I feel like we've hit a stalemate in our recovery. H and I had another MC session today. Our two topics of discussion for the past couple of weeks have been: SF(him) and finances(me).

My H says that I haven't given him credit for the changes he has attempted to make in the area of DS, and am only emphasizing the negatives in the area of finances. Meanwhile he needs SF, and I can't do that at the present time. I have serious sexual abuse issues that I am dealing with and am extremely scared of doing things that will HARM rather than help us in this area due to triggers and my overall attitude about SF throughout our marriage.

He does not bother me or pressure me about SF... but there's this undercurrent of pressure...because I feel that his effort in other areas is only tied to his hoping the end result is SF. If he doesn't get SF, then the effort stops. Before and even after he first came home, he was very affectionate, and it was very nice. There were a few times that his affection lead to a couple of breakthroughs in our sexual relationship (with foreplay happening...) One night our foreplay ended in me feeling extremely guilty because of my hesitations to have sex. So out of guilt, I told him we could try to make love. It was disastrous...it ended in him not being able to complete the act...and me bawling...which I think made things WORSE. After that night, the affection of any form pretty much ceased on his side, which was not what I wanted at all. The affection was helping me feel closer to him and we had made progress in moving towards SF until that night. But now it's gone because he can't do affection without SF, while I need some affection that is NOT tied to SF. It's a mess...

When I want to talk in therapy about finances, he says that all I am concerned about is my needs...that I don't care about his needs. It's like the fact that I can't have sex with him equals me not trying at all. He has not given me any credit for my effort in going to IC every week since October to try and overcome my issues and doesn't give me any credit for my efforts in other areas either to try and compensate for the lack of SF on his side.

To sum it up...I guess we both feel as if we are not rewarded for our efforts at all and are being punished for the things we are unable/can't do at the present time.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

Are you attending counseling sessions together?


I agree with him on this. Going to a counselor about "sexual abuse issues" in your past doesn't help him one bit. Nor does it help you. I can understand why this would frustrate him.

I think there is a much faster horse but I need to know if you are attending marriage counseling together?

Yes...we are going to marriage counseling together and have been for 8 months.

Here is what I think the problem is. You are not in love with your husband. That is the basic problem. That is why you can't bear to make love to him. You are emotionally detached so the thought of making love is sickening to you. I bet you had very little problem making love to him when you were in love with him. Your affair also caused enormous detachment and you are still dealing with that.

BUT...your H was getting there by your own admission. His affection was making you feel close enough to have SF with him, close but not quite there.

What I think would make a huge difference is to STOP going to marriage counseling because you are basically lovebusting each other there. You have been going for 8 months and this is still a mess so you know this is not working. I see marriage counseling as a DETRIMENT, not an aide because every time you go there and complain about each other IN FRONT OF EACH OTHER, it drains both your love banks. You undo all the good you did during the week.

So, I would stop going there. In addition, BOTH of you read up on lovebusters and make sure you are not doing them. That will be critical to your mission. You have stop the draining if you expect to fill the lovebank.

THEN, the fastest way to develop ROMANTIC LOVE [and keep in mind the goal here is ROMANTIC LOVE, not peaceful co-existance] is to spend 20+ hours per week meeting these top 4 needs giving each other undivided attention:

affection
conversation
sexual fulfillment
rec companionship

This should scheduled out, by actually sitting down 1x a week and writing down the times and planned activities in 2 to 4 hours blocks. No TV, no company, no children. Undivided attention. Do this every week for 6 to 8 weeks and you will be in love with your H.

That is the FASTEST, MOST EFFECTIVE WAY to fall in love with him.

Here are some things I would like to show you:

This article is about how sex should be treated as an EVENT rather than an ACT to make a woman WANT to engage: The question of the ages:How can a husband receive the sex he needs in marriage?


And then this: The Policy of Undivided Attention

and this: How to Overcome Sexual Aversion

oh boy, I was just reading about your H's independent behavior with money. HUGE LOVEBUSTER. Has he ended that?

Sexual Abuse issues are complicated. I was a sexually abused from age 4 to 8. Another attempt was made at 13. I went to therapy for 5 years. One year of it was everyday. I wasn't sexual. I am married and I have had problems at various times with my ability to particpate. Things that can trigger are tv shows, or conversations about rape/sexual abuse, some touches from my DH and oddly enough there have been times when it was associated with my childs age. Found out in later therapy.

