That's a good start It's so hard, but when we look to start fixing ourselves, things start getting better. I hope your wife will be ready to accept the man you are now walking towards becoming. And if she doesn't, then you'll be able to stand and talk to her as only a man is able to. Truth, compassion, peace and more can all be yours. By reading your reply, it looks like there were other issues that crept into your relationship before things took a turn for the worse. Maybe some of that was her fault, maybe some of that was yours. Relational problems rarely belong to just one person, yet it almost always takes one person to stand up and do what's right to begin the healing. You'll get there, but first, recover yourself. At some point, even before things are completely better, you can ask her for forgiveness. It's part of the healing process. When you've done your part to correct yourself, you can ask for forgiveness. If she's willing to forgive you, great. If not, great. Either way, just by asking for forgiveness you are moving things forward. Why? It's an act of humility, and when earnestly done from the correct posture, starts to change things. Some people may say that she would have a right to not forgive you. They are technically correct, but the spirit of things goes deeper than right or wrong. If she doesn't, and you've honestly done your best, then you can rest with peace knowing that it isn't entirely about you. At some point, people have to learn to forgive each other. Take this lady as example. You just keep on going, and even if things don't get better at least you will.
Perhaps it has nothing to do with physical desire or attraction at all. My husband is still very much in shape and I've never lost my desire for him or felt unattracted to him, but that doesn't negate the pain of betrayal trauma or the lack of trust that his decades-long P addiction has created. When I am resistant to and fearful of intimacy, it's for those reasons, not because I don't think he looks good. Obviously, being attracted to your spouse is a great thing, but it's no where near as great as feeling safe with them...feeling heard and understood and respected. There are many times when I'm dying to express my attraction to him, to initiate intimacy with him, but the pain and fear from betrayal trauma won't let me. It's a lack of feeling safe, knowing how many times he put his addiction ahead of my heart and well-being...
You mention working out and staying in shape as if that's a magic bullet to being attractive to your wife. From a woman's perspective, I can tell you that my physical attraction and desire for my husband all but disappeared and was replaced with sexual aversion once I found out about his betrayal and did not even begin to return until at least six months (a comparatively short amount of time on the scale of a whole human life) of total sobriety into his recovery. You have continued to regularly relapse and cheat on your wife. That's just....not attractive? Nothing about that is sexy or inspiring of arousal. When my husband's use started ticking up, his behavior changed without him realizing it and my desire for him as a man, even without knowing what he was doing, decreased drastically because porn use and masturbation and cheating and withdrawing to other people for sexual satisfaction has side effects and insidious fingers in all areas of your life. It's off-putting. As a woman, why on earth would I be attracted to anyone who was going to other women/men/people?? There's nothing arousing about that, regardless of visible abs, etc.
And I would honestly add to this that if my husband relapsed at this point, that would be totally it for my attraction to him. If he can do that after seeing the amount of hurt it caused, that's an instant deal breaker for me sexually. We might live together for the kids or to have more comfortable lives, but I would never find him attractive again. Just....nope. I would move on and look for a relationship with someone who wanted me and loved me enough that they couldn't do that to me, because THAT is sexy.
Married 30 years, been together 35. From 45-50 my husband was in the best shape of his life. Super attractive. But, as soon as he got home from work, I left. If he walked into a room I was in, I’d leave. He would try and have a conversation with me, I’d give one word answers and stare blankly at him. I wanted nothing to do with him. He could have his porn. I knew I just had to wait until my daughter graduated and I’d be free. 4 years ago, he began recovery, and no he didn’t just come on these forums and journal. He started going to group, got a counselor who specializes in sex addiction, got accountability partners, stopped all gaming and alcohol, retired early from a job he loved but was high stress, he changed his life to support his recovery. His recovery changed him. He did emdr for his childhood trauma ( highly recommend), does neurofeedback for his adhd. He is not the man he was 4 years ago. Today, I love being with him, I love laughing with him, I’m healing from his betrayal but I’m nowhere close to trusting him. Other than how you look, what have you done to change the way your wife sees and relates to you? Did you suffer from Ed/De when you were having sex? This in general, has a huge negative impact on your wife, even if she says otherwise( we don’t want to hurt your feelings so tell you it’s ok) on top of your sex addiction and subsequent betrayal, she has deep wounds regarding sex and she trusted you with that very area of her life and you betrayed her. She may never want to have sex with you again. Definitely not while you are active in addiction to other people.
