SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

Deleted because I don't feel safe being vulnerable without acknowledgment/support.*

*Edited to re-add the content of the original post. I had an anxiety attack before I deleted it.

Oh, god. Where to begin? Like my H says, all the threads of this topic are woven like a pot of unbuttered spaghetti that's been sitting on the stove for a couple of hours and is all twisted and stuck together. It's going to take some time to sort it all out, but we're workin' on it!

My H's sexual appetite has always been bigger than mine. Like, way bigger. Until back issues caught up with him, a typical romp in the sack lasted for about an hour and required a shower afterwards. He'd have liked a frequency of about 3X/week. Well, when you're working full time and raising kids, the thought of that is just daunting on a Tuesday night. I'd tell him that I was definitely up for a quickie, but he wasn't interested in that because he "needed me to be into it as much as he was." Needless to say, it was frustrating for both of us. I felt pressured and guilty, he felt rejected, and it tumbled downhill like a snowball picking up more and more emotional debris until it seemed too big to fix. I truly thought we were on the road to a completely sexless marriage, especially since we're getting older; he has ED and I'm in menopause. The mechanics are more difficult now and frequency has been about once a month.

We both have started IC recently, and I'm coming to the realization that I probably have mild inattentive ADHD. I also have hypersensitivity to touch. I don't like to be caressed. It doesn't feel good and can even cause my skin to hurt if the same area is stroked for too long. Sometimes, when starting to get romantic, I'll get super frustrated with foreplay and say, "I can't. It's too much" and pull away. To H, that was more rejection, which I 100% get. I even bought into it partially being an emotional aversion instead of a physiological response, due to infidelity.

I've always been this way, though. I'm tender-headed. Hot water over about 100 degrees hurts. I have food texture aversions. I have misophonia; I can't STAND mouth noises like smacking or gum cracking or tooth-sucking. I yell at the dogs when they lick themselves because it drives me insane. My nose is bionic. Over the last couple of years, I've started using cannabis to sleep at night, and when I'm high, all of the sensitivity calms way down. I actually like being caressed when I'm high. I had an epiphany that how I feel when I'm high must be how most people feel all the time. It's really relaxing to feel "normal."

Last night, I told H that I thought that the first thing a sex therapist might tell us is that I need to initiate and take the reins to avoid the "too much" factor. I also said that sometimes I just want to get fucked without having to walk through the minefield of foreplay and the pressure to get as amped up as he wants me to be. I've said that a thousand times over the years, but because the puzzle pieces are now coming together, H understands that I've always wanted him, I wanted to have sex with him, but my brain and body just work differently than his. I'm excited to see where this revelation leads us.

Sex has always been our Achilles heel. Our marriage is pretty solid in every other regard. I'm also sad that, had we had this realization earlier, we may never have had to deal with infidelity.

My hope in sharing this is that it sparks a lightbulb moment for someone else.

[This message edited by SacredSoul33 at 8:56 PM, Wednesday, August 9th]

[This message edited by SacredSoul33 at 4:53 PM, Wednesday, August 9th]

Don’t feel sensitive, I have noticed the board is a bit slower and quieter this week. Also, there isn’t a question in it, and people can be slower to respond to an update or a thought.

I am glad your husband is recognizing your bodies work differently. My husband has always felt the same way, he wants to only have sex if I am as I to it as him. That part isn’t the issue but sometimes I am just not going to climax and he used to have an issue where he wanted to keep going because he just knew he could get me there. We have averages 3-4 times a week for the majority of our marriage and out of those times there might be once in the week I couldn’t get there. But if he kept going then I was sore and not as keen for the next few days, he was making me averse if that makes sense because it also sounds like that’s what you struggled with.

However I beg to differ that if this hadn’t been a problem then maybe you could have skipped over infidelity.

Sure, part of the factor could be he wanted more sex. But there are so many other factors here at play that go into infidelity.

1. His need to be validated- this is why he needed you to be oerformative because he needed something very specific to have his ego stroked. If you had been naturally this way it’s just as likely a ws would not receive the same feelings of validation because he would become desensitized to the value he felt he was getting. He may have in turn still sought the validation elsewhere.

2. Cheating is not purely a sex thing. I can buy it more in certain circumstances such as a person who pays for it whether it be through happy ending messages, video chats spun from porn sites, etc. but most cheating has many forms of validation in it. Ws are people who need external validation more than the average person, they have low self worth.

3. The low self worth can present as overly selfish or overly unselfish. In both cases, the ws is seeking what they feel entitled to. Overly unselfish people believe through people pleasing or giving the other person so much they are earning love. These people become unbalanced because they become desensitized to what they get in return so they give more with little noticeable difference to what they are receiving. They don’t say what they want and they shrink themselves until they are so unhappy they blame the spouse. Overly selfish people are doing the same thing, they are just more outwardly saying "I need more and more" to feel loved or happy.

So, please don’t blame yourself. The fact that your sex life has been a painful topic, the cheating is because of your husbands character flaws. He could have chosen many other courses of action.

I am not trying to unravel your peace or not be happy for your breakthrough, I just don’t like that you seem to carry some level of responsibility for his choices to cheat. You may carry some of the responsibility for issues in your marriage but issues in a marriage doesnt equate to cheating.

You deleted your post, please let me know if you would like me to delete my response so that details are no longer shared? Peace to you.

