Where to start. About 10 years ago, my husband became impotent. . .this totally devastated him and I tried my very best not be make him feel bad about it. We had a great sex life until then but slowly our sex life just dwindled until there was no contact whatsoever. He just couldn't perform. . .we tried numerous remedies plus a number doctors but to no avail.

Then Viagra was invented and no sooner had it been invented and he started an affair with a much younger woman. She is about 20 years younger than him. I only found out about the affair three months ago and it had been going on for about four years.

He swears that it is over now and that he loves me but he has lied so over the past four years that I no longer know what is true and what isn't.

I am still trying to recover from the blow of the affair - we have been married 38 years and it feels some days that I am just dying. Its not easy keeping your marriage together and trying to keep yourself together. I am getting help from a psychiatrist at the moment but still have days where I am so overwhelmed with sadness that I don't know how to cope.

Does anyone think there is a link between his impotence and having the affair. The other woman had no idea that he had to take a pill to perform so in her eyes he was a stud. . .a 57 year old stud to boot.

Any advice on how to recover and regain the joy of living would be so very welcome.

12/2002 MY THEN 34 YO h BECAME Impotent out of the blue. Kept saying "it's not you baby, this is bothering me more than you"

1/06/04 H came to me I love you but not in love, never was.

Mid Jan admitted to EA

Today, I am confident it's PA, still going? I don't know. He refuses sex with me, won't kiss me. Says we are over. Has no feelings for me.

That's my story, not sure if it helps you out.

Good luck

Well my WH had an affair for 4 months not 4 years and I just started to not have days where I thought the black cloud was going to do me in. I had panic attacks everywhere I went. There were days when I was so sad that I could have gone to the hospital to ease the pain, days when even death seemed a better choice than the pain. But, I am here and I am living proof that you can get through this. Keep going to IC, and try to look at yourself differently. My WH is still with OW, and I know I am the better person here. It took a long time for me to realize this, but I am here now to tell you that you are not the cause of any of this. It is a problem the WS has within them, sure we don't help with the LBs and stuff, but it truly is a problem they have. Just keep your chin up and hope you can find a better you in there somewhere. That is how I made it through this. Lots of tears also. Crying makes you live longer, I am going to live forever.

NY

Enid,
I think there is a link between the impotence and the A but it is more emotional on his part. He couldn't perform with you because HE was doing wrong with OW. Emotionally, that caused problems for him when he was with you. Do you know if he could perform with her?
My WH sort of had that problem with me but not to that extreme but I believe it was because of his Affairs that he couldn't do stuff with me.

Thank you all for your replies. Its good to know that the pain that I feel is normal and that the panic attacks I have are normal. What is normal. . .I am sure I don't know anymore, I just know that each day I get through is another day I have managed to negotiate without falling apart.

My husband is definitely impotent and was definitely impotent for about five years before starting the A. He only started the A because he could use Viagra. That was how I finally found out about the A, after many clues and much suspicion on my part I eventually found his hidden stash of Viagra. He is still impotent and when we make love can only do so with the help of Viagra. He didn't tell the OW that he had to take Viagra, he pretended that there was nothing wrong with him while he was with her. I think this was one of the motivating factors for the A, first of all a much younger woman was willing, ready and able and she didn't know that he was disfunctional.

He says the A is over but I have no way of knowing whether it is or it isn't. I just hope that it is and I realise there is not much I can do if it isn't. I cannot control what he does and he has his own business which he works from home and so has lots of time on his hands to do anything he pleases all day long while I am at work.

I just find the pain and anguish the hardest to handle. He refuses to talk about the A at all and at home we pretend that all is well and I just hide my pain from him. Nothing in life prepared me for the devastation I would feel because of his betrayal. I think just talking with others who have felt the same kind of betrayal may just help me get through this thing. I was asking my psychiatrist the other day, "does the joy ever come back into your life?". He said, yes, but that it would take time. . .its four months since I found out and I still fell the pain as acutely as I did on the first day I found out. When does it stop?

Enid,
I showed my pain as Anger. I can count on one hand the # of times I cried over what my husband did and I was 5 1/2 months pregnant when I found out. Never really cried much at all. He made it easier because he was remorseful (so I thought at the time) and he wanted to make things all better. After one year of him not REALLY trying to hard to make the changes necessary in himself and for the marriage to work (he didn't follow through on anything) he started an EA with coworker. I have dealt with this in that my anger is causing ME misery. I have just given it to God and let him take over because there is nothing I can do. What I am trying to say is that the anger is quickly disapating from my life. At this point in time (with WH moved out) we are so far passed the Affairs that the Affairs aren't really even the issue anymore. So after 14 months, I can say that the pain of the affairs is pretty much gone for me. That's not to say that I am happy with my situation, but I am over what he has done. I feel no need to be angry, vengeful, or hateful because of the affairs. You will feel better one day. Just give it more time.

