Waiting More Than a Dozen Years

[DanceQueen]

Earl Grey,

To me it is apparent that when your wife said "sorry, no more sex, now or ever", you needed to say at that moment "ok sorry, but I can't get on board with that, guess that means splitsville". I mean, how else can we interpret your story? You complacently accepted her terms, but now you are struggling to figure out "what to do". But, what IS there to do? You accepted it. Now you can either change your mind and tell her you don't accept it, or continue accepting it.

Right? Or am I missing something?

DQ

[Strong&Alive]

Let me add another point that I haven't really focused on. The only bullet point that "rings true" are these:

[*]Nice guys put other people's needs and wants before their own.
[*]Nice guys sacrifice their personal power and often play the role of a victim.

The second part of the second bullet does not match up, however. Maybe only recently have I felt "victimized."

This marriage is so very different from my first one. Where the first one felt like a partnership right up to the birth of our son, this one has been a battle since day one. Being in a relationship should never be this much work and this much of a fight. It's not been compromise, its been me being in a continual state of conceding.

And what I learned from the outset was that it was ultimately better to "give in" than to "stick to my guns." And what have I given up? Well, the tangible things are things like my music (she doesn't like it and so my music and my very nice stereo system are put away), my mountain climbing and hiking, my skiing (I became an accomplished snow skier between marriages), most of my photography.

It's even reflected in the furnishings in the house. There is hardly anything in this house that I've supplied or picked out to reflect my sense of style. I had not noticed that until several months ago. The closets are full of her stuff and with the exception of one bedroom that I've used as an office, I am living in a house that I pay for and live in but hardly have furnished. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I object to the furniture, I've just had very little say over it and if I were to walk out today, there would barely be anything of "mine" to take with me.

It was not like that for me before and I think it's more than a nice guy syndrome. In her employment, there is no question who the boss is (she sometimes complains about "being in-charge"), but the dominance is subtle. Not a tyrant by any measure, but she is going to get her way (or life is going to be miserable). And that is my perception at home as well. Only recently, she asked why I just gave up on something and I told he that with her I always gave up, that's nothing new and she's known that from day one.

The incident that she threw back in my face the other day about "my anger" being threatening occurred 21 years ago and it was over my exhaustion of rarely, if ever, "winning" or at least having my point of view really matter. I took the relatively few possessions I had at her condo and threw them out the door so I would not have to keep going in and out the front door. I was putting them in my car and leaving not just for a business trip, but forever. (I was going to California for business and then was going to Lake Tahoe to ski. It was the skiing that was the point of contention. I ended up not skiing and making up. Point is, I gave up something I wanted to do to "keep the peace."). It was an incident that I had forgotten. How different would my life have been?

I may be the perfect person because I've been so tolerant. However, I am reaching a point where I ask "Is this all there is?"

As I said, from her POV, this question is not even open to discussion.

Earl,

You have been so utterly and completely placid throughout the entirety of this marriage, that it beggars belief!

(1) In what precise way has it been "better" to give in (on each and every occasion it seems)? Where has all this "giving in" got you?

(2) I'm staggered that you have ceased virtually everything that you previously enjoyed doing - that made "you" You - Why?

(3) You think there is "more" to this than Nice Guy syndrome. Well, I suggest you actually get the book and read it. It seems like you have an inherent fear of confronting this woman, and you need to work out why that is.

(4) You ask how different your life would have been if you had stood up to her before you got married. The obvious answer is "Very". Your life still can be very different - but You need to ask yourself what You want out of your life - and then using willpower, discipline and enthusuiasm start carving that life out for yourself. You had a Life before - its never too late to get it back - but only if you really Wake Yourself Up (no-one's is going to do that for you).

(5) PS "tolerant" on the scale you've described is not really very nice at all; nor is it admirable. Its fearful, weak and lazy. Forget Earl Grey and start smelling the coffee.

S&A

[Bagheera]

Greetings, again, Earl Grey (and yes, I got the name reference right away);

I know that you came here seeking answers regarding how to restart your now 12-years dead sex-life with your current wife. But rather than focus our attentions on her, and what you might suggest to her, we have instead put the spot-light on *you*. What's with that? A few points in answer:

(1) The lack of sex in a marriage is almost invariably a *symptom* of a MUCH larger problem, or set of problems in the relationship. In order to fix the Sex-Starved Marriage, you almost always have to dig much deeper, and ask *both* spouses to begin the long, difficult task of making significant changes to BOTH themselves AND to how they interract with their partner.

