It’s mindnumbing to think about – my husband and I have gone years at a time without any physical intimacy of any kind. He rejected me so repeatedly from the moment we got home from our honeymoon until now (almost 20 years later) that I am almost immune to the sadness of dysfunction. And that is dysfunctional!
I’m a fairly attractive, fit, active, lighthearted, younghearted, joyful, fun-loving person who has always been game for it. He just never has. It’s amazing we even have children.
If you can relate to any of that, I suggest watching a MasterClass by Emily Morse on Sex and Communication that is phenomenal – and I’m only 13 minutes into it so far. I don’t really know what to do with the information since my husband is totally disinterested in all forms of intimacy, conversational, emotional, and physical, but it is already transforming my ideas on the subject and making me wonder why our culture is so darn hush-hush about it. While movies and media treat it like it’s candy, so many of us in real-life relationships dance around it like it’s taboo.
I am in a phase of reconstructing my mental framework, since I didn’t ever imagine being in a dead marriage for two decades and I need to figure out what the road ahead should be since enduring this for another decade or two sounds outright nutty. When we married, I was so excited to share love and companionship and cuddling and wonderfulness until we were old and gray. Instead, he instated a stone-cold lifelessness, which has been terribly lonely for me. I always wanted to be married until the end, enjoy grandparenthood with my spouse, and love being the matriarch of a living lineage that was loving and cohesive. I may have to overhaul the whole internal “plan.” In order to keep everyone else okay, I’m in the middle giving things up right and left.
Our local library has a box of condoms for anyone to use, promoting safe sex. When I go in there, I think about the teenagers they are most likely aimed toward, knowing that certainly some of them will go home tonight and use them. Here I am, married and ready for sex at the drop of a hat for years, and I can’t even take one of those home for a fun night. It would never get used. That is so sad!! It isn’t right to have a spouse and no skin on skin.
