Thank you very, very much Yankee23Fan.
Please keep us updated on your counseling sessions and how everything works out. Good luck.
Thanks, I will.We had a very long conversation just the two of us last night. Probably the deepest conversation we have had in years. She came out and said that she just doesn't need sex and it's not important to her.
Allow me to say the exact opposite of what the counselor will say.
So what?When you got married you did not promise to love and honor and cherish her and then have her do the same with the caveat that when it comes to your needs if they aren't important to her than she really doesn't need to do anything? That's a unilateral contract if I've ever seen one. Look at it this way:
1. You have a religious marriage. A spiritual bond - whatever. Under that scenario if you are living your life as you should be, a marriage is a sacrifical agreement. Your needs are secondary to hers and her needs are secondary to yours. There are defined roles of a husband and wife that even with society's tug shouldn't alter that much. At its core, it's a symbiotic relationship. If both parties don't work together in the manner they are intended and required to do, the relationship suffers and neither is able to do their job. Barring physical pain or illness there is simply no excuse at all for a wife to try to claim that sex isn't important, she doesn't need it and therefore you suffer with no alternative because having sex outside of marriage is wrong and you have made a promise to not do that.
2. You have a secular marriage. For all intents and purposes it's a contractual obligation. In order for a contract to be enforcable and binding you need several things: offer and acceptance, mutual assent, and sufficient consideration. When you break down what the law has done to marriage, this is what it is when you take out the spiritual religious aspects.
So, you have an offer - you asked her to marry you. Marriage is a relationship whereby you pledge to mutual honor, love and cherish each other. In making that offer you are offering a contract to be formed. In return for her acceptance of the contract, you are offering to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish; from this day forward until death do us part. There are several aspects to the offer that need be accepted. To have and to hold means this is the only relationship upone which you will act in this manner. In our terms here, you pledge to no longer have intimate relations with another woman. You pledge to do that in every circumstance that arises from the day you take the oath until you die.
In accepting the offer, she likewise pledges the same thing. Unless she told you when putting the ring on that by doing so you were going to only have sex 3 times a year and you bought in anyway, then it's on her at this point.
Then comes the mutual assent. Again, unless she tried to alter the terms of the agreement, the black letter stuff is the agreement. She will meet your needs just as you will meet her needs. There is no caveat that says in the future if she finds one of your needs unimportant to her she can just ignore them while enforcing the rest of the contract. It's all or it should be nothing.
So you offered, she accepted and you both mutually assented to the terms, acted on them and in doing so took a good faith step towards completing them. Now she wants to alter the agreement without negotiation or reimbursement for damages. You are still expected to carry out each and every term of the agreement, with every single little modification she has made over the years, while she is specifically refusing to do so because the terms she has to comply with are just not that important to her. That is a breach of contract giving rise to voiding the transaction, reimbursements and damages, whether actual, compensatory or anticipatory.
In the end, again, it's on her.
We need to knock this nonsense off in marriage. Sex is not a game, it is not a chore and it is not a doggy treat if your a good boy to be used more like a weapon that anything close to a wilfull gift. I had a discussion once with a female client who was filing divorce. The basic reason why she was filing was that she complained that her husband didn't love her anymore. She basically told me that they stopped having sex. It's not my job to inspect that type of reason in preparing a complaint but the talk we have is always a few hours long so I end up getting the story anyway. It turns out that she just lost interest - too much to do around the house, kids, he worked long hours and didn't make her feel special, she deserved nice vacations, yada yada. What got her furious in the end was that she found his porn collection and basically considered it cheating, even though she wasn't very willing to have sex anyway. So I asked her a question because I was curious - I asked her if she knew why he was watching porn. He's a pig was the basic answer. I said, maybe, but if you notice any of those films or pictures, the woman is willingly doing it (granted there are specific types where that isn't the case but the general rule of thumb is, in the end, there is a woman willing to do this). My point to her was, for many of us (at least me and basically every man I've ever talked to about this topic) the desire and the turn on - the basic need beyond the physical pleasure - is a woman who wants to do it.
