Hi,
I am in a marriage with no sexual intimacy, although we are very close and moderately affectionate towards each other. For various reasons my wife is not able to entertain sexual intimacy (sex of any flavour, intimate touching or passionate kissing) in our relationship. I on the other hand find sex and physical intimacy to be important, both generally, and to our relationship, and very much struggle without. We went through Relate some time ago to improve things, with some temporary improvement, but ultimately without a positive lasting result. Our sexual intimacy issues have been going on for around 10 years, and we are now in our late thirties. Things came to an unfortunate head recently because I reached the end of my tether and finally "gave up" on things ever improving, and it is fair to say that something needs to change in our relationship. We are both willing to fight to save our marriage, but I can only see three possibilities:
(1) We have another go at reviving our sex life, and it succeeds;
(2) We separate; or
(3) We investigate a coping strategy (basically for me) for a marriage without sex and physical intimacy.
Frankly, option (1) is unlikely to work, since we have tried it all before, although we have not entirely given up just yet. Option (2) is not desirable because (a) our marriage and life together is fantastic in all other ways, and (b) we have three fairly young children, and our family unit is important to us.
We are shortly to be attending Relate again, to talk about what all this means for our relationship, and how to move forwards, but before we do so I just wanted to canvas some opinion on the third of these options, which neither of us had given real consideration to before. In particular, I want to try to fully understand whether anyone else has taken an active decision to basically "give up" on sex and intimacy in the interests of preserving their marriage, whether they were able to make it work, and if so HOW! :-)
I'm not saying that we'll never touch each other again and sleep in separate rooms - simply that we would both give up on trying to sort out our sex lives, and focus only on connecting in ways she is comfortable with - generally non-physical, but she is perfectly happy with the occasional hug, a massage, and sitting together on the sofa. If by some freak of romantic coincidence something sparks off between us without trying, then great - but we wouldn't be hunting for it.
Please could posts be directed if possible to this issue, rather than on my other two options - which I have already explored in substantial detail!
Please could posts also not be directed to suggesting open relationships, secret affairs, or the use of sex workers!
Also, not keen on chemical castration (!), although I wouldn't necessarily discount natural remedies or dietary suggestions which may diminish male sex drive, since this might be of some help.
From the reading I have done so far, the conventional wisdom seems to be that a sexless marriage can work just fine if neither person is that bothered about sex, but is a tricky beast indeed if one party does want it, which is certainly the case for me. Having given it some thought, I think the two things I find most difficult are firstly the absence of sexual intimacy in my life at all, and secondly the difficulty in fully connecting emotionally with my wife without sex (she doesn't really experience this - she feels comfortably close to me without, so this problem only applies in one direction).
I think perhaps what I am most interested in is whether by way of mental attitude, coping strategies and lifestyle it is possible to live a happy and fulfilling life in my situation.
One final point - the solution should not just be a stop-gap until our children grow up and leave home, since my wife has said she would rather the relationship failed now so she can plan the rest of her life before she hits 40 rather than when she is nearly 50! I guess what this means is that the advice "just focus on the children" for the next 10 years will not work!
Thanks!