This is my first post here. I'll be "celebrating" our 15 year wedding anniversary soon and I'm anything but happy. I regret marrying my wife but feel trapped in the bonds of matrimony. I'm miserable and unfulfilled.

My wife and I did very little intimacy wise before we got married. She admitted to having been sexually abused as a child and was taken from her home for much of her early teen years but seemed to be and assured me she was completely healed. However after getting married, I realized that she wouldn't let me kiss her anywhere but the front face and only like bird pecks. Anything longer than a fraction of a second was uncomfortable to her. In 15 years, I've never french kissed her. If I were to kiss her neck, she'd push away and retract herself. She wouldn't let me touch any erogenous zones with my hands or mouth. Accidentally breathing on her neck brought violent responses of an elbow or jab. She rarely exposed her breasts and wouldn't allow intimacy without a sheet over her. She was able to do the deed but wouldn't allow anything but missionary. Sex to me was nothing more than robotic, I could do the deed with her but it wasn't intimate or connecting. I had other relationships where we would do nothing but passionately kiss for hours and fog the windows up till ice formed on the insides of the vehicle and you had to use an ice scraper to see through them. I begged her to get help and offered to go with her. She blamed me for not doing things right but I would ask her to show me, place my hand where she'd want and how or walk me through. She'd get angry and blame me. She had never given me oral or hand in over 11 years of marriage.

Fast forward about 10 years and the perfect storm came... My mom (her "adoptive" mom) died of a long fight with breast cancer. We were making frequent long trips to help my mother and sister. She was pregnant and then gave birth with our 4th child and went through postpartum. Our church we thought we would die in had a dirty nasty split due to infidelity of the pastor's wife. We lost alot of our friendbase through that split. We were doing major repairs to our house to ready it for selling and moving and add in there an unhappy marriage and her gaining weight from the marriage not filling pretty as opposed to the previous 3 births where she didn't gain the same type of weight as she did.

In comes the home repair man who I didn't know was a 2x convicted child molester. He started giving my wife compliments which grew and she never told me. That goes on till about September of 2013 where she commits adultery with him. He taught her how to evade my suspicions by having sex with me the previous night or that morning before meeting him. Integrating going out with legitimate activities and bring receipts and leave them around. Never going out at night. She got a membership at the gym and would go from his place to the gym to shower after her vile activity. Their relationship grew and blossomed into some deep stuff. She would get, "tributes" for him which was young women who would be willing to have sex with him and she'd meet them, weed them out and facilitate the first greet. He was on parole at that time so he couldn't use computers. She would talk to women anywhere she went that she thought he would like or online. It grew from there where she'd post CL adds for a threesome or partner swapping and for a "swingers" lifestyle and they'd pretend to be married. We attended his wedding while she was with him. He asked my wife if my then 6 year old daughter was out of bounds. Later, he told her he wanted to use my then 4 year old son to go out "hunting" with them. Hunting was the term for finding a tribute for him. He wanted to teach my son how to do it when he got older because he was really cute and had charisma for people... he'd be able to allure women. Towards the end of their 2 year romp, he asked my wife to get illicit photos of a teenage young girl in our church. With some coercion, my wife agreed to do it. Then contacted the girl and asked her for a picture of her hairstyle but couldn't bring herself to ask for anything illicit. She went back to him and told him if he wanted that, he needed to get it for himself. At no time did she break it off with him during all of this. I am completely unaware of this stuff at that time. One day he posts a CL add offering to be some daddy's boy in return for the man to buy him a particular car that was for sale. The boundary my wife had with him was that he was free to mess around but no gay activities. You see, her mom has HIV from her husband who was a hemophiliac in the 80's and got a bad blood transfusion and died. She became enraged and spiteful and posted adds on CL for revenge sex. She became careless in her activities and I began suspecting something was going on because she'd start going out during the day, not responding to her phone, her entire demeanor changed even more than it was. I later found out that he had given her chlamydia and she gave it to me and she went to the Drs 2x and got a prescription and put it into my food without my knowledge or consent.

