I called my husband today to apologize for getting us into this mess by not meeting his emotional needs. Last night I fell asleep due to the baby waking every 2 hrs. For a week now & just crying. He was cool to me in the morning & I was grumpy due to sleep depravation. I said I just have this to say, I don't want to fight. He called me back later in the day to elaborate on what I said to him earlier in the day. We got into a heated discussion & I ended up saying <BR>F - - K Y - U & hanging up on him. Now I sit hear asking advice from you as the tears blind me from typing. H has a very strong sex drive, I don't! I don't partly because I have so much going on all day that I'm touched out. He is angry with me because I'm the one preventing him from having sex. He claims that he needs it to relieve stress. After he had the A's, I find it hard to meet his need. It has been a month since d-day I am deeply wounded. He constantly brings up sex. I even folded, for him once but I didn't enjoy it. I did it for him. He was a happy man & I an unhappy wife. Now he is angry all the time & told me that he cannot go that long without it, he put a 6-month limit on it. I told him, then he has to leave because he cannot tell me when I will be over this. I feel like there is something wrong with me. He said that I will never have an affair because I don' have a need for sex. He is starting to make me feel like there is something wrong with me! Please pull me out of this deep despair that I am feeling.

{{{Bula}}} I don't know your story, but I'm going to guess that you are the BS? First of all, if this is the case, does your H realize that on top of the stresses you currently face with a baby, you are feeling BETRAYED??? Please seek counseling for both of you. Don't talk about the needs with each other if he is being so NASTY about the whole "sex" thing. He needs to understand that working on a marriage is a two-way street. He doesn't get it all his way. He's being completely unreasonable to DEMAND this of you, especially if he's recently ended his A. I don't know what else to say except I'm praying for you. Please say more about your history, then perhaps we can help you more.<P>MOM

Myownme,<BR>this is my story!<BR>I have my original post in devorce/devorcing so I am copying that post to give you an insight don't have the time to type again. Sorry! In a nut shell (long)<P>I can't believe that I'm actually posting but I need advice. I found out on 9/10 the day before the WTC attachs that my husband of 14 years has just started being fathful to me. He has had a total of 3 affairs spaning our marriage & 3 of our 5 children. All 4 were planned pregnancies the 5th was an oops!I was devastated but held it inside because the world was suffering a greater loss. I consider our marriage to be a good one. We are always together on his free time. We never fight. Our sex life went downhill since the children. I had a total of 7 pregnancies & suffered 2 great losses in the span of our marrage. He never came to me to tell me that he wasn't happy about our sex life but he claims that he has dropped hints before. I on the other hand was as happy as could be. I feel like the happy idiot. Anyway now that I know, I don't feel the same about us anymore. I don't know if I will ever recover from this. I was a proffesional that put my life on hold for him & the children. I have a nursing infant now. All 5 kids are fairly young. Please point me to the road to recovery.<BR> My situation is unique in that my husband & I have been sleeping in seperate bedrooms for years now due to children sleeping with me.Let me give you a little insight into my life. I have 5 children. All 5 were nursed some for 3 years. I am the type of person that needs sleep or else I cannot function the next day.All of my children never slept through the night. My husband incouraged the children to sleep in the bed but he couldn't sleep with them for fear of rolling over onto them. Even if I bottle fed, he would never wake for a nighttime feeding. He claims that he has to work the next day & I don't HA!Anyway to make a long story longer he has just admitted to 3 affairs. One lasting 1 1/2 yrs the other 2 yrs. & one a fling. He says that over the years he has felt disconnected from me. Instead of sitting me down & saying that we had a problem, he didn't. Istead he took care of his need on the side. If you are wondering did they ever have sex, yes we did, just infriquent. Now I am blown away & still have 2 children in the bed. It is to late to make them leave when they are so used to having mommy. I also have no desire to be with him now, after the affairs.Has anybody ever had a situation similar to mine or am I the only one out there.Please help me fix this!

Your H sounds like he does nothing to help. 5 children is a ton of work. Does he ever do anything with kids or show interest in them?<P>H sounds demanding...sounds like one of the kids wanting "mommy" whenever he has the urge. <P>I agree with Myownme that marriage is a two-way street. It also seems like the children have come in between your marriage. Reversing that will open the door to you both filling each other needs better. But the repeated As are really an issue that needs to be resolved first...Are you in counseling or do you have anyone to help and support you? <P>Learning the principles here and posting will help you.<P>TW

Yes I went 1 x & my husband is going the next. He is totally against counseling but he is doing it for me. As far as helping with the kids, he is a great older kid daddy but stinks in the infant department. I wouldn&#8217;t consider him demanding even though that must be the way it is interpreted but he has NO COMMUNICATION SKILLS. That is a big problem. The children definitely came before him. He paid me the greatest complement. He said if he could be a kid again he would want me to be his mother because I'm an excellent mom but I guess I just stink in the wife department!

