had a great "partner"

[uhtred]

On 2/23/2018 at 5:23 PM, banoffeepie said:

You must have known things were unlikely to change after .... 20 years?    surely.

Maybe you chose to stick with it because she's been wonderful for you in every other way.  Maybe not, I don't know, you haven't said why you really stayed.

 

I'm sure that to be together for 50 years there must have been some reason other than ... I was waiting for her to get turned on.

 

As the only good words you have to say about her are in quote marks, it seems like you have real bitterness boiling up inside you now. I'm sorry that's how it's making you feel. that's a horrible feeling and a great shame. It seems like you should talk or leave pretty quickly. Before you become worse.

My ex left after 23 years, and she was pretty bitter towards me by the time she talked to me about it.

Now she's tried to start new relationships but they've been failing and now she still has no sex ... and she's lost her best friend. So it's something you've got to think really carefully about I guess. I you choose to stay and live a sexless life... don't be bitter about it. Celebrate what you have together.

 

Good luck.

It’s so easy to fool yourself because you want to believe it can be fixed. Took me 35 years to realize that there was no fix.

 

the life long suffering this causes, sometimes for both, is tragic.  

 

Parents warn your children.

[ryn2]

2 hours ago, James121 said:

Hmm, I’ll refrain from the use of the term ‘clueless’ but what I would ask is this.

 

For 17 years did you not realise that you preferred not to have sex with your partner?

 

 

 

 

Sorry, busy day at work!

 

For 17 years I didn’t realize that my experience of sex was different than most other women’s.  It was not on my list of  favorite things to do but I didn’t realize that was unusual or concerning.

[James121]

7 minutes ago, ryn2 said:

Sorry, busy day at work!

 

For 17 years I didn’t realize that my experience of sex was different than most other women’s.  It was not on my list of  favorite things to do but I didn’t realize that was unusual or concerning.

But you did it anyway? Relatively regularly? It becomes a major issue when it is reduced to never or next to never.

I hear what you are saying though.

[ryn2]

Yep, I did it regularly, like all the other things I do to keep a house, job, and relationship going - the things I do in pursuit of those larger goals, rather than because they bring me intrinsic pleasure.

 

As I’ve said before my husband has significant ED.  At some point he became very focused on doing sexual things “for me,” perhaps to make up for that.  I couldn’t understand why we were doing things “for me” that I actually didn’t enjoy, that were more unpleasant than the PIV we had struggled through previously.  That had added some stress, for me at least, but not affected the frequency.

 

He stopped initiating in the midst of a couple of years of general life (jobs, volunteering) upheaval.  I wasn’t complaining because it meant less things “for me” that were making me actively unhappy.  That certainly caused me to be less likely to ask what was up.

 

In hindsight I should have asked what was going on immediately, but I didn’t have the benefit of hindsight then.

[Telecaster68]

Do you think he stopped just because of other life stresses, or because he was also figuring out that you weren't getting much out of it too?

[ryn2]

7 minutes ago, Telecaster68 said:

Do you think he stopped just because of other life stresses, or because he was also figuring out that you weren't getting much out of it too?

I thought the former until January.  In January he told me I turned him down on a vacation and, because he has issues around rejection that he had not started addressing at that point, he vowed not to ask again.

 

His retrospective doubts about how my lack of mutual “getting something out of it” might have factored into our whole life together started when I told him in January that I was ace.

[Telecaster68]

3 minutes ago, ryn2 said:

 In January he told me I turned him down on a vacation and, because he has issues around rejection that he had not started addressing at that point, he vowed not to ask again.

So just the one rejection was enough to stop him asking ever again? Wow. That's some issues.

[ryn2]

1 hour ago, Telecaster68 said:

So just the one rejection was enough to stop him asking ever again? Wow. That's some issues.

I’m sure there were isolated times I’d said I’d rather not but it was the exception and nothing that ever brought things to a stop.  From what he recalls I “shot him down hard” this one time and since one of the main things he likes about me is that I never reject him (in all areas, not just sex) like others have that had a major impact.

 

He has said all of this to the therapist recently so it doesn’t appear to be me conveniently forgetting a string of turn-downs.

