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Anonymous

My husband and I have been married for 30 years. When we were first together my life was in happy land. He showed his love for me, we connected in all the right ways, and our sex was loving and fulfilling. We had a baby out of wedlock but still I didn't ask him to marry me. I felt his love and commitment every day. Then our baby nearly died, but was saved do to costly hospital care. I realized how vulnerable I was so I asked him to marry him. He immediately agreed, but all of the hippy wedding pictures show him with a look of stunned resignation. Not a smile in one of them. Soon afterwards he became distant then began a behavior that has haunted our entire married life together. He obsessively stares at beautiful, young women in public, right in front of me! This staring is both rude and compulsive. On our first year anniversary he did it and I decided then to retaliate with an affair...I was young myself and very stupid. The affair was a disaster. I was consumed with guilt, finally confessing everything to my husband, you forgave me. It told him that the lack of passionate sex, affection, and the horrible staring made me do it. For about two years afterwards he controlled his impulses a bit, but soon they began again in earnest. Our lives became stressed. I pursued a degree in design, we remodeled a home for 12 years, and do to sleep issues, we slept in separate rooms. Then it was my job only to initiate sex. I have always hugged him but he never hugs me, checks me out, initiates sex, or compliments me in any way except for the most mundane of ways..."you always know how to pack a car." I promised him and myself that I would NEVER have another affair, and his staring of very young women told me that he no longer desired me, so I did what many women on this list have done...I closed up shop...I stopped being a sexual being. I entered public life, ran for office and won, and made many new friends. He has made no new friends since college. All he seemed to want to do was watch TV until both of us had passed out. Then he would take the laptop to bed with him and close the door. Not until last month did I realize that he was watching a lot of porn...lovely college girls ( and we live in a college town!) besides many pickup sites. When first confronted he denied it all until I found the cookie files that told all. He has started to be nicer to me, hold me and caress me, and we are finally having loads of sex. I am in dreamland over the sex, but knowing that he has lied to me all these years, that he has wantonly stared at very young women in my presence for years, and that he is a hopeless fantasy addict makes me very mistrustful of him. We are luckily in marriage counseling, but now that my buried anger has been released I have become dangerously depressed and anxious. I lost 15 lbs. in 3 weeks so I am now worried my health. I keep thinking that we will be in a restaurant, I am dressed very sexy, I leave to go to the bathroom, and when I come back he is doing his staring at a lovely woman at the bar. At that point, I don't know WHAT I will do. When I say that he stares at young women, it is something to see. NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE else is staring at these young women like he does, except, maybe, time to time, a horny teenager. My hurt is so deep, 30 years deep, that there are days that I can barely function. I think I can forgive him because we are best friends, but I don't think I will ever trust him. What am I doing wrong? How can this all be over?

October 6, 2010 - 10:10am

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