Yeah you are most-likely right, I could be suffering from a different issue. I just have a hard time understanding what it is at times.
Addiction has deeper roots. When I observe my own pattern, I see that when ever I get sad or depressed, I have an extremely high tendency to relapse. Observe how your addiction pattern is. What makes you sad? And stop looking for validation from another person. In my experience, if a woman thinks you are a bad person, then it's extremely hard to change her mind. So stop trying to. I have heard this a lot, that "a woman needs to feel secure to love". With a male brain, I have a hard time understanding what that really means. Here's what my male brain has understood so far. An addict needs to fix his addiction first, before trying to mend any relationship. Then learn to find happiness in yourself, by yourself. Smile. Yeah, practice smiling. Learn to be happy doing your own thing. Start to show love and affection to yourself first. And then start to project the same love and respect to everything around you. Whether they love you back or not, is not important. Easily said than done, but atleast start somewhere. Stop looking for love and affection from another person or external things. Do I love myself? Am I proud of my achievements? Do I admire the person I have become? Are you happy with those answers?
@hope4healing I know I am probably sounding like I am doubling down here but I understand that @NewJohnQ is struggling in marriage and trying to keep his physical apperance together in hopes of satisfying his wife, I honestly relate to that, because I try to put as much effort as I can in how healthy I am and how I look. Yet... I just feel like women aren't drawn to me, which I know is bs because I have recieved complements from women, yet I can never wrap my head around what they mean, when they say "You're cute," or "You're adorable", because that is applied to many different contexts that I can't take a hint.
I have a lot wrapped up in needing to feel desired by someone. Frankly anyone. I suspect some childhood abuse plays a role, or I’ve sexualized my need for male companionship. I have a lot of journaling I need to do about all this.
Journaling is an excellent way to unwrap your thoughts. You are on the right track. The more you know about yourself, the more you will know about the world around you. You are on an awesome path my friend. Keep going.
I understand this, too. I don't mean there's anything wrong with wanting to stay attractive to your spouse. All I was trying to say is that his physical appearance may very well be satisfying to his wife...as my husband's is to me. But, as is also the case for me, that is not the most important part of a desire for intimacy with him, and in fact, it really seems insignificant without the sense of safety and trust. What I mean is, he can workout all the time and look fantastic, but without working on the other more important aspects (rebuilding trust and creating safety), there will likely be very little progress with intimacy. That's a good thing. I think it's important for people to like the way they look, but is that the one thing about yourself that you hope will draw women to you? I know that physical attraction matters, but I think for most women, that alone is not enough, at least not for a long-term relationship. I think some men get so caught up in wanting to look good that they sometimes forget that there are so many other qualities about them that are equally or more important to most women. (I'm not implying that's what you're doing.) IMO, I would rather be with someone who makes me feel respected and cherished even if they weren't the best looking instead of someone who looked amazing but didn't make my emotional well-being a priority.
I think addicts especially struggle to understand that attraction for people outside of an addiction that focuses very much on a specific kind of look (porn itself shapes your arousal template and makes it restrictive to very specific visual aspects of a person's physical appearances, even if you don't realize your template has narrowed), what you're attracted to is very fluid and contextual. I find my husband incredibly physically attractive. I get aroused looking at him throughout the day or seeing him across the room. At this point in his recovery, I am excited to have sex pretty much every day, multiple times a day. He hates the way he looks and has many physical features that in sex-focused culture and media have been excluded as being attractive. He's just under 5'7", he's been balding since his late teens, he does not work out and doesn't have big muscle mass, he thinks his nose is too big and he has a smaller chin and that he's "pudgy". It's really hard for him to believe, but it's absolutely true (he's not on these boards and doesn't know I'm here, so I'm not trying to make him feel good) that those things are things that I find incredibly attractive and PREFER and that preference was built out of having a good, safe relationship with him to explore and build a sexual template. I go to the gym and am around muscle dudes every morning and there's just....nothing for them or anything about the way they look. Guys taller than him are off-putting at this point. My husband's look is literally my sexual preference, in part because he is the context where I eventually started building safety and felt loved and I literally cannot think of a single person, actor, etc, that I feel even a 1/10000th of that attraction for. I can appreciate that there are male actors who work hard to have a specific look. I know that's a lot of work and dedication, but I feel absolutely no sexual admiration for it. I feel the same way about them as I do about the actresses who put in a ton of work to have a specific look. It means that all of my desire and sexual outlet are directed square at him. That feels nice to me to be married to my literal wet dream and I would never risk changing that. It feels nice to him and I'm sure he'd be devastated if I went and messed that up with media designed to get a dopamine response and alter that. THIS IS WHAT MANY WOMEN, PROBABLY YOURS TOO, WANT FROM YOU.
