Feel so utterly worthless after this experience

[crazyafterall]

A lot of this post is just getting it off my chest I suppose as I feel it is eating away at me horribly so hopefully this will help.

I am a longstanding lurker and poster NC because I am totally ashamed.

DH and I are in a sexless marriage. After trying to get him to have sex without feeling like he was doing me a great big favour for 3 years, it has finally reached the point where I don't want him in that way either and we are left with DC and a warm friendship and mutual respect.
I have suffered from mild MH problems for a number of years which must have been v difficult for him to put up with. It has left me unable to work and I am on AD. Sometimes I feel since taking them I have been in a kind of dream...I am 34.
We are on what could be described as a "break" at the moment while I get my head together about what I want to do and what is for the best. DH still wants me and thinks we should stay strong and together for the DC.

The way I chose to deal with this crisis point is by having an affair/ fling with a younger man I met at a sports activity I do. For 7 weeks I became totally besotted with him, although we only saw each other once a week and he was always quite cold and distant, I felt a real emotional connection with him and over the weeks I became very attached. He was quite a selfish lover, but I absolutely loved the sex with him, it was so different and wild. He was so attractive to me and I really fell for him. Like a total fucking fool.

He ended it last week as he feels like it's all getting too much and "it has to come to an end sometime". I feel, like me, that he was developing feelings and it just wasn't part of the plan for us. I found myself sobbing on the phone like a teenager whilst he said there was nothing left to say. The final and worst humiliation was when I asked him could we please end it on a positive note and could he not thing of anything to say to make me feel better -via text- and he patronisingly listen off a reel of good things about me and how we had had great sex and a laugh.

A fucking laugh. Right. I think I was iin love with him.

I could just crawl up for a month under a blanket. I feel like that bob dylan song " a corkscrew to my heart". If this is what guys are like out there I can't be single again I will be eaten alive. I feel so blank.

What is so strange to me is that my friends tell me I am beautiful. I look in the mirror and I see I am tall, blonde v slim with even features but I don't feel worthy until a man gives me validation and lusts after me. I feel hideous and unlovable. Good to fuck but no more. Apart from DH who just sees the friend and companion.
I don't know what i am going to do.
Thanks for reading.

Lol vivacia. Lazyjaney I'm not sure where you got the idea that rough sex is wrong. Could you quote someone who said that?
It's normal for people to relate their own experience to those of others. That's not cod psychology, it's conversation. You seem to have the idea that you should police and criticise other people's statements, which shows that you might not understand the principle of conversation. You can start your own thread on that if you like.

Leavenheat said: "I can really see how your associations with sex might have got fucked up so badly at an early age, so find some counselling that can help you to re-programme yourself about what makes sex good".

Sounded like a condemnation of rough sex to me.

Not at all.

But it occurs to me that if someone can only get off on rough animalistic sex, there might be a link with earlier abuse, or with using too much porn.

As a more general observation, it seems healthier to me to enjoy a varied sex life. I'd think it was odd if someone could only get off on feathery, strokey sex too...

Crazy said "even if DH was rough with me it wouldn't turn me on as he really loves me so it wouldn't be real". In your opinion is that "normal" distance?

Precisely. It looks like the eroticism about the sex preferred is not just its roughness, but the disassociation and the element of a partner 'using' her as an inanimate person for whom there is no feeling. Role-playing that clearly wouldn't work- that level of distance and disassociation needs to be 'real' for it to hit the spot. it wouldn't take a genius or a psychologist to summise that a poster who's disclosed childhood abuse alongside these revelations might have some unresolved issues about sex and eroticism.

OP, why are you not even considering what MadBusLady is saying? The poster is making perfect sense. Do you not want a solution?

I am considering it. Absolutely.

I did think you were from what you said after my post, as it happens, but in any case there are lots of viewpoints here to absorb, in your own time.

"You think there's something fishy going on?"

Was trying to think of a good comeback but I'm floundering....

IMO there is some serious overthink going on here, it's far simpler than all this. Most people with a pulse need sex, it's soul destroying not getting enough (something IMO quite a few on the MN Relationship boards don't "get", nor do they "get" the lengths people will go to for sex). Her DH is at best up for very occasional dullsex which is why OP is gagging for more and wilder sex.

OP has 3 options - put up, get out, or get it elsewhere - she has opted for the latter. Lover 1 was great in the sack but just wanted FB status. Lover 2 needs to be a bit more into OP. But if she cant handle anything except a full-on relationship she needs to know she probably has to ditch DH at some point.

I'll write this advice down for the next time some poor woman's on here having discovered her husband'a affair, "don't worry love, he's currently on 3, just wait to see if he does 1 or 2 next".

^^
If that "poor woman" hadn't wanted to shag her partner for several years, as is the case here, she really shouldn't be that surprised.

Why should the advice be different if the sexes are reversed btw? And why should the advice be to give in to the partner who doesnt want sex?

