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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am the PP who wrote about forgiveness.  I did not realize my post would lead to such strong reactions.

I was not trying to write a Hallmark moment.  I just wrote about my personal experience, and I was totally honest.  That was some of the most hard-earned wisdom I have accumulated over the years, and I wish someone had shared similar advice with me years earlier, because it would have saved so much grief.  I could have put my personal story in terms of psychology or theology, but I thought that would make it too easy for people to put it into a box with a label.  I wanted it to speak for itself.

Right now, OP is stuck with a certain set of facts.  The past cannot be changed.  His wife wants to have a good marriage, and his kids would be better off with two parents who love each other.  But OP, by his own admission, does not know what to do with these (understandable) feelings of hurt, resentment, rejection, confusion--nor has he yet figured out where things went wrong all those years ago.  He wants to find a way to deal with those feelings, and to learn the truth.

His anger has him trapped.  And his anger is trying to convince him to dig in, to hold on, to not let go, that forgiveness equals weakness, that justice is holding his wife accountable, making her suffer, getting her back.  Where will that get him?  No where good.  Seriously--nothing good can come of all that.

But how to make a step away from the anger?  He needs to change this paradigm of "I am good, she is bad.". Because no one is perfect. Besides how he has been in his marriage, I am sure there are times he has wronged other people.  His parents, his friends, girlfriends, strangers...what if they all held him completely responsible for his shortcomings?  What if everyone he has ever offended came back and demanded their pound of flesh?

And this is his wife, the mother of his children, the one person on this planet with whom he shares the most intimacy. He has established a dynamic that has her in a hopeless place.  She can never change the past.  She can never give him back those years.  She let him down, and she cannot make up for it.  That is a terrible place to be.  I know.  And if he wants an equal partner, in his home and in his bed, he needs to put her back in a place of honor and wholeness and reverence.  How can she have confidence and sexiness and affection for him sexually if she knows he carries this low opinion of her?

So he needs to divert his focus away from her acknowledged shortcomings and seriously contemplate what HE needs forgiveness for, and once he has reconnected with her, as a fellow weak human being who has his own faults, they can reestablish trust, mutual respect, honesty, open communication, and so on.  Maybe that will require an outside counselor, or maybe they can handle it themselves.  I don't know.

OP, I don't know if you are even still listening, and maybe you thought I was hokey.  That's fine--it takes all kinds.  If you can tolerate a little more cheesiness, listen to the song "I See" by Matt Nathanson.  I doubt he meant it to apply to this situation, but I think it summarizes what I am trying to say in a poetic way.

Sex is not a transaction.  It is not something owed, something taken, something demanded or given.  It is a union of two PERSONS, body, mind, soul.  And it should be a union of EQUALS.  Isn't that what you desire, OP?  You don't just want a physical indulgence.  You want to love and be loved in return.  That is worth fighting for, worth sacrificing for, and it is not always easy.  But it is worth it.

Again I wish you and your family only the best.[/quote]

Let me just make the only decent points in your post while stripping out the soft lighting:

"OP, your bitterness and anger towards your wife is going to prevent emotional intimacy and any true reconciliation in your marriage. Whatever it takes to truly be happy in your marriage you will have to get past that."

There.

Your follow up posts are not helping. I am personally not just reacting to your post because it's overwrought. It's because it's sexist and weird.

One, no one ever responds to women complaining about husbands not doing dishes to revere and honor them because they are the "father of their children". But you clearly think this should be the case with mothers and women - women should be put on some sort of pedestal? Your language is indicative of a creepy Madonna/whore complex, which is always good for marital sex lives.  :roll:

I can see why your marital sex dried up. Your husband married his perfect women, his perfect wife. You buy into this as well and need to be... revered. But you're flesh and blood like the rest of us and make mistakes. Neither of you can handle that. You withdraw and obsess about being a failure. You can't live up to the pedestal you enforce internally because *surprise* you're human. Then one day your husband wipes the slate clean. Maybe because he truly loves you and forgives you. Maybe because he *needs* you back on that pedestal. Maybe you both revised down your expectations of perfection. Maybe your new "perfect wife" identity is one who is perfectly loving to her savior of a husband. Maybe your marriage is perfect. I don't know.

Either way, OP PLEASE don't buy into this. You owe your children a healthy marriage (if it's possible to get one) but your wife isn't some sort of saint, and this is a fantasy. You are not going to be able to grant her some miracle of perfect love in order to heal all of her emotional wounds and open her heart to your perfect sexual union. Does the miracle of perfect love instantaneously heal vaginismus? Erase childhood trauma? This took years to break, so don't expect it to be fixed overnight. Give voice to your feelings and let your wife do the same. Go and do the messy work to get a real marriage, don't be tempted by this facade this poster puts up. She clearly *needs* to believe whatever she believes.
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