# Wife cannot remember what an orgasm feels like



## Casual Observer (Sep 13, 2012)

Ok, you’re reading this and thinking a woman hasn’t had an orgasm in ages and can’t recall what it was like when she did.

No, we’re talking about someone who can regularly have two orgasms/week via oral, but cannot, at all, imagine what that experience feels like at other times. And she doesn’t think that odd. She can’t fantasize about one, she can’t anticipate one. The experience is quite awesome in the moment but exists at no other time.

She has not told her therapist because she never thought it odd. The therapist is only just now beginning to focus on her nearly complete lack of anticipation of all-things positive. Something I brought up early on as being something I had a tough time living with and it was dismissed as me misinterpreting things.

Or am I wrong and this is actually common?Not being able to keep a pleasant memory intact for even a couple days?


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## TJW (Mar 20, 2012)

I don't think it odd, either. I have no anticipation of positive, or negative, things. I never regarded this as a subject for a therapist, only a part of my temperament. I have fantasized countless times about other aspects of sex, but never the orgasm.

I fully expect that others will have much different viewpoints.


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## VladDracul (Jun 17, 2016)

CO, looks that this is more about you and her stroking your ego than it is about her. What do you expect? her going around for days talking in amazement as to how good it felt. Of course she remembers the big "O" when she has one. She may be telling you she can't remember to get you to stop pestering her for conversation about it. Of course its possible she pulling a Meg Ryan (Harry met Sally) and don't want to dwell on it.


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## maquiscat (Aug 20, 2019)

Casual Observer said:


> Ok, you’re reading this and thinking a woman hasn’t had an orgasm in ages and can’t recall what it was like when she did.
> 
> No, we’re talking about someone who can regularly have two orgasms/week via oral, but cannot, at all, imagine what that experience feels like at other times. And she doesn’t think that odd. She can’t fantasize about one, she can’t anticipate one. The experience is quite awesome in the moment but exists at no other time.
> 
> ...


This is a key line. Does this seem to be a problem in other areas besides sex, even areas where you are not involved? What is it that is bringing this to your attention?


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## Blondilocks (Jul 4, 2013)

Some people live their lives in the moment and others live their lives wishing and hoping and anticipating.


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## Affaircare (Jan 11, 2010)

And yet, although I do strive to live in the moment and live in gratitude rather than negativity, I can say that if you said to me “Remember that giant O you had last night?” I do have the capability to say “Yes I remember that. I enjoyed it!”

I think @Casual Observer has been trying to tell us she literally does not have the capacity... like it never happened.


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## Blondilocks (Jul 4, 2013)

Casual Observer said:


> but cannot, at all, imagine what that experience feels like at other times.


It may be a question of semantics. She may remember she had sex and remember that she did orgasm. She has difficulty recalling the sensations of the orgasm. I would think that if she could remember exactly what it felt like, she wouldn't need him - she could recreate her orgasms from memory alone.

If I'm understanding CO, he is concerned about her inability to anticipate or look forward to an event as in not anticipating their next sexual encounter to recreate those feel good feelings. Apparently, she doesn't look forward to anything. That could be from conditioning.


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## DownByTheRiver (Jul 2, 2020)

I don't believe I've ever met a woman who goes around dwelling on how great her last orgasm was. Mainly because if she wants another one all she has to do is go get one by herself or with a partner. You went to a lot of trouble to give her one, what the truth is she could probably give herself one in half the time. 

It does seem like you're looking for validation. Just try to keep in mind that people don't need a partner to have an orgasm. Your biggest accomplishment will be if you can keep her interested in being with you because you are interested in getting to know her and appreciating who she is as a human being because otherwise sex is just sex, and women need more than that. It's not just the orgasm they value.


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## minimalME (Jan 3, 2012)

This was my thinking too.

I've given birth to children, and although I know it was extremely painful, I don't 'remember' what it felt like, and it wasn't awful enough to stop me from doing it multiple times.



