giotto Posted November 25, 2009 Posted November 25, 2009 I definitely agree that one's thinking needs to be more along the lines of "how do I fix this?" vs, whose fault is it? Reading in here, it does seem that in many cases, perhaps even a majority, that simple consistent loving care - consideration and respect, go a long way. Sometimes resentments make this difficult, but trying to take the high road and be the one to take charge in correcting things seems to be the most successful approach. In my case (since this is a survey), I do not think that there is any fix. We were sexless for years, I had a conversation in which I basically said I could not live like that and offered a choice of working on it or calling it a day. We worked on it, went to counseling, got up to 3x a week of quickie impersonal sex that focused on him, counselor became "incompetent" after pointing out my H's issues...and so we bailed on counseling and over time, gradually, the 3x a week became 2x a month...and quicker and more impersonal... I tried to bring up the subject again but H tried to insist that it was about my insecurity and suspicions of infidelity, which did not actually exist outside of reality (he had an EA a few years ago, and yeah, I took exception to it). His position was that we did not have any sexual issues because he was satisfied and did not want to "be with" anyone else. Bottom line is, whether with me or in general, he prefers masturbation. If I try to talk about it, he says I am an oversexed pervert...and at some level, he seems to try to deny the masturbation. "I hardly ever do that" when in fact it is practically daily. He paints himself as morally superior for his "faithfulness", but I disagree with him that what we are practicing can be called "sexual fidelity". It is at best a technicality. He asserts that because he has no sexual needs or issues, that my bringing up the subject is just "creating problems" as though for the sheer sake of drama. Anyway, I recently opted out of sex myself. It just became tiresome, pointless and at times humiliating to engage in. I have tried everything I can think of to bolster his ego, optimize my personal appearance, and connect with him emotionally. When he rejected me sexually, he said it was because I am "too mean". When I finally rejected him sexually, he said it was because I am "too mean". Ironically, the only time he seems to try to please me is when I withdraw emotionally. And if I am really good at withdrawing emotionally, I go for a while where I really don't care. As soon as I try to re-engage, though, we are right back to me being criticized NO MATTER WHAT I DO. This was really brought home to me the other day when we were having what I thought was a normal, mutually interactive conversation. He stopped in the middle and informed me that I was not showing enough interest in what he had to say. I was like, WTF? The conversation went on, and a few minutes later, he told me that I was being needy and obsessive and talking too much. I had not, in fact, changed my tone or level of participation much at all. Sometimes, you just can't win. I have a lot of things going on right now, but appears I am heading for divorce eventually. I am a bit older (51) and probably looking at a single life - and death - if this happens, but I feel like the walking dead a lot of the time now, so what the hell... there you go... things get so complicated and twisted and there is so much baggage that it's impossible to have a clean slate... at this stage, the only solution is to have your brain erased and restart from zero...
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