Thank you for your posting...it hit a nerve. I am 61 and have not had sex with my wife in over ten years. We went to several therapists, but all my wife heard was everything was my fault. I have not held her accountable. I just need to decide what actions I will take next. She needs to feel some of the emotional distress I have been struggling with for over a decade.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mythryl1969
Not to be mean, but...
If you accept being treated a certain way, you communicate that you agree with the treatment. The longer you accept it the more you reinforce that perception until you get to a point where the person giving you that treatment would be legitimately shocked to hear you object.
Please keep in mind that I am not talking about the absolute morality of how you are being treated - for instance, wife abuse is never okay no matter how long a woman 'accepts' it - but it is an undeniable truth that part of what helps perpetuate that cycle is the inability of the victim to break themselves free from the abuse.
Make no mistake: Short of some type of medical development or physical handicap, having your wife refuse sex with you for even a month is a serious presumption on your relationship; when you start talking about multiple months or even years you are absolutely talking about emotional abuse and a rejection of the fundamentals of a true marital relationship. You aren't a husband and wife at that point regardless of whatever reasons that you continue to cling to the titles. Kids, economics, whatever it is or however significant the reason is. Remember that ideally marriage precedes all of those things and establishes the foundation for supporting those things, not the other way around. A physically intimate relationship is absolutely one of the cornerstones of a marriage and it separates 'just friends' from 'lovers', and if two people are not lovers then they have no business being married. If sex wasn't important to marriage, after all, then why the hell would anyone have EVER cared about sex before marriage anyway?
In the end, it is up to you to decide how much abuse you are willing and able to tolerate. Just verbalizing your objections is meaningless if you don't back them up with action because your actions will always speak loudest. PuffyNips story is a perfect example of that principle in action; as long as she thought he was still just talking nothing changed. It was only when he proved that it was more than talk that she was forced to decide.
And yes, she might decide the sex isn't worth it and dump you. But then if that's true, you aren't losing your wife; you aren't even getting dumped. All that is happening then is that your roommate is moving out.
|