Nothing at all to do with loving my husband. I have been in intense IC and group therapy. If you want to chat privately I will. I will tell you I am brand new to MB. But I do understand SA.

RL, welcome to MB. I empathize with the damage that was done to you when you were abused as a child. Many of us were. I was sexually abused by several men, over a period of years. My earliest memory was at the age of two, when 6 teenaged boys 'took me for a walk.' I understand your pain and I don't want to dismiss sexual abuse as being immaterial to a child's emotional health.

However. It is often counterproductive to introduce childhood abuse in the course of healing from an A. At best, it is a distraction that preempts the healing efforts made by the WS and BS.

Affairs happen when there are boundaries lacking, when marital commitment and communication has broken down, when someone decides that they are entitled to 'do the easy thing' because 'no one will ever find out' or 'no one will get hurt.' It is selfish, it is horrendously self-serving.

But it needs to be addressed as the separate issue that it is.

Living in the past is not the solution, though. It is a distraction from adult problems and does nothing to resolve her present problems. If she continues to wait on IC to have sex, her marriage will be long gone.

I was also sexually abused, and there is nothing complicated about resolving it if you focus on the present and leave the past in the past.

You can sure complicate it if you continually trigger bad memories, though. Bringing past pain into the present does nothing other than make the present miserable. For no good reason. [except lining the pockets of counselors]

Dr Harley is a clinical psychologist and here is what he says:


here

here

here

Wow, MelodyLane... I think you have hit the nail on the head on so many levels. Before I posted this thread, I actually said this to our MC today that, "I am not in love with him yet, but I want to be." My H took it hard and is very angry and hurt by what I said. I didn't know this until this evening when he came into the house and plopped on the bed to watch TV in our room, to stay away from me in the living room. I told him that I was trying to be open and honest about my feelings because hiding things is part of the circumstances that created the conditions that made the EA with the OM possible, and my intentions were not to hurt him...I was trying to communicate with him. He says I broke the rule of protection by saying that. I said that I earnestly wanted to get to the point where I was in love with him again, but I wasn't there yet.

H said that I didn't want to work on our marriage...that I just wanted to dwell on the past. That is not true as in what my intentions in going to IC/MC have been...Both therapists have wanted to work with me/us to resolve the issues of the past. It wasn't until I read your response and the articles you attached that I see how trying to resolve the past is contributing to our current situation. My IC and our MC has spent countless hours trying to drudge up the issues and events of the past (with sexual abuse and our marriage) to try and resolve them, and honestly it hasn't worked. My IC often comes up with questions and issues for me to bring up in MC. And in retrospect, that has also hurt our progress as well. It has only allowed my resentment and anger to fester and has ended up being counterproductive to say the least. And you are right...we seem to be draining our love banks and undoing all the progress made during the week during our therapy sessions...

As for my husband's independent money behavior, it has still been an issue. After last week's MC session, he has been trying to do better, but the effort has only been there for a week. I'm extremely reluctant about this because he has put effort for a week before and then went right back to his old habits. It's been a HUGE problem throughout our entire marriage, especially since the use of check cards and debit cards have become so popular. And there has been a great deal of dishonesty and deception associated with this problem in the past (see my other thread for more information). This is an issue he has avoided at all costs in the past and has admitted to "not caring a bit about it," as recently as last week and "doesn't understand why it's such a big deal to me, since not writing things down worked just fine for him" when he was living alone during our recent separation. So, I am just waiting to see if this change is for real this time.

Those articles applied to us in every way, and the other articles referenced also apply. There is one thing that concerns me...I have a difficult time communicating about sex as in needs/wants/pleasure, etc...like a phobia difficulty. It's a huge trigger for me and always has been even before we were married and in previous relationships. It makes me extremely uncomfortable and feels very dirty to me. Is this from abuse or is from not being "in love?" And while most of the exercises in the sexual aversion article seem comfortably doable, the final steps that the article describes seem EXTREMELY out of my comfort zone. I need some direction here.

So MelodyLane...after reading these additional comments/thoughts/elaborations, do you think that I need to cease IC as well??? Do I need to stop trying to resolve sexual abuse isssues all together even though there have been issues even when I was in love with my husband and in previous relationships?