First, I don't have a woman because I am the wife. I've been married to a PA (who's currently sober but not really in recovery) for over 27 years. I understand and agree with all of this. That's exactly how I feel about my husband, and I have no interest in any other guys no matter what they look like either. All my sexual desire is for him and it always has been as long as we've been together. Even during the times when he was very active in his addiction and I avoided sexual intimacy all together, I didn't think about or want to be with anyone else. In no way was I trying to diminish the importance of sexual attraction to your spouse. I was simply saying that, by itself, sexual attraction is likely not enough to repair intimacy problems in a marriage that was damaged by years of P addiction and/or other acts of infidelity. The rebuilding of trust and a sense of safety, in addition to a physical desire/sexual attraction, are all necessary for intimacy to return to the relationship.
Yup, sorry! I didn't quote you to respond to you, I quoted because I liked what you said and wanted to add on.
I will admit that I do struggle with this, I get caught up in making sure I am not fat and somewhat muscular, I also try to figure out tasks and goals for myself too especially at work, and take almost every opportunity that comes my way, not only for money, but also experience and mental endurance. @hope4healing What you said about building trust and creating safety, I honestly feel like I struggle with this, not because I want to take advantage of women, but because I most definitely want a woman that feels safe with me, and a feeling of insurance that she knows that I cherish her no matter our struggles. Either this or I am certain that I mentioned this in some of my other posts. I could also be doing this because I am quite shy around women and often sensitive when it comes to sex/dating/marriage or any other romance related stuff. So much so that I often find myself having abnormal thoughts foreign to most relationship, which I am unsure are healthy or not.
Hey NewJohnQ, You got a lot of traction from your post, after reading through the comments I went back to see if you had a question, but it appears that you only stated a situation. So if your question is, can a married person be lonely?, for sure the answer is yes. I'm in a similar situation, but my sex life with my wife is not frequent enough for my libido and it is not very fulfilling when we have sex. My question to you and I is what are we willing to tolerate and why should we tolerate anything less than a good situation? I can't answer that for you, but for me, I'm always hopeful that I can improve our sex life. The biggest problem for me is getting a good streak going. We have sex and then my wife will become sick with a cold, ear infection, or a 100 other things that keep us apart for 1-2 weeks. So I tolerate it as I try to figure out how to have a sex life with someone who can possibly make me sick, and it's not her fault, it's just the way it is. The other issue is that I need to spice it up. We shared some kinks, but as we age she is not into it as much. That's a shame, because our kinky fun was great for us and to remove that from our sex life has been hard on me. My hope is to get a streak going and bring back the kinks. Fingers crossed for her good health and better communication from me to get back on track. FYI - It was easy to ignore the long breaks between sex when I had a daily PMO problem. Again, one of the benefits of no PMO is the opportunity to work on oneself and make a better life.
I love and care about her (as much I can love anyone, I’m a pretty damaged human). l am growing to accept not having sex with her. But I need to determine what that means to me.
Good luck, you will figure it out. Because of my obsession with sex, I would not be able to be in a celibate marriage unless one or both of us had a physical aliment that prevented sex. At 64-years-old I still feel like I have the capabilities to enjoy sex for at least another 10-years. It's actually a reason to take care of my diet, health, and physical well-being. Enough about me, hope you find a resolution that works for you.
Sex is still very important to me as well. I’m only a few years younger than you and I don’t know how to be celibate yet.
Yup, maybe sex is meant to be one of the most important things in a persons life, after all it's what keeps the species on earth. I'm to the age in my life where I'm a bit more self-centered and thinking I don't have much more time left on earth, so I'm going to do what's best for me. That can always be difficult when our choices involve other people. Wishing you the best.