Blondilocks said:


> She has difficulty recalling the *sensations* of the orgasm.


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## Personal (Jan 16, 2014)

Casual Observer said:


> She has not told her therapist because she never thought it odd.


No amount of sending your wife to a therapist is going to make your wife think like you, because she isn't you and can't be you.

Instead of spending plenty of time trying to convince your wife that she is broken, and trying to get her to prostrate herself to your ego. Perhaps you might stop for a while and just let her be who she is, without constantly trying to get her to be someone else.


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## Livvie (Jan 20, 2014)

Casual Observer said:


> Ok, you’re reading this and thinking a woman hasn’t had an orgasm in ages and can’t recall what it was like when she did.
> 
> No, we’re talking about someone who can regularly have two orgasms/week via oral, but cannot, at all, imagine what that experience feels like at other times. And she doesn’t think that odd. She can’t fantasize about one, she can’t anticipate one. The experience is quite awesome in the moment but exists at no other time.
> 
> ...


It's not average to not be able to have a memory of pleasant experiences.

Think of an amazing dish at your favorite restaurant. You remember it and are in pleasant anticipation of having it again. Ooh I'm thinking of one now, actually.... and it's making me plan when I might be able to plan a run into the city to get some takeout!! That's a pretty common experience. So is remembering a pleasant sexual experience with your partner and looking forward to having another one.

You are never going to change your wife. I think you should either quit trying to, or exit the relationship.


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## Blondilocks (Jul 4, 2013)

Maybe @badsanta will be kind enough to share his insights. He likes to talk about and anticipate his next sexual encounter and his wife is kinda 'meh'. They've worked on this.


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## badsanta (Oct 13, 2014)

Casual Observer said:


> *The therapist is only just now beginning to focus on her nearly complete lack of anticipation of all-things positive.* Something I brought up early on as being something I had a tough time living with and it was dismissed as me misinterpreting things.
> 
> Or am I wrong and this is actually common?Not being able to keep a pleasant memory intact for even a couple days?


I would look a little into better understanding what her ideal frequency would be. If she is having orgasmic sex twice a week while her ideal frequency may be only once or twice a month, that may help explain things. 

Taking someone beyond their desired frequency is equally as problematic as starving someone by keeping them below their ideal frequency. Someone that is primarily starved will struggle to empathize with the dynamics of someone that is primarily overfed. 

I know the idea of an appetite for food is a problematic analogy to use for sex, but I have often heard women compare sex to eating ice cream. While ice cream is great, at some point it a person stops desiring one if they are perpetually being offered one again and again. And as time progresses perhaps one starts desiring the times when ice cream used to only be a rare treat and occurred less often. 

Sometimes less is more. Can the OP remember how wonderful that was or has he forgotten?

Regards, 
Badsanta


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## TJW (Mar 20, 2012)

My personality (Myers-Briggs) type is either INTP or INFP. I score about 50% T, 50% P. One group is 3% of the population, the other is 4%. I'm an outlier. Maybe your wife is, too. If her innate personality type is governing this aspect of memory for her, you will waste your time and money trying to get her to change. She won't. God doesn't make mistakes.


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## LisaDiane (Jul 22, 2019)

DownByTheRiver said:


> I don't believe I've ever met a woman who goes around dwelling on how great her last orgasm was. Mainly because if she wants another one all she has to do is go get one by herself or with a partner. You went to a lot of trouble to give her one, what the truth is she could probably give herself one in half the time.
> 
> It does seem like you're looking for validation. Just try to keep in mind that people don't need a partner to have an orgasm. Your biggest accomplishment will be if you can keep her interested in being with you because you are interested in getting to know her and appreciating who she is as a human being because otherwise sex is just sex, and women need more than that. It's not just the orgasm they value.


You need to change that, because if you consider that we've "met", I AM a woman who DOES that - I always thought about my past orgasms, and fantasized about when I would get to have sex again to have another one...WITH a partner, NOT by myself. My partnered orgasms are always much more satisfying and pleasurable than anything I could give myself.

