is it we throw out those relationships for "sensible" ones? Then we spend our whole existence thinking about sparks.
All this being said, we have fun together and I cannot imagine leaving her at this time. She loves me and has based her whole life on our being together. It is perplexing.
Farley
Farley, some people might tell you sex isn't everything, but that's like saying "Money isn't everything." When you can't pay the rent, when you can't put food on the table, then money is everything.
When you don't have the minimum requirements, your focus is drawn to what is lacking. Is it too much to say you can't imagine having children because you know that would be the trap you couldn't escape. Excuses and conditions freeze you in hopefulness. If she stalls long enough, you will feel it is too late to begin again.
Everyone agrees the one relationship in which physical intimacy is permitted and inherent, is between husband and wife. You jumped through hoops to improve the chances for intimacy. Now you know firsthand you can't trade household chores for lovemaking. Bargaining for sex has another name.
Why can't your wife pinpoint what is wrong? Because an honest answer is going to put her somewhere she doesn't want to be. Single. Evading the problem allows her to have her marriage on her terms. She has decided you will not have sex for the rest of your life.
The issue is black and white. Can you accept a marriage of small talk and no sex, or not? Many, maybe most, of the letters we receive boil down to this. You can't change anyone else. The only power you have is over yourself.
Tamara
(From the column for the week of March 19, 2001)
An Unquenched Thirst
I'm engaged to a wonderful, warm and loving man whom I've been with for four years. We have always had mismatched libido. I would prefer to have sex nearly every day, but he would choose once a week or less.
Early in our relationship we fought about this issue. He let me see that if I asked for sex much more than he wanted, he felt diminished as a man. So I've adjusted by limiting myself to only rarely initiating sex. He's adjusted in offering me more verbal and nonsexual physical affection each day.
Lately I'm worrying this issue will spell disaster down the road. Even as I've accustomed myself to having infrequent sex, there has been no adjustment to my libido. I find myself daily fantasizing and writing explicit stories (starring him).
I don't hide these things from him, but I mostly keep quiet about them because I fear he feels my sexuality strange. Is this type of problem a deal-breaker when it comes to marriage?
Georgiana
Georgiana, you are talking about making permanent something which isn't adequate or acceptable now. It doesn't matter that you have a history with him or that you have a certain amount of feeling for each other. You both made a concerted effort to come to a mutually satisfying outcome, and it's not working.
The next step, marriage, should occur when a relationship is so fulfilling now that marriage will only enhance and deepen it. Glossing over issues puts off the day of reckoning, and wishes don't change reality. If you don't deal with reality now, reality will deal with you later.
At the end of Hemingway's novel "The Sun Also Rises," a woman laments what might have been. "We could have had such a damn good time together," she says. If things had been right. But they weren't.
Wayne
(From the column for the week of September 9, 2002)
The Price Of Delay
I know this may sound strange. Both my wife and I were virgins prior to marriage, it's been a year, and we still are. The reason is she worries about pregnancy and not being ready.
My mother-in-law, by the way, is the one who came up with these ingenious ideas. My mother-in-law is a very clever person when it comes to her own. In my case too clever, because I could not be more sincere.
I waited a long time to make love to the lady of my life, but I've waited for nothing. Regardless of how many times I explain the way around these problems to my wife, I still do not know what physical love feels like.
I grew up poor and raised myself. As you can guess, I have strong religious roots. Holding God's hand along the way gives me comfort and direction, but I can't explain the amount of damage this has caused me. I am losing all goals which were dear to me.
During the last year I haven't been around my wife all the time due to our financial situation. I believe my mother-in-law wanted me to wait on sex until I came to take my wife away once and for all to our own home, though keeping a young couple from having sex goes against our religious beliefs.
This has caused me to look at other women, to contemplate a life without my wife, and to treat her with less respect than I ever imagined I could. I have been deprived of something essential to marriage, and frankly, not only do I now not love my wife, I feel no attraction. This experience has been humiliating and unbearable.
Ramin
Ramin, two innocent people coming together on the wedding night can be uncomfortable, but the emotions of the event are usually enough to push them over the edge. Your mother-in-law interfered with this.
If she thought her daughter was not ready to be a wife, or she felt you were not able to provide as a husband, she should have prevented the wedding. All she has done is allow a wedding to occur without a marriage.
What should have happened a year ago, given willingly from the heart, has been lost. Those emotions have been replaced by anger, disrespect, and disgust. This delay, this interference, has caused irreparable damage to your relationship.
We hear in your words you feel the relationship is ruined. Some things cannot be undone. Your wedding night and the beginning of your union has been permanently spoiled, but your life doesn't have to be.
Nearly all religions and legal systems allow an unconsummated marriage to be dissolved without prejudice. If your feelings are as genuine as you say, this is the option you should seriously consider.
Tamara
(From the column for the week of September 17, 2001)
The Same Boat
Please excuse the untidiness of this letter. It is the first time I have put my life in writing. I read with great interest the story of the young couple that were virgins before marriage, and a year later, still are.
Their story is my own. I speak from 45 years of lost love, sex, and caring. I remained a virgin two years after marriage. I had such migraine headaches from the stress my boss would not allow me back to work without a doctor's note.
How could I go back to the doctor I knew since childhood, a virgin two years after he attended my wedding? So I saw another doctor. I cried myself to sleep many nights. I needed someone to hold and love me.
