Should I 'stray' or should I just accept my lot?

[LovingHusband]

Hi, I'm a 53 year old man in my 30th year of marriage to a woman I adore. She is compassionate, empathetic, caring and selfless. The only thing missing from our relationship is physical intimacy.

We were never what you would call rabbits but our sex life was regular and enjoyable for the first 5 years or so. It then started to tail off a bit, but I accepted that as normal and a part of what we were goign through - children, work and I was dealing with a few mental health issues inc. anxiety. This were related mainly to my work so at home it did not affect me so much.

About 15 years in, it dried up completely. We did have not have sex for 4 years and with my worsening mental health I wasn't brave enough to bring up the topic. I eventually tried twice to very genty broach the topic and this ended up with my wife bursting into tears and asking if I was going to leave her. She implied that she thought my anxiety meant I didn't want to. I ended up apologising and in the end accepted it as my lot in life.

Over the next couple of years we had sex maybe twice and then it stopped again. I tried my best to remain physical - giving random hugs, holding her hand, giving shoulder massages, rolling over the cuddle her in bed. As beautiful a person as she is, she never intitiated any of this and I got to the point where I gave up.

For the last 9 or 10 years, we have basically been best friends who happen to sleep in the same bed. I still adore her and I know that she loves me. However, I miss the touch, the feeling of being at one with her. Neither of us has ever cheated so that's not an issue. I'm at the point where I'm startng to wonder if I should seek occasional discreet encounters, whether from a hook-up site or even a sex worker, just to feel, as shallow as this sounds, like a man again. I've begun looking at porn online to relieve my frustration but I don't think my wife is aware of this. My mental health is great now - a different career and move to my wife's home town - so this is no longer a factor.

Just even considering this has me racked with guilt. I struggle with the concept of worrying about my sex life and I worry  that my wife will think it's all  I care about. One of her few less positive characterstics is that she will not talk about these sorts of things easily and certainly not with anyone else, so counselling is not an option.

Should I just accept that this is my life? 

Edited September 9 by LovingHusband
Left a point out.

[BaileyB]

2 hours ago, LovingHusband said:

One of her few less positive characterstics is that she will not talk about these sorts of things easily and certainly not with anyone else, so counselling is not an option.

If her options are - counselling, cheating husband, or divorce - which do you think she would choose? 

[ExpatInItaly]

She's being unfair and conpletely unrealistic. 

She exepcts you tp be okay with a sexless marriage, yet won't talk about it to try to find a reasonable solution. Was your marriage always this unilateral? She has got to realize that this is not working for you. 

I personally would not accept this as my lot in life, no. That sounds miserable and unfulfilling. But I also wouldn't cheat. I would make it clear to her that this needs to be address respectfully, or the marriage will not survive. 

 

[Gebidozo]

4 hours ago, LovingHusband said:

Should I just accept that this is my life? 

I wouldn’t accept it. A sexless marriage is nonsense to me, but the worst part is that your wife is unwilling to solve the problem. 

However, cheating is a bad idea. You need to insist on counseling and working on that problem together. If she still refuses, I think you should tell her that you can’t be staying in such a marriage anymore.

[Leihla_B]

6 hours ago, LovingHusband said:

I miss the touch, the feeling of being at one with her.

I'd start the conversation with this ^^^, and when she cries I would comfort her and tell her that I want to stay with this discussion and take it to a marriage counselor. I'd have a list of 3 ready for her to choose from, and I'd ask her to schedule our first appointment.

The last part is important, because her choosing and scheduling removes the idea that you are positioning her to be ganged up on with your choice of counselor.

Stay with this. You have nothing to lose.

Edited September 9 by Leihla_B

[BaileyB]

The “easy” thing to do here is to continue with the status quo and find yourself another woman with whom you can have a sexual relationship on the side. Should you chose this option, you are likely to find that things become complicated very fast and what appears to be the “easy” solution more often than not becomes anything but…

It’s much harder to have the hard discussion - the discussion that you’ve both been avoiding for years now because you care too deeply about each other to want to hurt each other. The thing is - the “solution” that you contemplate puts your entire family at risk and also causes your spouse an inordinate amount of pain - whether she knows it or not. 