Although, I will definitely agree with you that I value much more than just orgasms.


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## Casual Observer (Sep 13, 2012)

Interesting responses; I had a feeling I was going to get a whole lot of “you can’t change your wife” responses, and I did. But I never suggested that was the goal. What I asked was if it was something others could relate to. I’m trying to understand the mechanism. Is it common or is she as @TJW suggested, an outlier?

Is this common in depression? Is it a coping mechanism of some sort? How do “I” work with it? In terms of me, not her?

Its not all about sex. It’s this way about everything. And it’s not come out in therapy. That’s what seems a bit strange.


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## Personal (Jan 16, 2014)

Casual Observer said:


> How do “I” work with it?


Her experience may not be particularly memorable at all.

Does your wife actually have orgasms with you?

How can you actually tell for certain if she does or doesn't orgasm?


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## Affaircare (Jan 11, 2010)

Casual Observer said:


> Interesting responses; I had a feeling I was going to get a whole lot of “you can’t change your wife” responses, and I did. But I never suggested that was the goal. What I asked was if it was something others could relate to. I’m trying to understand the mechanism. Is it common or is she as @TJW suggested, an outlier?
> 
> Is this common in depression? Is it a coping mechanism of some sort? How do “I” work with it? In terms of me, not her?
> 
> Its not all about sex. It’s this way about everything. And it’s not come out in therapy. That’s what seems a bit strange.


Okay, well this is just a start at scratching the surface, but for one thing, if a person has no idea that their viewpoint or responses are unique, they would not bring it up in counseling. Thus, it seems to be consistent that if she thought that 'not recalling positive emotions' was "normal" she wouldn't bring it up because ... well why would you? However, over some time, I suspect the counselor might trip on it and begin to see it.

Next, again this is just scratching the surface, but there are two kinds of memory: emotional memory and event memory. Emotional memory is remembering, and to some degree reliving, the FEELINGS of an event. Event memory is remembering the date, time, place, and occurrence but not the FEELINGS. So if someone says "Remember that time we made out in the car to Meatloaf's 'Paradise by the Dashboard Light'? It was like we were teenagers!"... the event memory would be "Yes, I recall the event taking place" and even a sort of snapshot of the facts of the moment. The emotional memory would be evoking the spectrum of emotion you felt as you "made out" from being afraid you'd be clumsy to the joy of how good it felt to kiss.

So it sounds to me as if she absolutely has EVENT memory, and may even be able to remember if an event felt good or bad (so to speak)... but she doesn't have that part of her memory that evokes EMOTIONAL memory. A person's emotional life comes from the amygdala, in the inner portion of the brain, so maybe there is a medical issue here. There is a condition called *Alexithymia*, which is the difficulty recognizing emotions (negative and positive). So who can tell? I'm no doctor, but maybe instead of actually "feeling" things, she has been participating in a learned response...this is what she "should" be doing so she does what's expected. It's like emotional blindness.

(shrug)

It's a place to start. I realize it may not be "the answer" but maybe it's a way to start down a path that will lead to an answer.


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## SunCMars (Feb 29, 2016)

Blondilocks said:


> Some people live their lives in the moment and others live their lives wishing and hoping and anticipating.


Yes, and the moment they both meet, this moment, and that future, their lives go dashing for the exit.

Some exit.
Any exit will do.


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## SunCMars (Feb 29, 2016)

Blondilocks said:


> It may be a question of semantics. She may remember she had sex and remember that she did orgasm. She has difficulty recalling the sensations of the orgasm. I would think that if she could remember exactly what it felt like, she wouldn't need him - she could recreate her orgasms from memory alone.
> 
> If I'm understanding CO, he is concerned about her inability to anticipate or look forward to an event as in not anticipating their next sexual encounter to recreate those feel good feelings. Apparently, she doesn't look forward to anything. *That could be from conditioning.*


Um, maybe, likely more than this.

