Ah, @prolificus The 100 million dollar question. I can tell you what I did—which was to seek sex outside my marriage. I justified it because I loved my wife and didn’t want to bother her (and felt I didn’t have a right to ask her to make love to me), and I couldn’t stand it any longer.
After my first “mistake” I tried to get us into counseling, but it didn’t help. Wrong therapist, I think. He advised me not to tell her what I had done, and therefore she didn’t understand the importance of therapy. She couldn’t quite see the problem, even though she had been throwing the “D” word at me far too often (divorce).
So I kept on “acting out,” as they say in the love addiction books. In my case it got more complicated because this kind of behavior, I found out later, is associated with bipolar disorder, which I was later diagnosed with. When that happened, and after I had confessed to my wife, we started couples counseling. Our therapist got us to agree to each take half the blame, so we didn’t have to play the blame game and we could start working on our relationship. I think it was probably a good sign that neither of us had a problem with that ratio.
Later, I found out she did love me. She needed certain things to feel loved, so that she would feel “frisky,” so to speak. I started trying to do them and they didn’t seem to work at first. I was getting more frustrated. Eventually, however, they started paying off. But it’s a work in progress and sometimes we go too long for me.
We had to negotiate. I wanted sex every day. She wanted it once a week. We ended up with twice a week as something we both felt we could tolerate. It’s not really enough for me, though, so there is still a good deal of tension about that.
I guess what I’ve learned by telling you this story, is that couples therapy is probably your best hope. Acting out has a good chance of destroying things. You might be able to deal with it on your own if you can talk honestly to each other. That’s hard. A therapist can serve as a buffer to allow you both to say your piece without getting shot down.
In our last session, my therapist really wanted me to speak honestly about what bothered me about my wife. I didn’t want to because, a) I knew my wife would get defensive and shoot down everything I said, and b) she would take it out on me later.
Our therapist had to really poke me hard to get me to talk, but I did. As expected, my wife started defending herself. But the therapist made her shut up and listen. The session ended with both of us feeling really bad, but the therapist was rubbing his hands gleefully (really, rubbing his hands), and saying that finally we had gotten somewhere. Never mind that we were both hurt and angry. The truth was out.
As expected, my wife started to take it out on me at home, making all kinds of passive-aggressive comments about the things I didn’t like. Surprisingly, however, she stopped that after a day or so. She’s been nicer since then. So, I don’t know. Maybe there’s hope.