We hear it all the time in various talks on the topic - I wish she would initiate more is the usual way it is handled. Why? Well, first, we hate begging. We aren't dogs and the act of begging gets tiresome and creates emotions that don't help in a marriage. But the fact is that we married the woman for a reason. We want her, and it feels damn good when we know she wants us. The 'clinical' variant of that is in the Five Love Languages - most men fall into the category of wanting physical intimacy as a sign of love. But the deeper understanding of that is that they don't just want the physical act of sex itself. A warm kiss or touch out of the blue. A passing carress on the stairs while you are running to your appointments. The actual feeling that, wow, there is a woman that wants
me. Pornography falsifies that feeling and gives it in spades. Why would it be a turn on to see another man getting satisfied by a woman? I mean, really, on that level pornography makes no sense. But men don't enjoy it for that reason, nor do many probably even consider it. They see a willing woman. That is the turn on - add your personal fetish thereafter.
I know that one of the wives that leads a bible study in our church for wives has touched upon that very subject. I've talked to her about it. When the girls start complaining about their husbands, the first thing she asks them is if they are meeting their husbands needs. After you get past the "he's a pig, I'm too tired, there's no time, why do they want it so much," things she hears back, she basically uses the porn example to prove her point - your men want you and just as much if not moreso, they want you to want them. I know she's saved a marriage or two (I wasn't so lucky with my client. They got divorced anyway).
But none of this is fair game when we talk about this topic. We are pigs, we want sex too much, she isn't a sex slave, there are chorse to do, you aren't that important. Bull****. Ask any man what he would prefer - his wife to have to come to bed basically kicking and screaming, or walking up behind him wearing one of his collared shirts and nothing else and taking his hand to the bedroom? Guess which one wins 99.99% of the time?
So, in a marriage where she uses it as a weapon, you've already been hit. Not only is it a weapon but there is no willingness at all. There is no desire to meet your needs. There is no connection as to what makes you tick, but god help you if you don't do everything you can to make her tick no matter what. You beg, she feels guilty, the cycle repeats. It's not an act of love at that point, its a physical contest. It then becomes a mental war and an unspoken degredation in the relationship that can be solved with anywhere from 5-50 minutes of physical exercise that there isn't a single person this country can't use.
So, if you are religious, she failing her God-given responsibility to you. If you're secular, she's breached the contract or is in anticipatory breach and you have suffered damages that are clearly ascertainable. Either way, it's on her. If you are loving your wife, providing for her as best you can to meet actual needs and not selfish expensive wants that are unimportant, being faithful, caring for your family and killing yourself early all to please her, it's her problem, not yours.
In my house, we had almost a little issue last night. It had been about 4 days. I wasn't home for one of them and she was getting over a cold from the previous week so, that's fine. I'm not a camel but I'm not a rabbit either. She has off of work this week and is home all day. So she cleaned. All day. By the time I got home, my son and his friends had done a good job of destroying his room and driving her nuts. So she initially said, basically, "Really? You know what I went through today. I need a break." My response was, basically, well, I worked all day, paid the mortgage, bought the food, got the AC fixed, paid for your car, dealt with several crazy clients, 2 judges that hate me and an adversary who should be disbarred, all while getting work done on my 150 files and, oh yeah, covering my bosses files while he is on vacation. I missed lunch, and feel like I've been run over by a bus. Oh, and look, I made dinner when I got home - not because I had too, but because I wanted too. " She realized I was right. And frankly did fine for herself.
I get woman are stressed. They have pressures just like we do. Being a mom is the most difficult job in the world. Working at the same time is even more difficult. I'm not sitting on a throne getting cooled off with grape leaves every day either. Either the most important thing in your marriage is your spouse's happiness or it isn't. If you can't make each other happy, won't meet each other's needs and feel like the other person's requests are really just unimportant, then what exactly is the marriage? It sounds more like some kind of warped slavery.