Good point, I'll remember that too, "he had an affair? You've only got yourself to blame if you weren't shagging him enough".

Vivacia Lazy is talking about cases where ppl have ignored their partner physically and emotionally for years.

YEARS not months or weeks YEARS with NOTHING at all.

I still don't think that justifies deceit and betrayal. I hope I wouldnt go behind my husband'a back if we couldn't or didn't have sex any more.

"keep you unto them forsaking all others"

"With my body i thee worship"

Theres that cherry picking again.

Im not saying it justifies it. But it makes it bloody understandable.
And for someone to refuse their partner any affection Refuse counselling and then crucify their partner for going elsewhere after years of soul destroying loneliness is being controlling and abusive.

I don't really see how moral indignation helps the OP. The affair seems like a cry for help in a difficult situation.

YY Twinkle.

I'm not cherry-picking anything. I think having an affair is hurtful and you're deluded if you think it goes hand-in-hand with mutual respect and affection. I think the OP should deal with this unhappy relationship head-on. I am accused of moral panic, but similarly I see affairs being excused. One thing I've learned on MN is that an affair is not the fault of the betrayed party, the cheat always has a choice.

Really feel for you - I almost wish I could have an affair! However in my case, it's me who can't be bothered with sex but I am married to a control freak who makes me feel stupid and worthless. He does love me and I know he couldn't survive without me but our relationship now is more friends than lovers. Maybe now were both 50, that's kind of what happens anyway. The saving grace here is a male friend who is incredibly supportive of both of us, makes me laugh and has the same tendency to talk for hours about religion, politics, spirituality etc that DH doesn't have any real interest in. He often comes over just for a cuppa either with the whole family or just with me (kids are always around). I am incredibly attracted to him and I'd think less of him if he wasn't aware of it, but over the 2 years we've known him he has never once indicated any mutual sexual interest. As a committed Christian, he wouldn't dream of it, and I as a Christian myself I wouldn't either. I am coming to terms with finding him very attractive but treating him as a brother - you don't shag your brother, but I do care that he's successful in his business (he's a musician and producer) an that he is happy. I also met one of his bachelor friends recently and the 3 of us went out for an evening (DH was aware and ok about it - he was meant to come too but got sent away from home that week for work) and ended up back at mine chatting until 2am!!

Maybe the point I'm trying to make is that you can have a close male friend without it becoming a sexual relationship? DH does sometimes find it hard that the On my way! makes me laugh in a way that he doesn't, but I also laugh with my sisters and girlfriends in a way I don't with DH. I suppose that we don't laugh much as he has to share the shit stuff too, whereas friends (male & female) don't?

Maybe you need to find a male friend with whom you can have a laugh but without the pressure of an affair? Not sure if that helps or not?

"...on my way..." Should've just read "OM"! Predictive text!!

Vivacia said: "an affair is not the fault of the betrayed party, the cheat always has a choice."

Wow. Generalisation much?

And honestly, do you think that having a sexual indiscretion is the worst possible thing that you can do to your partner? (And yes, in my view this applies both the men and women).

If a woman withheld sex and affection from a man for years, I would say exactly the same thing. There is no relationship. There's no blame in having an affair.

That's a straw man Distance.

Has anyone said that having a sexual indiscretion is the worst possible thing a person can do to a partner?

I don't think anyone has on this thread.

Although I agree with Viv in everything she says about affairs being choices and the illogicality of blaming someone for another's entirely secret behaviour, this thread was actually about an OP who feels 'utterly worthless' after her affair experience. How others feel about their own affairs is irrelevant. As irrelevant as their entirely different personal circumstances.

This OP has said the sexual chemistry has gone on both sides now and the marriage has ended all bar the formalities. They are on a break.

It seems utter madness suggesting returning to this marriage and propping it up with other sexual affairs, especially after the OP has disclosed that she only gets turned on sexually by men who accord her no worth or value. For a survivor of childhood abuse, just how dangerous might it be to have other experiences then that might make her feel 'utterly worthless', like this one has?

My view on this is that the married woman having an affair angle is largely irrelevant to this thread. I do however think there's some merit to the suggestions that the OP's husband is repelled by his abuse survivor wife's inability to be aroused by anything other than rough, animalistic sex and if a woman posted here that her abused-as-a-child husband had the same pecadilloes and it turned her off because she had no desire to re-enact old traumas, I'd have enormous sympathy with her right not to participate in a type of sex that turned her off.

The real issue as I see it is an abuse survivor whose sexuality was defined in childhood and because of the sexual partners she prefers, is hugely vulnerable to compounding those feelings of worthlessness if she continues to have relationships with men who fit her sexual ideal.

I'm not the greatest fan of counsellors, but one who's been trained in childhood abuse and its impact on adult sexuality might work wonders for this OP and stop the vicious cycle of 'worthlessness' before more damage is done.

Excellent, insightful post Leavenheath

distance the generalisation is not my own, as would be obvious if you hadn't chopped off the beginning of my sentence.