Hello. I've been Googling for months and I came across this board and found some insight, but I haven't really found any answers that meet my situation exactly.
This coming September will make 19 years that we've been married. We dated for about 2 years before getting married. We have 3 children aged between 8 and 10 years old. We were both in the military at the time we met.
Prior to getting married, we had the talk about past partners (Yes, I now know how stupid that was). At 21 years old, I had been in several relationships that were never sexual. I had only had one partner with whom I had any sexual contact and that was only after I was engaged to that person. So my only sexual partner was someone with whom I was in a relationship with. Prior to "the talk" I had expressed my lack of respect for the women in the barracks who slept around freely. When we had "the talk", she said she had been with three partners, but then quickly changed that number to two partners (the third she had just shared a bed with on a trip with friends, there was no sex or touching). I did question her changing her answer at the time, but I was truly in love with this girl and decided that it didn't matter what she had done.
We got married after the talk. We eloped and got married at a courthouse. After eloping, we wanted a church wedding in a military chapel. To do this, we had to go through pre-marital counseling. In this pre-marital counseling session, her past partners came up. She stated that there were 2 partners. The first was a guy who was pursuing her but she had no interest in him. Six months before she met me, she decided it was time to lose her virginity, so she got drunk and had sex with this guy in a hotel. A few days later, she decided to have sex with him again in her room. Her second partner was someone she said she had a crush on. She had never dated this person, but she hoped that having sex with him right before she moved would result in a long distance relationship. She said she forced herself on him a few weeks before she left that assignment and had sex with him on the couch at the place they worked together. She never contacted him after the sex or even went on a date with him after the sex. While not easy for me to accept this, I did accept it. It was who she was and while I wasn't totally cool with what her past held, I was willing to look past it for the person who she was with me. I felt that she was still very much the person that I wanted to be with forever.
After the church wedding, things started to slow down in the bedroom. We were still having sex, but not as often. I was attributing much of that to us both being in college (Thank You GI Bill) and working at the time. There was part of me that still questioned her past due to her answer changing from 3 partners to 2 partners. I would sometimes ask about her past, but she was consistent in her answers. She had slept with 2 other men, she used condoms every time, she never had an orgasm with the others, she had never given or received oral sex. She reassured me that I was the only one who had given her an orgasm, that I was the only one she had performed oral sex on, that I was the only one she had ever had unprotected sex with. I came to believe that she was telling me the truth and never really put much thought into the matter. Any time that I mentioned that we were not having very much sex, she always came up with an excuse for not having sex. School, stress, work, children, "mommies don't have sex". I was in school (and even completed grad school beyond her Bachelors degree), I had stress, I worked more hours than her, I took care of the children as much as she did, and daddies do want to have sex!
Over time, the frequency of sex continued to decrease between us. It was not due to a lack of desire on my part. I still found my wife incredibly sexy. I had repeatedly expressed my desire for more sex with her. I repeatedly told her that I still found her very physically attractive. I purchased her the Panty of the Month for about 3 years, took "glam" photos of her for to use as my computer desktop wallpaper and as the photo for my monthly calendars. I planned a tropical vacation for us alone. Eventually the rejection started taking its toll and I stopped pursuing her as much.
About 8 years ago I started trying again to spice things up. I was begging her to put some effort into thinking about sex every once in a while. Things would cycle regularly. I would beg for sex, things would be good for about a month, things would be stale for 3 or 4 months, I would beg again. Several times I wrote pages of things that she could to to show me she was interested in sex, that I was interested in sex, and that I still found her physically attractive.
Her response was that after being together for so long I couldn't still find her attractive. This was based on an episode of "Cheaters" that we saw one afternoon that showed a guy who was cheating on his wife because he was just tired of her. I repeatedly assured her that this was not the case with her. I was VERY attracted to her still.
After the first 2 kids were born, she attributed the lack of sex to me prying into her past. She said that she thought I was not over her past and that it was the root of our problems. To the contrary, I was fine with her past. I had tried having her fantasize about the other 2 people she had slept with to get her stimulated and to get her interested in sex with ME again. It didn't work.
Fast forward through several years of the same cycle of little to no sex.
