Question
I'm 44 and have been married for 14 years. My husband and I waited until after we were married to have sex. I thought feelings of passion would grow after marriage. Instead, I realised that my husband was able to wait for sex because he was never interested in it. In our first year of marriage we had sex less than once a month. And as in all marriages, the frequency of sex decreased over time.
I tried to be sexy for him, bought beautiful lingerie, but it didn't interest him. His only response was to complain about it being a waste of money. A few years into the marriage we found out that he had a chronic, but not life-threatening illness, and he's stable on regular medication. This illness, though, doesn't explain his lack of empathy towards my sexual frustration. He just doesn't see sex as important. I'm dying for sex, but I don't want it with someone who has little passion, someone who doesn't even understand what passion is. We have one child, conceived using an ovulation timer, so the pregnancy happened with one act of scientific intercourse.
Both for my child's sake, and for the same religious reasons which led me to waiting for sex until we married, I do not want a divorce. But I'm sexually frustrated and very sad and lonely. A few years ago, I fell head over heels for a man in my office. I didn't know how to handle the strong desire I had for him, didn't have an affair, but went through a real emotional roller-coaster. I told my husband about my feelings, hoping that he would be jealous, or worried about our marriage, and hence work on our sex life. He simply asked if I'd have any actual sexual contact with this man, and when I said no, he said he wasn't going to change, and never mentioned it again.
I'm trapped. I tried weekends away, books for my husband to read on how important sex is in a marriage, everything - and nothing works. My daughter, who is only 8, asked me recently why her father and I got married, was it because I was lonely. Even though her father and I get along, and we never have any marital discussions in front of her, she can see the lack of affection between us.
I know it's up to me to work at improving my life, and my marriage. But I don't know how to do it anymore. I am humiliated to be the only one to voice displeasure with the marriage, the only one making an effort, when my husband is either too ill or too disinterested to be bothered. I'm humiliated to ask a man to have sex with me. I grew up expecting my husband to chase me for sex. But I'm the one who does the pursuing. I've read that even an ill man can pleasure his wife. I find that humiliating. I want a man who wants me.
I'm in limbo, not only sexually frustrated, but full of grief over my lost dream of living a fulfilled life. I'm involved in lots of activities, but these in no way meet my need to be loved as a woman, to have a companion who is healthy, able to get up each morning with energy for life, and who goes to bed each night with desire for me.
Answer Yes, disappointment is hard to bear, harder I think even than sexual frustration. You mention that a lot - sexual frustration I mean - but that's not what really bugs you. Like you say, you want someone to share your hunger for life. Instead, by the sounds of it, you have a man who is ill. No, you don't make that completely clear. That's because you're not clear about it yourself. My guess is, you don't want it to be the truth. If your husband's chronic illness is what saps him of life, then that's fate, unhappy but a fact. But as long as you can see it as a fault which can be fixed, as in his failure to see sex as important, then you have hope. And you don't want to lose that hope. So you work your socks off trying to engage your husband emotionally, trying to release the passion you still stubbornly believe might lie hidden in him, and feel even more frustrated.
Your husband was never a passionate man. Now he's also ill. Certainly he's hiding from emotions. But he doesn't sound simply switched off. He sounds exhausted, emotionally, physically, spiritually. I don't believe that hounding him will help in changing that. And it obviously doesn't help you. Your focus, or life strategy, will have to change. And I'm not sure what I can say to console. Except that in my experience we deal better with reality, handle problems more competently when we face them, manage more magnificently than we might think, when we stop trying to live the dream. It's not that we stop dreaming, or aspiring to happiness. Rather, we learn to dream differently. And yes, it is very hard.