(2) If you were to hand a copy of MWD's The Sex-Starved Marriage to your wife, or some other book that we could recommend to you, the chances are extremely thin to nil that she would even open it, much less read it, based upon all that you have described here about her. It would only make her angry and defensive. The same thing goes for suggesting that you two see a Marriage Counselor or Sex Therapist together -- she would veto that notion as well, from what you've said. Thus, the ONLY person that we suggest making changes to is YOU. Luckily, *you* are 50% of your marriage, and we can guarantee that if you start to make positive changes in yourself, it WILL have an effect on your partner and your marriage. So we start by focusing on **YOU**.

(3) It is very obvious from your posts that you have a very common ailment among men stuck in sex-starved marriage: the so-called Nice Guy Syndrome. If you don't want to take my word for it, try taking this Nice Guy assessment test. The good news is that if you work hard and put your mind to it, you CAN recover from this, and it will positively effect all aspects of your life, not *just* your sex-life. You're also in good company -- we've seen this before and those of us who talk about it here tend to be recovering Nice Guys ourselves. Even if you don't believe our assessment of you, I would challenge you to still go out and get a copy of No More Mr. Nice Guy, by Dr. Robert Glover: if it applies, great -- get to work!, and if it doesn't, you're only out a few bucks and might learn something useful anyway. If that book doesn't appeal to you, I would also recommend The Way of the Superior Man, by David Deida, although I find Dieda to be a bit heavy and abrasive at times.

In any case, you need to do some serious introspection about the relationship that you are currently in, and what YOU get out of it. Currently you feel like this:

An incident the other day had me think about something I have not in a very long time: the thought of just walking away. No warning, no threats. Just walking away, particularly when I’m told, in so many words, that I can’t be angry or display anger.

While in your last past, you shared the following:

And what I learned from the outset was that it was ultimately better to "give in" than to "stick to my guns." And what have I given up? Well, the tangible things are things like my music (she doesn't like it and so my music and my very nice stereo system are put away), my mountain climbing and hiking, my skiing (I became an accomplished snow skier between marriages), most of my photography.

Can't you see the correlation between these two statements? You have sacrificed, in order to "keep the peace," the very things that give YOU pleasure, as a person and a man. You have allowed yourself to give up the very things that make YOU happy and make your life fulfilling for **YOU**.

On the relationship front, you talk about promises and "negotiations." You have given your word that:

(1) You will remain ever faithful to your wife...no matter how she treats you.
(2) That if you find yourself straying you will disclose it to your wife immediately.
(3) No matter how bad the relationship is, no matter how trapped and unhappy you feel, you will never threaten to leave the relationship.
(4) You will not show anger or negative emotions toward your wife...ever. And,
(5) You have (silently) agreed to a completely sexless marriage for 12 years now.

Earl....what did YOU get out of these "negotiations"? I don't see that you got anything worthwhile, and instead you have agreed to give up all power in the relationship and hand it over to your wife. You have also given ALL of your masculininity (masculine energy, strength of will and character, decisiveness, and sexiness) over to your wife also --> she wears the pants in the relationship (and I'd be willing to bet that she secretly resents it). And yet she still 'beats you up' over the last time you actually tried to stand up to her...21 year ago (!!!), and makes you feel guilty, even over THAT.

Earl, what I see is a man who will do anthing, absolutely ANYTHING, in order to avoid conflict. You would rather obediently hold out your hands for the shackles to be placed on them, rather than do *anything* that would threaten the so-called "peace." And in the process, you are miserable and feel like you have lost yourself and all sources of happiness....and, in fact, you have -- you handed it all over voluntarily.

Earl: REAL relationships between men and women, *healthy* relationships, include *conflict* and conflict resolution. Spouses become angry at each other from time to time, they argue, they bicker, and they fuss --> but they do so in a non-destructive fashion that doesn't do damage to their close relationship, they resolve the conflicts (in varying degrees), and they move on and keep on loving each other. Healthy marriages are *hard work*, and don't "just happen" --> they have to be purposefully strived for by BOTH partners.

The FIRST step in your journey towards a healthy relationship is to start living your life for YOURSELF again, your OWN happiness, and to do so in a self-determined fashion. If your spouse disapproves, that's HER choice, and not yours -- let her disapprove. Take back your manhood and start doing the things that make YOU happy again, not to the detriment of your other responsibilities, but in moderate, healthy doses. Decide who YOU want to be, for a change, and then start reaching for it.

-- B.

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

My router is acting screwy again, so I really can't depnd upon messages being sent. That being said....

The possibility that I've made a huge mistake is something I am considering after all this time. It does not feel like "investing time," it feels like marking time, like waiting for the clock to run out...which one of us dies first.

Don't get me wrong. This is not a relationship where there is no affection. There is; there is just nothing sexual about it. It looks more like a professional business relationship...to the point where I keep my personal feelings to myself because I have found expressing those are somehow very dangerous.