I saw warning signs when she started cheating but didn't attribute them to cheating... pick your poison, grief of my mom dying, loss of our church, friend base, moving away from the house, 3 children, postpartum and birth of our 4th? Once I got suspicious, I took her phone and looked at it. I am a penetration tester for a federal agency but had never ever suspected her of cheating. I didn't think it possible for her. Yes I know, we are all capable of anything and Christ was at all points tempted yet without sin BUT if there was any sin to be committed, my wife would never cheat. I used some forensics tools to undelete photos on the phone and found a picture of her giving oral sex to a man. That was March 29th of 2013, my D-day that will never forget. She had done that only once with me for the first time after she started cheating. She readily admitted that it was her and that she was cheating on me. What she didn't say was it was revenge sex with 4 other different guys on CL and not that it was with the child molester. The very next morning she went to a hotel with some man and I remotely enabled GPS on her phone. I didn't have a vehicle to go there and called my pastor. The 2 of us called her phone and left multiple messages. The pain I felt was like nothing ever experienced. Using the word, "pain" doesn't seem to be enough. My heart was torn out and stabbed repeatedly and eaten and spit out and thrown on the ground and stomped on. My wife, the woman who could never cheat was a monster. I still didn't know it was with a child molester. We went through three weeks of cat and mouse. i told her to leave the house and come back when she was done cheating and she said she was done and I didn't have the intestinal fortitude to kick her out. She gaslighted and accused me of all manner of abuse, physical, mental, financial, not allowing her to see family. None of that was true. I hadn't so much as cussed at her in the entire time of our marriage. She had full access and cards to all accounts... the fact she got away with cheating for 2 years provide I didn't control her. I bought into the accusations and gave her everything she demanded... except for getting away with the cheating. Once I suspected the child molester, I audited every electronic device in our household and decrypted her KiK chats and gained access to the email accounts. I used privately acquired software and not gov't software to do this. I didn't care if I could loose my clearance, my children were in danger. The state we lived in was legal for 1 party consent for surreptitious recording. There were times where she'd open up and just tell me everything. I recorded those conversations but she never said anything about the molester. You see, they had agreed ahead of time if caught they'd admit but not about each other. Once the heat died down, they'd resume. I called him directly and confronted him, he told me they were cheating and about the length of it and the most of what they had done physically which was everything. I recovered text chats but she had a phone that broke earlier so I wasn't able to get anything past a point because that phone was thrown away. I did get her admitting to the things about how the molester asked about boundaries using my daughter as an example and about wanting to teach my son and about her being willing to try to get illicit photos of a minor. I took this information to the police and they said that it wasn't enough, they didn't have enough evidence. By this time the molester was out of parole and in probation. They raided his house but found nothing. You see, he'd have women do the contacts and he kept an SSD card with his, "conquests" but would have other women hold onto it. When it was at his house, he kept it in the ceiling fan light socket or between the floorboard and laminate in an airvent. I'd watch her try to contact these men and arrange meetups and I'd contact them right away and tell them to go away or else. I went over to the 2x convicted child molester's house with a 30'06 to kill him but he skipped town.

We were bleeding out, she was gaslighting and in the fog and felt ripped out of her cheating. I couldn't stop her from contacting them but I could contact them and make the situation so very full of drama that they didn't want to mess with her. It didn't help that she told a few that I was a hacker, x-airbone and firearms instructor. I met with an attorney who told me with the evidence I had at that time and the fact she was still in the relationship, I could walk away with everything. We were in intensive IC and MC and the counselor told me basically that marriage is for life and that I would sin if I divorced. He did say we could separate but I couldn't kick her out physically and didn't have the money to pay for rent at 2 locations. I got permission from work to work 100% from home so i could be with my children at all times. I moved us to get out of the area and went to a church in a state where the pastor had a reputation for helping marriages. We have been at this new church for 3 years. My wife stopped physically cheating around July or August of 2015. She stopped chatting with men online since December of 2016. We have been in reconciliation since Feb of 2017. She went from seething rage and bitterness at me for hacking her, stopping her from cheating through embarrassment and contacting them, holding her children hostage from her continued cheating etc to after a particular sermon giving over her bitterness, talking about the future, wanting another child and really trying to work things out with me.... EXCEPT....

