# Hi! I am a new member seeking some advice



## LiveLaughLove4_Ever

Hello! 

I am a new member and I am seeking advice regarding my sexless marriage. 

I have been with my husband for 10 years. We recently married this past summer. We do not have any children. For nearly 7 years my husband has not had much of a sex drive and therefore we have been struggling with it and intimacy. It's getting worse. I'm at the point where I feel like my husband is telling me all these excuses when I have been begging him for answers for the past 7 years. The main excuse is that his testosterone is low (which it is), he has been diagnosed with hypothyroidism. He has been on hypothyroid medication for the past 2 years and recently has seen a new doctor that prescribed him something else that seems to work better as his levels have improved by 50%. His doctor wants him to come back soon to recheck his levels again, and if they haven't improved much more than she wants to put him on testosterone. In the early years of the problem, he didn't go to the doctor to get it checked because he didn't have health insurance. But now he does, so I can't blame him for finally getting it worked on. However, I don't think him not wanting to have sex is because of his testosterone level. I think it's me and when we argue or discuss it, he would tell me that it is not me. But his actions and his words lately have me feeling otherwise. He constantly plays video games whenever he comes home from work and then plays them until he goes to bed around 1am. He works 12 hours for his job then comes home and plays the game. I work a 9 to 5 job, but when he comes home I am eager to spend time with him and talk to him. So him playing his game until bedtime leaves no time for us to spend together. He also works on the days I am off. He used to come home and watch tv with me. Recently, within the last 2 weeks, he told me that he needs "alone time." I asked him what does he mean by that? What he means is that he comes home to play his game and I basically do not talk to him while he is playing the game. That I don't ask him for favors around the house, etc. Well since he has been spending time on the game so much, he doesn't lift a finger around the house anymore. I have to constantly ask him to do something. He either always puts me off or he does it days later or he doesn't do it at all. Well, if he is working 12 hour shifts then plays his game, then when can I ask him for help around the house? So I started to give him the alone time that he was asking for, and he didn't like that because I would either not be home or I would pretend he wasn't home because thats basically how he made me feel when he plays the game. I feel neglected. He has headphones on and can talk to his clan members, but he can't talk to me. He talks to more to these people then he does me because even when he is not playing he has an app he talks to his clan members through. I am not opposed to him playing his game, I just don't think it should be so frequent. He leaves no free time for us.

Back in October was when we last had sex more consistently. After a few weeks I started asking him like why aren't we having sex and he would blow me off. Then one day, I happened to be using his phone to look something up on the internet and I saw that he had watched a porn video. I questioned him about it because I told him how much it hurts me that he did that because I have been asking him for weeks why he won't have sex with me and he would just blow me off. Also, because a few years ago it was a huge problem in our relationship. He would masturbate instead of having sex with me. He even admitted at one point that he was doing it to hurt my feelings. So we made an agreement that until he can get his sex drive issue worked out that he would not do it. The day I discovered it on his phone he swore up and down to me that he was going to suggest we watch porn together, but he has not suggested it since! Last month he also started seeing a therapist, but he told me that he is seeking one out because he just wasn't happy in general. That he was depressed about his new job. Then I come to find out that on his first and only session (so far) that he discussed his low sex drive with his therapist. His therapist suggested we have sex dates. But he has not suggested a sex date at all. It's been a month since he last saw his therapist due to the holidays she was fully booked. At least that is what my husband told me. On Christmas Eve we had a huge fight that led into so many problems that we have with one another. We both agreed that we feel like we needed that. However, he continued to blame every single problem on me. He said that during wedding planning it was like a hobby and therefore I was not miserable to be around. He said I am miserable lately. I told him that it can't possibly be because all he does in his free time is play his game, right? We had sex on Christmas Day and the day after. But on Christmas day he told me, "I feel like I can have sex with you, but I feel awkward." I didn't know what to say, and in awkward situations I sometimes say stupid things, so I chose to stay silent. Eventually he talked me into having sex with him. Before Christmas day it was nearly 60 days since we last had sex.

