23rd November, 2008
Question
I am writing for some advice. I am a 53 year old married woman with 4 grown-up children. My husband is a hard worker and we are reasonably well-off. Everything appears OK to everyone else. But I'm just not fulfilled.
My husband has never kissed me. I mean that. He may give me a peck, or something similar, but he has never really kissed me, ever.
When we got married many years ago, I didn't think about it and just got on with life. But about eight years ago I had an affair. Initially it was just a bit of excitement. And I was kissed for the first time. We fell in love, but unfortunately he got seriously ill and moved back to his family abroad. And I had to get on with my life again.
Since then I long for sexual love, touching, kissing, cuddling, which I never have with my husband. I just feel such a failure and don't know if I can spend the rest of my life with this frustration inside me. My husband is not capable of love or affection. To him sex is just intercourse - no conversation, no tenderness, no kissing, nothing.
I want more at this stage in my life. I am an attractive woman and men look at me from time to time. So I feel it's only a matter of time before I embark on another affair. It will be a disaster. But I have to do it or I'll go mad. I have confided all this to a local priest who says I'm very wrong and bad to have these feelings. But I just can't help it. I have tried talking to my husband but it's a waste of time.
Am I to spend the rest of my life like this? Or should I be strong and just leave the situation? Am I selfish or crazy or what?
Answer
No, you're not crazy. Tormented yes, but crazy no. And you're not selfish either, or an awful person. Far be it from me to second-guess your priest, but I doubt if he said you're bad for having feelings of frustrated sexuality, or that you are wrong to want and need more than your husband is offering. Battling temptation is what a good human being is all about. We have limited control over such temptation. All we can work on is our response to it.
Maybe your husband can't be tender and affectionate and cuddlesome. Perhaps a harsh upbringing left him without any sensuality, without even the capacity to be emotionally close. Such impoverishment very often does lead to a mere bang bang, rather than real love-making. Or perhaps your husband is stubbornly refusing to learn the language of physical love. Maybe he feels threatened and loath to leave his comfort zone. Or maybe he's a man who buries anger deep, so that it surfaces solely in the form of saying no.
Either way, he is failing to give you what you want and need. There are only three honourable solutions to that. You can try again, systematically and seriously, to get your husband to see a marriage counsellor. Because what your husband has really cut off is all proper communication. He's not hearing your distress, not heeding your unhappiness, not listening. And that could be, partially at least, in the way you tell it.
The second option is to scald your soul, learn to live with life's limitations, shape a strong a vibrant personality out of the pain of doing without. Or you can have an honest and upright conversation with your husband about ending your marriage. The point is, you have choices. What's important is the dignity of doing things right. Such dignity isn't possible if you settle for having someone on the side. A disaster is what you said it would be. Quite.
