So... I've just ended a relationship which had been going on since January last year. I say going on, when what I should really say is I ended it a good few times last year already, but kept going back and trying again.
We're both at the far end of our fifties, so no spring chickens, we've seen a fair bit of life. He's divorced, I never married.
We got on so well, sure there were issues, some minor, but mostly ironed out. We seemed compatible in many ways. But it was me that kept calling it a day because there were big issues with our sex life being non-existent and what he would call a fetish that he said he's had his entire life, but what I am now understanding to be an extreme compulsion and an addiction that is in part responsible for destroying his marriage and any subsequent relationships he had post divorce, which was a fair while ago. (It's a harmless fetish, it's for feet and shoes and certain actions with them, so nothing illegal and certainly nothing that would cause harm to anyone.)
He was kind of upfront about it when we started trying to sleep together, but he totally minimised the extent of his need for this fetish to get aroused. At first I thought he wasn't attracted to me at all, eventually when I managed to get him talking and I discovered his preferences, as it were, I started wearing high heels, wigs, different outfits.... it seemed to work a little, but still no real sex to speak of.
After months and months of hoping we might actually have sex at some stage, I kind of gave up on it as I had fallen for him and said to myself I would rather have him in my life than not, more important things than sex, sex isn't love.... etc etc..... However, I did blow my top a couple of times out of sheer frustration at his inability to address what was going on with him, his unwillingness to get his physical health checked out, to seek specialist sex therapy if necessary... to try to understand what was going on so that we could at least know whether we would ever have a sex life. I kept going back because I couldn't imagine being without him though.
Then I discovered the extent of his social media use, namely Instagram and Facebook. He said he wasn't really much of a Facebook user, but he seems to be a follower of every possible fetish related group or page on there and on Instagram he's posting reel after reel and consuming one photo after another, every single day, of women doing their fetishy thing. Last week, after spending a lovely evening together.... one in which I thought he might, might want to have sex with me, but again, it didn't happen, he was liking and commenting on some random's photo about how hot she was...
I lost the plot yesterday and ended it for good. Collected all my things from his house. Explained how he was having sex with thousands of videos and images and I was having sex alone with my vibrator. That I knew he used this material, but not the extent of it, the liking, commenting, every single day of the week. That his sexual desire was all directed away from me. He was sad and kept apologising, but when I asked him if we could figure it out, if he would ever get therapy, he said he didn't know what to do.
At one point he actually said "I'm emotionally cold, aren't I?" He had marriage counselling with his ex wife and they never resolved his need for this material instead of a real sexual connection with her, so I figure it's never going to change for me. When I asked him what I meant to him, he just said we get on very well and of course the attraction to you, and sort of waved his hand.
Just WTAF...
When I got home last night, he was straight onto Instagram liking photos again.
It's just that horrible feeling, even though I ended it, it feels as if he had no shits to give. He probably didn't, in fact. I was the one giving all the shits.
I just had a drink with a friend who said I need to get out speed dating and get laid. Whilst the very idea kind of horrifies me right now, after a year of total sexual frustration, they could well be right!