She still has not gotten help with her childhood abuse she encountered as a child. I believe that this is a skeleton hiding in the closet waiting to rear its ugly head again should the right opportunity or circumstances happen again. I do believe that man brainwashed her BUT she was a willing participant and she could have said no at any point. She must take full responsibility for her cheating and I do believe she has.... now.

So where am I through all of this. I'm now a bitter man feeling cheated still... not because I think she's with other men... but because she refuses me in ways she freely gave to strangers. Those ways of refusal are not considered unChristian between a husband and wife. I long to have intimacy and passion in our marriage without barbed and razor wire fences at every corner. I have become addicted to pornography and blame her for it knowing it was completely my decision. I'm angry and hurt and we need help in so many levels. The pastor asked me if I could give him one year of working with her.. if I could withstand emotionally and I did and it worked almost exactly one year. But I internalized everything. I'm angry at God for not intervening and for me now having a porn addiction. This is such a mess. I just want to walk away. Fought so hard and long for her to want this marriage again and now that I have it, I don't want it. I'm so disgusted at her for endangering my children, for cheating, for giving men things she never ever gave me and still hasn't in the coming 15 years of our marriage. She's trying to plan going away with me on our anniversary and she does try, she really does but not in intimacy. I'm at the point, I don't want anything else from her. I don't want to talk to her, I don't want to invest, I'm tired of doing for her and she just wants me to give everything and she doesn't offer anything back. I'm tired of having a mental checklist of what to do to be able to do the deed with her, I can't just let go. I don't even want to try or give until she's willing to get counseling for her childhood sexual trauma and until she lets me kiss her, touch her and have other positions than missionary and actually seem to want it. She convinced all those other men. To add insult to injury, I read more than other men do about their wive's activities. Most men don't even know their wives were cheating. I now have to live with these vivid pictures in my mind of things she typed to them. She made the statement to me among many many others that without God, she wouldn't even be attracted to me. That's the opposite of me, I know I'm now backslidden and I don't have to have God to be attracted to her. I asked her to clarify because we are incapable of loving without God... but she specifically meant attraction and not love. How great it feels to hear your wife say that to you. So what happens if she backslides, is she going to go cheat again anytime she backslides?

Although life through this reconciliation has been livable and amiable without arguments, it is just internalizing and not solving things anymore. We need help.

Hello and welcome to Marriage Builders. I am sorry for the reasons that have brought you here. Most marriages do not recover from infidelity because they have no plan for recovery. If they stay together, they are usually a crippled version of the pre-affair marriage. If the marriage does not recover, the resentment of the betrayed spouse grows and grows because his mind continually wanders to the past. That is what has happened to you. The Marriage Builders plan prevents this from happening by teaching the couple to fall in love again. When one is happy in the present, the mind does not tend to go to the tragedies of the past.

Your wife does not need to go to counseling to talk about her past. Bringing the unhappiness of the past into the present only makes the present unhappy. What you both need is a recovery plan to restore romance and passion to your marriage. Her going off to counseling to discuss her past will be a needless distraction. She doesn't need to do this to learn new habits in the present.

Secondly, your porn addiction needs to stop immediately because it will always make you unhappy in your marriage. Porn causes men to CHECK OUT of their marriages. You can't be checked out and be successful in this plan. This plan really does work, but you will have to follow it.