Bless your heart, I know that vulnerable feeling well. I had a good discussion with my husband based on your post. I haven't had time to respond, as I've been whining my butt off on other threads and busy in general. For the record, it usually takes me days to work up a response on some of these threads, and I've written and deleted as many responses as I have posted, for so many reasons. Also, fyi, I almost deleted a long overshare post yesterday, but decided to hold off. It felt good to get it out.

I'm sorry you felt unheard, and need you to know your post helped me! Me too on many levels, and it was good to talk to my husband so easily about such a sensitive topic, and that would not have happened without your post. So thank you, and feel free to pm if you want to discuss anything without feeling so vulnerable. Spilling your guts, sharing an epiphany or just general thread killing into a void is the worst feeling. Makes me ask what am I doing here????? Doesn't happen often but I feel you for when it does.

There are several important and useful threads here dealing with semi-related topics, and I really appreciate knowing other women are going through similar experiences so I don't feel so alone.

Best to you, hope you feel comfortable sharing moving forward, or more of us show up to chat.

I had a full-on anxiety attack this morning before I deleted my post. Thank you for responding and supporting me. I really appreciate it.

However I beg to differ that if this hadn’t been a problem then maybe you could have skipped over infidelity.

I truly don't blame myself for his decision(s) to cheat, but I do think that our incompatibility opened the door in his brain to the entitlement to "get his needs met" because he felt unwanted. A#1 happened while we were apart for a few months. Right before he left, he wanted sex, but I had a baby to tend to and blah blah blah, and it didn't happen. So he left feeling rejected and had 1500 miles of driving to stew on it. He went off the deep end and started hanging out with his dipshit single Marine friend acting single, partying, driving motorcycles drunk, getting a DUI, and cheating. That's when he cracked the seal. That has always haunted me. Had I had sex with him that day before he left, would all of this still have happened? No way to know, of course, but damn. I definitely don't OWN it, but I do wonder about the butterfly effect, if you will.

sisoon made an interesting point:

"I believe no one can fully process the anger that comes with being betrayed if one pays attention to possible reasons for the betrayer's actions."

This is the thread: https://www.survivinginfidelity.com/forums/?tid=661281&HL=83038

That really struck a chord with me. I'm always one to look for the WHY in people's behavior and to be empathetic to it, maybe to my own detriment it turns out. We have our quarterly tune-up appt with our MC tomorrow and I want to bring this up with him. He's friggin' brilliant and I know he can help me figure out if this is part of what's holding up my healing. It's been 19 years, for Pete's sake. I'm tired of this shit being such a big part of my daily thoughts.

The low self worth can present as overly selfish or overly unselfish. In both cases, the ws is seeking what they feel entitled to. Overly unselfish people believe through people pleasing or giving the other person so much they are earning love. These people become unbalanced because they become desensitized to what they get in return so they give more with little noticeable difference to what they are receiving. They don’t say what they want and they shrink themselves until they are so unhappy they blame the spouse.

This is him in a nutshell. You nailed it. He's getting so much better about communicating his thoughts and feelings in real time rather than stewing on them.

Spilling your guts, sharing an epiphany or just general thread killing into a void is the worst feeling. Makes me ask what am I doing here?????

That's exactly what happened. I made so many assumptions that there's an organized behind-the-scenes effort by someone who doesn't like me to leave me hanging. I was SO amped up that I couldn't concentrate on anything and was racked with anxiety. I even requested that my profile be deactivated. (I sent another message saying that I temporarily lost my shit and asking that it be reversed.) I had to stop my workday to breathe and meditate for 15 minutes, which really helped. And then I came back and saw your responses and felt silly.

I'm sorry you felt unheard, and need you to know your post helped me! Me too on many levels, and it was good to talk to my husband so easily about such a sensitive topic, and that would not have happened without your post. So thank you, and feel free to pm if you want to discuss anything without feeling so vulnerable.

Thank you so much! I'm so glad that it helped you too. That seriously makes my day!

My marriage ended in D, but I see a LOT of what went on in our home in what you wrote. I would beg for a quickie— he had to have the whole show. We didn’t talk about it and when we did, we didn’t hear each other. Both felt butt hurt.

Thank you for being vulnerable and brining this to the forum. There are a lot more folks going through what you are going through.

Glad you opened this door and are exploring solutions together with your husband. Amazing how good communication works, right? If only it was easy.

Amazing how good communication works, right? If only it was easy.

The funny thing is, we really thought that we were good communicators. We just thought that that we couldn't communicate ourselves out of this predicament. The ADHD/hypersensitivity thing was kind of like finally figuring out that one puzzle piece that just didn't seem to fit anywhere.

We had MC yesterday and it was an excellent session. We drive about four hours each way to see our MC (he moved and we didn't want to see anyone else) which leaves a lot of time for introspection and good talks. He shared with me willingly what he was thinking in real time, and I did the same, and we realized that our level of transparency had waned over the years. We agreed to share with each other when things pop into our brains and it was sexy AF. We stopped to make out on the way back. When we got home, we had a really awesome quickie that turned into a little bit more. We were both so friggin' thrilled with that!

I truly don't blame myself for his decision(s) to cheat, but I do think that our incompatibility opened the door in his brain to the entitlement to "get his needs met" because he felt unwanted.

My MC agreed with this. It's not an excuse, but it was definitely a huge contributing factor to my H's mentality.