June of 2013, I decided I would see just how much sex she desires. We had sex one night and I decided that I would wait to see how long it would be before she had the desire to have sex again. I would not reject her, but I did not pursue her. In the past, we had gone for 3-4 weeks at a time without sex. To go 2 weeks at a time was normal for us despite my begging. As it turns out, it was 8 weeks before she decided that she wanted to have sex. I didn't mention this to her at the time it was happening. I only mentioned it to her about a year later. At that point, I decided I was done with begging for sex from her. I was committed to being faithful to her, but I had just given in to accepting that we were going to have a sexless marriage.
Fast forward to March 2014.
One evening after having sex, my wife decided to tell me that she had lied to me and that she had slept with four other partners before me.
She said the first one was the one in the hotel and again a few days later in her barracks room. She was not interested in him, but chose to sleep with him because he kept asking her out despite her repeatedly rejecting him. She decided he was the one to lose her virginity to because the rumor was that he had slept with many women. She had sex with him on the first date which involved taking her out for dinner and wine and then to a hotel. A few days later she had sex with him when he just showed up at her door. There was no relationship.
The second was another person in the barracks. Several friends were going to get together to watch a movie in the guy's room. She was the only one that showed up, so she watched the movie and then decided to sleep with the guy. She said that he had given her an orgasm. She said that as soon as he was done, he got up and went to playing a game on his computer and left her naked in the bed. She just sat there for a while before getting dressed and going back to her room. There was no relationship.
The third was a guy she had met 3 days earlier. She went with a friend to his house. While her friend and his sister went to look for something, the guy asked her if she was ok with having sex. She had sex with him while waiting on her friend to return. There was no relationship and she never saw the guy again.
The fourth was the coworker previously mentioned. She did have sex on the work couch and, despite previously denying it, she did perform oral sex on this partner. She did not have a relationship with this person either.
She lied about the number of sex partners.
She lied about having orgasms with others after telling me that I was the only one that had given her an orgasm.
She lied about having performed oral sex on anyone and had told me that I was the only one that she had performed oral sex on.
As for condoms, she says she really does not know if any of these guys used condoms or not, but that she just assumes that they did even though she doesn't remember seeing any condoms.
So now here we are today. We have gone through almost a year of marriage counseling and things between us are still hit or miss. We have some good days, but I think we still have more bad days than good days. She has started working with a coach to improve her outlook and her self-esteem. Certainly both of these are things that could improve our relationship. She has also started exercising some. She has started dressing much nicer around me. She has started keeping her hair nicer around me. She has started keeping her nails painted around me. She has starting trying to let me know that she wants to make this work between us.
How do I feel?
I'm not upset by the number of her partners. I am completely disgusted by her dishonesty. If I ask questions about her past now, she gets angry with me. This does nothing to build trust. She also frequently does not remember what happened back then or does not know the answer to what I ask. While these other partners were 20 years ago, I understand that memory fades, but an "I don't know" or an "I don't remember" does nothing to help boost the trust right now.
I feel that I had accepted her for who she was a long time ago, but now I am being forced to accept a person who is much worse than the person that I accepted so many years ago.
I no longer feel attracted to her. It's not just a physical thing. I am finding it hard to be attracted to someone who gives herself up so easily to so many people in such a short time. She basically had 4 one night stands within a 6 month period. There was actually going to be a 5th person (not anyone she was emotionally attached to), but her roommate walked in on her while he was fingering her. I am also finding it hard to be attracted to someone who lied to me for so long. I am finding it hard to be attracted to someone who disrespected me by lying to me. I find it hard to be attracted to someone who disrespected my values (she knew I was not interested in being with a woman who slept around freely as she had done prior to marriage). Physically, she had gained some weight over the years, but was still attractive (still a size 6, and has gotten more toned with her recent decision to start exercising). In fact, prior to this issue coming up, I still would tell her how attracted to her I was even after 3 children. She was still smokin' hot! The problem is that I sometimes see the dishonesty and the "skank" side of her showing through. This is not an all the time phenomenon. There are times that I see past these ugly characteristics and see someone I am attracted to. I wish I could see past the ugly stuff more and see more of the person I was attracted to. As it is now, when I'm desiring sex, most of the time I'd rather take care of it myself than sleep with her.