I would start here first and familiarize yourself with the MB plan:

The program will teach you both how to meet each other's needs in such a way that you will have an incredible attraction to each other. Women need two things to desire sex: an emotional attraction to the man and the prospect of enjoyment. read this

Melody, this is not a situation where we once had passion and lost it. My wife had/has phobias. She couldn't go into closed spaces. Elevators physically scared her. She wouldn't even touch the door to an elevator. I worked with her for months to be willing to touch it with my hand touching it first and her touching my hand. We worked from there to where she was finally wiling to go inside. If I accidentally breath on her neck she'll elbow me. She elbowed my daughter in the face one day because my daughter came up, put her arms around my wife's neck and exhaled lightly. She loves to cuddle and she loves to give pecks on the lips and cheek. From the beginning of our marriage, I feel like I have a daughter and not a wife. She avoids conflict at almost all costs even to her detriment. It is a point of contention in our marriage because there are many times a person must stand up and be willing to conflict. Especially for the safety of herself and our children. Her and her sister were taken from their home very early in their teen/preteen years. She was taken out of a very bad situation and placed through the CA foster system into even worse situations and even separated from her sister. She clings to me all the time to the point that I need to breathe and has been throughout our marriage except for when she was cheating. Honestly the physical realm was the best when she was cheating. I'm embarrased to say that. As soon as she stopped cheating she reverted back to what she was pre-cheating. Its almost as though she treats anything but the minimum as dirty but she says it makes her physiclaly unconfortable or hurt.

I hear what you're saying about not rehashing the past but at what point do you have to clean out the decomposing bodies in the closet before they spoil the whole house??

At what point is it a clinical issue and not just a spouse/spouse relationship issue??

At what point do you move away from the closet with the decomposing bodies? Is there any benefit to perpetually dragging the dead bodies out? Not at all. At what point do you leave the past in the past and start fixing your marriage? The only thing that helps is the counselors bank account. If you are focused on the past, which it seems you are, then you are not solving problems in the present. You can't fix the past, but you can fix the present.


My suggestion would be to stop psychoanalyzing your wife and put aside your own ideas. Keep an open mind to plans that really work. Dr. Harley is a licensed clinical psychologist with 50 years of successful experience saving marriages. Here is what he says about this subject:

http://forum.marriagebuilders.com/ubbt/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2413831#Post2413831

Here is the thing, we can help your marriage tremendously but we can't if you insist on chasing rabbits down rabbit holes. Her past has nothing to do with changing adult behavior. Leave it all behind. Replace that bad past with a GREAT present. Now you know she can be a great sexual partner under the right conditions. We can teach you and your wife how to create a passionate, romantic relationship where she has sexual desire. But that can't happen unless you drop this childhood thing and start practicing sexual exclusivity yourself.

Have you at any time in your marriage asked her to do sexual acts she did not want to do? Are you doing that now?

And one other point. I had a horrendous childhood. But, I have a very happy adult life and a great marriage because I locked that closet of decomposing bodies and moved out.

Leave the dead to the dead, my friend.

Did you know Dr. Harley has helped a lot of marriages that have never had passion create it?

Yes, it started near the beginning of our marriage. I want to kiss her in places other than her lips and cheek and she does not want that. I want to be able to touch her in erogenous zones, she does not wan that. I want to be able to french kiss, (without tonselectomy) french kissing is disgusting to her. I want to be able to make love in other positions than missionary only, she does not want that. I would like to give and have oral sex, she does not want that.

There is no freedom in our sex, it is just boundaries, walls and rules. I'm nearing the point of being willing to divorce than have the physical relationship I have with her. She did things with a child molester and strangers that she hasn't done with me. She asks me to give her time but that's what she's been saying for 15 years now. How much time did she need with that anonymous hookup her child molesting adulterer setup for her to give him oral sex and then tell him later when he asked if it was really her texting him a complete detail of the scenario and that it ended in her mouth.

