# I Need YOUR Advice and Input! PLEASE!



## AnxiousInAustin (Jun 22, 2012)

I need advice and help; I’m at a loss and constantly upset about where my marriage seems to be headed. Sorry for the long post but I am not very good at summing up things.
Me and my wife started dating when I was 19 and she was 17. We dated happy for several years and moved in together when I was 22 and she was 20. We were both fairly large Christians at the time and had both decided at a young age to wait for marriage. We decided on having our own rooms in our apartment because we wanted to live together so bad. (this embarrasses me for some reason) It was very unconventional but it kept us from having sex. We started to drift apart for various reasons. She became very unaffectionate verbally and physically. I have a memory of us making out all the time and messing around then feeling guilty. We did most things short of sex every so often, had a long talk and would stop for a while. We made out a lot and I remember I once tore that bit of skin under your tongue that keeps him from flying around and I got paranoid and didn’t want to kiss her awhile while it healed. We didn’t make out much after that it was almost as if she was scorned and so started refusing me in turn. I was also becoming very undesirable I feel. I was 22 and confused and not sure what I wanted to do with my life. I was in and out of school and I gained a little weight. I do not fault her at all for losing some attraction to me. We started to drift apart and almost broke up within that first year of living together. We were not physical in the slightest, just friends that were dating. I loved her to death and she didn’t seem to be passionately in love with me at all. We didn’t break up and worked on our relationship. We did not get physical much at all, she was very uninterested in it because she said it didn’t go anywhere so she didn’t see the point anymore until it could go somewhere. I proposed a few months later and we eventually got married in August of ’08 when I was 24 and she was 22. I know now that we shouldn’t have gotten married. We did for the wrong reasons. We got married because we were best friends and didn’t want to lose each other. We got married because we thought with the introduction of sex into our relationship it would help us grow closer. I don’t care about those reasons anymore, I am here now, things have gone downhill again and have been for years, and I want to rescue this relationship before it is too late. Let me give you the rundown of where we are now.
We got married and things didn’t change. Who would have guessed right? Ha.
She has never liked sex once since we got married and if anything I have been getting more and more into it. I’m 27 and she is almost 26 and I think I am peaking sexually. My eye is wandering at every passing women (I promise I would never cheat in a million years.) She is completely uninterested in sex and we have gone on spells to where she promised me we could once a week to keep me happy, to once a month, to it not happening for half a year because she cant bare the thought. We both have very busy lives as I am now self employed for 60 hours a week and I attend school online at night. I have made extreme efforts to be a very productive person and my life is changing rapidly because of it. I still could stand to lose 25 pounds to be more appealing but overall and I am a catch. Everyone tells me so and I have to struggle to own it because I don’t understand what I am doing wrong with my wife. She is in grad school and also very busy. Recently she started her last year internship so she now works at a clinic and does not attend class so her stress is reducing substantially. I am hoping this will help things. My stress is off the charts with the amount of time I work and the demands of school. But I make time to go eat dinner, go to the store with her, and spend time with her basically. Physically I don’t know if things can ever change because she has told me she does not believe she will ever enjoy sex. She has never had an orgasm even alone and finds it all completely hopeless. She has been having sex with me once a week the entirety of 2012 but it is awkward and forced and she wants it over with quickly. If I can get a 15 minute session with her I am lucky. But forget the sex… our problem is emotional intimacy and affection. I am very affectionate and she is not and I think that, not the sex issues will be our undoing. She doesn’t touch me or anyone else for that matter much anymore. She has trouble saying I love even though I know she cares for me. I walk up to her daily and hug her, rub her shoulders and she loves it. She does not reciprocate though and I am drowning in anxiety over it all. I see couples holding hands, hugging while waiting in line at the movies and it tears at me inside. Why can’t I have that with my great friend and companion? Why can’t I have what I thought was promised to me by waiting until marriage? Why would God, if there is a God, allow us to get married if we were doomed? Or at least if we are not doomed why do I need seem to be finding no help. I mean short of losing those 25 pounds I have no idea how to help her become affectionate again. At least to the level she once was when we young. I mean I no people change as they grow older, but I have been here in love the entire time.
We fight so much now. I bring up her being unaffectionate and me being unhappy and she gets mad at me then is that much more withdrawn because of the argument. We repeat this once a week.
I do not know how many more arguments we have left in us. I don’t have many, and I REALLY DO NOT WANT TO live the rest of my life without this women. I know she hates the thought of us splitting up also. But I also get so overwhelmed with the thought of the marriage, of the life, I want to have, and what I actually have and don’t deserve. I mean I will only live once.
Is our want to stay together because we are codependent, or that we are meant to be and just need work, if work is possible.
I mean where do I start or where do we start?
Again I know I gave extra info but it felt like I would get asked a million questions so I wanted to cover the basics of it all. Please give me some advice. Are we doomed? I mean how do you help someone want to touch and compliment you more, and if you have to, is it even worth it?
-AnxiousInAustin

ps did I post this in the best place?


