SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I align pretty whole heartedly with TIF, at least intellectually.

I also think it does touch primal, visceral areas that are unquenchable by reasoned thoughts. This can easily be an R killer.

There is an angle to this that bothers me still. In marriage, we vow to stay together and exclusive, and for many it is meant to be for life. To say that if there is sexual dissatisfaction that the answer is to pick up and go (no lube, so leave) seems to ignore the solemn nature of the vows. So when the word "deserves" is used for a husband (or wife) and that is immediately swatted down on grounds of personal autonomy, I think it’s something of an over reach.

The world has no problem thinking that a marriage partner deserves the others time and money. The alimony money I am about to start paying speaks to that. Even though wars are fought over how much humans value their property rights. This exclusive pact we enter has implications that other relationships don’t.

As my divorce comes to a close, I will be giving her a huge sum of money over a very long time period. I will get absolutely nothing back from her. Apparently she deserves it, our society has decided.

I’m not really sure what the middle ground is in this. Hope this isn’t a total thread jack.

For men your age, as long as you are solvent, reasonably fit, and your junk still points north when called upon to do so, the world is a cornucopia of sexual opportunity. Widows. Divorcees. Long-neglected married women.

Are you seriously arguing, here on Surviving Infidelity, that it's ok for a man to fuck someone else's wife if her husband "neglects her?"

I have several buddies our age who have divorced in the last five or so years. Their experience has been uniform on this point.

Here's what the buddies all have in common: they're divorced. These women are dating single men, not a married man who says that his wife doesn't count because she's not giving him the sex he deserves. There's far less of a market for married men, regardless of how they spin themselves.

Also, to clarify, in the thread I was referring to, though some others shared the view, The loudest voices were indeed from specifically WWs. Perhaps this wasn't representative of the site as a whole.

I don't know which thread that is, but I've participated in several versions of this debate over my years here, and I was always struck by how many of the women pushing back were BWs, not WWs. To be clear, BWs were typically the dominant cohort speaking out in solidarity with WWs, often at a time when there was significant tension between those groups in every other thread. You don't have to be wayward to have strong feelings about women being pressured to deliver sex.

Holy shit did I strike a nerve using the word "deserve"! Before I get started here, I want to say that I appreciate everyone's help and opinions on my issues. I don't think anyone outside of a marriage counselor or therapist will ever understand how much infidelity really disrupts and fucks up your life. Before this happened to me I knew it was wrong and seen it happen to other people and that was it. I now feel very naive to have thought that it would never happen in our marriage. I did everything wrong after Dday but I was so lost and pretty much on my own to figure all this out. I am the kind of guy that does the research to understand both sides of infidelity and then learn how to recover from it. I have read so many books and watched so many YouTube podcast and videos and journaled so many pages with rants and questions. I wish I would have found SI sooner, as it has been so helpful to have people who have walked in my shoes to listen, help and guide me. With all this information I still make mistakes, and I have become what I have discovered what my wife is and that is a conflict avoidant. As you all have said in your responses, I need to grow a pair and start an open line of communication with her. Communication or the lack of it is a major reason the infidelity happened in the first place. On the surface our marriage was ideal, far from perfect though. My wife holds everything in and rarely shows emotions. For 15 years she compartmentalized her guilt and shame during the affair and I never knew anything was wrong with her or our marriage. You can't fix what you don't know about. This affair had so many of the familiar circumstances for it to start and flourish. It started at work with a older and well built co worker who she told me was hitting on her but she convinced me that he was nothing she couldn't handle and I trusted her completely. A red flag I should have paid more attention to. Me and my wife worked opposite shifts for the last 20 years and sometimes we were like two ships passing in the night. There is much more backstory that fuels this. I have been with the same woman for close to 50 years now and I thought I knew everything about her but obviously I didn't. With all that said I still love my wife and believe in her but I also understand she made a terrible choice that involved both of us and that she has many internal issues she needs to work out. I know the balls in my court and I need to stop walking on the eggshells and start the conversation with her. And for the women who answered this post please do not take the word "deserve" and hit me over the head with it. I'm a good man who respects women but I am hurting and a lot of times lost on how to express things.

I appreciate each and everyone of your responses,

Lost1313

[This message edited by Lost1313 at 7:58 PM, Friday, June 6th]

Please understand the reason that part gets heated immediately is more about the history of this site and numerous debates surrounding bodily autonomy in marriage. We have had some doozy discussions around that and so every-time it comes up, people throw things out that have been repeated themes within the discussions.

I personally did not see deserve from you as "entitlement". Something has been taken from you and you would like to recover it, and I see that as how you meant it. There is no recovery of those 15 years.

