"Stella it may be common for men not to be attracted to larger women but it isn't normal to completely destroy an entire family over it and abuse your partner because of it. To me, that is what it looks like is happening."

I agree. And there is so much he can do to get to know what makes his wife tick. Instead of simply asking for sex, he could really get to know his wife on a deep level and treat her good. Maybe the woman is really great and he needs to know that. If she is a difficult woman, well, he married her. I believe everyone has some passions in life you just have to find them in the person. He has to find hers and help her refocus so she can have a healthy life.

hmmm.. where to begin...

i am not going to bash anyone here, just give my input for whatever it is worth.

when you met your now wife she was overweight. she told you she would never be "thin"... that she has had weight issues her entire life. you said you loved anyway. you even went back to her after breaking up with her. she loved you enough to lose about 70 pounds it looks like before you got married. it is obviously something that is a huge struggle for her and if you have never had a weight problem you would not understand that. she did not lie to you about anything. she told you before you even proposed to her that she always had weight issues and would never be thin. She told you this before you were married! Why are you mad about it now? It is not like she was thin BEFORE marriage and then gained a bunch of weight. You knew what you were getting and you said you still loved her. You take a chance when you marry someone believing they will lose weight,etc.. If you don't like overweight you should not have married overweight. marriage is for better and for worse. She still loves you 15 pounds heavier, she is beating you over the head is she? Lots of people change in marriage, lots of people get into a comfort zone. the "oh I'm married now, it doesn't matter what I look like anymore" mentality. I do not know your wife so I do not know what is deep inside of her. I do know my own story though so here goes:

I have always struggled with weight. I have weight issues on both sides of my family and both sides were very sedentary. I had no self esteem, no nothing. Never even had a boyfriend all throughout school. Well, one day the weight, the pressures from society and my own family caught up with me and I ended up with a full blown eating disorder. You name it, I did it. Starve, eat, throw up, laxatives, excercise, etc... Right down to a size 4/5. Did it until my early 20's. Ended right up into the hospital for 4 months and then out patient therapy. Was not fun at all. Was the scariest part of my life. I hate to see what women do to themselves to be accepted. It is ridiculous.

Since that time in my life my weight has fluctuated. But most of the time I maintain a healthy weight. I am not a stick and I am not huge either. I work out every day, sometimes twice a day. My eating is not perfect but I really try. I don't buy junk foods for the house, and I really try to eat right. I am 5'6" and vary between 145-160. Size 10, sometimes an 8, sometimes a 12 depending on the cut. I think I look good. I have twins so I have no 6 pack abs going on. I am not perfect by any means. But I love life, I love clothes, I love to feel sexy, I go tanning, I spoil myself with manicures, pedicures, you name it. I am very feminine and very curvacious. Would I like to be a size 5 again? sure, that was great. But not what I had to do to myself to maintain that. It was not worth it. I am also a medium frame, so size 5 on me looks pretty skinny. I had bones sticking out everywhere. I like looking healthy, not boney. During my marriage my weight fluctated and at one point I gained a LOT of weight. It was during the darkest most depressing time in our marriage. I just didn't care anymore about anything. It was awful. I know my husband didn't like the weight gain, but he did nothing to help me either. I needed someone to talk to about my feelings (my company had just closed, marital problems,etc) and he was not there for me AT ALL. I asked him to join a gym with me, he would not. I asked him to walk with me, he would not. I was begging for his help and he turned his back on me. Any efforts I made for weight loss he never said a word. Never a "looking good, you're doing well,etc.." nothing! Do you know how much that would have helped me? If you told you wife once in awhile, good going, you're doing well, I can see you're losing, etc... I swear it would make all the difference in the world. She is trying, or the times she has tried, you have never reinforced her. She is your wife and you love her right? So why can't you tell her once in a while she is doing a good job. Or thank you for trying, I see you are trying. I don't care if it is a lie, if you don't think 20 pounds from now you think she is beautiful enuff yet, tell her anyway! it will help her to get the next 20 off. Do you want to know what helped me? you don't if you want your marriage to work....

