Little intimacy of any kind leaves me fantasizing outside our marriage

[Guest]

I just don't know what to do. My husband and I have been married for almost two years, and we dated for five. He's a good man - intelligent, educated, funny, decent - and I love him. I have a son (14 years old this month) from a previous relationship and the two of them share a very strong bond and mean a lot to each other.

 

My problem is that although I admire and desire my husband, I don't feel the same coming from him. Oh, he'll insist that he finds me attractive and brilliant and charming, but I don't feel that kind of warmth from him. We rarely have sex, which is not a new development. Our relationship up until a couple of months before our wedding was long distance, meaning we saw each other only on weekends. Between his family and my family and my son and whatever else, it didn't seem too odd that we weren't physically intimate very frequently. Only now, I realize that we never were intimate at all. Other than a few heated makeout sessions at the very beginning, we don't "pet" at all. Believe me, I try everything to initiate any level of physicality - lingerie, losing weight, romantic dinners, suggestive self-portraits (which he loves, but still doesn't put out for), dirty talk, porn, massage, suggestive wording, downright begging. Nothing makes any difference. He says, very cerebrally, that he's sorry we don't have sex and he's "working on it."

 

I have a strong libido and this lack of sex itself is wearing me thin, but the bigger deficit is the lack of emotional intimacy between us. As I've said, no real cuddling, no reaching out to me in the dark. He likes to have me close to him, but more like a security blanket than anything else. No lingering kisses, no playful caresses, no spooning. You know that thing where you get close to a person you feel strongly for and you catch their scent and it pulls you in closer until you're nuzzling their neck? Never happens. Not to him. Happens to me, and then I feel rejected because he doesn't even NOTICE, let alone reciprocate! Don't get me wrong - he tries to do everything I ask and he's not mean or intentionally withholding. It's just like there's a barrier between us through which he can barely see and cannot smell, taste, touch, or hear. Like I said - no intimacy. I don't miss him when he's gone, like this weekend, because how can you miss what you don't really have?

 

We've been in counseling for a year now to "work on things." It's really going nowhere. He refuses to admit that there's anything other than "adjustment issues" going on. He's not cheating - he even works from our house most days and rarely leaves at all. His life is an open book - he lets me read his emails, his snail mail, look through his wallet, whatever. The counseling stuff is all very superficial - working from the outside in. "Bob, try not to get angry just because Sue is angry." "Sue, choose your battles."

 

It's to the point where I start to fantasize about every guy who connects with me in any way at all. I don't imagine running away with anyone and I don't intend to act out on any of these daydreams, but I know this isn't right. I *want* to connect with my husband, whom I adore and cherish. But I worry that I'm only a couple of years in; I know I'd have a hard time resisting if opportunity presented itself, so I'm avoiding opportunity right now, but will I be that committed in another two years of - I don't want to say loveless, for I know that he does love me - cold duck marriage?

 

What can I do? I don't want to tell him I'm fantasizing about other men because I think it would hurt and anger him. Is there another way to approach this in counseling? We've been in counseling for a year.

[Outcast]

Our relationship up until a couple of months before our wedding was long distance, meaning we saw each other only on weekends. Between his family and my family and my son and whatever else, it didn't seem too odd that we weren't physically intimate very frequently. Only now, I realize that we never were intimate at all. Other than a few heated makeout sessions at the very beginning, we don't "pet" at all.

 

Sigh. And this is why marrying someone from an LDR too soon is not the best of plans You didn't know him long enough in 3D to know that he's an unaffectionate guy.

 

What did the counsellors say? Did they speak about it at all? Often people who are unaffectionate grew up in families that shunned affection so it could be deeply ingrained in him and not something easily changed. But I should think the counsellors would have touched on that right off the bat. Did they?