This is my first post and it is a LONG one, so please don't start reading it if you're in a hurry! I've been reading TAM for a few months now, and have been very impressed by the sensible, compassionate, moderate, thoughtful and sympathetic replies that most people's posts get, so I thought I'd jump in myself and ask for some help with the problem that led me to the site in the first place. I found it in the first place because I googled 'wife not affectionate or intimate', and TAM was what came up first. To begin with I was utterly staggered at the number of people who had shared the same problem as I have; now it has settled down to a long-term sadness / 'aching' feeling that the world is like it is, and that so many people are as unhappy as I am. I have worked out the cause, although not the solution, to some of my problems, and I can predict the responses some people will give, but it's worth setting everything out anyway, to see if any of my experiences are unique. I am British, unlike most of the posters here, although I don't think that makes any difference.
Anyway, here goes. I am 55 and my wife is 54 and we have been together since 1978. I only had one other girlfriend before my wife and I have never dated any other women except these two. I have never been unfaithful to my wife and I would lay quite a lot of money that she hasn't been unfaithful to me either, but, paradoxically, in some ways I wish that weren't true, because in her case the cause seems to be an utter withdrawal / detachment from emotional life - I fear that she isn't interested in any men at all, me included. For a while I worried that she might be gay, but I think she is just asexual. To begin with we were definitely in love and I think it was mutual - she certainly swept me off my feet then, and the sexual attraction she had for me in 1978 is still pretty much undiminished, although I fear very much that the reverse might not be the case. I have pretty much always been the HD partner in the relationship, although for the first year or two there wasn't much in it. But now I am certainly the HD one and she is LD to 'No D'!
To begin with, our sex life was fantastic, with my wife being very much the more adventurous partner (I was a pretty conservative and inexperienced guy and she had dated a few more people than me, although still not many). Everything was great for maybe 4-5 years, and then the sex and the intimacy both seemed to subside. It is hard to say where that began - I can certainly not claim to be blameless, but it seemed to stem from a combination of things. My wife is and always has been an utter workaholic - she runs a school, and seldom comes home before 7-8 p.m., upon which she is extremely tired and goes to bed (to SLEEP!). We have two grown-up children aged 20 and 22, and there has always been a reason, since about 1986, why sex wasn't easy to achieve - either I was out, or she was out, or she was tired, and then there was a 10-15 year period when the kids were around and it was difficult to get personal time, and now she is menopausal (I think coming to the end of it but it is still a factor). Whatever it is, there always seems to be a reason why we can't be intimate. I tried years ago to encourage her to have a 'date night' with me, where we either just cuddled on the sofa or went to the cinema, or whatever, but that petered out because, frankly, I think she felt a bit silly doing it. But maybe she finds me physically revolting and doesn't love me any more? I have always been tortured by that thought, although she denies it.
In the early years of our marriage I reacted to this isolation by finding my own activities - I restore classic cars, and so I always had plenty to occupy me. However, that actually contributed to the problem by increasing the amount of time we spend apart (she hates the cars), and it has always frustrated me that we spend so little time together, and the fact that she comes in late and goes to sleep early means that there is very little time for intimacy. I am a 'touchy-feely' kind of guy, and we have done tests in the past that said I had female characteristics and my wife male ones - I want sex but I'd like it to grow out of cuddling and a sense of arousal arising from the closeness of the cuddling. I suppose she hasn't so much got male ones as none at all - what I actually get is 'here it is - you've got half an hour and then I'm going to sleep' about once a month if I am lucky (although at the time of writing it is 3 months since we had sex, which I think is the longest ever). Us having sex seems to depend on her feeling horny, and she doesn't feel horny very often. I feel horny virtually every day but that's my problem - her response is that I should just masturbate to solve the problem, and I do but it doesn't solve the problem, in fact making me feel empty and miserable (and it's not really what I expected marriage to be about).
In addition, my wife's attitude is that as it is me that wants the sex I had better be the one who works at it - she just lies there and waits for me to arouse her, rather than participating actively. She literally does absolutely nothing nowadays except lie there - I might as well use a blow-up doll. Unsurprisingly I began to suffer from ED a few years back, but I find that Cialis solves the problem. However, she hates the idea of me taking it, and so I have to guess when I am going to 'get lucky' and take it without her knowing - which, when you are only having sex a few times a year, means a lot of wasted Cialis!
Despite all this I love her a lot (I am still besotted with her), and I *think* she loves me, although she is a very strong person and I get the impression that she doesn't respect me a lot. She is certainly a much more cold and emotionless person than me, and doesn't show or express any loving feelings towards me at all beyond linking her arm in mine while we are out walking, maybe once or twice a week (it's such a big shock that I always notice it). The thing that depresses me most is that my wife was the most amazing kisser - she used to be able to make me literally go weak at the knees when she kissed me. But the last time she kissed me was probably 20 years ago.
She has always earned more than me, and we have a fair bit of debt which was largely run up by me running a business that failed. I am working to pay it off and am gradually doing so, but it needs her income as well if we aren't to go bust in the short term, and it will take a while yet (years, not months). However, I am pretty sure this isn't a big factor (although I feel terrible about it), as most of the things I am writing about pre-date the debt problems and have been ongoing for over 20 years. I have always worked at home (I was a writer until I started the business), and so I did most of the childcare and upbringing of our kids when they were younger because she seldom got in before 7-8 p.m., so I used to feed the kids, bath them and put them to bed, and then I used to restart my work while she came in and went straight to bed (another sex life killer!). The bit about me having female characteristics was very much to the fore then, and we used to listen to people talking about relationship issues and find that the gender roles (child carer versus career person) were diametrically reversed from how they were in most marriages. Some of my financial position has also stemmed from loss of income while I was a child carer, but it is not a good thing to discuss with my wife as she has very little sympathy with that viewpoint.
I think I am probably what is known as a 'nice guy' and a bit of a 'loser' as a consequence (I don't know if you have the expression in the USA, but in England we'd say that I was a bit 'wet'). I have read the stuff about 'nice guys come last', and it pretty much seems to sum me up. I think I probably need to 'man up' but frankly I haven't got the first clue about how to go about it. I do know, however, that I am utterly, utterly miserable and have been so for most of my married life, and I really need to do something - I am entering what I might term 'early old age', and I am freaked out by the feeling that if I don't sort my emotional and sex life out soon it will be too late.
I am sorry that that has been such a long post, but any suggestions will be gladly appreciated. From what I have seen about TAM I can expect some frank responses, and I don't mind what people say - I don't expect any punches to be pulled! Thanks for reading all this… with fingers crossed that some solutions arise from it!
Put the internet to work for you.
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