hello, all. I have been married for over 24 years. My wife and I have shared lots of joy over the year, but overall, I would say has not been a happy marriage. I don't want to go into details now, other than to say a major issue was my lack of emotional support to my wife over two miscarriages long time ago.
My wife is a good person, and I believe I am to, and I feel we are both working reasonably hard at our marriage. One of the key problems from my perspective is that my wife is not a real forgiving person, and one way she expresses this is by very infrequently wanting to have sex. Even if we are getting along very well for months, this doesn't change. She is not consciously trying to be mean or punishing, she just doesn't want to, and a lot of this is because she is so hurt and angry from the past.
My problem is the feeling of total helplessness. She has said to me directly that this is the way it may be for the rest of our lives, not as a threat, but as a reality. For whatever things I have done wrong in our marriage, I don't deserve this. Neither does she deserve to have a sexless or near sexless marriage. And I want to emphasize that for me, I am using the word sex, but I really mean that I need to feel sexually desired. I guess I am much more present oriented than my wife. When I don't have this feeling for months and years, it hurts deeply. I would so much rather just feel desired and not have sex, then have some sort of sexual contact with my wife when it is out of some sort of obligation.
In summary, what does a husband do when his wife won't forgive. I know relationships are 50-50, but I feel like I am helpless because even when we are feeling much closer out of bed, it has no impact on our relationship in bed.