.....................................

Maybe this-

Or, with her living in that _na-na_ zone, mildly suffering that continual emotional flat-lining.
With, her being semi-depressed, with her daily thinking, dwelling just below the surface. 
Her, but a little depressed, and not really happy about anything.

She is certainly alive, just not thriving. 
Some sort of chemical imbalance......usually is.

Check out her thyroid.

Open the hood, check out the rest of her inner workings.
A full blood panel, all those things that effect/affect mood.

Umm.


_THRD-_


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## SunCMars (Feb 29, 2016)

Personal said:


> No amount of sending your wife to a therapist is going to make your wife think like you, because she isn't you and can't be you.
> 
> Instead of spending plenty of time trying to convince your wife that she is broken, and trying to get her to prostrate herself to your ego. Perhaps you might stop for a while and just let her be who she is, without constantly trying to get her to be someone else.


This is the only answer, any short of chemical intervention.


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## TJW (Mar 20, 2012)

Casual Observer said:


> And it’s not come out in therapy.


It may not be a definable syndrome, or one that fits the models. The world is replete with right-handed appliances, tools, guns, etc. because even a 75% - 25% distribution makes more money when made for the 75% component. There's probably little more than hypothesis about this.


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## EleGirl (Dec 3, 2011)

I deleted an argument between members over who is more argumentative. Please stop it. If you don't like what someone else posted just ignore their post. You can even block that member. Arguing between members does not offer any support to the OP. 

{Speaking as a moderator}


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## Mr.Married (Feb 21, 2018)

Or maybe.... she just doesn’t want to talk about it.


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## Casual Observer (Sep 13, 2012)

badsanta said:


> I would look a little into better understanding what her ideal frequency would be. If she is having orgasmic sex twice a week while her ideal frequency may be only once or twice a month, that may help explain things.
> 
> Taking someone beyond their desired frequency is equally as problematic as starving someone by keeping them below their ideal frequency. Someone that is primarily starved will struggle to empathize with the dynamics of someone that is primarily overfed.
> 
> ...


Thanks @badsanta. This really isn’t orgasm frequency. It's more about me trying to figure out if this is an unusual thing and/or related to depression. To me, it seems very unusual.

But again, this is not just about sex. The therapist asked each of us to describe the most-recent time we felt good or happy about something. She wasn't looking for something grand and sweeping. My wife had to think back two months to when we went out to watch birds along the shoreline. There had been plenty of times since that she's been out on a date with me or worked together to do something she really wanted to do, time she seemed quite happy. But none of those registered. She doesn't even remember things she did the day before that made her feel good. 

To register long-term for my wife, any feeling of good or happiness, anything that she might look forward to, is something that is a foreign concept to her. 

All this stuff about what an evil person I am for wanting to change my wife... she lives in a world that's dependent upon her own false narrative to feel ok, and she is bombarded daily, everywhere she goes, with a world that runs counter to her desires. Everyone is wrong, everyone is judging her (that part is often correct), and she will do her darndest to find a way not to follow whatever rules have been set in place by others. The only authority she respects is her own.

And maybe that's what it is to be depressed? We are often told to "Live in the moment." To "Be present." But what happens when those moments can't be recalled?


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## Livvie (Jan 20, 2014)

I think you are working too hard to try to analyze her. It shouldn't be so hard, and it really isn't your job. And, to what end??

Honestly, the last time I was really happy was this morning when I smelled the fresh coffee grounds when I was making coffee. I kept sniffing them, multiple times!!! as I waited for the water to boil (I do a pour over). It's one is my favorite scents. The sun was shining and I heard birds outside and I was sniffing coffee beans. 

Your wife doesn't seem to enjoy regular daily mundane events or regular daily relationship events, and it sounds like she had been like this for decades. THIS IS HER PERSONALITY. 

It ain't gonna change.