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## YinPrincess (Jul 31, 2011)

Sounds like you've been friend-zoned. I'm sure the guys will be by shortly with advice on how to up your game... Hope things improve for you both! 
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## AnxiousInAustin (Jun 22, 2012)

I'm not sure she will go. We have talked about it a few times. Mostly the sex stuff would help majorly but I don't know if it is the answer to the overal problem of her being unaffectionate.
Thanks a lot for the reply. Hope to get many more.


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## HiMaint57 (May 24, 2012)

You're way too young for this kind of marriage.

It sounds like your wife has a lot of guilt when it comes to sex. She may have been raised to believe it was bad, wrong, etc. These feelings can stay with a person even when married. 
She obviously has trouble with intimacy -- at least with you. You were so young when you started dating -- did she have any other boyfriends before you that she was emotionally connected with? Is it possible that she could be having an affair? Does she feel that she missed out on her late teen/young adult years and would like to try and recreate them?
Is this a relationship that should have stopped at a wonderful friendship and not taken the next step? My husband has a lot of close women friends that I know he's not intimate with.
Lots of questions to think about, I know. Just some things that came to my mind.


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## anchorwatch (Mar 5, 2012)

Austin, first thing first, my eyes hurt from reading you post. Please edit it and break it up into paragraphs. Most readers will just look at your first few lines and give up. You'll get more replies that way.

You should post this in the general discussion forum for more replies too.

A marriage is not a marriage without intimacy. Intimacy is the way we bond and celebrate our love for each other. You both are missing that. Without that you will fail. Counseling can be helpful. I would recommend a sex therapist, they also serve as marriage councilors. They will address the affection issue. I do think you can save this. The question is will she go?


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## River1977 (Oct 25, 2010)

Want to know what your biggest problem is? It's not your wife being unaffectionate and not wanting sex. Here is your biggest problem right here........


AnxiousInAustin said:


> I REALLY DO NOT WANT TO live the rest of my life without this women.


As long as you are more willing to lock yourself in your misery, then you are saying you'd rather be miserable with her than find happiness elsewhere. I'm not saying you should leave. I'm saying you have to be willing to leave.....or resign yourself to being unhappy and sexless if she refuses to work on improving things. You are not being fair to yourself by allowing her to be dictator and conductor. That's not what marriage is about. You both should be willing to work at each other's happiness.

Another problem I think you have is a very, very common one among sexually inexperienced couples. At the age your wife was when you moved in together, I was already married and separated. My husband and I were both inexperienced like you guys, and some of what you describe about your wife reminds me of myself back then. I didn't enjoy sex or orgasm because I found sex unsatisfying. I didn't turn him down normally, but I didn't want to have to be bothered either and wanted it over as quickly as possible. I really felt used and felt it was unfair to women. There was also an issue where he would say things that offended me (not about sex), and I'd regret being considerate of him the night before. It reached the point that I didn't want to have sex with him at all or be affectionate either.

Our problem was the inexperience mostly. Neither of us knew anything about a woman's needs or how sex can be satisfying for her too. As a man, it's much easier for you because the in-and-out motion feels good, but it doesn't necessarily feel good to her. It might and probably does, but she still needs more than that. It's just that she doesn't know what she needs, so she cannot help you please her. She doesn't know what to tell you to do or how to ask you to do it. If love making were satisfying to her, she would want it more often and wouldn't always want it over so quickly.

I will tell you also that my sexual disatisfaction made me resent my husband to some degree. These many years later, I'm still not quite sure if I blamed him because it wasn't his fault. It just seemed to me that's the way it was - that sex was for men and not women. So, because there was nothing in it for me, I resented him because I felt used. I didn't want having sex with him just for him to be the purpose of my birth as a female, and that's the way it seemed to me. As a result of those feelings and his disrespect on occasions, I mentally and emotionally withdrew from him. I was not going to live my life that way even if it was actually the way God made us. I had sexual urges too and knew in my heart there had to be more to this thing called sex.

It happens for a lot of people to learn about sex and pleasing each other by someone who is more experienced. For me, it was an older man who had, in his youth, been taught by an older woman. These days, there is so much available on the internet and in books that you and she can learn from if she refuses to go to a sex therapist. Something else to consider is to ask a friend to talk with her. Do you and she have a mutual friend who is a woman. Or perhaps, your wife has an older lady friend, and you can talk with her and ask her to talk with your wife to convince her to go with you to a counselor and/or sex therapist. That conversation with the older friend can be her introduction to understanding that sex can be enjoyable and not dreaded.


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