I finally said "F" my husband, I am doing this for me. I am tired of being like this, tired of being depressed, tired of HIM. January of 2005 I revamped my whole life. Went back to school, ate right, started excercising again, taking care of ME. My ex was gone to military training at the time. When he got back in May I had lost weight, and he could see the changed in me, but do you think he could say anything positive? nope. not a word. nothing. After all the affairs, the sexual, emotional, and physical abandonment of the last 2 years, I had had enuff. I told him we were done. I needed someone in my life who loved me no matter what and would pay me a compliment once in a while. I did not need a man like him anymore. Do you want your wife to get to that point because she will you know. She will chuck your a** out and find someone who will love her no matter what. and I bet if she had someone who loved her unconditionally and gave her support and compliments once in a while the weight would just melt right off of her.

She cannot do it for YOU.. She has to do it for HER. I do what I do because I like to look in the mirror and be happy with what I see. i do it because I want to be healthy and feel good. I am in a healthy weight range for my height, build, and age. I am happy with me and like how I look. Am I a sports illustrated swim model naked? ****** no! I've had twins, I have had weight fluctuations,etc... I work out like crazy, and I think i look all right, I think I am sexy with or with without clothes. But if a man comes along and I am not "thin" enuff for him or perfect enuff, screw him. keep walking, don't want you. I will look great for me, and I will make my partner proud by how I look. But be ok with me as I am now, because I am not going to kill myself to be a size 5. i don't want to be a size 20 either, don't get me wrong, and i would never let that happen to myself again... but love me as I am, the whole person, and ALL I have to offer. love me at 145, love me at 160. love my size 8-12. if you love me unconditionally you will have the best woman you could ever ask for... i bet your wife might just feel the same.

just my 2 cents worth.

by the way, whenever i am not with my ex, i don't seem to have a weight problem.... go figure. overweight with him, the times we separated, right back to healthy weight... as long as i stay away from unhealthy evil self absorbed narcissists, I seem to be just fine.... mlhb

I've read this a couple of times and this is where you should have broken it off with this woman.

To go ahead and marry her and have a child with this poor woman was the cruelest thing you could have done. You should have ended it after the first date.

I know that's a lot of should have's, but it's that plain and simple. I know you said you don't want to divorce, but this can't be good for your son. You are very unhappy and your wife must be as well. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

You CHOSE this woman even though you weren't attracted to her at all. In fact, it sounds like you were REPULSED by her body.

Oh man.....I missed that post. You never accepted her, even from the beginning.

Basically you ruined her life by marrying somebody you were never going to truly accept and then you ruined your own life marrying someone you cannot accept.

GULP, I thought she gained the weight married to you. But you married her that way maybe hoping to change her. Geeze you needed to really know your own mind and break off this relationship before marriage and a child. I wish I knew what you could do now.....divorce, maybe?

Bud ya got about three choices:

1.Leave her and get on with life.
2. Stay and be a mean miserable petty little man...which may be pretty damaging to your self esteem and no good in the long run for anyone.
3. Put your resentment and self entitelment down, change yourself, help her get with the program, and GROW as a human being.

I guess it all comes down to courage.

Just wanted to say mhlb, that was a great post you made. now THAT is courage. <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

That is what is so appaling about this post. He knew she was overweight when he met her. He knew he was not attracted to "fat" girls. He dated her, slept with her and then married her knowing all of this. She even told him she couldn't promise him that she would ever be "thin".

Yet here he is....10 yrs, and a child later still being bitter over the whole situation. UNBELIEVABLE I tell ya!!!! <img src="/ubbt/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

I find it pretty believable, I tell ya! I think we all came here frustrated, thinking our spouse had in them the power to make all the unhappiness in our life go away. We thought, the answer is so simple, why doesn't my spouse see it and just fix it already!

Miserable, there is healing in this MB program. Real joy, love, and happiness. Whether or not you think today that your wife is worth the journey, you know you are worth it. I've read here on these boards that the first step is to emiliminate LBs, and I 100% agree. Which one do you want to tackle first? We're here to support you each from where we are.

Even if the delivery isn't always gentle, we are recognizing others' DJs, and pointing it out. Awesome, because DJs are poison, aren't they? Eat away at who we are.

Well I certainly am a little reluctant to come to the defense of Mr. Miserable seeing he has made his own bed so now he has to lay in it or ....

I would like to remind us all to offer helpful advice and not get into a bashing feast. Many posters don't respond well to that. Seems Miserable is one of them.