[Telecaster68]

Oh, I'm sure not. I was just being nosey really.

[ryn2]

I can see how what might feel like a reasonable cadence or number of turn-downs to an ace might feel much less reasonable to a sexual but from what he has said recently that doesn’t seem to be part of the issue.  It really does seem to be the one time.

 

Well, that plus how it was never discussed.

[James121]

8 minutes ago, ryn2 said:

He has said all of this to the therapist recently so it doesn’t appear to be me conveniently forgetting a string of turn-downs.

Maybe he knew all along. He could sense it by body language etc. Maybe he tried for years and years to find that magic technique or that mystical something that would have you coming back for more. Maybe that one occasion you rejected him with a bluntness caused him to recall the fact that he has been the only person initiating sex throughout the entirety of the marriage and he realised that although you had never generally said no, you also hadn’t ever said ‘I want you’.

 

[ryn2]

25 minutes ago, James121 said:

Maybe he knew all along. He could sense it by body language etc. Maybe he tried for years and years to find that magic technique or that mystical something that would have you coming back for more. Maybe that one occasion you rejected him with a bluntness caused him to recall the fact that he has been the only person initiating sex throughout the entirety of the marriage and he realised that although you had never generally said no, you also hadn’t ever said ‘I want you’.

 

It’s hard to know since he has mentioned none of this.  All I have to go on is that he says he had not noticed I was ambivalent towards sex until we had been married more than 14 years, and that knowing I am ace has now cast doubt on everything.  To me that sounds like he thought things were fine at the time, but we’re all just speculating.

 

For many years I initiated, so I’m sure he didn’t just then realize it was only him.

[James121]

3 minutes ago, ryn2 said:

It’s hard to know since he has mentioned none of this.  All I have to go on is that he says he had not noticed I was ambivalent towards sex until we had been married more than 14 years, and that knowing I am ace has now cast doubt on everything.  To me that sounds like he thought things were fine at the time, but we’re all just speculating.

 

For many years I initiated, so I’m sure he didn’t just then realize it was only him.

I was also speculating and going by my own experience/experiences of other people I have discussed this type of stuff with.

I was just sounding out what it could have been but doesn’t sound like I was correct. 

 

Intiating sex is a massive deal though. If I were to initiate sex 20 times a year and my wife said yes each time, it would still feel that one is having to kind of ‘pester’ for it. It’s definitely more common for boys to pursue girls but sometimes it’s nice when the situation is reversed and initiation is shared a little.

[ryn2]

3 minutes ago, James121 said:

I was also speculating and going by my own experience/experiences of other people I have discussed this type of stuff with.

I was just sounding out what it could have been but doesn’t sound like I was correct. 

 

Intiating sex is a massive deal though. If I were to initiate sex 20 times a year and my wife said yes each time, it would still feel that one is having to kind of ‘pester’ for it. It’s definitely more common for boys to pursue girls but sometimes it’s nice when the situation is reversed and initiation is shared a little.

Agreed, I was including you in the speculating “we.”

 

Re: the second point, understood and I did initiate (nearly all the time, which is part of why I ultimately thought he might also be ace) for many years.  It wasn’t until he started focusing so much on making it all about me (which was only a few months before the cutoff point) that I stopped initiating and left that to him.

[James121]

10 minutes ago, ryn2 said:

Agreed, I was including you in the speculating “we.”

 

Re: the second point, understood and I did initiate (nearly all the time, which is part of why I ultimately thought he might also be ace) for many years.  It wasn’t until he started focusing so much on making it all about me (which was only a few months before the cutoff point) that I stopped initiating and left that to him.

Hmm, yes this is complex. It’s difficult to know what he was thinking really because in the circumstances you describe, I’m not sure how he would have become all that distressed.How offer were you have sex together?

[ryn2]

Initially, most days.  Over time it dwindled to once a week.  A few times it dwindled further but always came back to once a week.

 

He is clinically depressed and struggles with explaining what he is feeling (even to himself, he says).