Thank you so much for your help! I welcome any more insight and advice you and anyone else can give me.

PG01

I know there is an earlier post where you described your A but I've lost it. Did you have SF with the OM?

It's ok, I've found it now. So everything was perfect and intimate with the OM? Pardon my ignorance, but wouldn't your deeply held issues with SF carry through to ALL SF?

Yes. I stopped contact for 2 months after I ended the EA. H had an EA and some other things happened while I was in NC. I decided to D and contact with OM started again (OM initiated the contact). EA turned PA after the D was filed.

PA ended 3 months after contact with OM resumed. H and I decided to try and work things out after my A ended. H also had SF with a woman after D was filed. D was never finalized. H and I have been trying to recover for 8 months through MC and IC. I have not had direct contact w/ OM since the affair ended, although I admit indirect contact through looking at OM's facebook profile and talking to OM's best friend since the A ended, but that has since ceased as well. I have made it so I cannot fall into those temptation anymore, and am committed to getting through this and making my marriage work.

That's the short version....

I think he's asking if you were able to have sex with the OM and your past sexual abuse was not an issue, then why is the sexual abuse an issue with your husband? Basically, why is your issue of sexual abuse only an issue with your husband but not in other sexual settings with other people.

I did have issues with SF with OM to a degree...I didn't "communicate" and there were things that I was uncomfortable with...But yes, it was more fulfilling and better with OM, (and I am extremely ashamed of this). And I have discussed this in depth with my individual counselor. I only saw OM physically on 2 weekends during the 3 months were back in contact. He lives 6 and a half hours away. And I do believe that SF would have eventually become an issue had we started seeing each other on a more regular basis.

My IC said that my ability to enjoy SF with OM stemmed from my distorted views about sex....That when morals were out the window, it didn't bother me to have sex, but that my sexual problems in marriage stem from when I am trying to be morally respectable...that I have trouble equating being a good person with SF, since my first sexual experiences (starting when I was 5 years old) were bad...so when I am not in alignment with my moral beliefs, SF wasn't as much of an issue because I wasn't trying to be a good person.

It made sense to me at the time because SF before I was married to H was better than after marriage, but we were in college and there was much drinking and partying those days, so the alcohol helped my inhibitions a great deal. Once we were married, graduated from college, and started going back to church, the alcohol intake dropped drastically and it didn't take long for SF to go downhill after marriage...I feel like I should also add that more times than not, alcohol was also involved in SF with OM as well, so that could have also been a factor in my ability to feel as if it was more fulfilling with him.

Does this make sense? I am going by what my IC has been telling me...if it's hogwash or I need to give more explanation, please say so because I want to know what is right...

Yes, that is what I was asking. BTW I'm a she, not a he. AN FWW.

I find it hard to get my head around that. Why do you have to be respectable in your marriage? Marriage is for no holds barred SF. I guess I ask that because I had the opposite happen. In my marriage I hold (and held) nothing back but with the OM I was almost prudish.

I'm not a psychologist. I think that your IC is giving you the "easy" answer but I don't know the dynamics of what happens after sexual abuse. I do know that I am very, very sorry you had to endure that. NO ONE should have to go through that.

PG, yes, I would stop that too. I think going there keeps you perpetually triggered and depressed and is a distraction from resolving present problems. Dredging up the past is preventing you from being happy NOW.

I honestly think if you try the experiment I lined out above, that you can fall in love again and the sexual problem will resolve itself. But that is what is missing here. When you are in love it is not hard to meet each others needs. It is not a struggle like you are experiencing now.

Do you have any Marriage Builders books? If not, I would get Surviving an Affair, His Needs, Her Needs, Lovebusters and the workbook that goes with them. This program is outlined in those books and will make much more sense if you and your H read those books TOGETHER. They sell those books cheap here and they are less than one counseling session.

Women need 2 things in order to enjoy sex: an emotional attachment to the man and the prospect of enjoyment. When one or both of those ingredients is missing she loses interest. When she is pressured to make love to someone to whom she is not emotionally attached, she becomes AVERSE.

That is what happened to you.