I am having a hard time with trusting her. She says that she has never cheated on me, but with the very long stretches between us having sex, where was she having her physical needs met? I know that I had to meet my own needs by "taking matters into my own hands". The long history of deceit and multiple lies cast a shadow of doubt over everything she has ever told me. I'm not even sure I believe the version of her past that she is telling me now. She now says that she was forcing herself to not think about sex for fear that if we had sex, I might bring up her past and she would accidentally reveal that she had been lying to me. Along with the trust issues, I feel that she cheated me out of 18 years of happiness. It could have been 18 years of happiness with her (had she dealt with her own past and/or been honest with me) or it could have been with someone else (Yes, I know that if there had been someone else instead of my current wife, things may not have been any better; this is just speculation). She seems to justify lying to me about this as she was just presenting me the best version of herself that she could and that sleeping with random people was not who she really was.
I feel as if she has totally disrespected me by lying to me. She knew what my values were long before we were married. She lied to me about her past because she had done things that didn't meet what my values were. She wants me to respect her while she seems to have no problem with disrespecting me or seeming to have had no respect for herself based on her past.
I know it's stupid, but after all of the rejection, I feel as if she's settling for me. I know she's said the other guys meant nothing to her and that it was just meaningless sex. However, I feel less important to her than her meaningless sex because she felt that keeping her meaningless sex a secret was more important than her relationship with me. I feel as if I have been the only one truly present in our relationship because she has been off guarding her book of secrets instead of being present with me.
We're still going to marriage counseling. I'm still trying to make things work. In the beginning I had a strong desire to hurt her (emotionally, not physically!). I was wishing that I had done something in our past that I could reveal to her that would cause her a great deal of emotional pain as she had caused for me. I had nothing. About 3 months after she told me the truth, I was going to a conference and thought about how great it would be if I could meet someone and have a one night stand to come home and rub in her face. Once I got to the conference location, I couldn't speak to anyone and spent every evening locked alone in my hotel room knowing that I could never cheat on her.
There is a part of me that wants to just divorce her and go on with my life. But even when I think about that, I want to be able to finish paying off our house and leave her and the kids with that so that I know she and the kids will have a stable place to live. She makes about $100k/yr, so with a paid off house and no other debts, she'll be able to live comfortably on that income. But wanting to take care of her in this way tells me that I know I'm not really ready to divorce her because I still care for her and want good things for her. But in staying with her, what do I end up with? I end up with someone that has no problems lying to me and that has sexual morals that I don't agree with. Ultimately, I am a man of integrity and I have committed to raising a family with her and I feel that my duty as a father and commitment to family trumps my desire to divorce her.
When this first erupted, she wanted to have sex a whole lot. We had sex several days in a row and several times per day. In fact, there was one weekend where it was 10 times over 3 days. It was exhausting! However; I felt that she thought that the only problem was that we hadn't been having sex and that now the only thing she had to do to fix things between us was to have sex more often. It seemed as if she just wanted to have sex because she felt guilty about what she had done. She wanted to have sex one time and it didn't feel right to me, so I stopped her and said that more sex wasn't the root of our problems. Since then, the sex has again dried up with it pretty much being 2-3 weeks between us having sex including another 6 week stretch back in November/December. I've tried to explain it to her, but there is a delicate balance here. I do want to have sex, but I don't find her attractive all the time and I also am committed to being faithful to her so I can't get sex elsewhere.
Since this erupted, she has complained that she's unhappy because of the state that we live in. I've said we can move to any state she wants, but she can't un-sleep with the people she randomly chose to sleep with. I'm open to moving, but she's not really interested in moving anywhere now because she is happy with her present job. I just accepted a VERY well-paying job that I couldn't get anywhere else and I am willing to give it up to move and make her happy. I don't honestly think that moving will make either of us any happier right now.
My main problem at this time is trust, respect, and attraction for her.
I know I've rambled on, but any help or advice would be appreciated. Many times the advice is that if the marriage has been great, just let the new information go and enjoy your great marriage. Our marriage hasn't been great. It's been far from it. Much of the advice I've read also says to let the past be the past. I understand it, but that isn't helpful. This isn't jealousy. I'm actually proud that I don't have the emotional baggage that she has from all her partners. I only had sex with one person whom I was very emotionally involved with. I don't regret not sleeping around when I was single. I have no desire to increase the number of people I have slept with. I do not want that baggage to carry around.