As the saying goes, the right thing to do is often the hard thing. You seem to be using your assertion that she will not go to counselling or have a deeply personal, honest and vulnerable discussion with you as potential justification to step out on your marriage. I would respectfully suggest that this is an unfair and unkind thing to do. When you make this statement, are you not doing exactly what you say that your wife is doing - attempting to avoid the really hard discussion with your wife because that makes you really vulnerable? In that discussion, you will need to share with her that you are unhappy in such a way that she understands - there is the potential that your marriage will end if things do not change. That’s risky for many reasons, not the least of which being - for her, because she will need to step up if she wants to keep her marriage and for you, because you need to be prepared to follow-through if she doesn’t. 

To answer your initial question - would I stay and accept a sexless marriage if there is no physical reason why my spouse is unable to be physically intimate? No. While there are certainly health reasons why people are not able to have sex, I don’t understand how a woman would expect to keep her marriage if she refuses to be intimate with her spouse. I personally don’t believe that we should expect to keep any relationship when we don’t invest - I wouldn’t expect a friendship to continue if I didn’t invest in the relationship. I wouldn’t expect to keep my marriage if my spouse was interested in maintaining a healthy sex life and I denied that aspect of the relationship.

As was said above,  she has made a unilateral decision and that is not fair to you. While it is certainly her right to make that decision for herself, she needs to understand that there are consequences to every decision. She needs to understand, as kindly but as honestly as you can say it, that she now has a choice to make… she can either invest fully in the marriage or you will make another decision for yourself.

I personally do not believe that you have the right to find another sexual relationship without her consent. I believe that you have the right to ask for a divorce, not to have an affair and hurt your wife in this way. Others here will tell you that the decision to find some other, extracurricular activities, is justified. Some will subscribe to the “what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her” philosophy… and insist that this is somehow, the lesser of two evils. At the end of the day, you will need to make your own decision based on your own values. 

Edited September 9 by BaileyB

[Els]

8 hours ago, LovingHusband said:

I'm at the point where I'm startng to wonder if I should seek occasional discreet encounters, whether from a hook-up site or even a sex worker, just to feel, as shallow as this sounds, like a man again

Nothing makes you "less of a man" than cheating, just so you know.

That being said, it doesn't mean that you have to accept things the way they are. Two of your ethical options are to leave or to ask her for an open relationship.

[mark clemson]

Cheating is the purview of alpha males whose morality permits it.  That's not you by one or both of those conditions.

You've allowed a "status quo" to be set in your marriage. You sound like you don't want to cheat, so it would seem the thing to do is reverse that status quo. That would involve discussion and possibly "negotiation." If you're wife refuses to discuss the matter, she does and end run around addressing it. Keep in mind that, on her side there may be issues like pain, past trauma or similar that she doesn't feel comfortable discussing.

That said, a possible approach to address this might be along the lines of "Honey, I'm done going without sex. You're never willing to talk about this, and this leaves me with my natural needs unmet in our marriage. It's definitely, absolutely not my first choice, but if you aren't willing to have intimacy with me, would you consider allowing me to find someone else to satisfy that need with."

It should be implied that you're at least potentially willing to go the other person route. However the intent here very much would be to get her to talk/negotiate and hopefully reach a reasonable middle ground for both of you, NOT to "carry out an ultimatum." Depending on how things go, there's certainly a chance she will jump to "fine, let's divorce". Hopefully not, but it's possible - that is a risk you'd be taking. Consider carefully if you want to try to use that approach.

It's possible for a couple to be extremely compatible in all but one very important way. C'est la vie.

Edited September 9 by mark clemson

[BaileyB]

If she wanted a divorce, she would have filed long ago. 

She, like you, is probably content in the marriage and she likely has great affection for you. Unfortunately, she has shown you that she has limited interest in sex. Lots of women, and some men, do this. 

Personally, I would expect something along the lines of what you have experienced previously… a promise to do better, that eventually slips back to the status quo. That’s why you will need to impress upon her that you are serious about this - she may not understand how serious you are because you have settled into the status quo as she would prefer it in the past. 