I feel like she took a machette to my kneecaps and is telling me to stand up to be able to have an intimate relationship. Even in times she initiates physiclal intimacy, it is the same rules etc... I went years without asking for certain sexual acts and that got me the good husband status that she can leave at home while she went and sewed her oats. Now she comes back to me all messed up and expects me to do all the giving again without her having to reciprocate. Talking about putting money in the bank, I feel like I've been loading it for that last 15 years and I just get cheated on in return. I cannot let go while being phsycially intimate... yes the act can occur but I have to be on guard of my behaviours the entire time to ensure I don't illicit a violent response from her. You know the Dr is right that everyone is capable of cheating on their spouse... we're all sinners. What hurts me most is the rejection and refusal after all the years I put in and her telling me its just things she doesn't like doing intimately with anyone and that she only did some of it with them because she knew it was expected and she's not going to do anything with me that makes her feel uncomfortable. thank you so much for not doing anything that would make you feel uncomfortable. I only go to work every day, I watch guard over my behavior when intimate with her, I felt uncomfortable staying with her knowing she was cheating and knowing she had placed my children't safety in danger. I felt uncomfortable moving my family accross the country trying to save it. I trigger on those statements because she's just doing what she wants to do through all of this and even now seems to have no regard for me or my feelings. I should be able to dine in the house for Thanksgiving supper but instead, I'm out with the swine looking for scraps of her intimacy and consideration.

Would you be willing to go on Dr. Harley's radio show (anonymously of course) and find out if he agrees with you or not? Send him an email at mbradio@marriagebuilders.com I promise you Dr. Harley has worked with a lot of childhood abuse situations.

We can help walk you through Dr. Harley's plans, and they will work for your situation, but it sounds like at this point you don't quite trust us, so I'd really like to encourage you to talk to the professional, hear what he has to say. People like MelodyLane have been here for over a decade, listened to hundreds of hours of Dr. Harley on the radio show, know the ins and outs of the plan here and how to apply it in unusual situations - you really have a lot of great guidance here, but it sounds like you remain unconvinced.

I would like that very much


MelodyLane, Please understand, I'm reading everything you're sending me and thinking it through. My responses are not in the spirit of arguing. I'm very hurt, feel very wronged and frankly still feel cheated because she was not honest about her sexual disfunctions before we married. I asked her about them and she said she was completely healed. Post cheating, I contacted her previous person she was engaged to. He too said she has serious problems with intimacy. I feel like I married her under false pretenses adn feel most cheated about that because I certainly wouldn't have married her had I known about this ahead of time. Now even wishing we didn't try to save ourselves but engaged in intimacy before marrying. This is mostly my anger, pain and bitterness speaking. I do love her and want the best for her, but I'm just tired of giving now without at least a doggy bone from her at least tossed in my direction.

You've got two options in front of you:
1. Leave the past in the past and start following a plan of recovery that will build a romantic marriage today (including intimacy that is enjoyable for both of you)
2. Divorce her.

Choose one.

h3ll0, there's a lot that you can learn that will motivate your wife to feel like giving you more in marriage. The materials are here on this site. If you go the present route, seething in resentment, you're not likely to make any progress.

Talk to Dr. Harley! Get a professional opinion instead of relying on your own analysis of your wife.

She was in love with you and therefore felt healed. Don't be angry with her for being wrong.

You cured the elevator phobia with gentle patience. If you force the issue, you will create a sexual aversion.

You're going to have to quit even thinking words like this and being her psychoanalyst because it's very unsexy and will push your wife's sex drive deeper into the red. I get why you're saying this - but don't.

You're also way out of your depth, because you're assuming all sex drives are like yours: A drive which remains the same throughout different relationships; even bad relationships - there's no squashing it!

Your wife isn't like you; but she didn't lie, and asking her what her sex drive is going to be like was folly. She has a reactive sex drive, one which needs conditions to be juuuuuust right, and of course she hoped it was going to show up as you become closer. Unfortunately the circumstances you describe were terrible. Her sex drive would have locked the door and refused to come out!

If she was engaging in unenthusiastic sex, she was shooting herself in the foot.
If you were using porn, you were shooting her other foot.

Awakening a sex drive, perhaps for the first time, for someone like your wife, after years of unenthusiastic martyr sex, which has probably pushed her back A LOT, is a patient, slow burning game...