I would like to make one correction of you if I may. Yes, Miserable is here because he is Miserable. Yes, (IMHO) he did make a mistake in continuing to date, sleep with and then marry a woman he wasn't really very attracted to. She did state to him before they were wed that she would lose weight. She said this at the same time she said she would never be thin. And if you reread his posts you will see he's not asking her to be thin. He would probably be happy if she fit in the BMI's scale of overweight. He just can't deal with her being obese.

I think Miserable has made the same mistake many a marriage partner has made and that was going forward with the ceremony thinking their spouse would change somewhere down the line. That things would only get better, not worse or remain the status quo. He had seen a lot of great qualities and thought she's great material except for this ONE thing. "She's stated she's going to work on it. Why not? I can help her. I could be happy if she lost weight.".

There's been many a poster who had seen the early warning signs of a less than compatable or less than acceptable M partner yet continued on thinking they could help them change for the better.

I wholeheartedly agree that being resentful isn't going to help. I suppose it is what many of us do in order to detach ourselves from the situation. He can't leave her if he loves her so he has to feel resentment and anger. We don't detach because we're sad ... we detach because we're mad, bitter, angry ... (JMHO).

Someone offered up some good advice. I'd like to see your reply Miserable to that advice should we care to continue to help you with your sich.

I rephrased the question a little:

1. Leave her and get on with life.
2. Stay, continue to be miserable and offer only non-working reactions to the situation.
3. Put your resentment down, change yourself, help her get with the program, and GROW as a human being. If you can't do that or you feel you've tried and she can't make the changes you need to be happy then see #1.

I guess there are some ENs identified by the Harleys that this board doesn't believe can be valid. I can't believe you would get the same kind of responses if you were a wife complaining that her husband wouldn't brush his teeth so they were brown and stank and it was a serious turn-off.

MiserableHubby, I am sorry you are getting flamed by people with no empathy.

That having been said, I don't have a lot of hopeful advice to offer. The prospects of long-term weight loss for the morbidly obese (and if your wife isn't there yet, she is certainly well on her way) are not particularly good. It can be done, it is not impossible - my brother has maintained a 100+ pound weight loss for more than twenty years - but this is not common. He did it thru exercise, but not as a quick fix. He essentially replaced his bad eating habits with running. And has entered in and completed the Hawaii Iron Man triathlon. But it was therefore a lifestyle change, not a "diet" or "I'll do this until I lose the weight", but forever.

I suspect you are going to have to do the same sort of thing, but for yourself. Somehow or other, you will need to figure out how you and your wife will be able to deal with the fact that her excess weight makes her unattractive to you. This may or may not - probably not - assist her in losing weight. Whether it does or not, you need to continue with the program regardless. I frankly do not know how to set this up, so I would recommend counseling.

This whole notion of "you knew what she was getting into the marriage, so you suck because you don't like fat chicks" is not particularly helpful, and I suggest you not bother beating yourself up (or letting buffoons do it to you, especially on a messageboard) over that. You are in the situation you are in, for whatever reason, and it sounds like you are genuinely struggling to deal with a problem. Feelings are facts, and it often doesn't make any difference if you "should" feel a certain way or not. Maybe you shouldn't have married her until she lost all the weight you expected, and then waited longer to be sure it would stick. But you didn't. Maybe that was a mistake, just as it would be a mistake for a woman to think "why should I bother about being attractive, I'm already married" as sometimes happens.

But here we are, and things are as they are. So I think you should consider counseling. If your wife won't go, go yourself.

Good luck to you. And don't let the *******edit***get you down.

Regards,
rs0522

Take your feelings and multiply them by 1000 and that is probably how you are making her feel by causing it to be such a big deal. You know, stress causes weight problems so I don't forsee her losing any of it soon with you being so, sorry to sound blunt, but selfish.

Well folks, I'm back. Two years after this last prophetic post, and more than three years since the first one.

So much has changed. First, to sum up:

Beth wants a divorce. I truly understand why, and accept the responsibility for this train wreck. I also understand much more about the deeper psychology of what's been driving me around all my life.

This is going to be a long post, since I've got three years, and lots of information and changes to cover.

Two years ago in July, Beth had LAP-band weight-loss surgery. Since then, she's lost about 100 pounds, is down to a size 12, and looks and feels great. This last July, she took the initiative and we started being intimate again. I was pretty happy, and began to come out of my withdrawal. Things were looking up.