Edited September 9 by BaileyB

[LovingHusband]

Thank you all for your replies. What it's confirmed to me is that, no, I shouldn't stray - TBH, I don't think that was going to happen anyway, as I couldn't live with myself doing it. You also confirmed something else I already knew - I need to grow some balls, bite the bullet and talk about it with her. Our problem is that we are both introverts who avoid confrontation to a fault so this will be interesting  

Thank you again - I appreciate the tone and objectivity of your replies. Much appreciated. 

[LuckyM]

Well you might get an erotic massage from a. Massage shop depending where you live.  Worth a drive   That's a little like cheating without

The happy ending. And it is discreet no nonsense. You deserve some pleasure for an hour. I say

[LovingHusband]

11 hours ago, Els said:

Nothing makes you "less of a man" than cheating, just so you know.

I agree completely. I suppose what I mean is that I want to feel what it's like to please a woman again  - I just want it to be my beautiful lady.

I was thinking about things at work today. I was a successful athlete in my teens and early 20s, and always near the top of my class academically. Even then, I never had particularly high self-esteem. I went from having a fit, toned body to, let's be honest, a dad bod. It's nothing too drastic - they don't roll me back in when I lay on the beach - but I wondered for a while whether that was an issue, then  realised I was still reasonably fit when things stopped. I dealt with anxiety, quite severe, for a while, and the depression that followed. These things just made me second-guess everything and assume that it was probably my fault anyway.

I think the one thing I can definitively say is my fault is not trying hard enough to deal with it early on and letting it stretch out. I remember a therapist saying to me once, not about this but the way i was dealing with life, that I was so used to walking the one path, no matter how bad it was, that the better path was metaphorically overgrown and looked dangerous, and that's what I've done.

Anyway, I've made a decision to talk about it tonight. I know there will be tears - probably from both of us

14 hours ago, Leihla_B said:

20 hours ago, LovingHusband said:

I miss the touch, the feeling of being at one with her.

I'd start the conversation with this ^^^, and when she cries I would comfort her and tell her that I want to stay with this discussion and take it to a marriage counselor. I'd have a list of 3 ready for her to choose from, and I'd ask her to schedule our first appointment.

I'm going to use this excellent advice from Leihla_B above. 

Thank you all again for your straightforward and objective advice. Cross fingers for me.

[Gebidozo]

6 hours ago, LovingHusband said:

Thank you all again for your straightforward and objective advice. Cross fingers for me.

Crossing fingers. I do hope it will work out between you and your wife, but in case it won’t… You sound like a good guy. There is nothing wrong with wanting sex in your marriage, that’s what marriages were supposed to be before they became distorted sociopolitical constructs. I’m sure there are some nice single women who would like to get into a hot, sexy, passionate, and completely legal nuptial-marital arrangement with you.

I usually can’t stand the phrase “you deserve happiness” because I don’t believe any of us really deserves anything, but I sort of feel this way about your situation.

[S2B]

17 hours ago, LovingHusband said:

Thank you all for your replies. What it's confirmed to me is that, no, I shouldn't stray - TBH, I don't think that was going to happen anyway, as I couldn't live with myself doing it. You also confirmed something else I already knew - I need to grow some balls, bite the bullet and talk about it with her. Our problem is that we are both introverts who avoid confrontation to a fault so this will be interesting  

Thank you again - I appreciate the tone and objectivity of your replies. Much appreciated. 

Write out a list if you have trouble talking about things.

be clear - make your points clear. 
let her know the marriage has left a void between the two of you despite the good things happening.

be clear she should be willing to make effort for you if she loves you. If she doesn’t love you or want sex let her know you need to make changes. Sex is a basic need. She is depriving you of that. She took vows she should be willing to participate in. She shouldn’t expect you to go without - so come up with solutions together.make her promise that once a week you two talk about weekly goals that would make you both happy. Revisit those goals every week (no excuses).

this may get you both talking about what hurdles you need to overcome.

don’t back down. She shouldn’t be able to dictate something this big that affects both of you.

if she won’t - let her know you’ve been slowly slipping away from the marriage because her lack of intimacy. And that you don’t expect to live without it.

be strong - don’t back down - don’t let her manipulate you with tears so you still expect nothing. Those tears are designed to manipulate you.

she got a move to her hometown - why doesn’t she be willing to also do things to make you happy?

stop the one sided ways she participates. You must get her to consider your feelings in the union too.