I'm open for any constructive help that can be offered.
This coming September will make 19 years that we've been married. We dated for about 2 years before getting married. We have 3 children aged between 8 and 10 years old. We were both in the military at the time we met.
Prior to getting married, we had the talk about past partners (Yes, I now know how stupid that was). At 21 years old, I had been in several relationships that were never sexual. I had only had one partner with whom I had any sexual contact and that was only after I was engaged to that person. So my only sexual partner was someone with whom I was in a relationship with. Prior to "the talk" I had expressed my lack of respect for the women in the barracks who slept around freely. When we had "the talk", she said she had been with three partners, but then quickly changed that number to two partners (the third she had just shared a bed with on a trip with friends, there was no sex or touching). I did question her changing her answer at the time, but I was truly in love with this girl and decided that it didn't matter what she had done.
We got married after the talk. We eloped and got married at a courthouse. After eloping, we wanted a church wedding in a military chapel. To do this, we had to go through pre-marital counseling. In this pre-marital counseling session, her past partners came up. She stated that there were 2 partners. The first was a guy who was pursuing her but she had no interest in him. Six months before she met me, she decided it was time to lose her virginity, so she got drunk and had sex with this guy in a hotel. A few days later, she decided to have sex with him again in her room. Her second partner was someone she said she had a crush on. She had never dated this person, but she hoped that having sex with him right before she moved would result in a long distance relationship. She said she forced herself on him a few weeks before she left that assignment and had sex with him on the couch at the place they worked together. She never contacted him after the sex or even went on a date with him after the sex. While not easy for me to accept this, I did accept it. It was who she was and while I wasn't totally cool with what her past held, I was willing to look past it for the person who she was with me. I felt that she was still very much the person that I wanted to be with forever.
After the church wedding, things started to slow down in the bedroom. We were still having sex, but not as often. I was attributing much of that to us both being in college (Thank You GI Bill) and working at the time. There was part of me that still questioned her past due to her answer changing from 3 partners to 2 partners. I would sometimes ask about her past, but she was consistent in her answers. She had slept with 2 other men, she used condoms every time, she never had an orgasm with the others, she had never given or received oral sex. She reassured me that I was the only one who had given her an orgasm, that I was the only one she had performed oral sex on, that I was the only one she had ever had unprotected sex with. I came to believe that she was telling me the truth and never really put much thought into the matter. Any time that I mentioned that we were not having very much sex, she always came up with an excuse for not having sex. School, stress, work, children, "mommies don't have sex". I was in school (and even completed grad school beyond her Bachelors degree), I had stress, I worked more hours than her, I took care of the children as much as she did, and daddies do want to have sex!
Over time, the frequency of sex continued to decrease between us. It was not due to a lack of desire on my part. I still found my wife incredibly sexy. I had repeatedly expressed my desire for more sex with her. I repeatedly told her that I still found her very physically attractive. I purchased her the Panty of the Month for about 3 years, took "glam" photos of her for to use as my computer desktop wallpaper and as the photo for my monthly calendars. I planned a tropical vacation for us alone. Eventually the rejection started taking its toll and I stopped pursuing her as much.
About 8 years ago I started trying again to spice things up. I was begging her to put some effort into thinking about sex every once in a while. Things would cycle regularly. I would beg for sex, things would be good for about a month, things would be stale for 3 or 4 months, I would beg again. Several times I wrote pages of things that she could to to show me she was interested in sex, that I was interested in sex, and that I still found her physically attractive.
Her response was that after being together for so long I couldn't still find her attractive. This was based on an episode of "Cheaters" that we saw one afternoon that showed a guy who was cheating on his wife because he was just tired of her. I repeatedly assured her that this was not the case with her. I was VERY attracted to her still.
After the first 2 kids were born, she attributed the lack of sex to me prying into her past. She said that she thought I was not over her past and that it was the root of our problems. To the contrary, I was fine with her past. I had tried having her fantasize about the other 2 people she had slept with to get her stimulated and to get her interested in sex with ME again. It didn't work.
Fast forward through several years of the same cycle of little to no sex.