We went out for NYE, he was drunk, so he finally opened up to me and I feel sick to my stomach. Firstly he told me that he hasn't wanted to have sex with me because I am controlling. I asked him for 3 examples of how I am controlling. The first and only example he could give me was that I don't allow him to masturbate when he feels like it. I told him that I would be fine with him masturbating if we had a normal sex life. He basically accused me of controlling his body. I told him that he has hurt me in the past with choosing not to have sex with me and choosing to masturbate instead. He said he understands, but it is still me wheeling control over him. I said, well then why did you agree to it in the first place? He told me so that he didn't lose me. Then as the night went on more comes out. He tells me that he is bored with me sexually. He told me he talked to his therapist about it. He told me that his therapist says its normal to want something else from time to time. I told him that yes, I could understand that and that I probably would feel the same way he does, but our sex life hasn't been consistent enough yet for me to feel that way and be bored of him. He told me he understood that as well. I was kind of surprised he told his therapist that, especially during the first visit. I asked him if he talked to his therapist about the masturbation thing and he said no. I said, "well I think you should tell her the whole story as to why I do not want you to masturbate at this time." He then told me that is me controlling him. He said its not in my control what he tells my therapist. I only said that so that she can get the full picture as to why I feel that way. I could see him leaving out my reasoning why because he doesn't like to be looked at as the "bad guy." But I didn't tell him that, thats just how I feel about it. So then it goes onto how the next time he sees his doctor he is going to demand she put him on testosterone. He then went into how what is his hormones are so out of whack in the beginning that he will want to have sex all the time. I said well, I've been ready and waiting! But he was like, no, what if it makes me cheat on you. I told him if he cheats on me I am done with him. He then says, but what if its the hormones and how they aren't to the right adjustment (level) yet and thats why his hormones make him cheat. I told him that I don't care. I told him I feel like he is saying this as an excuse to cheat. He said, "thats where the faith comes in." I told him that it takes steps for people to cheat. Like, for instance, they have to be getting to know one another, then flirt with one another, then one asks the other out on a date or they hangout, then the person cheats. He told me he disagrees. He also wants to blame it on hormones, because when I have PMS I can be *****y and he never liked it. I told him all the time how it was like out of my control that at times I didn't even realize how much of a ***** I was being until it happened. So now I feel like he is using it against me. Also later in the night he could tell I was upset. I tried to shrug it off but eventually pointed to his head and said that his brain doesn't want me. He then tells me, "No, my brain wants you. I love you so much." But then he pointed to his **** and said that his **** doesn't want me. I am so hurt. I am trying to find a therapist for myself at this point because I am feeling embarrassed and duped. I feel like had I known this was going to happen especially so shortly after we got married that I wouldn't have married him. I feel like I have made a mistake, and I love this man, but I feel like all he does is blame me for all his problems, yet when I ask if it is me he tells me that it isn't. How is that fair? It just makes me resent him. I asked him why this is all of a sudden coming to light. That I suspect he has known this for a very long time. He said no, that he had a revelation! C'mon! Does he really think I am that stupid? I also suggested we do sex therapy. He said he is open to it, but thinks we should have individual therapy to work on ourselves first. I don't understand why we can't do both? I think he just wants to avoid him being the A-hole. Also, I did question him the following day about what he said on NYE. He didn't make me feel comfortable coming to him to talk to him about it, because he rolled his eyes and said "oh god." He then explained he did that because he thought I was going to complain about how much he drunk that night. But it wasn't that at all. He told me that as far as the hormones and cheating, he said that yes he does feel like I should forgive him for that as he forgives me for me being a b*tch to him when I have PMS. I told him, well if you become an angry a-hole to me when you are on testosterone, then I wouldn't leave you for that, I would have understanding. However, I will not ever put up with him cheating on me and reexplained to him the process of how people cheat. He continued to disagree and said there is such things as one night stands. But I told him that he told me he would never go for that in the first place all the years I have known him! 