Then we started to have some problems. Our politics are different - I got a bit too into it with her in an argument, and really stomped all over her, so to speak. I was so "right", and boy did I know it! That started a cascade of things, that went very bad. Basically, I had a huge chunk of repressed anger, and when I decided that I had to be honest and let it out, and said to her, "Hey! I've apologized to you over and over. What about the hurt that was done to me as my needs went unmet?" (Meaning, of course, because she was fat and I hated that.)

Well, of course, that did it.

All of *her* repressed anger and pain and humiliation surged up, and she started wanting out. She has every right to it all, as I know now, as the above quoted post says, that I hurt her very deeply.

So we have been to a "marriage counselor". Mostly the sessions have been spent bashing me (for good reason) and supporting Beth in "letting herself acknowledge and feel her anger", and learn to stick up for herself. There was a lot of discussion about parents, and childhood, and what effects those things have had on my inner workings. Naturally, I went on a book-buying spree at Amazon to learn more.

So that's where it gets interesting, and maybe a bit beyond where the very "nuts and bolts" focused MB stuff generally goes.

I've spent a number of hours in counseling, with her and separately, and if anybody had told me four months ago that I'd be believing and saying what I do believe and say now, I'd have just laughed.

I own this disaster. It's 99.9% me. My past, especially the unresolved abandonment issues surrounding my own parents' divorce when I was eight, left me with some unpleasant core beliefs about myself. I feel unlovable, unworthy, and unimportant. Although both my parents are still alive, I feel like an orphan. I still do not even remember the years immediately following the divorce. My sister, three years older than me, tells me that it wasn't unusually horrible, but it must have been to me. She's had a lot of problems too, including "feeling like an orphan", that she traces back to that time.

I think the eight-year-old logic that was operating is pretty obvious - if I was loved, important, lovable, or mattered, then how could they do this to me?

So what the therapists tell me is that when a person believes about themselves as I do, they struggle mightily against it ... railing at the world, "Hey! Look at ME! I count for something!" and they also develop a tremendous defensiveness, where just about anything gets interpreted as an attack, and is reacted to as if it were. Kind of like "reactive armor". Touch me and I will explode in your direction. I was emotionally abusive. I struggle with accepting that label, and my therapist says, "You can be abusive, and not be an abuser. You're a good man."

I try to believe that. I want to believe that. But I see the wreckage around me ...

Note: I saw some posts by IAgree in OurHouse's thread that I'll quote below:



That made me feel a little better, because by that definition, it wasn't abuse, but ... but, dear God, I hurt her so, anyway.

I did have an issue with Beth's weight (or at least I think I did). But because of who I am, rather than it being a problem of the normal and ordinary variety, to me it became "If you don't fix this, then obviously you do not love me.", which just made it crazy. Made me crazy, made me say hurtful things. Things I so regret now.

And since so much has changed in the few months of soul-searching, I'm not even sure if I *really* had a problem with her weight, or if that was simply the first thing that I could find to push her away from me, to recreate that childhood abandonment. I no longer trust what I thought I knew. As a matter of fact, I had always thought my parents were divorced when I was six, and I was stunned to find out that the truth was that it happened a full two years after that.

I have done this before. A previous marriage ended twenty years ago, and it's so clear to me now that all my issues then are the same as now.

I love Beth - she's the most amazing woman that I've ever met. We are so well matched; everybody says so, and I believe it to be true. I love my son, and I love our family together. I want to keep us together, not as we were, but as we could be. I don't like what and who I have been. I'm doing my damnedest to change, as fast as possible, so that I might be someone that Beth could forgive and trust not to hurt her again.

I'd rather cut off my right arm than hurt her again.

I've said all these things to her, but it's too late, barring some kind of miracle. What's killing me is that we are slowly moving toward doing to our son what was done to me at exactly the same age.

I'm also just plain scared. I'm scared because I'm 51 years old, and I don't want to start over again. I'm scared as I look at the world on the verge of an economic depression, the likes of which has never been seen. And to someone with unresolved childhood abandonment issues, another abandonment brings it all back, and with it, a profound fear of death since a child instinctively knows that abandonment is likely to be fatal.

Where things stand now:

We have a huge house in a rural area that needs a good bit of work if we are to sell it. Just cleaning out the junk left from both of us being in a poor emotional state for the last three years will be a huge effort. There are a lot of home improvement type things that need to be completed as well, so we are here for at least several months, if indeed we can sell it at all. Most of our net worth is tied up in this place; most every nickel I made got dumped into it along with thousands of hours of labor. It was the only way that I had to show my love for my wife since everything else was so shut down. (She still doesn't get that, which is a shame, as it could only make her feel better.)

