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?

IH, the disparity conversation is not one society is really ready to have yet.

IH, the disparity conversation is not one society is really ready to have yet

.

I think it’s actually being had as some of the states are looking At getting rid of no fault divorces. I think with every change there is a downside to it. I had written a response and then didn’t move forward with it because it did become too much of a thread Jack. Might be a good topic for a different thread.

I think it’s actually being had as some of the states are looking At getting rid of no fault divorces. I think with every change there is a downside to it. I had written a response and then didn’t move forward with it because it did become too much of a thread Jack. Might be a good topic for a different thread.

I am a firm believer in this saying:

"There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs." -Thomas Sowell

On the surface, it would appear this is a thread jack. But once the emotionally loaded statement "nobody is entitled to a woman's body" is made, it is opening the door for asking the logical follow up:

If I am not entitled to my wife's body, what exactly is she entitled to?

Is she entitled to my listening ear and comfort as she vents about her day? After all, parts of my body are required to fulfill that obligation.

Is she entitled to the money I earn? The law says she is, especially in community property states. But my body is also necessary to fulfill that obligation as well.

What about squishing the recluse that she just screamed bloody murder about in the upstairs bathroom? That lid to the pickle jar that is too tight? That bag of dog food she can't lift and empty into the container? The hay bales for her horse? Sorry, but I would not want to get bitten by a spider, or hurt my back, or any number of other physical risks that society at large deems acceptable simply on the basis of my gender. It is patently clear "My body, my choice" does not really cut both ways, at least not societally.

I am obviously not arguing that a man is entitled to a woman's body. But what I am saying is that, should a wife take the "I don't feel like it" stance beyond a healthy point with her husband, don't be surprised when he embraces the same mentality.

"I don't feel like it" cuts both ways.

[This message edited by farsidejunky at 4:30 PM, Monday, June 9th]

I think it’s an interesting topic. But based off OP’s comment about the use of the word "deserves", I doubt that it serves him well and we should reserve this thread for his benefit.

I don’t disagree, farsidejunky. But you are right, there are trade offs. There are lots of studies done on female sexuality that says implied coercion over time will kill all attraction a woman has towards her husband. (I am only being gender specific here because I have read a lot about this in trying to understand the polarity that we have experienced at times in our own marriage). My assessment in our situation is that went into my people pleasing category for some time. If I didn’t say yes I believed it would be detrimental towards me getting love.

For me it had become self coercion and it led to a female version of impotence (which I was in when my affair started until far after it had ended)

I have found as I have almost reached fifty, and have wrangled my people pleasing and now feel I have permission to take a pass now and again if I am tired or just not up for it. My husband is older now and his sex drive has gone down a little which means we are not as far out of sync. He no longer cares that much if we take a rain check until tomorrow.

The freedom I have to say no has yielded a crazy amount of yes’s and a lot more initiating from me spontaneously rather than "well he says I need to initiate more let me do that ".I had lost the pulse on my desire, and being able to feel my desire instead of automatically saying yes has empowered me some how. Sometimes he simply hasn’t initiated enough to keep up with me now.

There are things you can do that squashes a women’s desire or stoke it and a lot of them have nothing to do with whether she loves you.

It can be from the way you initiate to how foreplay is conducted, all the way through the act. And certainly feeling entitled or feeling there shouldn’t be bodily autonomy will do it too. Sometimes you have to figure out a better angle at getting what it is you want other than saying "we are married and it’s owed" Or worse, saying something like "she cheated and it’s owed" is even more detrimental because at that point it’s using her own shame against her.

Falling into the trap of believing it’s about how much she loves you is self defeating, and likely inaccurate. We have different drives and women’s hormones fluctuate throughout the month, where as men are even. A lot of Women tend to need emotional intimacy and safety whereas a lot of men can separate sex from other aspects of the relationship. Stage of life- you have young kids? There is only so much energy for giving to other people one person can do.

There are lots of things that can go wrong. But until it gets discussed you can believe it is unlikely to change spontaneously.

I think sexuality is just more delicate than some of the other things you mention and I think it’s okay for it to be its own thing in marriage. Infidelity raises a lot more stakes to that area.

