25th January, 2009
Question
It's late at night, I'm playing one of my old CD's, softly, I'm somewhat drunk, and looking back over my life, all 56 years of it. Three kids all grown up, qualified and quietly successful, my wife, six months younger than me, this house, the mortgage paid up, a full-time job, an apartment in Spain, paid up, don't smoke, fit as a fiddle, lots of friends and drink little and seldom. So what's the problem?
Well, this time next week I may or may not be here anymore. A girl at work has made it very clear that I, in all my glory, am the object of her desires and fantasies. She's single, 15 years younger than me, while I'm married but feeling very alone in my life. My wife, to all intents and purposes, has settled into old age, the TV and a routine which basically excludes me. I sleep alone, touch is derided, affection dismissed.
I put on a happy face with my relatives and friends, but I burn inside with each and every rejection. And now, I just don't give a damn anymore. I feel I have a few years of life left in me and could quite easily walk away and just be one of those people who simply disappear.
This sounds pathetic, like a page out of some crap women's magazine, a 'torn between two lovers' routine. In reality I don't love either of them, but any change is better than the frozen loveless place I'm in, and have been in, for the past five years. It doesn't help that we live in a small country town, where everybody knows everybody and everybody's business. The news about you arrives home before you do.
I don't know what I expected or wanted out of life, but this overwhelming sense of aloneness has plunged me into a place I don't like being. So what do I do now? Tell me, Patricia, what the meaning of life is. I think of myself as a decent man, a bit of a dreamer but constant, hard-working, dependable and well-liked. Give me something, anything, and I will follow it.
Answer
Would that I had a balm for grief, for you are grieving. Don't knock the booze, music and musings on the meaning of life. It's just you in touch with your sadness. I'm sorry.
I'm also certain that many many wives have no notion that their husbands are suffering such grief. Does yours? Yes, I know you make sexual approaches and are rudely rejected. But have you ever sat your wife down and told her how bad you feel?
What hurts in a marriage is the silence which descends on subjects that are hard to handle. Your wife has withdrawn sexually. That's only possible when a husband colludes. So you have colluded. You've told me yourself. You put on a happy face for family and friends. You sleep in a separate room. Why? Sex is the central plank of marriage. Why would you let it be removed and stay smiling? Your wife hasn't withdrawn from sex. She's withdrawn from her marriage. She has ended it. Hasn't she?
I am not saying that sex always has to happen. Nor am I saying that your wife had no reason to withdraw. What I'm saying is that the fact cannot be ignored. Maybe she's going through a very tough menopause. Maybe you stopped loving her long before the sex stopped, she sensed it, and withdrew. Maybe sex is the battleground for your marital disharmony, your wife's withdrawal a way of expressing her unhappiness. None of that matters.
What matters is that sex has been allowed to slide away. You haven't fought for it. I mean you could tell everyone who comes through the door that they are looking at a rejected husband. You could sleep on the landing outside the marital bedroom in a sleeping bag. You could, in short, think for two seconds about teenage protest, how they thunder through the house when something happens them. What's the point of burning inside. Why not burn outside? No, not just by having rows. What we're talking here is the need for communication between you and your wife.
This isn't about your ration of sexual penetration. This is about dignity, respect and the sanctity of marriage. No-one should be allowed to take the heart out of a marriage without that fact being articulated. Otherwise you end up the way you've ended up. Someone on the side? Running away? Being branded as the baddie? Losing everything, including other people's respect? Estranged from your children? Why would you be so stupid?
