Mel, thank you for sharing that. I will pass that directly along to him.

Gimble

Gimble,

Perhaps the issue is being framed incorrectly. Let's conjecture that this is not about what is "fair" or who did what to whom with regard to her affair, and his ONS and subsequent affair in the marriage.

What if this is about his values. Some have mentioned the Madonna complex. I'm thinking he fears being compared to another man. I'm thinking if he feels he is too old for the Harley's, that he is losing some self-confidence in his abilities, and that coupled with age will in fact drop the desire...way down.

Also knowing now that his W is capable of lying to him for 30 years, really affects his confidence to see and feel things.

I would recommend that you talk to him along those lines. In short this is not really about his W, but about himself and his fears. He actually seems to have many fears if you look back on what you said and given his affairs. Which fear is controling the game right now?

Ask him WHY he had the ONS, and the affair on his W. I'll bet if he is honest with himself he feared something, maybe just not getting "enough". But, it seems to me the key is for him to identify what he "fears". His W is a good woman, their sex life is/was on the up tick. She loves him and wants the best for him. What is it he fears? Could be now that he knows she is a sexual woman, he fears he cannot keep up with her, and that coupled with the KNOWLEDGE that she is capable of having an affair and not tell him or he suspect, causes a real fear of commitment on his part.

So focus on that part is my recommendation.

JL

Maybe yes, maybe no. When the parts start to go west for various chemical reasons, the first fade out is during relationships, not during self inflicted pleasures or even "involuntary biological seizures." Sometimes this can be interpreted as a failure to connect with partner since otherwise the parts seem to still be working ok.

Just for the record.

Larry

Wow, I really feel sorry for his wife. He sounds very controlling and manipulative. All he's doing is using her pre-marital affair to deflect attention away from his marital affair so he doesn't have to take responsibility for it. And of course his affair was worse. It happened AFTER they married. Hers happened before marriage when he was also not monogamous and therefore had not made a commitment to her. As far as I can see, she did nothing to require forgiveness from him at all. If she was my friend, I'd tell her to kick him to the curb and go find someone who doesn't have so many hangups.

Now now AP. You made a good point, then:


Tsk tsk. You haven't kicked your spouse to the curb and you don't want to be kicked to the curb for what you have done, right?

That said, I do remember cruisegonebad and her situation and I finally told both of them husband was a complete jerk and she needed to go find a human being to have a relationshp with. So it can be that be a route, but only after trying real hard to take a different path.

Oh, and husband didn't like me a lot. And he was the ONLY one on here who has gotten my wife mad enough to roast. Otherwise, she just reads a bit and goes on about her business. It was a similar situation to this one.

larry

Was he tasty?

ROTFLMAO

Only if you like toast. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Semi private joke folks. Fugitaboutit.

Larry

LOL Larry. I was just playing with you.

Larry -- actually Cruise and I are still lurking here. We are about 3 yrs and 3 mos into this and still no resolution. We have been through much counseling, etc. The one thing I have the most difficulty getting others to understand is that the 7-year lie about Cruise's A really crushed me to the point I may never recover. I'm sorry you consider me a jerk - I consider myself one who is looking for answers to what may be an unanswerable question. I will never find the words to help you understand and you clearly gave up listening long ago. That's OK, because we are all just an anonymous community of people in similar circumstances, not family.

I actually was going to respond to the original post when I read down the thread a little further and saw your post. What I was going to say was "maybe there are just some people whose makeup leads to this kind of pain/difficulty/'unforgiveness'." The fact that he also hid his own marital A for 15 years drives me nuts (as in why are you taking the "do as I say and not as I do" approach?). However, I can understand that he could have a deep-in-the-soul feeling that he just can't shake. Perhaps his W, being of a different makeup, just does not share the same kind of feeling regarding his 15 years of lying. That does not lessen the pain of his own feelings nor does it make them any less valid. My $0.02 worth.

Todd

Todd - there are a few posters - Nif for one on the "Just Found Out" forum that could benefit from your words.