Are you willing to create a passionate, romantic marriage built on the sexiest kind of masculine patience or are you going to whine for 'a bone?' in this deeply unsexy way?

No judgement if you're done after her infidelity, coupled with a low feeling about the recovery work needed here; I chose not to recover after an affair, so i get it if youre not game.

But if you're going to do this; do it right.

Patiently and with optimism. Speaking to Dr H would help.

I am concerned that you are more focused on her lack of doing what you want sexually rather than on her infidelity.

You are addicted to porn, and you demand that she does things for you sexually that she doesn't enjoy doing, and you seem to think that the lack of intimacy is her fault.

If you are addicted to pornography, it wouldn't matter what she did for you. She will never measure up.

If you are insisting that she have sex the way you want, and are not seeking ways to have sex that will make it enjoyable for her, then you have shot yourself in the foot. She will not be able to be intimate with you if she knows the things she IS willing to do simply do not measure up for you. You cannot have a wife in the throws of passion if she feels 2nd rate, not good enough, that her dislikes are not important, uncared for. That your desires are more important than her.

There are 1000 ways you could enjoy having sex. There are 10 she could enjoy. Your job, as her husband, is to find those 10. It is NOT to focus on the other 990 ways you can't have sex, because you will hurt her and ruin any chance for a fulfilling sex life.

I completely missed that you are addicted to porn. There is no way you can have a good sex life if you are using porn. One major reason I don't use pornography is that I don't want to ruin my ability to enjoy sex!!! Another major reason of course is that it would be hurtful to my wife Prisca. No human being deserves to go through that sort of pain. But there's a major self-seeking component to this decision: I like sex and don't want to ruin it.

The best way to stop using porn is to tell your wife every time you use it.

You might also check out the book Every Man's Battle - this book helped me a lot years ago. It focuses on training new habits that will help you avoid a lot of the triggers that lead to porn use.

And God brought you here!!!

FYI I cried out to God in 2009 for a mentor who was a good husband and had a good marriage and could show me how to get a good marriage. Check out the date I joined this forum.

I think you need to lead a little more, here.

There's a lot of reasons your previous trying and giving have been ineffective and have worn you out. But if you want this to get better, you need to understand you're probably going to have to do a lot to change her feelings about you before she feels like changing. That's rough. I've been through it. But it does work.

If you aren't willing to learn what you can do to make this better from your end, you should probably just accept that this is going to end in divorce. With four children I think that would be a tragic outcome.

One thing you can do when you don't feel like trying any more, and I did this in 2013, is see a doctor (just your regular physician; doesn't have to be a psychologist) and ask him to prescribe you some short term mild antidepressants. These can help even out your moods and enable you to rise above your emotions and work a plan that will improve your situation in the long term. I understand this can be scary - putting a mind altering drug into my mouth was one of the scariest steps I've ever taken, and I broke down crying after I took the first one. But it did work, and after three months I was off of them. Dr. Harley recommends wellbutrin because of it having minimal side effects, particularly sexual side effects. My doctor recommended Lexapro. If I had it to do over again I'd probably insist on trying wellbutrin.

Also, please get Dr. Harley's professional opinion about whether or not it even makes sense for your wife to have counseling for her childhood sexual trauma. I know we've all seen Counselor Troi on Star Trek insist that you have to cry and deal with it and take a bunch of other grieving steps, but that is television script writers, not psychologists. Dr. Harley used to run a whole chain of mental health clinics in Minnesota. He did addiction therapy, trauma therapy, rape recovery therapy, anger management - the whole gamut of psychological issues. He has helped a lot of people have good marriages when the wife had childhood sexual trauma.

And STOP JERKING OFF TO PORN. Your wife doesn't stand a chance finding a way that both of you can enjoy sex while she is competing with other women who are paid to do anything in pictures. You are making the sexual experiences that she CAN provide you less enjoyable for YOU. Doesn't seem like a fair way to treat anyone, let alone a survivor of childhood sexual trauma, right?