Maybe eight or ten years ago, my wife and I stopped having sex very often. At first, I thought she would get over it. Then it went on and on. I started watching porn a lot, so I could take care of myself.
Like you, I thought she had more power in the relationship. Every once in a while, during one of our repressed disagreements, the D word would come up, and I was truly afraid that if I didn’t do whatever she wanted, she’d divorce me. I was sure she was no longer interested in me, and it felt like we just had a business relationship—a corporation to raise a couple of wonderful kids. There was no real connection.
I started advertising in Craigslist, and I found myself visiting someone in a dangerous part of town, who was hugely overweight, and dressed in a most unbecoming nightgown, and we did it in her dark living room on a plastic covered couch in front of her blaring TV.
It freaked me out, and I went to get checked for diseases and I got a therapist, and then got my wife to come. We were doing some therapy, until she had to have an operation, and we stopped. She never liked the therapist, anyway. Later I told her he had advised me not to share my adventure with her. She began to understand why she never trusted him.
Our problem was not solved. We would talk somewhat openly about our issues every once in a while, but I felt I was the one who had to bring it up, and I wanted her to initiate such conversations, too. I wanted her to take some responsibility for fixing the relationship. I felt like she didn’t really care.
Anyway, I started meeting women online, and I fell in love (or so I thought at the time), and I was getting ready to get out of my marriage. Then it all fell apart. I was acting crazy—angry with my kids, sullen with my wife, spending nights up until two or three in the morning every night on the internet, chatting and skyping my women, and I was never tired in the morning. My brain was going faster and faster, it seemed, and I felt like it was warning me that I had brain cancer or something.
It all came to a head when I told her what I had done. She told some therapist friends and they told her to get me to a shrink as fast as she could. They were right. I was diagnosed as bipolar.
It was a good thing that I told my wife what was going on, because it got me diagnosed, and it got us into couples therapy (which I didn’t believe would do any good), and we started healing.
The thing about couples therapy, is that if you are with a competent therapist, they can provide a safe place for the two of you to not only talk about your feelings, but also to figure out ways to try to give each other what the other person needs and wants. It turned out the my wife needed me to listen to her, and talk to her, and touch her and massage her, all without demands. When she started feeling the connection, then she might want to be with me, physically.
I felt like I couldn’t connect with her until we were physically connected. It was a chicken and egg thing.
Well, I lost…. and I won. I gave her what she wanted, and eventually she started giving me what I wanted. I thought I needed sex every night of the week. She didn’t think she could handle more than once a week (which was more than once every other month—so an improvement in itself). However, once we started reconnecting, and once my meds kicked in, I felt better about myself, and I didn’t need as much sex in order to feel like a person.
We’re not out of the woods yet. We’ve been in therapy two years. We see the therapist a lot less now. We understand each other better. I understand that she loves me, and that what I think matters to her, and that she is committed to our relationship—all things that I was certain were not true before we started really talking to each other. She has learned the same thing.
Before this all started coming to a head, I, too, had resigned myself to a life of just making it from day to day. I thought I could take care of myself—maybe have an affair that would keep me physically and emotionally satisfied, while staying with my wife, who I loved, even if we weren’t really together.
People who I would talk to about this universally felt I needed to talk to my wife. I needed to work with her to solve our problems, or get out. Some people couldn’t even imagine how I would be able to just stay there, with all that pressure, and not work on the real problem.
I was convinced that if I tried to work on it, my life would fall apart. I believed my only choice was to bear it, and try to get a little satisfaction and love on the side.
l don’t know. Maybe it would have been worth it if we had not been able to work on the problem. Maybe the kids were important enough. They were experiencing problems as a result of our problems, though. It wasn’t clear what was going on.
I’m glad I came clean and we started to solve the problems. I’m so happy to find that she does love me, and was as unhappy as I was, but still wanted to work it through. I have learned not to get freaked out by her moods, and not to take the blame for every fucking thing. Actually, it was me who was blaming myself. She wasn’t. Who knew?
I think you are underestimating the potential that couples counseling holds. I think you are discounting the importance of really solving your problems. I think you are trying to sell yourself on the idea of just putting up with things because that’s the only choice you have. You probably don’t want to get divorced. Maybe you have kids? Maybe there are other reasons.
I think that if you do these things, the pressure will continue to build, and it will burst out some time. I don’t know what form that eruption will take, but it won’t be pleasant.
I don’t know if you can save your marriage. You both have to want that. You both have to not give up hope. However, I think it is worth trying to give yourselves a chance at making things better, rather than just going on as you have been, and giving up hope of improvement. Even if you end up separating, you will finally be facing your fears, and you will probably find out that you can survive. Maybe even make things better.
You said you are afraid that if you do get therapy, you could end up making things worse. I’m not sure what you mean by that—do you mean getting a divorce? I guess I would like to suggest that as bad as a divorce sounds, or as bad as any of the other things that you imagine are worse sound, it really is worse to keep on going as you have been.
You’re afraid. I get that. You should be afraid. You feel like she has all the power. I get that. It may or may not be true, but if you don’t equalize things, well, you’ll end up miserable or cheating or getting divorced anyway. ”You can’t go on like this.” Well, maybe you can, but why?
What could possibly make it worth it? Kids? Financial comfort? Retirement? Community? Those aren’t trivial things. But what will they matter if you are forever miserable?
I used to imagine I’d find someone who loved sex, and I’d jump ship to be with her, and I’d be happy again. Maybe. However, I had a serious problem to deal with, and I learned that I couldn’t be loved until I let myself be loved. I was the one who was fending it off.
You are certainly different, and that was my own particular issue, and yet there may be some similarities in our stories, too. I think you may have no choice but to put your future comfort at risk in order to save your relationship. Sooner or later, if you go on as you have been, there will come a breaking point. Don’t wait for that.