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## Casual Observer (Sep 13, 2012)

VladDracul said:


> CO, looks that this is more about you and her stroking your ego than it is about her. What do you expect? her going around for days talking in amazement as to how good it felt. Of course she remembers the big "O" when she has one. She may be telling you she can't remember to get you to stop pestering her for conversation about it. Of course its possible she pulling a Meg Ryan (Harry met Sally) and don't want to dwell on it.


Wow. Is that what you got from what I wrote?

If you bought your wife flowers and she really enjoyed them, and a few days later she said flowers were meh, she could take them or leave them, they don't do that much for her... that wouldn't be strange?

This is about memory of pleasant experiences helping you look forward to the next. This is about, when you're down, thinking about something that could make you feel better, something that you enjoy and know will happen again.



DownByTheRiver said:


> I don't believe I've ever met a woman who goes around dwelling on how great her last orgasm was. Mainly because if she wants another one all she has to do is go get one by herself or with a partner. You went to a lot of trouble to give her one, what the truth is she could probably give herself one in half the time.
> 
> It does seem like you're looking for validation. Just try to keep in mind that people don't need a partner to have an orgasm. Your biggest accomplishment will be if you can keep her interested in being with you because you are interested in getting to know her and appreciating who she is as a human being because otherwise sex is just sex, and women need more than that. It's not just the orgasm they value.


I would love for her to have an orgasm on her own. But she has really negative feelings about that. She's still hung up on sex being a bad thing because she did bad things (in her mind, not mine) before she met me. She feels like she doesn't deserve to feel that good.b


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## Casual Observer (Sep 13, 2012)

Livvie said:


> I think you are working too hard to try to analyze her. It shouldn't be so hard, and it really isn't your job. And, to what end??
> 
> *Honestly, the last time I was really happy was this morning when I smelled the fresh coffee grounds when I was making coffee. I kept sniffing them, multiple times!!! as I waited for the water to boil (I do a pour over). It's one is my favorite scents. The sun was shining and I heard birds outside and I was sniffing coffee beans.*
> 
> ...


That bolded part, that's what I want for my wife to experience. That used to be her. That was the woman I met 42 years ago. Since then she's suffered significant depression and dealt with a number of therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists, none of whom tried to figure out why, just fed her pills. Three different therapist and one psychiatrist now believe they understand the why. They all believe she has a very severe issue, brought on by trauma.

This has become her personality. Just leave it at that and end things?


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## LisaDiane (Jul 22, 2019)

Casual Observer said:


> That bolded part, that's what I want for my wife to experience. That used to be her. That was the woman I met 42 years ago. Since then she's suffered significant depression and dealt with a number of therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists, none of whom tried to figure out why, just fed her pills. Three different therapist and one psychiatrist now believe they understand the why. They all believe she has a very severe issue, brought on by trauma.
> 
> This has become her personality. *Just leave it at that and end things?*


That's such a hard question to answer...but let me ask you this, as a person with a spouse who changed and is most likely never changing back - your troubles with her, your dissatisfaction and your decision to leave if things didn't improve...that started how long ago...SIX years...? (I can't remember how far back your other post went)
Are you SATISFIED and getting your needs met like you were thinking you would be after this many years of almost constant WORK on your relationship...?? If you had been able to see the future way back when your wife first said she was willing to work on her marriage to keep you from leaving - would you have still STAYED with her if you knew you would be at THIS place with her after this many years...? Has the work been worth the results and time frame for YOU?


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## SunCMars (Feb 29, 2016)

EleGirl said:


> I deleted an argument between members over who is more argumentative. Please stop it. If you don't like what someone else posted just ignore their post. You can even block that member. Arguing between members does not offer any support to the OP.
> 
> {Speaking as a moderator}


I wish...

I wish I could delete the arguments that the others in my 'head' are having!
The stories I could tell...