I have pretty much spent the last three week just reading and reading this board. I have found the people on the board to be incredibly insightful and strong. I wish I could find some of that strength for myself. I still feel so weak and if I am honest "sorry for myself". This feeling of betrayal almost becomes an intolerable burden and I have no one to talk to. Strangely I have not told any of my close friends or family about the A more to protect my H than to protect myself. He would hate it if anyone else knew. Funny how someone who has caused you such pain can also still cause you to protect them.

The bottom line is that I still love him dearly and have been married to him for 38 years. Does one throw away those kinds of years because of one A?? And yet there are days that I feel I could just crawl into a corner and die from the pain of it.

I know that only time will heal and its only been three months into the recovery and life really holds so little joy for me at the monment.

To all of you who have given me such wonderful words of encouragement I thank you. I am working hard at being the best wife I can and I think successfully hiding my extreme pain from my H. He has a major problem with confronting issues and consequently we sweep anything unpleasant under the carpet. I just find this unpleastness doesn't seem to fit under the carpet too well.

I think one of the major problems is that I am not even sure if the A is over or not. He says its over but then he has lied so well and so successfully for four years that I have no idea what is truth and what is lies. How does one have any idea when the A is completely over other than intuition?

Once again thank you to everyone for their threads and their wonderful words of inspiration.. they do help.

enid -

If you have been reading on this board, you know that this cannot be swept under the rug. Your WH has to be willing to discuss this with you or there will be no recovery.

Stick with us, we will help you through this. We all have our sad days, but life does get good again. Keep reading and posting.

Enid

I go with moving on that the impotence is due to the emotional attachment to OW. He actually doesn't want to cheat on her. I talk from experience.

My H became impotent End of Dec 2002, I just recently uncovered his PA (SEE MY POST UNCOVERED PA, MANY WOMAN) where he fell in love with OW and this is where his impotency came into play with me, he actually felt like he was betraying her!! (I have emails to backup my feelings).

His PA with her ended late summer, still was in love with her. Now that I look back starting late summer H wasn't 100% impotent w/me anymore, although there were still some perfomance problems (basically sex would happen, just maybe 3 times from late summer til 1/06). Starting in fall, H started having relations w/ OW, but there was not emotional attachment so he was able to "get it up" w/me when I initiated it. He prefered oral all of a sudden to. I always chalked this up to his fearing "failing" me via intercourse.

Now that I have uncovered the entire truth of my H everything fits into place. And I was a trusting wife. The last thought on my mind was he was cheating, I never accused him, I felt bad for him.

MO1069, Enid's husband has been impotent for TEN years. Viagra allows him to function with her as it did with the OW. To suggest that he has a loyalty to OW causing him to have to use V with Enid doesn't help her. He has had a long term issue with impotence, period.

Enid, have you considered moving this topic over to emotional needs? Impotence is something that strikes at the heart of a man and it would be helpful for this topic to get more traffic and particularly traffic from the male point of view.

Impotence falls under the catagory of SF, which is a high EN in most men regardless of whether they can function normally with a woman or not.

The sense of failure can be so great that it can affect every area of life. I would imagine it feels like insult to injury that your husband had an affair after being unable to function with you for five years but the emotional effect of impotence cannot be minimized.

Your husband chose the "easy way" by testdriving his brandnew toy with someone else and that was plain wrong. I say easy way because after five years of no SF together, performing sexually for the first time must have felt like diving off an Olympic high dive for him. I could understand (NOT CONDONE!) him doing it with someone he wasn't so heavily invested in. (Initially anyway) You two have been married a long time. Don't lose hope here, Enid.

There seem to be so many issues surrounding this problem, it really would be helpful to hear a male POV.

replace his V pills w/sugar pills. <img border="0" title="" alt="[Eek!]" src="images/icons/shocked.gif" />

I read everything you guys write and it does help. I just sometimes frighten myself because I think it would be better to die than to suffer this pain. I have days where the idea of death is preferable to suffering and not being able to talk to my H about how I am feeling. I know everyone says you need to be honest but my H just gets angry and shuts me out all together. Things are fine with us as long as I don't mention how I am feeling or his affair. Those two subjects are complete no no's.

I am in therapy and am taking an anti-depressant, so I am trying to get help for myself. I know that the only thing that can really help me is time, time to get over this terrible pain that I feel from his betrayal. I know some of you have suggested that his impotence had something to do with the A but he was impotent years before the A and needed viagra to actually have the A. The OW didn't know that he had to take anything and I think this was one of the things that made the A enjoyable for him. . .her not knowing that he was impotent. . .I knew and in his eyes he thought of himself as flawed. . .I never thought of him as flawed. . .I still don't think of him as flawed. I just think of him as not being the man I thought he was, I always thought he had such high morals and such a high standard. . .he also set high standard for me because he had such lofty standards. I think that is probably the hardest to take, my hero, my icon whatever he was to me has been taken away.

I totally adored and worshipped my H and now I have got to live with what he has done to our marriage and somedays I find trying to live with that just too hard.

Thanks for letting me vent. . .its what I needed to do.