June of 2013, I decided I would see just how much sex she desires. We had sex one night and I decided that I would wait to see how long it would be before she had the desire to have sex again. I would not reject her, but I did not pursue her. In the past, we had gone for 3-4 weeks at a time without sex. To go 2 weeks at a time was normal for us despite my begging. As it turns out, it was 8 weeks before she decided that she wanted to have sex. I didn't mention this to her at the time it was happening. I only mentioned it to her about a year later. At that point, I decided I was done with begging for sex from her. I was committed to being faithful to her, but I had just given in to accepting that we were going to have a sexless marriage.
Fast forward to March 2014.
One evening after having sex, my wife decided to tell me that she had lied to me and that she had slept with four other partners before me.
She said the first one was the one in the hotel and again a few days later in her barracks room. She was not interested in him, but chose to sleep with him because he kept asking her out despite her repeatedly rejecting him. She decided he was the one to lose her virginity to because the rumor was that he had slept with many women. She had sex with him on the first date which involved taking her out for dinner and wine and then to a hotel. A few days later she had sex with him when he just showed up at her door. There was no relationship.
The second was another person in the barracks. Several friends were going to get together to watch a movie in the guy's room. She was the only one that showed up, so she watched the movie and then decided to sleep with the guy. She said that he had given her an orgasm. She said that as soon as he was done, he got up and went to playing a game on his computer and left her naked in the bed. She just sat there for a while before getting dressed and going back to her room. There was no relationship.
The third was a guy she had met 3 days earlier. She went with a friend to his house. While her friend and his sister went to look for something, the guy asked her if she was ok with having sex. She had sex with him while waiting on her friend to return. There was no relationship and she never saw the guy again.
The fourth was the coworker previously mentioned. She did have sex on the work couch and, despite previously denying it, she did perform oral sex on this partner. She did not have a relationship with this person either.
She lied about the number of sex partners.
She lied about having orgasms with others after telling me that I was the only one that had given her an orgasm.
She lied about having performed oral sex on anyone and had told me that I was the only one that she had performed oral sex on.
As for condoms, she says she really does not know if any of these guys used condoms or not, but that she just assumes that they did even though she doesn't remember seeing any condoms.
So now here we are today. We have gone through almost a year of marriage counseling and things between us are still hit or miss. We have some good days, but I think we still have more bad days than good days. She has started working with a coach to improve her outlook and her self-esteem. Certainly both of these are things that could improve our relationship. She has also started exercising some. She has started dressing much nicer around me. She has started keeping her hair nicer around me. She has started keeping her nails painted around me. She has starting trying to let me know that she wants to make this work between us.
How do I feel?
I'm not upset by the number of her partners. I am completely disgusted by her dishonesty. If I ask questions about her past now, she gets angry with me. This does nothing to build trust. She also frequently does not remember what happened back then or does not know the answer to what I ask. While these other partners were 20 years ago, I understand that memory fades, but an "I don't know" or an "I don't remember" does nothing to help boost the trust right now.
I feel that I had accepted her for who she was a long time ago, but now I am being forced to accept a person who is much worse than the person that I accepted so many years ago.
I no longer feel attracted to her. It's not just a physical thing. I am finding it hard to be attracted to someone who gives herself up so easily to so many people in such a short time. She basically had 4 one night stands within a 6 month period. There was actually going to be a 5th person (not anyone she was emotionally attached to), but her roommate walked in on her while he was fingering her. I am also finding it hard to be attracted to someone who lied to me for so long. I am finding it hard to be attracted to someone who disrespected me by lying to me. I find it hard to be attracted to someone who disrespected my values (she knew I was not interested in being with a woman who slept around freely as she had done prior to marriage). Physically, she had gained some weight over the years, but was still attractive (still a size 6, and has gotten more toned with her recent decision to start exercising). In fact, prior to this issue coming up, I still would tell her how attracted to her I was even after 3 children. She was still smokin' hot! The problem is that I sometimes see the dishonesty and the "skank" side of her showing through. This is not an all the time phenomenon. There are times that I see past these ugly characteristics and see someone I am attracted to. I wish I could see past the ugly stuff more and see more of the person I was attracted to. As it is now, when I'm desiring sex, most of the time I'd rather take care of it myself than sleep with her.
