Hi SI,
I haven't posted in a while and always feel awkward about that...but am always deeply gratelful for the thoughtful responses shared here despite the posting gaps. Thank you, as always, in advance, for listening. I appreciate you.
I am still, 4 years out from a complicated DDay2, sorting deep seated areas of stuckness in terms of the sexual aspects of my wife's PA. I am thankful for significant progress here, and have had to go pretty far back into places where my very sexual identity and formation took place to try and unravel why, despite IC, consistent unwavering remorse from my WW, and the passage of ever increasing amounts of time, that I am still pretty stuck in terms of the sexual aspects of my wife's betrayal. One partuclar bear trap that I have not been able to find very much ink on in recovery literature is when the BS was a virgin at marriage so, obiviously has no other sexual partners other than their WS. I am finding this particulary mindbending in my own ongoing recovery. My wife is my only sexual partner. She was not a virgin when we married, we processed that "incongruence" during our dating/engagement and entered into our, what I thought would be, an exclusive sexual relationship upon marriage.
What I seem to be crashing up against at some level in recovering from her sexual betrayal during our marriage is, in addition to the betrayal itself, having zero point of reference of what it is even like (beyond the generalities of course) to have sexual experiences with another/other people. At best, even when sexual detail is asked for and received by the BS, we will never have it all, or even close to a comprehensive truth about the (affair in general as well) the sexual encounters our waywards have with their APs. So there is STILL, even with as much detail as a WS can remember and offer, a deep sense (for me at least) in which I feel a great deal of just being IN THE DARK about. And I think it's just an additional, volatile, toxin to then add, not only feeling in the dark about large parts of the affair and the sexual encounters therein, but also being in the dark about what even a baseline experience is like to simply have sexual encounters with another person AT ALL...just twists it exponentiually for me.
I anticiapte the counters to this somewhat...I mean...sex is sex, right? We're adults. We know how sex works etc. etc. I don't know why that doesn't work for me. I think it has soemthing to do with sex never really being "just sex" to me. To me, I would think, if you change the parnter, the sexual experience could/should/would change SIGNIFICANTLY. I don't knnow that experientailly though. I can only guess. So, my wife not only went and lived a secret chunk of life that I will never be able to really know or be a part of, she also had deeply intimate sexual experiences that I will never even be able to relate to,even at the most fundamental levels.
I'm not sure I am making sense at this point...usually a sign to start winding the post down.
I have often had the, admittedly bizarre (embarassing?) notion that, if I could be given an ULTRA HD account of every single interaction, conversation, date, meetup, and yes, masochistic as it sounds, sexual encounter where I could observe every single detail with as much clarity as possible... every single nuance, every facial expression, every twist of the hair, tilt of the head, smile, touch, voice inflection, choice of words...that I could somehow get totally free. Just EXACTLY how WAS my wife with him...on a date...in his car...at the mall...out to dinner......IN BED? That if I could somehow know this...there would be freedom for me. Just having the knowledge itself firsthand. My IC says this desire is about control. Feeling that knowledge would give me a sense of control over all of it. She's probably right...but I don't know. I just know it's how I feel.
Good Lord, I may have just threadjacked my own thread.
But I think it relates...I have this seemingly inordinately DEEP NEED to try and RELATE experientially to my wife's affair...especially the sexual dyanamics of it, and, because she is my only sexual partner...I can't even relate to what it is to share a sexual relationship with another person...let alone grasp the much deeper dyanmics present in an affair. I guess it just feels like I will never get my head and heart around it...and the "virgin problem", for me anyway, seems to exacerbate it. Tremendously.
After all of that word vomit...I guess I just want to ask...
Is there anyone out there who had a "virgin problem"to solve in your affair recovery. Was it even a problem? If so, how did you do it? What were some of the more stubborn obstacles if you did?
Even if you didn't have the virgin problem...I welcome all potential insights.
Thank you so much as always for your time and thoughtfulness in wrestling with me,
WH