At least, I am not alone.
Hmm. 🙃

_THRD-_


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## SunCMars (Feb 29, 2016)

Casual Observer said:


> That bolded part, that's what I want for my wife to experience. That used to be her. That was the woman I met 42 years ago. Since then she's suffered significant depression and dealt with a number of therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists, none of whom tried to figure out why, just fed her pills. Three different therapist and one psychiatrist now believe they understand the why. They all believe she has a very severe issue, brought on by trauma.
> 
> This has become her personality. *Just leave it at that and end things?*


Just leave it at that..
-or-
End things..

Is the bad you know going to be worse than the good you hope for?


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## badsanta (Oct 13, 2014)

Casual Observer said:


> And maybe that's what it is to be depressed? We are often told to "Live in the moment." To "Be present." But what happens when those moments can't be recalled?


There is a lot to be said about someone that develops a pattern of focusing on negative things. 100 positive things happen and the only thing you remember was that a mosquito bite on your leg was bothersome and that you need some insect repellant the next time you go to the store. I think the emotions evolve as follows:

Frustration
Anger
Resentment
Contempt 

So imagine that someone has become frustrated with themself. They start to focus on the negative. Over time that evolves into contempt to where they have reached a point of actively despising their own life and feeling it is worthless. When something good happens it is then impossible for it to register because that person is actively seeking to validate something negative. 

Speaking a bit candidly here. Is your wife really good at remembering things that are negative? I would be curious if you praised her for that if that would create somewhat of a paradox for her? Make her feel good about her ability to notice negative things and then ask her what it was like to feel good about herself. If she is really good at noticing fine negative details, praise her for how observant she is capable of being and perhaps claim that she would make a good detective (like honest praise because she would likely accuse you of being condescending). 

My candid thought here is that it is often possible to turn something negative into something positive by changing one's perspective a little. 

Badsanta


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## Casual Observer (Sep 13, 2012)

LisaDiane said:


> That's such a hard question to answer...but let me ask you this, as a person with a spouse who changed and is most likely never changing back - your troubles with her, your dissatisfaction and your decision to leave if things didn't improve...that started how long ago...SIX years...? (I can't remember how far back your other post went)
> Are you SATISFIED and getting your needs met like you were thinking you would be after this many years of almost constant WORK on your relationship...?? If you had been able to see the future way back when your wife first said she was willing to work on her marriage to keep you from leaving - would you have still STAYED with her if you knew you would be at THIS place with her after this many years...? Has the work been worth the results and time frame for YOU?


Thanks @LisaDiane , some very good questions there. The dissatisfaction on my part began much further back than 6 years. We waited 9 years to try to have a kid, partly because something was amiss that she wouldn't talk about. So that's 30 years ago. Another time I can focus on was when, after kid #2, our final kid, we decided no more kids and it was either she gets her tubes tied or I get a vasectomy. I opted out on the vasectomy because I frankly wasn't sure if I might end up starting over again. So 24 or so years ago. She would not talk at all about anything... everything having to do with unmet needs on my part was 100% my issue to deal with. It was kind of crazy. 

So... is this a sunk costs thing that I'm not thinking rationally about? Some of that. The process has been much longer than it should have been though, due to her claiming to be "all in" and do what it takes, but then seizing every opportunity possible to stonewall or seize anything a therapist comes up with as a reason for not making progress. How many times has a therapist said "Well you know X, it's perfectly normal for a woman to lose interest after monopause..." and my wife eats that up. And now when I see things heading in that direction, I have to stop them in their tracks and remind them to respect the timeline. That things were actually worse prior to menopause than after. 

The reason I'm still here with her? Probably because there is some incremental progress, there is some hope, and validation that we're on the right track. And also because I love to get all the abuse on TAM from people wondering why I'm torturing my poor wife. I just live for that. Not.

And partly because I'm fed up with a society that thinks pushing pills is the answer to everything, instead of getting to the root of whatever the problem is. She may have a chemical imbalance of some sort, but you'll never find out if you keep pushing higher doses of prozac on someone.