Beth's sister and her parents live about 2+ hours away, and what she wants to do is take Ty, our son, and move up there, so she'll have a "support system". Her job is actually 45 minutes north of here, but would be over 90 minutes from where her sister is. She can work from home for several days a week, but she does need to go in once or twice a week, and occasionally travel for work too. She's got a great job in IT with one of the few banks still left standing. At this point, she's making about twice what I do, so money shouldn't be a problem for her. The other point she makes in favor of moving there is that they have "a great school", and that gifted kids' education is mandated by PA, unlike here in DE where there's not much attention or resources given to the smart kids.

I told her that if we were to reconcile, then I'd be open to the idea of moving north (though I have poured my soul into making this place a castle, as it was the only place my screwed-up soul could go). I also told her that I was not at this time OK with her moving Ty that far away in the event that we did split. Initially, she said, "Then this could get ugly, real ugly.", but I think she's perhaps moved back from that position a bit in the last couple of days, since she sent an email to the admissions person at a private school nearby.

Before the crap hit the fan, we'd been hoping to send Ty to a really nice private school about 20 miles up the road - they even have bus service from here. We couldn't get him a spot for this school year, but we've just been told that there is now one open for next school year. We have have to decide on this in the next month or so.

To make matters even more stressful, Ty's just been diagnosed as AD/HD. We've got him in counseling now too, and will try a short five-day drug trial as soon as possible to see if that helps him to stay focused.

Beth has just started individual counseling/therapy yesterday. She said the therapist was "good", but no more. We've agreed to postpone any more joint sessions for a couple of weeks, to give Beth a little time in the solo sessions. I'm dead certain that as of this instant, her idea of the joint sessions is just to get me to accept the inevitable divorce, but I'm hopeful of some movement.

Here's why: just as this has brought up all my childhood stuff about abandonment, and made it very present and very real to me, I can see how Beth's opening up and experiencing her anger and hurt from what I did is connecting to and bringing back up all the anger and hurt from the rest of her life over how the world treated the "fat girl". With my sins so connected to that overwhelming amount of pain, there no way that she'd ever be able to forgive me. I'm hopeful that therapy will allow her to separate my part from the rest of it, and just maybe forgiveness and trust might become possible.

She did say at one point that she didn't have any faith in the idea of reconciliation because she felt that in order to do that she'd have to "stuff" all the anger and hurt again. I replied that I knew that wouldn't work, and that that is not what forgiveness is. She says that she's not able to trust me with her feelings, because she could get fat again (it is possible).

My reply was that I wouldn't be enthusiastic about that, but that I would handle it a thousand times better than in the past, because I am changing - I **WANT** to be a different man, to finally soothe that little "Lost Boy" inside so that his pain, anger and fear do not control me.

There are techniques for doing that, and I aim to start them very soon.

One of the self-help books I read was "How to be an Adult in Relationships" by David Richo. In it, he talks about transference, where we find life partners who in some way help us to recreate unresolved childhood situations, and we may even unconsciously maneuver and manipulate things to recreate those situations. It's all well-known and well-accepted psychology.

Here's a quote that had me in tears as I saw Beth and I in every word:

(shoot - I can't find the book, so I must paraphrase)


She's agreed to a one-month "pause" in this, where we take no action, with the proviso that we keep plugging away on the house. That's fine; there's a lot to do and it needs doing. I was very up front with my request that she use the counseling as an opportunity to ask, "Can I come back to this marriage in a way that works for me?" If nothing else, I hope that I've planted a seed.

She's never been divorced; she doesn't know how much it will hurt. She's never been a single mom either.

I've cleaned up my act; since November I've been trending toward the super-husband side of house & child care, and whatever I can do to meet her emotional needs for admiration ... which is about the only one she'll accept from me now. It's difficult for me to avoid "pleading my case". I want the opportunity for us to heal.

I do tell her that I love her. Hopefully not so frequently as to be offensive to her now.

We're still sleeping in the same bed though we never touch, except for once or twice when she's accepted a foot rub. We don't want to tell Ty anything until we have everything planned out - Beth found a book that says that that is the best way to do it to minimize the pain for him. So that means that we try to maintain the fiction, until we have everything settled.