[Mary Lambert]

On ‎4‎/‎19‎/‎2018 at 10:36 AM, ryn2 said:

was about 15 years into my marriage (17 years into the relationship) when I realized I might be ace.  If I hadn’t happened upon the hobby that led me there, I might still not know I was in any way unusual.

 

By your logic I must be exceptionally clueless.

This is exactly what is so confusing to Allos. How could you not know something was really wrong? My hubby always acted so clueless also, but he had to know something was wrong. He was 34 years old when I married him. ! ACE partner must think we just love hanging out watching TV with them. Hell, I can do that with anyone. Maybe it's building a family together? Maybe he/you have just different criteria that makes a marriage then Allos do.  To most Allos marriage = monogamy. Definition of monogamy to most Allos is 

• the practice or state of having a sexual relationship with only one partner.

[Telecaster68]

Reading the forum, you're not far off the mark with the watching the telly together comment.

[ryn2]

1 hour ago, Mary Lambert said:

This is exactly what is so confusing to Allos. How could you not know something was really wrong? My hubby always acted so clueless also, but he had to know something was wrong. He was 34 years old when I married him. ! ACE partner must think we just love hanging out watching TV with them. Hell, I can do that with anyone. Maybe it's building a family together? Maybe he/you have just different criteria that makes a marriage then Allos do.  To most Allos marriage = monogamy. Definition of monogamy to most Allos is 

• the practice or state of having a sexual relationship with only one partner.

I did think my partners enjoyed things like going out to eat, going to the movies, traveling, and - yes - watching shows together.  Sharing hobbies.  Going hiking, kayaking, etc.

 

And my relationships (all but my very first one) involved both PIV sex and many other sexual activities.

 

Without having conversations with other women like the ones we have here, and the ones I ultimately had in fandom, how would I have known that my experience of sex was not typical?  For most of my working life I was in a male-dominated profession and most of my friends were men.  What I heard about sex was an endless, stereotypical stream of complaints about how their wives never wanted to have any.

[ryn2]

1 minute ago, ryn2 said:

Maybe he/you have just different criteria that makes a marriage then Allos do

I think many people, ace and allo, see marriage/LTRs as building a loving family and household together.  The difference comes in when you look at what the two groups need/want/expect in order to feel loving, loved, and appreciated.

 

Hopefully going forward as younger people learn more about the full spectrum of sexuality and grow up surrounded by candid conversations and a lot more information, more people will realize needs, wants, and mismatches before/early in their relationships.

 

Unfortunately that leaves a lot of us who figured it out too late.

[ryn2]

1 hour ago, Telecaster68 said:

Reading the forum, you're not far off the mark with the watching the telly together comment.

That’s it.  You’re watching TV alone from now on.

[Mary Lambert]

Yes, it's really quite unbelievable, isn't it? Is it lonely being an ACE? 

[ryn2]

13 minutes ago, Mary Lambert said:

Yes, it's really quite unbelievable, isn't it? Is it lonely being an ACE? 

That depends on most of the same things that make an allosexual lonely, probably.

[everywhere and nowhere]

(emphasis mine)

 

On 23.02.2018 at 2:01 PM, frednsa said:

so here I sit after a half-century of marriage to a "great" partner.  sexless as a stone but viewed as so "warm" by those not craving intimacy with her.

I'm dying but healthy at the moment and so resentful and angry over so much time in this marriage hoping that something will change.  50+ years, huh ?

 

insane, maybe.............but the awareness that the window is closing and there's virtually no hope of change.  i guess if it hadn't been for my prior (60 years ago) relationship in school being with such a sexual girl, i wouldn't know better.  got sucked in by my wife's wonderful (out-of-bed) personality and family and believed her statements that after our pre-marriage celibacy imposed by her (remember asexuality was unknown by me) that she would really warm up after marriage.  if she believed this she was a fool.  But no more a fool than me for staying past the wedding night !

OK, Pity pot stored again - hope everyone has a nice day.............

Do you really love your wife if you're so spiteful and ironic? She's just lucky she doesn't know what does her "dear hubby" write about her. On the other hand, even you are better off if she doesn't want to stay with someone who doesn't respect her.