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## Cletus (Apr 27, 2012)

TJW said:


> My personality (Myers-Briggs) type is either INTP or INFP. I score about 50% T, 50% P. One group is 3% of the population, the other is 4%. I'm an outlier. Maybe your wife is, too. If her innate personality type is governing this aspect of memory for her, you will waste your time and money trying to get her to change. She won't. God doesn't make mistakes.


If every one of the MB personality types, 16 in all, were distributed randomly, ~6% of the population would land in each bin. So you're not all that much of an outlier (coming from another INTP who doesn't put much stock in a personality inventory invented by a mother/daughter team with no formal training that fails most measures of predictive value).


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## Affaircare (Jan 11, 2010)

#1... @Casual Observer I think you may have missed my post 

#2... It sounds to me as if most of the folks posting here think that CO is trying to "make his wife change" from an introvert to an extrovert (for example), because HE is an extrovert and thinks extroverts are "right" and introverts are "wrong." Or something like that. In real life, I think what he's saying is "at one point she was able to experience and recall pleasant events via emotional memory and then say "I hope that happens again one day!" Now she can recall the event memory (it occurred on *_ date, at _* time and ___ occurred), but not the reliving of the emotion like when we hear a favorite song come on the radio and remember where we were the first time we heard it and how we felt at that time. We look back at the memory and sigh and smile as we remember HOW IT FELT. 

So the part that he's wondering about is a) is that how people remember (event and emotion) or is he unusual in doing both (Hey...maybe HE is the odd one!)? To that I answer "Nope, I remember both the event memory AND the emotional memory. In fact, many of the items in my house are reminders of events so that I can look and them, remember the event, and feel that happiness for a moment as I remember. And b) if many people do remember both the event and the emotion, did something happen to his wife that she shut hers off? Or is it a medical condition? See, it could be that she was outright assaulted at one point and literally shut down all feeling for the remainder of her life (that's drastic but possible). Or it could be that she has a brain issue in her amygdala that is preventing her from distinguishing emotions at all (she knows she feels "something" but it doesn't register as joy or sorrow...just blank). 

Handing her pills doesn't seem to address the issue at all, so it's not something a pill can fix. There doesn't seem to be a huge rape or assault in the past, but then again, those kind of buried memories can sometimes take years to resurface--then again it's been years! But has it been continuous years of applied actual effort? Ah...that's the question!


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## Casual Observer (Sep 13, 2012)

Affaircare said:


> #1... @Casual Observer I think you may have missed my post
> 
> #2... It sounds to me as if most of the folks posting here think that CO is trying to "make his wife change" from an introvert to an extrovert (for example), because HE is an extrovert and thinks extroverts are "right" and introverts are "wrong." Or something like that. In real life, I think what he's saying is "at one point she was able to experience and recall pleasant events via emotional memory and then say "I hope that happens again one day!" Now she can recall the event memory (it occurred on *_ date, at *_ time and ___ occurred), but not the reliving of the emotion like when we hear a favorite song come on the radio and remember where we were the first time we heard it and how we felt at that time. We look back at the memory and sigh and smile as we remember HOW IT FELT.
> 
> ...


Yes, you've pretty much got it. The latest therapist added to the mix is the most-interesting. The MC and her IC both recommended a sex therapist, both of them believing it's possible we may never know the cause, she may never be completely whole (a strange thing to be telling a patient?) but that perhaps addressing sex as a separate and specific issue could at least improve that aspect of the marriage. She (my wife) might still have all manner of issues but at least have better sexual function. 

Well that's played out very different than expected because it's actually the sex therapist who is diving most strongly into issues of shame & emotion and, she thinks, my wife was coerced into sex in a way that greatly traumatized her. That her behavior afterward (more sex with more guys) was a result of having to rationalize that what she'd done was ok. And the sex therapist claims this is nothing new and she deals with it all the time. So far, 5 very expensive sessions with the sex therapist, none of which in any way focused directly on sex between us.


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## Mr.Married (Feb 21, 2018)

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