Hi,

I am a 28 year old male 4 years into a marriage. When my wife and I were dating, we had an extremely active sex life, followed by a short hiatus after graduation where we were both living at home and didn't have much opportunity. But when we married and moved in together, my wife began turning me down constantly for sex. For the 4 years we have been married, I get it once a month (at best, some months get skipped). I have talked to her about it, and she has done what I asked and asked her doctor and her gyno, who both tell her its normal from the birth control. However, she was on birth control before we married. She thinks she will bounce back, but I don't see much hope after this long. I have asked her to go off birth control (cause whats the point?) and use condoms only, but she does not want to

I would summarize our sex life like this. One day when it had been a month since we last had sex, I started sending her naughty text messages from work. She played along and I got excited thinking shed be waiting for me in the bedroom when I got home. When I got home, she was on the couch watching tv in pajamas. I asked what about the text messages? Her answer? "Oh! I'm sorry, I thought you were joking!" I had never felt like a bigger piece of sh__ in my life.

She often cuts me off when I try to start being intimate with her. I will hug her and start to passionately kiss her, and she will pull away and say "If you keep this up, you're going to get "Happy" and that would be mean to you". The few times we have sex, she usually initiates at a time she chooses, by lying on the bed with her vibrator and calling me in to the bedroom. It is rare she accepts my advances.

She encourages me to look at porn and masturbate, which I do. But I am tired of that and it is not enough. She even stopped giving me birthday sex or anything like that. My last 2 passed by with nothing.

Two birthdays ago, I took some money I got from relatives and went to a "happy ending" massage parlor. I consider it the worst moment of my life and it haunts me to this day. In the ensuing weeks, I could barely eat, could not concentrate at work, had constant diarrhea (sorry), felt sick, etc. Even the thought of doing such a thing again I find horrifying. I had times where I had to go to the bathroom at work because I was about to break down. I didn't confess because I was afraid of what it would do to her. I love her as my partner and would never want to leave her. I still have occasional "guilt attacks" which can be incapacitating. Also on 2 or 3 occasions, while I never had cybersex, I had short discussions about sex with women in a random chatroom, nobody that I kept contact with. It was just that porn stopped being enough.

I'm not sure I'm really asking for advice, I just needed to get this off my chest. Thanks for listening. Any advice would be appreciated. I do plan on keeping trying to fix our sex life, but it is difficult. I don't want her to only have sex with me because she feels she has to (which is what I expect the once a month is now). I want her to actually want to. I sometimes wonder if she is no longer attracted to me physically.

Outside of this I feel I have been a good husband. Even her parents tell me how happy they are she has me. I do my share of housework, cleaning , cooking, laundry etc. I am attentive, give her back rubs ,etc. I just feel unappreciated - and now guilty.

That's like saying outside of murdering someone, he lived a good life.

You screwed up. Confess this to your wife. Deal with the consequences. And this post is all about you, you, you. Have you ever thought about why your BW doesn't want to have sex with you? Are you meeting her needs.

The way you should have handled it was to go to discuss your feelings with your WW, go to marital counseling and work together on the MB program, meet her needs and avoid love busters, and if she still showed no interest in meeting your needs for sex, then divorced her. Now you complicated things by committing adultery.

Yeah, dude..... you done screwed up.

Honestly, reread your post. I'm sure you don't think of yourself as a bad person, but you sound so self-centered, self-pitying, and frankly, narcissistic, it's pretty hard to read. Check yourself.

You are no catch. Knock it off - you have just injured your wife in the most grievous way imaginable short of killing her.

Spend as much time actually PUTTING HER FIRST as you do getting validation from people that she's "lucky she has you" and you might take a first step towards getting outside yourself.

Sorry for the 2x4s; but WOW, man, you need them big-time.

Get humble and confess to your wife, and do a 180 and start being a REAL MAN and a servant-leader, putting your wife first, OR get humble, confess to your wife, tell her you failed, and divorce her honestly.

Otherwise - that guilt you feel? Yeah.... that's only gonna get worse and it will drag you even further down this twisted path of a sad, wasted, miserable life. It's called karma.

Best Wishes,
Arpeggi

Welcome, sl.
Have you read any of the concepts on this site? Take a look at this one: The Most Important Emotional Needs

Your W appears to be totally in the dark about your need for SF (sexual fulfillment.) Or, if she does know, she is not motivated to meet that need. I suspect you may not have an idea what her most important emotional needs are, either. It sounds like neither of you have been meeting each other's most important emotional needs.

Read this article and then come back here and let's talk more.

Hi sl93, welcome to Marriage Builders. I would first go read this article: How Can a Husband get the Sex he needs in Marriage?

Once you are finished with that, print up your thread and hand it to your wife. You are a dangerous man, Sir, and she needs to know what you have been doing so she can protect herself.
Maybe if she knew how bad off you were, she would do more to meet your needs.

I agree you should get your needs met in marriage, but there is no excuse for infidelity.

The basic problem is that she has probably fallen out of love and is emotionally detached. That can be turned around.

Right on the money. You could have let your wife know that because she hasn't seemed to take your complaints to heart that you feel that she doesn't care about meeting your needs and were thinking of ending the marriage; anyone would have empathized with you because it does sound like your wife did the old bait and switch routine on you.

But how does cheating or getting sex from Hertz Rent a Girl help you out at all? You need to confess to your wife, that way you both can make a MUTUAL decision whether to rebuild your broken marriage. If you want to save your marriage, you need to read the materials on this site with your wife, particularly the part about Emotional Needs and Surviving an Affair.

I was in a sexless marriage as well. I felt lucky to have sex once a month.

It was a symptom that marriage had problems. I couldn�t woo my then wife the right way.

She later cheated on me.

Have you looked into the possibility that she is possibly cheating?

Granted, what you did is pretty bad, but I think it�s good you feel bad about it.

Confess to your wife and tell her that this is a very serious problem. But don�t present it in a manner that is accusatory.

Ask her what you�re failing to do to turn her on and want to have sex with you.

Present it as your problem, not hers and then see what happens.

But I think you can�t avoid confessing to what you did if you�re going to go anywhere in this marriage.

Full disclosure: If it was her on this board asking for advice on how to deal with the disclosure that you cheated I�d tell her to leave since she has no kids, but would also add that your remorse is a very good sign, so there is a chance to rebuild.

If you truly regret what you did, then you need to confess and expect to be in a state of purgatory for a long time.

But you need to romance your wife. You can�t just expect sex.