I Live In a Sexless Marriage
I have been married for 7, almost 8 years now and most of my marriage has been sexless. I mean a year of wonderful, fiery, passionate dating did not warn me of what was to come.
Almost from the start, our marriage was devoid of sex - Except during hour honeymoon, I think it dropped to like twice a month and then once every few months and nothing for the past 2 years since the birth of our daughter.
I had always attributed this lack of sex drive on my husband's part to his terribly busy schedule which obviously was draining on him. I should mention however that 6 months into our marriage, he had a brief affair with his first love/college sweetheart. He was deeply repentant however, and blamed his misjudgment on all the stress of adjusting to marride life. He had a fantasy about married life(as probaby all men who marry in their mid-twenties) and he said he was strung out by the starkly contrasting reality. I think we stopped having sex for about a year after that because we were both devastated by the affair and were recovering. Our marriage after that was ok - not ecstatic but quiet bordering on boring, on hindsight. But hardly as sex - Now that I think back, how did I put up with it? Well I guess I was feeling like I did not miss sex very much...we were more like buddies than a couple. But I was coping...He was wonderful every other way and I guess since marrying, I sort of mirrored my hubby's behavior and tendencies- I was not feeling very sexual.
And 2 months ago, I discovered he had had an emotional affair with his coworker while we worked in different countries for the past 2 years. I discovered this just as we started living together again. In the process of talking about the affair, hubby admitted that for a long time, he had been unhappy about our marriage and felt that the passion had died a long time ago. He says he realizes he had kept all the discontent bottled inside because he felt guilty about the last affair and felt he did not deserve to rock the boat by talking about how unhappy he was.
He says he deeply cares still about me and our child and would like to give our marriage a real shot. I am however pessimistic about this as how can a marriage without passion ever be revived? I have recovered from the hurt and anger over the emotional affair, but I find that like him, I do not feel any sort of physical attraction for my husband. So the feeling is mutual there at least. I care for him a great deal, but I feel the situation is so hopeless. Husband says that to him, sexual attraction is linked to emotional attachment...and tha ahhh feeling he used to have for me is gone, although he cares for my well-being a great deal and there is nothing in the world he would not do for me
(except have sex with me, apparently).
I guess love died a long time ago in our marriage and we were in denial. Is there hope for us, we want to make this marriage work, believe it or not. Would seeing a therapist help?
I feel like if all the advice we will be getting from the therapist will be "take a weekend trip together" or "buy new lingerie", it is not worth out time, as our problems are very real and very serious.
Please, anyone, any word of wisdom will be greatly appreciated!!!