We know for sure that one of those conditions exist, which would explain perfectly your lack of desire for SF with your husband. When I was reading your post, I saw immediately that you weren't in love with your H and that is the source of the problem. Solve that and I predict the sex problem will resolve itself.

I personally don't dwell in the past. I do have dreams and or times where I have a flashback. My most recent occurance came when I awoke during the night with my DD standing over me. I di have problems for several weeks with my husband coming into the room and kissing me. I told him, he didn't take it personally and we worked it through. My point is that I have learned several techniques for getting through the resduial results of my abuse. I was also raped as an adult. I am not saying this for pity. In fact in retrospect of my life, the fact I got raped on the job allowed me the help I needed in regards to my abuse to be in a sexual relationship.

I was going to make the same point, kiwi. IMO, it's not so much sexual abuse issues as it is intimacy issues. I'd leave the sexual abuse-related dysfunction diagnosis at the door. It's a distraction to the issue of the A.

My thoughts? Your enjoyment of sex with OM was the natural result of meeting ENs - both of your Givers are working full time, and the act of SF is a natural outcome. Your abuse as a child had nothing to do with morals. Kids who are sexually abused rarely refer to themselves, consciously or otherwise, as "immoral". You were a victim of a crime. To use the word "morals" when referencing that crime goes back to our puritan upbringing - anything about sex is "immoral" or "dirty". You were the victim of a crime that, as a child, you may have tried to blame yourself for. After all, they're the 'adults' and therefore can't be doing something wrong, right? So YOU must be the one in the wrong. That's about it for what a kid thinks, IMO.

Your alcohol intake certainly affects SF - I won't go into all of the brain's frontal lobe activity that is affected by alcohol. Let's just say it loosens your inhibitions. You didn't 'get respectable' when you quit drinking, you just...quit drinking. And your frontal lobe adjusted accordingly. And - listen here, because this is important - you didn't replace that activity with something else. Like consciously meeting each other's needs, and getting to know your H without the numbing, nullifying affects of alcohol.

It would have been the same, had you chosen to remain with OM.

I think it was easy to mistake my problems with SF before the affair as due to sexual abuse and not from lack of intimacy and meeting ENs because we didn't know what was wrong. My interest dwindled fairly quickly after marriage and so I assumed that maybe the abuse was the issue. I tried to talk to H about things I felt were wrong (didn't know at the time that these were my top ENs) and he didn't get it. It always resulted in HUGE arguments, so after a while we quit talking altogether except for blowing up every couple of months or so out of frustration because things never seemed to get better. I gave my H SF (not as often as I should have) out of guilt and duty because I felt like it was what I was supposed to do...I thought it was issues from sexual abuse because I started finding sex with him repulsive and disgusting with no pleasure in it for me at all. I thought that maybe there was something wrong physically and mentally from the sexual abuse with me until I had the affair with OM...

Since I have read Surviving and Affair and many of the articles on this site that people have referenced for me, I am starting to see that I have an aversion to sex with my husband from years of not having my ENs met. That is why I didn't have problems with OM...It all makes sense. I am currently reading His Needs Her Needs and am learning the different ENs, and am starting to actually figure out what mine are and what was lacking in our M. My husband just read HNHN and SAA. As soon as I am finished we plan on filling out every questionaire, inventory, and contract in the appendixes of both books and get on track.

Meanwhile H didn't appear to try to meet my ENs at all. I think he was trying in retrospect, but he was trying to show love in HIS language by trying to meet my needs according to what needs were important to him...so I didn't see effort at all.

As time passed, he quit trying, I quit trying and we just started existing for many years. We started going two separate directions and having our most fun with our friends when we were apart from each other. Divorce would come up from time to time in one of our blow-ups but neither one of us had the courage to do it, and we would always just drop it and keep going the same as we always had. And after so many years of these patterns, I ended up having an A, husband had an A as a result of my A, and here we are in this big mess. We've been trying to fix it with little progress for 8 months.

We decided together yesterday that we were going to stop counseling (both IC and MC) for a while and try to focus on doing the things in these books. We plan on buying Lovebusters and reading it as well because we are very good at making things worse through lovebusting each other on a regular basis. I feel that if both of us are committed, we will finally get this marriage on track. We are both hopeful and very optimistic at this point.

I think I am finally getting it...and I have never felt so much relief in my life for as long as I can remember.

PG01