I have been married for 17 years and together for 22. We have 3 children together. Happily married. Four years ago my spouce found a letter that I wrote, at age 17, prior to us getting together, about a sexual encounter I had. It was pretty explicit. I wrote the letter back then and I put it away in my "keepsake" box. It certainly wasn't for any one else to see or read. The letter was destroyed the evening it was discovered. Things have never been the same since and more so in the past 1.5 years. We fight constantly about this letter and sex. He feels he had been cheated on and that I must harbor feelings for this person because I chose to put the letter in the keepsake box and keep it.
Not really a helpful attitude, but you guys are fighting, and he may be looking for reasons why you folks are fighting. So to him, this may mean you pine for others.
I don't deny that I wrote the letter or kept it. This is not the issue. The issue is weather or not I intentionally intended to keep such a grotesque letter and bring it into our marriage for some self serving purpose as he accuses me of.
No, the issue is are you willing to accept that he finds the letter troublesome. Which is more important, being right about your reasons, or your marriage? It doesn't matter if you had no bad intent by keeping it. Your refusal to accept that he was troubled by it is causing most of the problem here.
What is wrong with saying that while you did not intend to hurt him, this obviously hurts him and you want to stop hurting him.
Telling him you didn't mean to hurt him is not helpful. If he stepped on your toes dancing, would him telling you it was an accident make your crushed toes feel better? No. So telling him you mean no harm is a fruitless exercise.
The keepsake box was not in hiding. He just decided to open it up one evening. He feels that I am in denial and try to defend why I had kept this letter for so many years. I never revisited the keepsake for the sake of rekindling these past feelings or wonder about "what if". He feels now that I just settled for him because I was unable to "land" this person I wrote about in the letter (or any of the other guys I had been with).
So he's insecure. Does he have any reasons to think this? Let's read on.
I was 17 years old at the time. I was a stupid and inexperienced teenager! He brings up my past quite often these days as I had several sexual experiences prior to my spouce and I getting together. He says he feels he just doesn't compare now to the other men I had in my life (as a teenager). Our sex drives are very different and he equates sex/making love as my expression of love for him.
OK, so this is how he feels loved, and if he's not getting enough sex, or as much sex, or sex that is filled with the kind of enthusiasm as you wrote in the letter, he could feel as if he's not loved.
His love language is physical contact. He strongly feels because of my past sexual experiences that this must be the reason for my low sex drive and sexual desire for HIM. Prior to getting married we did have a very sexual relationship and early on into our marriage. So the story goes...we had three children, our lives are busy, I am older and wiser now and know that sex does not equate love.
Bzzzzt. His feeling loved is based ENTIRELY on his emotional needs. You don't get to pick them for him. So you cannot say you love him and then say he is wrong about how sex conveys love.
It may not send a loving message to you. But when you don't have desire for him, you ARE sending the message that he's not loved. Look at the concepts here. Sex IS a LEGITIMATE emotional need. You cannot just dismiss it as you have done here, and say the problem is with him.
This problem is one you've helped create, by denying him his greatest emotional need.
Combine that with your enthusiastic and graphic text and you can understand why he might feel unloved.
You've just said his idea of what love is is wrong. Or you've said you don't love him enough to meet his greatest need. His need is not valid and therefore you don't need to meet it.
My advice is to meet that need with FAR MORE enthusiasm than you had as a 17 year old girl. Instead of telling him that sex is not love, tell him that you love him so much that you are enthusiastic about having passionate sex with him as often as he would like.
You cannot just dismiss his legitimate emotional needs in the fashion you've done here and expect him to act any differently with respect to the letter you kept for so long.
I just do not have the need or desire for sex as I once did.
But apparently he does. Love is about meeting the other person's need. Your lack of desire for sex does not mean it's OK to impose this upon him. That is an unloving act to impose this unilaterally upon him.
I have not cheated on my husband nor do I do anything to evoke suspicion.
He get's to decide what makes him suspicious, not you. So if your desire and enthusiasm have waned, he has cause for concern. It may not be that your are cheating. But he can legitimately treat your love as suspect. To him, you don't appear to love him, based on what you've said are his greatest needs and your response to them.
So he logically concludes you don't love him.
The letter and what was described is what he longs for, what his vision of a loving relationship is, and you tell him no, no, no, that's not love and you aren't getting any of that.
He's RIGHTFULLY resentful.
However, he does not trust me and believes my days are consumed with my past relationships (as a teenager) and how my life must be miserable because I just settled for him.
He did trust you. He trusted you to meet this need and you don't meet the need. You did so with him and apparently with others before you met him, and with enthusiasm. So he has a valid point and valid concerns.
Instead of telling him his concerns are misplaced, why not address them in the most effective fashion possible. By treating his desire and needs as valid and enthusiastically meeting them. No excuses!
He questions phone calls that come into our house, why I took so long at the grocery store, he checks my e-mails, etc. My life is pretty much consumed with our young children. So, my question is this...did I cheat on my husband?
You may not have cheated on him, but it seems he feels cheated, and for some reason. You have unilaterally told him that his sexual desire is wrong and that he should feel loved even though he is not satisfied sexually.
So he rightfully feels cheated.
If he knows you were more sexually active before, and you are less sexually active with him, then he has a legitimate question.
One should have the MOST and BEST sex with their spouse. Unless you are medically unable to, you should be having MORE sex with your husband now than with any other man you've ever known.
There are no good reasons not to have sex with your husband, none!
By not having sex with him, you are telling him you don't love him enough to take his desire and needs seriously.
And, what can I do to repair this damage I have caused to my spouce. I did nothing intentional to hurt him and I certainly do not have alterior motives. He has said he doesn't ever believe he can or will ever forgive me for bringing this letter into our marriage. He said it took alot of work just to come to terms with my sexual past and now he finds this letter. He feels our marriage is a lie and now questions every other little "off" things during our 17 years of marriage that were never given a second thought as an issue.
married 17 years
me 40
spouce 38
children 8,5,2
Stop treating sex as bad. You may have had a checkered past. But if your husband wants sex 2 or 4 times each day, this is not a bad thing. Stop treating it like it is.
The letter and his reaction are merely symptoms. The problem is you are unilaterally telling him that he doesn't need that much sex, and that "real" love isn't sex.
You know what, real love includes lots of passionate, enthusiastic sex.
It's not the only thing. But I don't know of any way to have real romantic love with a spouse without it. As long as both of you are healthy enough, you should be all over one another every chance you get.
That's what I think the issue is really all about.
She never says she forgot about it for 22 years.
