I have been married to my husband for 16 years and we have 3 lovely children.
We married fairly soon after meeting - too quickly - although we were in our late twenties, so we were not young. We had an immediate strong connection as soon as we met, and in many ways he is my soulmate: we are excellent friends, we share similar ideas about life, support each other and look after each other. He is an excellent father, and a very nice man, a good man, loyal and caring. Everybody likes him. I know (because they say so) that people look at our family and think we are the perfect set up – happy parents, well balanced kids – and in many ways they would be right. It is not as easy as it looks of course – we are short of money and work very hard and suffer all the strains that everyone else does – but overall, our family is strong and stable, and I know we are lucky in that.
However, I feel as though I have carried a secret these past sixteen years that I cannot tell anyone, and sometimes, as at the moment, the stress is so great for me that I wonder if I can live like this for the rest of my life. My husband, though a loving man in many ways, has never made love to me. He knows how to have sex, but he does not know how to make love.
He comes from a small village in rural Spain, where the attitude to sex is just much more pragmatic than it is here. Prostitution is legal and a way of life (it is difficult to explain to people who do not know what it is like, but these are traditionally very poor communities where prostitution through the years has been just another profession as opposed to something ‘shocking’). I once asked him – jokingly - long ago if he had ever visited a brothel, and although his answer was negative, he reacted as though my question were a serious one, which took me aback. It is just a completely different culture, a completely different attitude to sex.
Although – as far as I know – he has never used prostitutes, he has used pornography ever since he first became sexually aware, I think. I once read somewhere that too much pornography dulls the senses, and that it is possible to get to a point with this from which one cannot come back, and I feel this is very true of my husband. Right from the start he has wanted a completely different kind of sex life to the one I want, full of experiences that I just do not want to have.
Please forgive me if the next bit is a bit explicit, but I have never told anyone and it is pointless writing this message if I cannot say it now.
Not long after we married he told me he wanted me to give him ‘golden showers’ and I know he is disappointed that I do not comply. He has always used sex toys on himself, and again I know he would really like me to too. In fact I am sure there are lots of sexual practices he would like to indulge in – he has suggested threesomes, with enough seriousness for me to believe he would be happy to go beyond fantasy with this, and he would certainly like to watch porn together – he watches a lot of porn on his own. He talks crudely in terms of (forgive me) ‘having a f**k’ as opposed to ‘making love’ and I feel he treats sex as though it is a recreational sport – or like going into a restaurant and choosing what meal he would like to have on that particular occasion. There is no emotion in it at all, no intimacy, no connection. I could be wearing a paper bag over my head for all I matter as an individual.
I know – because he implied it a few years ago – that he is disappointed with the sex life we have, and that he came to a conscious decision some years ago – he made the choice to stay with me even though he was not happy with it.
The same is true for me. We have sex – and it is having sex – once a week on the same night, and in the same way. I have directed things this way, because it is all I can bear to do. I would hate not to have sex at all – so long as we are having sex, then our marriage is still alive. But I cannot bear to do any of the things he would really like to do, because it just reinforces his complete lack of emotion about the act. It is, as a result, dissatisfying for both of us. I (again, forgive me), am ‘f*ked’ once a week, and he does not get to indulge any of the practices he would like to.
I have tried to talk to him about this, but it is impossible as he genuinely has no idea what I am talking about. It is as though the ‘intimacy’ chip is missing from his brain. I don’t think he knows what intimacy is – or he mistakes sex for intimacy, and, for him, the more extreme the act, the greater affection he is showing. Occasionally he catches himself and starts talking about ‘making love’, but I think he thinks this means spending five minutes more in foreplay (and sexual foreplay as opposed to intimacy) before ‘f*king’ anyway. And I would rather he didn’t do this at all, as it just flags up to me how little he understands the act of making love. It is not about (or not just about) physical satisfaction, it should be about so much more.
The problem for me is, I have had very loving and very satisfying sexual relationships prior to my husband. I have never met anyone who I connected with so strongly as him out of bed, but I have had very loving, intimate relationships in bed. For me it is so much about nuances, about eye contact and mutual trust, and the natural development, the sharing of intimate moments, which develop out of that into the physical acts. I have in the past found the exclusivity of that intimacy: the fact that the two people concerned have chosen to share what they choose to do together, a huge part of the attraction, and all these things mean the act is an act of love rather than purely physical.
I have of course considered that we should have therapy but aside from the fact that we couldn’t afford it, I am not sure I can bear to do it. Perhaps if we had had therapy years ago, it might have helped but I just feel it is too late now. I have spent so many years putting up with what he is, what he does, that he has killed any chance of attraction I might have had – the delicacy of that is gone for ever for me. And I will never be able to bring myself to share in the experiences he wants. So we are irreconcilable.
I don’t think I could even conjure up any emotion if I discovered he was having the experiences he wants with another woman. I wouldn’t feel any jealousy – how could I, when he doesn’t make love to me anyway? He doesn’t even see me. Perhaps if he was having sex with another woman then I wouldn’t feel a nagging guilt that by marrying me, he gave up the chance to have the kind of sex life he would have wanted. Because I know we shouldn't have married.
I suppose I am afraid therapy would inevitably fail and I am frightened of the implications of that.
But sometimes I think I just can't bear to go on like this forever. I couldn't bear to break up my family but it seems such a sacrifice, to have to give up the chance ever to be loved physically again. I ache for this and sometimes it is so overwhelming that I do not think I can go on.
I don't know if there is any answer to this, but thank you for listening.