As far as the sex dates that his therapist recommended we have (which his appointment was back in early December). He has not suggested it once since he told me his therapist suggested it! He tells me he is doing everything he can. I told him, "don't you think if you were really doing the best that you can, that you would do what your therapist suggests, and suggest a sex date? I told him that it's been a month now that he last had an appointment with his therapist, and has not suggested one at all. He got angry at me and told me that it is my job to suggest it because he is the one that has the problem with his sex drive so that he needs help. I said, well how am I supposed to know that you even need the help, if you don't communicate that with me. I told him that he always blames me for EVERYTHING! It's always my job to fix it. He told me that I never want to do anything that he wants to do, but I told him that he never communicates with me and even bothers to suggest something. For instance, I ask him all the time if he could take certain days off from work to do something together that is usually recommended by me, because again, he never says, "Hey, I am taking this day off from work to do _____. I told him that he perceives me as controlling what we do because I make suggestions and thats not fair! He told me that it is my job to suggest something that he wants to do to make him feel valued. I feel like I can do nothing right anymore. This guy totally blames me for everything. He even told me that he wouldn't have wanted to take the time off for Christmas Eve or Day at his work so he could get time and a half and should've celebrated Christmas on a "non Christmas day." I told him, well he works all the time and I always have to ask him to take specific days off and so thats what I did. He hates celebrating Christmas every year, and every year he mocks it or makes fun of me for celebrating it. He does it with pretty much all holidays actually. I decorated for Valentines Day as I took down our Christmas decorations and he always has something to say about it. How its not a real holiday and its companies way of making people spend money. But as far as the Christmas thing, I told him...if I really knew this is how you were gonna be (as far as not wanting to take Christmas off after I ask him to), then I wouldn't have married him and I would have found someone more compatible to things that I enjoy. It's important to me, and every year he doesn't seem to care. He didn't even wrap my Christmas gift. He put my Christmas gift in a suitcase and told me to open it. I was like really? 


What do you guys think? What would you do if you were in my shoes? I feel completely embarrassed. I really think we need couples or sex therapy. But I am afraid though. He gets defensive very easily. He suggested a divorce already however bates me into being the one to say it. Like "Go ahead and say it, Im not saying it. I want to hear it from you!" Thats not what I want. I want to work this out. We have put in 10 years, I just don't know how many more excuses and no work on his part in order for this to work. I feel he is putting it all on me.


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## BluesPower

My dear, I am sorry that you are going through this. 

Your post is detailed and it really points to one thing. 

Bottom line, your, Now husband, has issues, loads and loads of issues. 

If it is not the porn habit, it is the T levels, and yeah for a marginally sexual guy, it matters, a lot. 

Or his HT issues, or video game addiction... 

Honey, your biggest issue is your codependency and in ability to understand that you cannot, and never will fix him. 

The time has come for you to understand that if you want a functional, healthy, sexual marriage, it will not be with him. 

It is almost a 0% chance the he will ever become a grown, healthy, sexual man. Like no chance at all. 

It is time to get out. It has been 10 years, and you have been talking to him for what 7 years about the lack of sex... How is that working out for you. 

Lots of people will come in with lots of suggestions on how to make it work, and you know what, it won't. 

Are you prepared to waste another 10 years trying to fix him?


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## Diana7

Masturbating to porn is a big factor in men not wanting to have sex with their partner. I don't think the testosterone would help because it would just mean that he would watch more porn and masturbate more. Unless he is prepared to stop that and have sex with you instead, I am not sure what can be done to be honest.
For me I would give him the option. Stop the porn or we are finished. He has chosen the porn over you and what does that say? It says that he is selfish, nothing to do with you at all. 

I do have to wonder who you so recently married him when you knew what he was like.


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## wilson

Sex is not the problem in your marriage. The underlying relationship is not what I would consider healthy in any way. Sex won't fix the problem of his attitude or him playing video games every minute. Testosterone won't fix it either. You have low testosterone, yet you want to spend time with him and do things as a couple. That is what normal behavior should be like in a marriage. Testosterone is not part of it.