I am having a hard time with trusting her. She says that she has never cheated on me, but with the very long stretches between us having sex, where was she having her physical needs met? I know that I had to meet my own needs by "taking matters into my own hands". The long history of deceit and multiple lies cast a shadow of doubt over everything she has ever told me. I'm not even sure I believe the version of her past that she is telling me now. She now says that she was forcing herself to not think about sex for fear that if we had sex, I might bring up her past and she would accidentally reveal that she had been lying to me. Along with the trust issues, I feel that she cheated me out of 18 years of happiness. It could have been 18 years of happiness with her (had she dealt with her own past and/or been honest with me) or it could have been with someone else (Yes, I know that if there had been someone else instead of my current wife, things may not have been any better; this is just speculation). She seems to justify lying to me about this as she was just presenting me the best version of herself that she could and that sleeping with random people was not who she really was.
I feel as if she has totally disrespected me by lying to me. She knew what my values were long before we were married. She lied to me about her past because she had done things that didn't meet what my values were. She wants me to respect her while she seems to have no problem with disrespecting me or seeming to have had no respect for herself based on her past.
I know it's stupid, but after all of the rejection, I feel as if she's settling for me. I know she's said the other guys meant nothing to her and that it was just meaningless sex. However, I feel less important to her than her meaningless sex because she felt that keeping her meaningless sex a secret was more important than her relationship with me. I feel as if I have been the only one truly present in our relationship because she has been off guarding her book of secrets instead of being present with me.
We're still going to marriage counseling. I'm still trying to make things work. In the beginning I had a strong desire to hurt her (emotionally, not physically!). I was wishing that I had done something in our past that I could reveal to her that would cause her a great deal of emotional pain as she had caused for me. I had nothing. About 3 months after she told me the truth, I was going to a conference and thought about how great it would be if I could meet someone and have a one night stand to come home and rub in her face. Once I got to the conference location, I couldn't speak to anyone and spent every evening locked alone in my hotel room knowing that I could never cheat on her.
There is a part of me that wants to just divorce her and go on with my life. But even when I think about that, I want to be able to finish paying off our house and leave her and the kids with that so that I know she and the kids will have a stable place to live. She makes about $100k/yr, so with a paid off house and no other debts, she'll be able to live comfortably on that income. But wanting to take care of her in this way tells me that I know I'm not really ready to divorce her because I still care for her and want good things for her. But in staying with her, what do I end up with? I end up with someone that has no problems lying to me and that has sexual morals that I don't agree with. Ultimately, I am a man of integrity and I have committed to raising a family with her and I feel that my duty as a father and commitment to family trumps my desire to divorce her.
When this first erupted, she wanted to have sex a whole lot. We had sex several days in a row and several times per day. In fact, there was one weekend where it was 10 times over 3 days. It was exhausting! However; I felt that she thought that the only problem was that we hadn't been having sex and that now the only thing she had to do to fix things between us was to have sex more often. It seemed as if she just wanted to have sex because she felt guilty about what she had done. She wanted to have sex one time and it didn't feel right to me, so I stopped her and said that more sex wasn't the root of our problems. Since then, the sex has again dried up with it pretty much being 2-3 weeks between us having sex including another 6 week stretch back in November/December. I've tried to explain it to her, but there is a delicate balance here. I do want to have sex, but I don't find her attractive all the time and I also am committed to being faithful to her so I can't get sex elsewhere.
Since this erupted, she has complained that she's unhappy because of the state that we live in. I've said we can move to any state she wants, but she can't un-sleep with the people she randomly chose to sleep with. I'm open to moving, but she's not really interested in moving anywhere now because she is happy with her present job. I just accepted a VERY well-paying job that I couldn't get anywhere else and I am willing to give it up to move and make her happy. I don't honestly think that moving will make either of us any happier right now.
My main problem at this time is trust, respect, and attraction for her.
I know I've rambled on, but any help or advice would be appreciated. Many times the advice is that if the marriage has been great, just let the new information go and enjoy your great marriage. Our marriage hasn't been great. It's been far from it. Much of the advice I've read also says to let the past be the past. I understand it, but that isn't helpful. This isn't jealousy. I'm actually proud that I don't have the emotional baggage that she has from all her partners. I only had sex with one person whom I was very emotionally involved with. I don't regret not sleeping around when I was single. I have no desire to increase the number of people I have slept with. I do not want that baggage to carry around.
I'm open for any constructive help that can be offered.
Put the internet to work for you.
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