But as far as deserve or entitle to- I just don’t like that language when it requires action on the other person. I am not entitled to prattle on endlessly and make my husband listen.

However, I am fine if it’s used in this way- "we are all entitled to seek what we what we want from our relationships. And to be with someone who is compatible with the big important things."

We all deserve to feel we are in a loving and respectful relationship. Sex is the one area of the marriage that they can only have that need met from their spouse, and if there is no cooperation in figuring out a way you both can be happy, then it’s just never going to work. It’s true for other things- if you don’t share similar sensibilities on other things in your marriage, the more of those issues there are less it’s likely to work.

All this to say it’s a boundary like all others. And the appropriate way at to think of the boundary is "I understand you do not want to do x, but I feel that now I need to do y." "It’s fine that you have bodily autonomy, and but when you say no 9 times out of 10, that does not work for me. It is too much rejection when all I want to do is bond with you"

You can have feelings about what your partner does or does not do, and if one of them is simply a deal breaker, then it is. We have to be honest with ourselves and with them about that.

It’s a natural consequence of infidelity if the threshold of tolerance on something (especially sex) is lower than it was before the affair. And divorcing because of that comes not only with the lack of sex but that the ws has made that topic far more loaded by having sex with someone else.

[This message edited by hikingout at 9:44 PM, Monday, June 9th]

Ahem…..

Slight t/j…..I just want to clarify that I believe hikingout was referring to farsidejunky and not me in her last excellent post. I have not posted in this thread. I am happy and relieved to say that I have nothing remotely useful or enlightening to add to this thread. Whew!

Carry on.

Oops! I changed it! You are right!!!

To the original point, as the BS we watch the AP get much more than the Betrayed Spouse. Whether it is sex or communication or attention or gifts - the betrayed gets short changed.

I saw where my H gave all of his attention and invested time in long emails and texts, calls etc with the OW.

I got scraps. If I was lucky. I’d hear him on the phone talking to a friend sharing a funny story ( not the OW as the friend) and think "wonder why he didn’t tell me that".

I asked my very expensive but fabulous counselor that question - why does the AP get the best of the cheating spouse? His answer was because the cheater needs to impress the AP. They have to go above and beyond to keep the relationship going — just like the cheater did when they first started dating the betrayed.

It’s the mating dance. And it makes sense.

It also causes huge amounts of resentment that the betrayed is treated so poorly or overlooked.

In this case the cheating spouse is fortunate that the betrayed spouse is committed to Reconciliation.

For whatever they're worth, here are my two cents drawn from conversations with my wife, with whom I am in the long, sometimes erratic process of Reconciliation.
Soon after discovery I experienced strong feelings of resentment towards both my wife and the affair partner for the way that the intensity of their affair had minimized me diminished me and made me of no consequence in my own marriage.
When I ask my wife whether she had ever thought about me, the consequences of her actions or even away that this would end, She confirmed what I had expected which was that she was so caught up in the passion And the blind devotion to just being with her affair partner that the way she treated me was of no importance or relevance
since I was just a huge annoying impediment To her ability to be with the partner as often as she craved. Of course this is little consolation When you are being vilified made to feel to feel incompetent criticized intensely and are the object of fights picked for absolutely no discernible reason at all. She helped me understand that The sex and emotion in her affair was something very different from what she felt for me and now that she has returned to an equilibrium in her thinking, I can see clearly That It's all part the cascade of neurotransmitter good feeling Induced euphoria of the early part of the mating process What we have now is steady and stable and of a more sedate nature given our age since we are both in our early 80s.
Do I resent that she gave such an intimate close emotional and physical part of herself to somebody else without my knowledge Yes of course I do I wouldn't be human if I didn't but I know how to temper that with the realization that it was something I could not control and that although I went into a ludicrous pick me dance without even being aware Of what she was doing except making me feel ridiculed small and insignificant, I have made the conscious decision to forgive her. To my way of thinking We have to move past the idea of restitution or even betterment it just has to start all over anew in a different way And to keep thinking about that past part of your lives is ultimately very unproductive.