What I can say is that at some time in the past there was an acknowledgement on my part, that nothing I did mattered any longer, just so long as my behavior was not so outrageous that it could not be ignored. I can't remember what triggered that thought process, whether it was the fallout from her final decision on our sex life or something else.

As for why time has passed? Well, there have family medical circumstances that have had as much to do with staying in the marriage as anything else. But the are other factors that have played in as well. My losing my job in 1997 and it taking nearly a year to find a new position in a market that was in transition and "oversupplied." I took a substantial pay cut of more than one-third of my previous pay just to secure a position. My cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment.

Her mother suffered a stroke in 98 that left her mother incapacitated until she died in 2003. Just before her mother died, my mother became critically ill and spent the next 5-1/2 years in a nursing home until she died earlier this year. Then there have been a string of health issues for my wife and a job change for her that, while stressful, has reversed our finacial positions in the marriage.

Maybe it was my optimism and the fact that even through what seemed a constant struggle, we kept working stuff out. Whenever I was ready to walk away, there would be some special effort put forward to resolve the crisis until the next one arose. And there is always my willingness to suffer in silence, though I was not so willing to be silent in the beginning. I feel I eventually was just beat down into survival mode.

I was told (by her) that I was "passive-agressive" (what the hell did that mean? I had never heard of that before) and a whole string of other problems about my outlook on life, childraising, and whole host of other things that I, essentially, had to change. Well you see them, all those things that had me be "larger than life" are now gone, just a distant memory.

The one thing I managed to keep intact was my parenting and I did that by limiting my son's contact with her. That was pretty tough and we all made it through.

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

No, you aren't missing something. I allowed myself to be "outmanuevered" and by choosing to honor the promises I made, I have what appears to me to be a no-win situation.

[Walking]

Earl Gray

For our own lives, there are some no-win situations, and what that sometimes means is that we have to lose and start again.

Success is falling down 7 times and getting up 8.

This is a Divorce Busting/Marriage Saving sight, but I am divorced, and even though going through the divorce and losing what was then my whole life was the worst thing I've ever been through, I thank God every day I had the strength to get out from under a relationship that was probably never the best place for me to be.

I have a life now. I live alone, I make my own decisions, I have amazing adventures, I take the lovers who meet my criteria and I firmly believe there is a partner out there for me who is at the same stage of spiritual and emotional development that I am and I'm going to have a fantastic committed relationship with them.

It's not a no-win situation, but it's one where you are going to have to be brave in order to fulfil your dreams for yourself.

Take care

[DanceQueen]

Earl Grey....hm....yours posts are perplexing. Bagheera and others have given you stellar feedback and advice, yet you just keep spouting out the same information to them. Are you actually reading and taking in their advice? And if not, maybe you are not actually here seeking advice, but just to vent. That's fine, too. Many of us here are just journaling sometimes to help ourselves see our situation in words, to help us organize our thoughts. Maybe that's what you are doing. But you sure don't seem to actually want any advice, nor take it in when it is given.

Perhaps you can explain for us what you really would like here on this board?

DQ

[TeaEarlGreyHot]

First, congratulations on your unpcoming wedding.

Second, what do you consider "stellar feedback and advice" and by what measure or yardstick do you make that assessment?

Third, I disagree that I keep "spouting the same information to them" or to you. If you read what I wrote, my first post deals with my current marriage, the second post deals mostly with my first marriage and the other two posts of substance fill in some of the missing points. Over a period that really spans from 1980 to present.

While I recognize that it is only a story (and a terribly incomplete one at that just as a map is a very incomplete representation of geography), do you or anyone think that they could give stellar feedback and advice if I pared it down to "I have not had sex with my wife for more than 12 years." and just left it at that?

And finally, to complete this Reader's Digest version of a reply, I am writing to have the words written down, to create a version of an occurring world to see if I have really missed something and to see if there is something "outside of the box" that I have not considered. In a medium such as this, how we occur for each other is only given through the words we write and those we read. We are literally our word.

More later, now that I'm back for a few days.

[DanceQueen]

"Second, what do you consider "stellar feedback and advice" and by what measure or yardstick do you make that assessment?"

LOL! The fact that you would even say this tells me all I need to know about your situation.

Tea, this will be my last post to you. Good luck with whatever it is you are trying to accomplish.

DQ

[spellfire]

On the subject of tea...

The Japanese master Nan-in gave audience to a professor of philosophy. Serving tea, Nan-in filled his visitor's cup, and kept pouring. The professor watched the overflow until he could restrain himself no longer: "Stop! The cup is over full, no more will go in." Nan-in said: "Like this cup, you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup."

Being a critical thinker is a fine thing, and I also understand you have your story to tell, but at this early stage I highly recommend being as open as you can to the advice you receive. The whole picture will reveal itself to us as the discussion progresses.