But I am certain it will feel better to stay with her if there were things your were more excited about in the relationship. Passion is a big joy in marriage from my perspective, one that you "deserve" to pursue. And in the right spirit this should be a joy for her too. Working on our sex life has certainly brought new dimensions to our relationship that I treasure and it does help us feel more engaged with each other.

I think it sounds like to me that you are both avoidant.

There are ways to have productive conversations around this without it being a conflict. My husband and I try and remind each other it’s us against the problem. If your wife loves you, she will want to alleviate the pain you are in.

You can maybe start it by "I wanted to talk about something that’s been on my mind a lot, and as much as I have tried I can’t seem to resolve these feelings and I am hoping we can work through them together." And then just say what you have said here. You state it pretty respectfully.

She may or may not understand the feelings, and I am pretty sure she will possibly feel like there is no way to change the past even if she she wanted to. You may find out she thinks you wouldn’t want her as much because of her affair, I definitely felt this way at times. Shame is a powerful thing. So keep it moving towards the resolution of talking about building something new together that you can feel excited about.

Suggest experimentation. Tell her you would like to learn to please her in new ways, to bond with her both emotionally and physically. That you don’t know what it looks like either but you know that there needs to be some concerted effort from both of you to find what works for both of you.

I know it’s a fearful thing to approach because if she bristles, then you may be forced to reevaluate everything all over again. But honestly, you will never get what you haven’t asked for. I am so sorry this is the position you are in. It’s so hard to become vulnerable with someone who hurt you so badly.

Did you all do therapy? MC? Would it be easier to reinstate MC to have someone be able to mediate this for you?

[This message edited by hikingout at 8:49 PM, Friday, June 6th]

Lost,

Put divorce on the table. Figure out how you can be ok with that. You will get no where with her until you do.

And yeah, at 65 divorced and your plumbing works good, you won’t have issues replacing her, to be blunt.

My wife has been amazing and loving once she snapped out of the'fog', but sexually she is nowhere near where she used to be. It's frustrating to me because I'm wound up sexually like I was when I was in my 20's. To me my wife's ship has sailed sexually, and I think it's for many reasons physically and emotionally. I can't help to feel frustrated and resentful for what I lost during her sexually peak years to that wife stealing prick!

I’m not entirely clear on the specifics here. Is it physical acts that she did with her AP? That’s pretty cut and dry. I agree with those here who have said it’s wrong to force any persons into acts they may not want to do. Even if they did it for their AP. The flip side of that is after they gave themselves to another, and no won’t do those things for you, you now have every right to walk away. I know some will see this as a gun to their head choice, but it’s still a choice.

My EX did some nasty things with her AP. She did offer all those up to me. I wanted no part of it. She did more anal with her AP in a few weeks than we did in 25 years. It wasn’t pleasurable for her so we didn’t do it. She swore that she didn’t enjoy it with him, but in the back of my mind he taught her how to like it. NFW was I going to try to please her with the act after he broke her in.

What is harder to deal with is crappy sex. That has tons of grey areas. If it’s physical like weight gain, menopause issues, movement issues, that is kind of just life. You try to play hurt, but sometimes you just can’t perform like you did 20 years ago. If it’s
Not being enthusiastic, that isn’t physical and I think you have every right to demand. Same with frequency if the medical and other issues aren’t a factor. Again, she has every right to refuse, but you have every right to walk.

How hard is it to be passionate with someone who has given their life for her, while she pays back a horrific breach of your marrige. You are owed a passionate experience. She should be crawling over glass to please you after her affair.

My EX read the playbook on trying to make me feel like she wanted sex with me. Again, for me, I wanted no part of it. At one point she was talking like a porn star with all the compliments of how great she felt. I stopped cold and told her that I wanted no part of the verbal crap she probably told him, and with meaning. In her mind she was trying to build me up, but doing it in the worst possible way trigger wise.

You are not wrong in searching for a sexual connection. She needs to know how much this is affecting you. If she still doesn’t Buck up, you have you answer. You will never be her AP

Women often need stimulus to feel their desire.

I am thoroughly familiar with responsive desire, and at the risk of being chastised for "generalizing" women, I will repeat the claims of Dr. Samantha Rodman Whiten (aka Dr. Psych Mom): "most" women fall into this category, particularity in LTR’s. Thing is, such women (the ones who truly love their H’s, and who value the M) will still be *open* to sexuality when their man initiates, and, critically, once they get turned on THEY DO SEXUALLY DESIRE their man. Not every time of course, but more times than not.

OP’s WW was basically married to her AP, in a relationship for 15 stinking years. Even accounting for NRE, the thrill of "taboo sex", and all that, 15 years is plenty of time where all of that should have cooled off, and things become more mundane. Did that happen? Only OP’s WW knows the actual story. Sounds like it didn’t based on the OP.