Edited September 10 by S2B

[Els]

8 hours ago, LovingHusband said:

Anyway, I've made a decision to talk about it tonight. I know there will be tears - probably from both of us

I'm glad that you're going to do this. It's possible that she doesn't know just how much this is affecting you, if you haven't had a serious talk about it before. If she knows how bad things are for you, surely she would be open to going to MC? And if she isn't... what does that tell you about her? It's not a libido issue anymore, it becomes a "she doesn't care" issue.

If you two manage to make it to MC, it's possible that there might be hope.

[bpb2017]

On 9/9/2024 at 8:14 PM, Els said:

Nothing makes you "less of a man" than cheating, just so you know.

That being said, it doesn't mean that you have to accept things the way they are. Two of your ethical options are to leave or to ask her for an open relationship.

Nothing makes you "less of a man" than being permanently friend zoned by your own wife.

OP, some people turn asexual when they get older. If you strayed she either accepts it as a way to keep you, or she leaves. You have to decide if you're okay with that.

I would also like to bring up that when a person says that are okay with an open relationship, and then you exercise that permission, you don't always get the reaction you expect (i.e. turns out she isn't okay). The opposite can also be true (turns out she is okay), because as I understand it women are more concerned if a man has fallen in love with the other woman rather than just sex.

Edited September 15 by bpb2017

[Gebidozo]

20 minutes ago, bpb2017 said:

Nothing makes you "less of a man" than being permanently friend zoned by your own wife.

Nah, cheating is even less manly.

 

21 minutes ago, bpb2017 said:

I would also like to bring up that when a person says that are okay with an open relationship, and then you exercise that permission, you don't always get the reaction you expect (i.e. turns out she isn't okay).

Yes, because an open relationship might only work when both partners are very sexual with each other, so sexual that it “spills over” onto other people. An open relationship can’t work when the partners don’t have sex with each other. Or when only one of the partners is sexually unfulfilled. 
 

23 minutes ago, bpb2017 said:

women are more concerned if a man has fallen in love with the other woman rather than just sex.

Both are a great cause for concern for both genders, of course. If I had such a terrible choice, I’d rather accept my partner just having sex than falling in love with another man, too.

[Els]

21 hours ago, bpb2017 said:

Nothing makes you "less of a man" than being permanently friend zoned by your own wife.

Well, you'll have to agree to disagree on that. Regardless, I'm not sure what your point is - it's not like the only options are to accept the status quo or to cheat.

Edited September 15 by Els

[Gforce77i]

No, don't settle. Have a conversation and tell her you still desire sex and see where she is with it. Maybe it's hormonal, maybe it's something else. You deserve a conversation at the least. She can't expect you to give up on sex, even if she has, but that doesn't mean give up on her either.

There's a saying in our circle, "if you don't satisfy your partner, somebody else will!"

[jasonblackheart01]

No, you should not accept it. Sex is a sacred ritual of both lovers showing their affection to each other using physical intimacy. Sex is not a sin, its a gift. The problem is your sex life is dull as the turtle. It means its slow and boring. Have you tried talking to your wife like a man instead of looking for a cure in forums? Why don't you try to explore the porn world. Your both old, there is no shame sharing the porn with her. Maybe it can ignite a small slim of passion to your wife. Don't be guilty of watching porn because your a man, your not made of rock.

[BreakOnThrough]

This goes beyond sex, that came after what appears your mental health decline, it's a symptom, SOMETHING fundamentally is wrong with your marriage, you may not see it as that, but that IS the case.  You and your wife may have fallen into comfort zones to avoid the issue, but your marriage itself IS the issue.

Edited September 23 by BreakOnThrough