Eventually we did indulge, and I got pregnant immediately. I had a child all my own to love. Three years later we got together, and again I was pregnant. Four years more passed, and I was given the gift of pregnancy for my anniversary. Now with three children, life did not improve.
My husband worked in law enforcement so he worked around the clock. Obviously he kept himself happy while I craved love so desperately. I don't think it is good for children not to see love between their mother and father. Our last child was especially aware because I left the useless bedroom while she was young.
The moral of the story is this. Young man, get out of your loveless marriage. At 65 I'm too old now to make the change, plus my friends would be stunned.
Vera
Vera, many people carry a secret without realizing how many others carry the same secret. Even though you feel it is too late for you, you shared your experience to help another whose life is still ahead of him.
There is another moral. A secret exposed loses its power. The fear of revealing a problem traps you in the problem. When you overcome fear and openly express your feelings and the need for help, a solution becomes possible. Locked in the fear of discovery, the problem denied, there is no solution but more secrecy.
Wayne
(From the column for the week of October 8, 2001)
Deal-breaker
As I sit on my computer e-mailing a woman I could start an affair with, I search for answers. Your explanations about infidelity are plausible, reasonable, and thoughtful, but I still have questions I would like to ask.
I would like to start by saying I love my wife, but we are at a crossroads. My wife seems to have an unknown mental aversion to sex, something neither of us recognized upon meeting the first time. She saved herself for marriage, only to find she did not care for sex.
We have been and are in counseling. Our therapist has tried to give my wife tools and direction to focus on our sex life, while telling my wife and me she is surprised by my understanding, support, and patience. Unfortunately, in seven years not much has changed, and I'm looking for a balance between self and marital preservation.
I work with someone who obviously has issues of her own with her marriage, and she introduced the idea of having an affair. I'm not one to complain about my wife openly, nor did I confide in this woman, prior to her offer, about my own marital problems. It simply was based upon a mutual unconscious attraction, as best as I can tell.
Prior to having anyone in mind, I once asked my wife if she would allow me to have an affair. While crying and shaking her head no, she told me that I could. I am old enough to know I am reaching middle age where I will be more interested in planning my retirement than becoming the table-dancing, lampshade-on-the-head guy at the next wild party. I do not want to go into those years without a fulfilling, active sex life.
My wife is the kindest, warmest, most caring human being I know. She would do anything for anyone, but she is greatly struggling with what her husband wants and needs. We work together to raise our children, pay our bills, and juggle our finances. So, standing upon the precipice of infidelity, I'm asking for advice. I’m beyond asking my wife and our therapist for help because the result is the same.
Don
Don, a fulfilling, active sex life is not something you can purchase at Wal-Mart. You think your wife is standing between you and a given. It is not a given. You have a mental picture of what things will be like, but having an affair could change your life in ways you cannot imagine.
You want a great sex life with someone who wants sex, but the woman who suggested an affair has more on her mind than a roll in the hay. She wants out of her marriage and a new man. Women don’t give away sex for free.
A young girl having sex isn’t getting anything out of it except to say, “He’s my boyfriend, he loves me.” A mature woman may get pleasure from sex, but her underlying desire is still love. If you find a woman who wants only sex, you will get a woman who has been altered or damaged in some way. If you find a woman you have great chemistry with, you will think you love her and want to be with her.
The idea of saving yourself for marriage goes hand in hand with the idea sex is for procreation, not pleasure. Perhaps your wife is the way she is because of religious conditioning. Possibly she is one of those women who are nonorgasmic. Since she is not excited about sex, it is a gruesome event.
We don’t know what her issue is, but we do know she shook her head no. That’s her answer. The body doesn’t go along with lies coming from the mouth. It boils down to this. You have to decide what you want: wife and kids, or the risks that come from going outside your marriage.
Wayne & Tamara
(From the column for the week of July 23, 2007)
Warring Natures
I recently moved in with a man I love deeply. We’ve been together almost two years, and the only problem we haven’t worked out is the amount of affection I want. I have a higher sex drive than him, and I think that may be part of it. Whenever he is around, I want to throw my arms around him and give him kisses.
While he has never outright denied the affection I want to give him, I can tell sometimes it may be too much for him. I find myself lying awake nights wishing he would put his arms around me without me having to initiate it, or hoping he would want to spend more time alone with me cuddling.
Sophie
Sophie, Timothy Treadwell, the subject of the movie “Grizzly Man,” lived among brown bears for 13 summers. Treadwell believed he loved brown bears and sometimes even crooned “I love you” as he approached a grizzly. In the end, the bears loved him back; they loved him to death. He and his girlfriend were eaten by bears.
Timothy Treadwell’s life illustrates the nth degree of wanting what we cannot have. Treadwell thought because he loved bears, bears should love him. You think because you want cuddling, your boyfriend should want to cuddle. You and Treadwell act as if there is no will on the other side. What about the bears? What about your boyfriend? What if it is not their nature?
The amount of physical affection a person desires depends on many things, including the nurturing they received or failed to receive in the opening years of life. It is a pattern etched into the brain. You can berate, torture, or soothe your boyfriend into sometimes giving you what you want, but that is not his natural state.
You seek a way to get what you desire because you won’t acknowledge what he is like. Acknowledging what he is like implies change on your part, and perhaps, ending the relationship. If you stay with your boyfriend, either you will be sick of pushing him, or he will be sick of your demands. When a fox and a hare try to share the same den, they are in for a lifelong battle.
Wayne & Tamara
(From the column for the week of July 16, 2007)
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