If WW wants the marriage, and actually cares about her BH, it stands to reason she’d be willing to put in a little effort to make him feel special in the bedroom. Doesn’t sound like that’s happening.

These assumptions are based on things that can have other explanations, and I do think it’s cruel to tell someone trying to navigate this that you know what his wife feels and thinks though you have never met her. He hasn’t said enough in all his posts on this site for us to declare that, in fact he insists that she loves him.

When I see a contradiction of someone’s words vs. their actions, I always go with their actions. A fifteen year adulterous relationship speaks volumes. I’ll admit, never having committed adultery myself, I can’t even begin to fathom the mind-twisting mental gymnastics that go into living in long term adultery and still claiming her H is the love of her life. Can’t see me ever getting there. Judge me if you want.

Gr8ful- please understand I am not dismissing that a 15 year long affair is not an abomination of marriage. I do not personally relate to being able to move on from it. I am not excusing it, nor do I think it’s mysterious to feel the way he does about it.

However i do know a woman who had an affair for that long, and in talking with her while it was ongoing it was obvious she was in a trauma bond with him. He seemed like a sleeze bag and her husband seemed great. They would go through periods of low contact or would break it off and it was a cycle of a lot of pain and hurt that resulted in the highest of highs when they would reunite. Read about trauma bonds. I also can’t imagine why women stay with men who beat the hell out of them but that too falls under trauma bonds.

I still know her so was there for the aftermath and she told me that she spent so much time trying to win in that relationship that she ignored the best thing that ever happened to her. 10 years later they have rebuilt their marriage and she tells me, without my asking, without him there, that she kept herself from the love of her life by hanging into chaos and distraction. She actually had been his mistress before meeting her husband and started dating her husband in one of the breaks with the married ap. I do not think she has a reason to lie about it, she know nothing of my situation.

There are all sorts of things that people do that do not make sense to anyone but them and they are not about being star crossed only loves. We have the capability to have more than one big love in our lives as well.

However, I do not assert that I know losts wife feels the same way. I simply do not know how she feels and I do not think lost does either.

It boils down to there is no part of me that believes this man is going to leave her. So what we are left with is to help him proceed towards what he proclaims to want and get out of the pain he is currently in.

Claiming we know how she feels is not helpful. Not because of her interests but because he is in enough pain as it is. He feels foolish enough as it is. He feels like they have brushed it all under the rug and she is still avoidant and all of this has to land on him.

We also have no idea how often he is turned down for sex. I personally have gone the way of what you wrote about responsive desire, as much as possible I tried to be open to him, if for nothing else sometimes other than it enhanced our relationship and I saw lots of advantages to it. I went through a health thing and had to turn him down a few times and he stopped initiating far past the time when my issue had been resolved. And he would wait for me to do it, which yielded a lot less sex. Well, he didn’t understand responsive desire, he just knew I wasn’t into it and didn’t want it anymore. This was before the affair by the way, and this culminated in this big, hard discussion that I didn’t even know we needed to have. I really hadn’t taken much notice of it, he was working a lot I just thought he was tired.

I will buy into your theories much more if lost finally tells her how he feels and she takes no action. Right now, it seems to me plausible they are at a standstill due to communication. And at the point this is proven untrue then I think the next step is lost has some deep thinking to do about how he wants to spend the rest of his life.

For now, I think there are things we do not know. Do we know he is initiating very often or he is curtailing that with the assumption she doesn’t want to? Do we know how much their emotional relationship has been repaired? That too could be having an impact. There are 50 things I could write and imagine what is happening at this point, so I go with we don’t know because these two have not talked about this at all. No one is a mind reader.

[This message edited by hikingout at 4:58 PM, Saturday, June 7th]

A fifteen year adulterous relationship speaks volumes.

A fifteen year adulterous relationship may speak volumes, but unless one actually reads the volumes, one can't know what they say.

So we're back to Lost's need to communicate with his WS and choose his responses.

Sixty-five isn't dead, Lost. The Social Security Administration figures median life expectancy for a 65 year old male in the US is almost 17 years. My bet is that you'll quickly find out you're not 20 again, if your W starts to respond, but I expect you'll also find there's plenty of life left in you.

As I wrote, I am against comparisons, but I do think you're entitled to be loved and desired. If that's high enough on your list of requirements, not being desired can be enough reason to leave.

There's no right choice here.

100% that communication needs to be the focus at this point. From Lost's own posts, it appears that you have two willing participants trying to reconcile.

I know the balls in my court and I need to stop walking on the eggshells and start the conversation with her.

Why do you feel that you have to walk on eggshells?