A
male
age
41-50,
*esty
writes:My wife and I met when I was 18; she was 21. We've been together for 15 years and married for 13. After we moved in together the challenges of married life started to surface, I started to notice she'd distance herself emotionally and intimately. As the months and years went on, I noticed her sexual desire and passion was completely gone. I started asking questions and she'd reassure me it wasn’t me; that it was just stress, or fatigue (etc, etc). This went on for a long time and I found myself being the only one initiating any intimacy or affection in our relationship. This frustrated me and I became angry and resentful to the point of almost leaving so we started seeing a marriage therapist. My wife only attended a few sessions before the she became "uncomfortable" with the therapy and stopped going. I continued and the therapist said she's most likely suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder brought on by possible sexual abuse which would explain why she has trouble with intimacy and affection and being vulnerable. I confronted her with this and she denies being sexually abused but said she had some bad experiences. I asked her about her past and found out she lied to me about how many men she slept with. When we first started dating, she had said she'd been with 5, now it turns out she was with 12; almost all were 1 night stands. She said she didn’t tell me the truth because she knew I had only been with 1 (her) and she felt embarrassed. The fact she slept with 12 guys doesn’t bother me as much as knowing that over the course of our marriage she became a different person than the one I knew when I was 18. If she was sexually abused, she hasn’t come forth about it or try to work it out with me or with the therapist. She still to this day feels the need to distance herself which causes huge strain on this marriage. I don’t know what else to do. She won’t go to therapy and I feel like I've been lied to and manipulated into thinking she's someone who she's obviously not. I don’t want to lose the life we have together or my children but I don’t wan to live the rest of my life feeling resentful and angry. I know my feeling this way has caused many arguments which probably add to this dilemma. I want to end the cycle - but I fear that means ending the marriage.
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female
reader, Tisha-1 +, writes (26 September 2008):
 Hi, you are in an impossible situation and are trying so hard to try to fix it. And the fact that she seems to be sitting on the sidelines, content to let you do all the work must be tremendously frustrating.
Look, I'm not an expert in psychology or anything like that. All I can do is put myself into what I imagine could be going on and give my thoughts on the situation.
I think it's possible that your wife might be caught in a deep depression and cannot fight her way out on her own. The problem with being in this situation (which I do understand, having been there myself) is that you know intellectually that you're in a bad place, but you have no way of getting yourself out of it. And if she's got that borderline personality disorder that's probably not helping either. Refusing to go to therapy may be not wanting to face abuse in her past, but it also may be sheer inertia. She knows that you're unhappy and cannot face the whole thing, so she withdraws into her little cave and doesn't come out of it, even though she knows she's risking the marriage.
It's an instinctive retreat self-defense mechanism that may work for children, the ostrich in the sand thing, but as an adult, it is self-defeating and damaging. All of which you know and are experiencing.
So what do you do about it? The problem is that giving her an ultimatum is going to push her into that cave, as that seems to be her only functioning coping mechanism. I would take her to her physician, not the gynecologist, but an internist, a family practitioner, someone with experience in treating the whole person, not just a part of them. No offense to gynecologists, mind you.
Have that doctor take a very thorough history on her and specifically she must talk about her psychological issues with him or her. What I'm leading up to is that there are drugs out there that might be able to help your wife. They are not a panacea, they may not be appropriate, but it's worth a try to ask the doctor. Her brain chemistry may be out of whack, and no amount of talk therapy is going to fix it. I'm not talking about zoning her out or sedating her either. It's just something that you should explore.
I have to say that I've been there and now I'm out of that cave, and it feels great! It's wonderful and fantastic and I want your wife to have that feeling too. So drag her, kicking and screaming if need be, to that doctor and get that differential diagnosis done. There is hope and there might be a way out of this, if your wife can see fit to try.
PM me if you want more information from me on this.
I hope this helps in some way. It sounds like you've been doing all you can.
A
male
reader, testy +, writes (26 September 2008):
testy is verified as being by the original poster of the questionThanks for your replies: I've communicated how I feel countless times before both at therapy and at home and she's even agreed that her past may be causing a lot of this but she doesn't seem to want to do very much about it. She seems content just going on like this because she known's I've been able to "deal with it" (at least on the outside) but I don't know how much longer I can go on like this. I feel myself pulling away more and more (becoming more like her) and that's not how I see myself in a marriage. I've read books on sex abuse, BPD, been to therapy (alone) and visited many online support groups to try to figure out how to improve but I can't do it alone and she knows this. At this point I'm only in it for my children - which I adore and don't want to lose because of all this. I feel like I'm stuck in a really bad situation with little hope for improvement.
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A
male
reader, zymurgy +, writes (26 September 2008):
"Have you heard of this food that removes 90% of a woman's sex drive? It's called Wedding Cake"
Ok, I kid...but not really. Every guy I know (including me) talks about how the sex basically dries up over time till (if your lucky) it becomes a weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly ration. Also, the hot smutty things you did pre marriage, or just afterwards, you can forget about. Once the lady realizes your firmly bolted down, expect one scoop of vanilla after another.
If your reading this and thinking "that never happened to me...", you are the lottery winner of life.
If your not getting the ration at least, then it is indeed serious. I firmly believe the tenet 'women want sex, men *need sex'. It can actually start to alter your thinking towards anger, hatred, ect (trust me there). Sorry I dont have better answers. good luck!
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