Yesterday, when we took Ty to the doctor for a sinus infection, he and I were wrestling a bit, and she reached over and started tickling me to assist him. Don't know what to make of that.

So ... I'm feeling like I also owe an apology to some of the women here who flamed me, and I flamed back. I'm sorry.

You were right, and I was wrong.

paging Stellakat!

and paging Pieta too!

I read your post--three times actually. I'm sorry Beth wants a divorce and my heart goes out to you, especially since there is a young child involved.

I have had a question sticking in my craw concerning your SIT.

Why do you think you married someone who was overweight? Men do not usually do this.

Have you asked Beth if she would have picked YOU if she were not overweight? I would have imagined that her field-of-eligible prospects was limited due to her weight.

MH:

Boy. You two finally TALK to each other, and its going to end in Divorce.

That's sad.

And she's looking good too! She doesn't want to miss her chance!

THIS is the marriage that you TWO created. It takes both of you to fix it.

I wonder if she is having an A with someone else? You say she is in IT? That she only goes to the office a couple of days a week? Look into that. You might find out WHY she really wants to leave.

MB CAN help you out of this mess.

Stop going to a counsler that asks you to stay in your childhood to discover all your problems. Yes, you can be messed up. But YOU GET TO CHOOSE NOW how to act. You can't FORCE your W to love you. You can only act loving towards her!

THe MB Weekend may do wonders for the two of you together. It may be cheaper than the counselors as well. (And if insurance is paying for the current one, MB is acceptable with many reimbursement plans. THey have had the meeting in Philadelphia in tha past. Look into it.

LG

Pieta,

Basically, we are *amazingly* well suited to each other.

When we were dating, we broke up over the weight issue. I admitted it was a problem for me, but during the conversations that we had then, I realized that I loved her, and did not want to lose her. (In fact, I felt so protective towards her ... and the crushing irony is that the kind of thing I wanted to protect her from is exactly what I ended up doing.)

So I resolved to try again.

She started losing weight, and when she'd lost about 50 of the 75 pounds she needed to lose to get to a reasonable shape, I said "hallelujah!" problem's solved, and proposed.

It seems she said the same thing, except she thought that she'd finally found someone who didn't care about the excess weight.

MH

LG,

I know that it will take both of us to fix it, but she doesn't want to. (I'm constantly tempted to add the words, "yet", or "right now" to that sentence.)

No, there's no affair. I trust her word on that. Not to say that she might not have looked around and is thinking ahead.

Though I'll still be balding, I've been on the adrenaline diet for the last few months, and working out too, to try to keep my spirits up. I've lost about 30 pounds myself, which makes me lighter than when we met thirteen years ago. If she ever decides she wants me again, the body she'd get is going to be pretty buff.

Months ago, I showed her the MB stuff, but that requires an interest in healing.

We've pretty much both decided that we don't like the marriage counselor that we saw together --- too much authoritarian "I've been a therapist for 30 years and ..." and too much beating on me for stuff that wasn't real (as if there was a lack of the real stuff to beat on). Even Beth was defending me a couple of times!

Right now there's little hope, because she's just not interested in healing ... I believe she just wants to get away.

I have a recurrent fantasy; she kisses me gently, says "OK. I'll give it a try.", then smacks me upside the head and says, "I've heard what you've said, now prove it."

The individual therapy is necessary for changing the internal me. I certainly am changing behaviors, but the impulses that drive those behaviors are going to take some serious work. I had a session at noon today that was ... intense.

MH

Miserablehubby,

I am sorry that you and your wife are heading for divorce. I have scanned your thread dating back to '06 and can understand some of your points while strongly disagreeing with your actions.

It sounds as though you enjoyed her company but were never truly physically attracted to her because of her weight problem (and I'm not :twobyfour: ing you for that -- 200-250 lbs is obese for a woman no matter how you slice it). It seems you dated and married her out of need rather than romantic love...yes, romantic love does require physical/sexual desire and value. You were not honest with her and with yourself and have caused both of you needless pain.

I'm at a loss...why did you continue to "date" and eventually marry a woman to whom you were not physically attracted???

Sorry to kick when someone is down, but this one has me very baffled!

When I proposed she was 2/3's of the way there, and I thought the issue was taken care of.

And I loved her.