My wife (27F) and I (27M) have been together for nearly 10 years and married for nearly 7.
We are each other’s only sexual partners. We were together for 1.5 years before I went to the military. We spent the first 3 years of our marriage living in different states while she was finishing college. We’ve now been living together for 4 years and I just finished my masters degree.
We got in a big fight recently that really pulled the curtains back on a lot of problems that I think we’ve been ignoring for a long time.
First and probably the most obvious is my lack of intimate connection to her. Our sex life is awful. Obviously being in a long distance marriage was weird, but even after she moved in finally we had sex 1-2 times a month, then once a month, and now it’s once’s every 2-3 months. We make excuses like we’re too tired, too busy, etc., but the truth is that I just don’t want to. And it’s not that I find her unattractive, I just don’t want to have sex with her. I feel like when we were kids and when we lived separately, the passion was enough to keep us engaged sexually. But now in the years since she has moved in and the passion has dissipated, there is no intimacy to to fill the void.
Second is that I have a lot of personal issues stemming from my childhood that have largely gone ignored because I spent the last 10 years taking care of her. That isn’t her fault, it’s mine. She lived a sheltered childhood riddled with anxiety and by helping her grow into the world I felt like I was also dealing with my own problems. In reality I was using it as justification to ignore my own needs. So now I’m 27 with a whole host of problems that I need to deal with and I’m not even sure who the hell I am.
Third is the question of happiness. I recently had a month away from my wife in Germany, and it was the first time in my adult life that I felt like I was able to take care of myself. I had a clarity that I had never experienced before. I felt happy. And now I’m questioning whether or not I’ve ever been happy. Do I even know what it means to be happy? How could I? How could either of us? We were children when we got together.
We’ve already started marriage counseling, but there is a part of me that already feels like it’s over. Like I already have decided that I want to move on. But that’s not fair to us or to the 10 years we’ve spent together.
I’m not really sure what I’m looking for here. Venting? Advice? Support? Either way, thank you for reading if your made it to the end.
7 comments
Hey Dude,
I am very sorry to hear about your situation. I know how painful it must be (I am in a very similar one). All I can say is that you should give therapy a solid chance. It may help the two of you grow together as a couple and strengthen the relationship, and it will definitely help you identify your shortcomings and work on them. Worst case, depending on what is said and done during and throughout therapy, you will have more clarity.
You have been together for a while, and I do think that it is worth fighting for the relationship. Do anything and everything possible to salvage it. There will be a point when you know that you have given everything you have and can not continue fighting on. I am not sure when that is it, I am still trying to make things better…
Open to chat more if you wish.
Military life does complicate relationships… Mine got severely damaged because of it as well.
Take care,
Another regular dude
I’m in a position to tell you how it feels from the other side.
Your feelings, age, being your only sexual partner, and time together roughly resemble my relationship with my (29M) ex-wife (27F). We never did long distance, but she did spend some time alone visiting her father overseas and at the end when I quarantined with our kid because we had Covid) your description about not wanting to have sex (and the frequency) your personal problems and your feeling of “happiness” in the time you were away are all things my ex wife felt and shared with me. Some when she asked for a divorce and some after the divorce.
I will tell you that when she told me she wanted out my world shattered. She was my person, and I never in a million years would have thought she didn’t love me enough to fight for the relationship. We never did marriage counseling, she never wanted to, even after I once again suggested it after she asked for the divorce. Kudos to you for trying that, but I will say, you’ll only get what you put into it. Make sure you go in with an open mind, and an “us vs the problem” mindset rather than a “me vs her”.
I suggested separation rather than divorce to my ex so we could try to work through the relationship as well, but she didn’t want to, so I signed the papers.
A few months after the divorce she’s having doubts. She tells me she wants to try again, but she’s not in the right place for it. She says she has a lot of stuff to work out about herself before she can be ready for a relationship (which sounds like what you are describing).
What I feel you and my ex fail to see, is that a good spouse can absolutely understand that you’re going through struggles and can help you work through them. As humans, we’ll never be perfect. We’ll always be working through issues, and hopefully we’ll always be trying to improve ourselves. But throwing away a marriage because “you don’t feel ready now” is ludicrous. The fact is you may never feel ready, or if and when you are, it may be to late for you to get back with your spouse after you’ve blown up the marriage.
I would seriously address the issues your having with sexual desire/compatibility, as that is a crucial part of marriage, and the underlying issue there is important to determine how to proceed with your situation. Don’t make any hasty decisions, and for the love of everything that’s good, TELL YOUR SPOUSE HOW YOU FEEL AND THAT YOU WANT TO FIX IT. Don’t leave her in the dark until its too late.
My advice is to get into therapy for just you. It sounds like you got a glimmer of reconnecting with yourself when you went to Germany. You need more of that – digging into who you are, what you like, what you don’t like, what you want your life to look like. Then you’ll be able to decide if you are able to be your true self in this marriage and stay in it.
If you got married so young you weren’t even finished developing into yourself yet. Sometimes we grow and we change and become different people. I got married young and it was a mistake, we divorced after 3 years
There’s a lot happening here. You’ve been away off and on I’m guessing in the military which can put strain on the relationship. Then spent years away from eachother in different states also put strain on the relationship. Being in school pretty much this whole time can make it harder to focus on and appreciate eachother. Sex drops off with time and you need to do things to keep the passion alive, but if you guys have mismatched libidos that causes additional issues.
Therapy will do a lot of good for you both individually since it sounds like you both have a lot going on. Do you two have the ability to take a vacation? Taking some time away from everyday life together can help you two get back on track. How does your wife feel about everything? Also when you were enjoying your time in Germany what were you doing there? What did you enjoy about it?
Just because something doesn’t last forever, doesn’t mean it wasn’t beautiful for a while.
My husband and I both come from traumatic backgrounds (he was also in the military and is currently in fire service) and it has taken us awhile to really learn how to communicate and be the healthiest versions of ourselves in our marriage, but we’ve lasted 25 years, so it can be done.
Do you guys connect well and have intimacy in ways other than physically? Like emotionally, intellectually, socially, spiritually, creatively? If not I would recommend developing those. If you do, lean into those areas for a bit while you figure out the physical side of things.
Marriage counseling may be a good start, but you really can’t be a good partner to anyone if you have trauma you haven’t dealt with and aren’t in a good place mentally yourself. I would suggest individual counseling for you as well.
Finally, but maybe most importantly, do you have any other issues such as depression, low energy, difficulty concentrating, difficulty with memory, hair loss? Sometimes as guys approach 30, testosterone levels can drop just like women’s hormones do and that can lead to a low libido. And that is something that can be easily checked out and addressed.
I hope you guys are able to work things out!