Fixing intimacy is one of the hardest things to do in a marriage. Many otherwise excellent marriages are not successful at fixing intimacy. I'm sorry to say, I'm not sure I have a lot of hope in a marriage like yours. Before trying to work on intimacy, you would need to rebuild the emotional connection to where you're at least acting like a married couple.

If you want to fix the marriage, you'll need to start putting your foot down. And you'll need to be prepared to walk away. Go to a divorce lawyer to understand your options. Give him ultimatums he has to meet or else you'll leave. Demand he gives up the games, since he's acting like he's addicted to them. I would say to not worry about sex at the moment. Try to get him to act more like a husband outside the bedroom and then work on rebuilding intimacy. But if he's reluctant, you need to leave because it's only going to get worse. There are thousands of threads here about sexless marriages and hardly any have happy endings. Try to fix things, but don't hold onto hope forever and waste your life with someone who doesn't care to work on the problem.


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## MattMatt

@LiveLaughLove4_Ever Welcome to TAM.

I suspect there's stuff happening that you don't know about.

Have you considered couple's counselling?


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## TJW

wilson said:


> Go to a divorce lawyer to understand your options.


This is a good first step. You don't have to initiate any action, just understand where you're at, and where you'll be after a divorce.



wilson said:


> There are thousands of threads here about sexless marriages and hardly any have happy endings.


Not only here. Other message boards have similar reports. I wish I had something encouraging to tell you, but the data bears out that very few marriages actually re-form themselves into something satisfying for both partners.


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## arbitrator

*Be forewarned that without marriage counseling and/or sexual therapy things are not going to get a lot better. And even with them, there is no firm guarantee!

You've given him 7 years already to right his ship, and it hasn't brought about any kind of a positive result!

You need to get into IC, and make a decision as to how much more time and energy you're going to pour into this relationship without giving serious thoughts to cutting the cords!

You've wasted more than enough time already!

Best of luck to you!*


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## WorkingWife

He is gaslighting you non stop.

You say you love the man. Really? Can you name 3 things you love about him that make him special compared to any other normally functioning adult?

His insistence that he may cheat if he takes Testosterone makes me think he already IS cheating and looking for an excuse in case he gets caught. That's the dumbest story ever:

I have a wife who will have all the sex I want with her but if my sex drive increases, I will have to cheat and it will be out of my control due to the hormones." W.T.F. ???? So stupid it is laughable. He "disagrees" that testosterone won't make him cheat? OMG.

When I was reading your post I thought - 7 years and THEN she MARRIED him? And then I rememberd I did the exact same thing - married a guy I wasn't happy with after 7 years of unfulfilling dating. Guess what? I just divorced him -- after THIRTEEN years of unfulfilling marriage. And he was a prince compared to what your guy sounds like.

My advice? Thank him for the valuable 10 year tutorial on how people don't change and liars lie and CUT. YOUR. LOSSES.

Bottom line? He does nothing that shows he cares abut you at all.


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## FalCod

Cut your losses.


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## StarFires

LiveLaughLove4_Ever said:


> What do you guys think? What would you do if you were in my shoes?


When I was dating, I had a list of rules that I lived by. Here is an example of some of my rules:

1. If a guy cheats on me, I will leave him.
2. I will not date married men.
3. I will not date a guy for more than 2 years
4. I will not tolerate abuse (2 ex boyfriends sorely regretted thinking they could hit me, and my ex husband found out the hard and very physically painful way that he had no business thinking he was going to control me).

I just wanted to give you an example but my list was much longer than that. What I didn't know at the time was that I was setting standards and expectations for myself and the men I dated based on my principles and convictions. A person can't always know what they will encounter, so my list grew as I discovered many other things that were intolerable. 

For example, my two-year rule was to protect myself from anyone thinking they were going to string me along for an undetermined amount of time. If a guy can't decide to put up by then, it was time for me to move on. So, I never would have married someone after being with them for 10 years. We would never have made it nearly that far.