Gimble ~ I think JL is right about the "right frame" being drawn on it

Theres a couple of interesting things that have been suggested that I think hit the mark.

He thought he knew his wife of 30 years. He thought she was the good one and he was the bad one. (I'll be willing to bet he carries some guilt for his behavior in the past). I think it is a shock to find out that she's not the "good" one - she's a messy complicated human being like the rest of us.

So, he is trying to adjust to the stranger he's been married to for 30 years..thats a HUGE factor in the BS pain and chaos that happens after D-Day. When reality gets turned inside and out, it takes a bit to adjust...

Melody is right about the timing. I certainly went through the same anger about a year after recovery started.

Then we get to the messy part about his desire for his wife.

I'd be interested to know what "frame" did he put around his wife's disinterest in sex?

If he struggled through his marriage with a distorted frame about her sexual difficulties then I would imagine that this new information has got to throw him for a loop.

What if (just guessing because of course I don't know your friend or know the details)...he thought her lack of desire was because of his 'dirty' affairs....and he felt he deserved it, only to find out that she is no better?

What if now, he is terrified that her lack of desire for him was because that other guy 30 years was just mindblowingly better, and her lack of desire was because he was pathetic in bed?

Melody,

The difference is, you were not doing those same things (he had multiple one-night stands while they lived together)and expecting different treatment.

That's the problem that I see.

committed

Gimble:

JL has hit the nail on the head better than I could or did. And BR has added to the concepts. I didn't think about your friend's self esteem issues and women. Given his serial past, that may be a lurker for sure. Both your friend and his wife are not the same people they were 30 years ago or even 15, but they do have a lot of the same fears and issues now as they did then. Some parts of us are fundamental and some change in time. Your friend's wife is not the same person in terms of sexual mores as she was 30 years ago or even a year ago. Neither is your friend, but he still has some fears he cannot process very well, it seems to me.

I still think that the fact he asked a question after all these years is a string that needs pulling, likely the biggest one when you go back into question mode.

I am curious if his wife had no interest in sex or certain sexual activities - that could be important. See BR's comment.

Because we are all trained (or should be) in Harley talk, we are conditioned to view a fact revealed to us after XX number of years to have been living a lie all that time. And I suppose that the person who didn't tell might think that way but probably not; certainly the person told would likely give that spin on it even without Harley's stuff.

Yet the hidden or real reason someone doesn't reveal is most often fear or embarrassment; after all, your friend kept his own secrets for 30 years. The person who didn't tell doesn't think in terms of living a lie, they think in terms of outcomes; if I told, I fear the outcome so I won't tell. Both reactions are very human and consistent with personal views. Simply put, most relationships don't have the level of intimacy where some private thoughts can be revealed to the partner without fear of consequences, so they are filed away, never to see the light of day except in extraordinary circumstances. I would bet that the majority of both men and women carry around some deep, dark secret they have never told their mate that interferes with true intimacy.

Certainly your friend has carried his own secrets around with him for a very, very long time. So he should be able to understand the concept if he thinks about it that way instead of just his own entitlement. Perhaps he has yet more secrets in his heart and is using his wife's revealed secret to escape intimacy.

Since Todd is here, let me use his situation as an example; his wife was seduced (gave in to her weaknesses) many years ago by someone who used the techniques clearly detailed by an ex-cruise ship crewman in their thread. That is the short version. Those techniques are part of Harley's message that even good people can fall into affairs without extraordinary protection. At the right time, right place, right person who uses those techniques, a very high percentage of women (again right time right place) would have serious difficulty resisting to protect their weaknesses.

By right time, I mean level of maturity, level of intimacy with husband and immediate hormonal levels. Right place and right person is obvious. Vulnerable women can be overwhelmed with their feelings; they handle their sexuality different from men. And women are clearly sexual beings.

So 30 years ago, your friend's wife gave in to her weaknesses. I suspect she may have known of your friend's ways at the time and may very well have had in the back of mind that she wanted to enter in marriage with him on an equal footing; get it out of her system as she thought he might be doing or just to get even as knowledge of what he was doing at the time would have hurt her. She may have even forgotten at this late date why she did it. It is real hard after 30 years to remember a time you have put behind you and why you did what you did back then.