bump up for Bula [img]images/icons/smile.gif" border="0[/img]<P>Bula,<P>Stop - you are not a bad wife and your H is not a bad man either. Both of you have a tremendously challenging situation to cope with &#8211; just to relate, we have 2 boys and that stresses the hell out of our marriage - so having 5 kids msut be really tough. You have my total respect because I couldn&#8217;t do what you&#8217;re doing.<P>You&#8217;re situation is also not unique &#8211; we&#8217;ve probably had very similar discussions in our marriage. My W was putting the kids, her family, her friends (and there&#8217;s a lot of them !!!!) first. She made me feel like I came well down her list of priorities and was not important to her at all. I felt like my job was to provide (basically feed the bank) and every now and again was rewarded with &#8216;sex&#8217;. I need sexual intimacy and I felt that my W was not interested at all. You can break this &#8211; you really can.<P>My W doesn&#8217;t agree with anything that Harley says so we&#8217;re in counseling. Luckily the counselor echoed some of Harley&#8217;s ideas. She told us that we need to make each other feel that we are the most important relationship in each other&#8217;s lives. And we need to demonstrate this too. And this means spending time with each other.<P>To start with we&#8217;ve agreed to spend 4 evenings out of 7 together. That means NO kids, NO friends, NO family. Just my W and me. Previously I was lucky to get 1 evening a month !!!!!! An MB principle is 15 hours a week.<P>What we do on these evenings we discuss and agree before. It is amazing what has happened. We&#8217;ve started to &#8216;find&#8217; each other again. We&#8217;re talking more and we&#8217;ve started to discuss our future together again, something which I didn&#8217;t think possible 3 months ago. In addition to this it also gives us a chance to establish the right &#8216;mood&#8217; for my W so that sex becomes natural and not forced. <P>My W hasn't said those magic little words to me in months but last week she said to me 'I love you'. That little step just shows you how powerful this MB principle really is.<P>Bula, you&#8217;ll need to balance the needs of your 5 kids with the needs of your relationship. This isn&#8217;t just about meetings the needs of your husband. It&#8217;s very much about your relationship &#8211; the two people who are the most important here and meeting those needs. <P>I know the kids need feeding and they can be very needy but this shouldn&#8217;t be at the cost of your marriage. After all your kids will grow up and move away, someday if you&#8217;re lucky [img]images/icons/smile.gif" border="0[/img] , and you want your relationship to be working then, don&#8217;t you? I know your husband does.<P>So, you have to make time for the two of you. Can you get a sitter, a parent, a friend, somebody you trust to look after the kids for some hours? Then go the Cinema together, or take a blanket and a bottle of wine and sit in the car, or go to a restaurant together. Do something, and do it together. Listen to each other and talk. <P>And a tip, at all costs avoid talking about his affair. It isn&#8217;t important. It&#8217;s a side issue. Talk about each other, talk about the future together and how he and you imagine it will be.<P>After a couple of times of doing this, the sex thing will sort itself out. I promise.<P>good luck [img]images/icons/smile.gif" border="0[/img] but come back here and tell us where and when you're going on that first date with with H.<P>- Freddy

Freddy, funny you should ask where we went on our 1st date. We went to a local restaurant CELL PHONE AT HAND. We have no family to help. My family is dead & his is useless & about 1 ½ hrs. away. The 1st restaurant that we visited seemed nice. We were seated & just before ordering, we asked to see their wine list to find out that they didn't have a liquor license yet. Not wanting to seem rude, we left because a glass of wine or two were definitely what the DR. ordered. Now we are feeling nervous because we have very little time to be restaurant hopping. All 5 kids were home alone. The oldest two being girls were babysitting for salary. I made sure that we left them in the daylight hrs. & Returned before dark. We chose a local restaurant 5 min from the house, ordered a bottle of wine, dinner was yucky but the company was not. It felt very acquired being out on a date with a man that I have been married to for 14 yrs. It was almost like the 1st time for me. During dinner the phone rang 4 times. I&#8217;m sure you guessed it, THE KIDS. Mommy when are you coming home, mommy are you & daddy having fun, mommy we cleaned the kitchen, Mommy take your time we have everything under control. A waitress passed our table& said wow you are one popular woman, yah, I wish, popular in the mommy this mommy that department, I suppose. My husband & I agree on one very important issue. The kids! We trust nobody when it comes to watching them. We had a live in at one time. Very trusted, a big part of the family. I left her with 3 of my children & one of there friends for 1hr. tops. I came home to everyone crying including the live-in.& the friend. Apparently, the girls, showing off in front of there friend starting teasing her & she lost control holding my son, a baby at the time & chasing one of my daughters & throwing a toy car as hard as she could at her as she ran up the stairs, while still holding my son. I know that I put my children 1st in allot of ways but they are my world. I love my husband; I wish he had made his feelings known about his unhappiness before we added another wedge (child) between us. Now I hope we have the strength & will to let, at least the babyhood pass. My baby is 8 months old & breast fed, never would take a bottle. If you new us you would probably be shocked. We have what looks like from the outside a perfect marriage. A beautiful home 5 beautiful children always together never fighting mostly laughing. We fooled everybody including me LOL! Did you ever see a movie called the story of us, With Michelle Phipher & Bruce Willis? Boy was that a killer. It doesn't deal with infidelity just with a couple that lost one another along the way. I saw that movie before I knew about the A's & compared it to my life to the T. I even had my husband watch it & it must have hit a nerve because it held his interest. Meanwhile he was probably feeling horrible as he kept his secret buried. It took us 3 days to watch because we had to accommodate the kids schedule & ours. It is not a children&#8217;s film by no means. Anyway I went off on a tangent, sorry!!! Our 1st date was a start, thanks for asking.