Two years was also the point at which it was time to evaluate the relationship to determine if he was the right guy for me. If I didn't feel the relationship was improving or if one of us didn't want to commit, then I had to break up with him. So, when I dated Mr. Minute Man for 2 years and he asked me to marry him, I loved him very much and didn't want to hurt his feelings, but there was no way I was going to marry a sexual problem. And I certainly wasn't going to spend my marriage arguing with him about it after I'd spent that two years with no improvement.

What I'm trying to say is we women could eradicate a whole lot of problems in our lives if we all established standards and expectations to guide us through the tough times of discovering things we don't like about the men we meet and date. Once discovering, then it's time to decide what is tolerable and what is intolerable, what is worth your time and anguish and what is not worth your time and anguish.

With no self worth and no standards to guide you, then you don't know what to do about things as they occur. All you know is what you want to occur with no idea how to make it happen. But if you place yourself your own sense of value first, and love yourself more than you love a man, then you would encounter demeaning problems only once, and that's upon discovering them. You'd never have to deal with them again because you will have the wherewithal to recognize that he is not worth your time, and the problem that comes with him is intolerable.

Some things that you want are never going to happen, and some things you have no business wanting. Ever hear the phrase "Be careful what you ask for because you might get it"? It means you might want something so badly but after receiving it, then you regret wanting it in the first place. At some point, you have to stop focusing so much on trying to force the issue for your desired outcome and start looking at the man to determine he is not the right guy for you because having him is not worth allowing him to disrespect you like this.



LiveLaughLove4_Ever said:


> I feel completely embarrassed. I really think we need couples or sex therapy. But I am afraid though. He gets defensive very easily. He suggested a divorce already however bates me into being the one to say it. Like "Go ahead and say it, Im not saying it. I want to hear it from you!" Thats not what I want. I want to work this out. We have put in 10 years, I just don't know how many more excuses and no work on his part in order for this to work. I feel he is putting it all on me.


And that's what I've been trying to say. You should not have wanted him. You should not have married him. The problem was already so big, already too big to tolerate and shouldn't have been worth your time. And since the marriage, it has only gotten worse. I mean everything has gotten worse. The sex issues aside, you should not be allowing him to treat you this way. Under no circumstances should you allow yourself to be embarrassed by your man in the way that he treats you.

In addition to that, he doesn't want to be married to you. Putting it all on you is his divisive strategy to get out. I realize that is probably very hurtful, but he is enjoying hurting you, you keep letting him, so he keeps doing it. Stop putting up with all this from him. Walk out the door, and show him you love yourself more than this. I know you don't want to do that, and I know you aren't going to do it. You're going to keep insisting there is solution, but there really isn't, not one that you can effectuate because you cannot change him. You can only change yourself, and that means to start having self respect by not allowing him to continue disrespecting you. I realize this isn't what you came here hoping to hear. But there's no board, no counselor, and no sex therapy that can make it happen for you. He never was the right guy.


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## StarFires

I meant to tell you that I'm glad you got the posting problem worked out.


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## jlg07

"His insistence that he may cheat if he takes Testosterone makes me think he already IS cheating and looking for an excuse in case he gets caught. That's the dumbest story ever"

^^^ THIS.
Him telling you that is COMPLETE BULLS***. He isn't even TAKING testosterone and is mentioning cheating?
He has no sex drive now, and will not have sex with you, but boosting his libido would make him CHEAT? Umm, wouldn't it make him want to have sex with YOU?

Something is going on with him for sure, and he seems to be trying to drive you away for whatever reason.

YOU should go to IC for your own sake (maybe a bit co-dependent). You should also talk with a lawyer to get information (even if you don't divorce, you should KNOW what the details are in case you later decide to).

You can only control yourself -- get yourself a plan in place, a timeline for how long you will continue to put up with this if he doesn't try, and worry about improving yourself. HE is digging his own hole...


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