What outcome does he want? Limbo is not a natural state unless there is something unrevealed that keeps it that way. I hope he doesn't go into limbo.

Gimble; you have a lot to chew on. Are you up for it? He fears the Harley's. And he says it is because of age. Is he really telling you everything that in his head? Somehow I doubt it. Does he understand everything in his head? That too is questionable.

And finally, one other point. Some males need the illusion of some sort of superiority to get it up. And an even moral footing with a woman intimidates them. True intimacy intimidates them.

Good luck, hope all of us have given you food for thought.

Larry

From Penalty Kill

Gimble:

Finding out about a long past A is much different than discovering that an A is ongoing. Yes, there are similarities in BS pain, but I'm not here to discuss that. The difference is in what the BS can actually do.

A BS who discovers his WS in an A can act and hopefully affect the outcome of the A. There's power in that. When you find out about a long past A, you lose that power - the power to do something to stop the A, to confront your spouse and/or the OP at the time of the A, to expose. It's just not the same - it's history, and unless you have a time machine you can't affect history.

Your friend has just become powerless in many ways.

And what's another word for power? Potency. Now he is impotent....not physically, but mentally.

My .02

Gimble, did you post this problem looking for insight to the specific question involving your friend, or were you hoping for a general discussion of this kind of problem?

I ask because I'm not sure that loss of sexual desire in the man a problem that has arisen very often here, although of course I may have simply not read threads that discussed it.


It seems fairly common for the woman to lose sexual desire - whether she's the betrayed or the betrayer, and however long ago the infidelity happened. Hardly seems surprising, given that female sexuality is so intricately bound up with security and feeling loved. But, unless men aren't reporting what's happening in the bedroom, the posts here don't suggest a widespread loss of male libido on discovery of infidelity. It does happen, certainly, but I have the impression that it's usually when there's an affair aggressively ongoing, or the OM is still dangerously in the picture. Have I got that wrong? Perhaps men would comment on their own experiences?

From this third-party viewpoint, it strikes me that the marriage you describe is one in which sex has always been part of a power game, and that the current situation is no more than a novel variant on an old theme. It looks to me as if they've long maintained some sort of power balance in the relationship using sex; him by making it clear that he fancies other women, her by withholding sexual interest in him for long periods. If that scenario is at all accurate, then it would suggest that right now, he's 'punishing' her by withholding sexual interest in her. In other words, the players have changed places but are still using the same equipment and techniques.

I doubt if either of them would be consciously aware of playing this game; it would reveal itself only in their emotional reactions and 'illogical' behaviours.

What I do know is that problems like this need outside help, from someone who knows what to look for and who can stop the players from retreating into the game under familiar stimuli. A good-quality 'outside help' does not need to be 75; I see the age objection as being an excuse deployed to maintain Player A in the game.

If a person has 'read all the books', and is still stuck, then if they REALLY, REALLY want to solve the problem, they will take whatever slender chance they can. I don't think your friend really, really wants to fix this. I suspect that fixing it would involve too much painful self-discovery, and would require him to give up familiar, comfortable, dysfunctional patterns of getting through life.

And frankly, the only person who has a hope of breaking him out of the dance is his wife - not you.

TA

Advice on this support forum is a bit like stew. Looks as if TA has thrown some meat in the pot.


I dunno if my reaction was (is) typical or not. I performed because I could and it seemed appropriate during the initial honeymoon stage of our recovery. It helped start the road to real intimacy.

But yes, something was lost and mostly refound, but not 100%, yet.

Larry

Hi, TA.

The post was for both specific and generic discussion.

I am sorry if I was not specific enough in the discussion. This man has NOT lost his libido, only his desire toward his wife. In other words, he feels that sex with her unless he feels a connection to her, is using her in a way that he is uncomfortable with.

I am sure that his previous sexual affair has something to do with that mind set, but that is the reasoning given to me.

As for the generic portion, on this forum and on other bulletin boards that I frequent, men that are able to perform sexually with their wives and choose not to (for many different reasons, not just infidelity) are not uncommon. It may not be discussed much here, but it is not uncommon.

As for the age objection, he tried to set up a call with Willard today (at my and his wife's insistence), and it seems that Dr. Harley is no longer doing consultations with his busy radio schedule.

Their previous sexual issues are of the more common variety. She wanted more emotional connection, he wanted more variety and greater frequency. The marriage started off guns blazing, then she started rejecting him, eventually to the point that he stopped trying. No games, just garden variety marital dysfunction. About as scripted as it gets.

Quote:"And frankly, the only person who has a hope of breaking him out of the dance is his wife - not you."

I am curious as to why you think his wife can solve this problem. Care to elaborate?

I told him what MEL had posted and he agrees that anger is the primary component of his "feeling", and that he wants nothing more than to get past all this. He seems pretty sick of the whole thing to me, but he is still stuck.

I will post more as I get more time with him.

Thanks,
Gimble

BrambleRose wrote:
=================================================
He thought he knew his wife of 30 years. He thought she was the good one and he was the bad one. (I'll be willing to bet he carries some guilt for his behavior in the past). I think it is a shock to find out that she's not the "good" one - she's a messy complicated human being like the rest of us
=================================================

You are correct, That knowledge combined with a book he had just read written by an author named Langley (female, I think Larry had mentioned her on a thread somewhere) is what caused his first reaction, which was basic humiliation at having been a "chump" (his words). So his pride is definitely damaged.

As for the guilt, he was a player, almost as bad as I was. I know what it took to come to terms with my past. I am sure he is still bothered by his, maybe a lot. When a player gets played (been there myself), it stings even worse.

His wife's disinterest in sex seems to be of the boiler plate variety.

Quote:"What if (just guessing because of course I don't know your friend or know the details)...he thought her lack of desire was because of his 'dirty' affairs....and he felt he deserved it, only to find out that she is no better?"

I think that he always hoped that their sexual relationship would get better. I think that his patience for such an occurrence, was extended far too long by his sense of guilt at his past.

Quote: "What if now, he is terrified that her lack of desire for him was because that other guy 30 years was just mindblowingly better, and her lack of desire was because he was pathetic in bed?"

Don't take this the wrong way, but with his past, unless he just became lazy, doubts about his performance wouldn't be an issue. I can ask, but I imagine I will just get a "you've got to be kidding".

I believe that he does love his wife very much, or he wouldn't be suffering with this. Thirty two years is a lot of history to throw away, and he knows it. I've been married thirty, and we have had our rocky times, especially the early years, but throwing it away isn't an option.

Slightly off topic, I have another couple I've been working with. They broke up early in their relationship. She slept around. They made up and were married. That was in 1992. Now he is having great difficulty with her actions during the break up. They have a couple of young kids. So I am trying to figure out a simple plan for them. They have been through a half dozen counselors, and he refuses to go any more. Similar story.

Thanks for your interest.

God bless,
Gimble

Gimble:


Dang it.

Langley turned out to be less knowledgeable than I expected, but she presents her material well. She does explain the female infatuation cycle very well, but doesn't appear to get the next step so far as I could see. I once asked her if she had ever read any of Harley's stuff or visited this forum and she said she would get to it. This was after her first book.

She does say she has no professional credentials to support her work. There are half a dozen people here I sent over from that site including one who is very active right now that I know of and certainly more if they want to surface.

To be fair, I did send her an email with my concerns and she never replied. My biggest concern is that she appears to not understand the concept of the fog. She was upset with me because she says I shamed women when in point of fact I didn't. I did get a few upset because I accurately pointed out consequences which they didn't want to hear.

Send me an email, please. I'll give you more stuff. I have said all I will say in a public forum.

Larry

Ok, well I had to go back and read the original post. How confusing..... <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/eek.gif" alt="" />

My take is an A is an A is an A.

He did it, she did it. Yet they are married and both are missing closure.

L.