Reply to When did you decide it was time for an affair and did it help your marriage?

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[quote=Anonymous]OP, I'm a wife with a husband that has a high sex drive. Well at least compared to what I can keep up with. We have sex about 3-4 times a week, but he thinks it's not enough if it's not every night.

We have two young kids and especially after our second was born, he was really in a bad place with the lack of sex (we never got down to less than once a week, but his standards are his standards regardless).  Especially while I was breast feeding, but for the first two years or so after the second child was born, I was just utterly exhausted. So so tired. Not feeling like myself, touched out, feeling fat and out of shape (never have been more than a size six, but your body changes so much), etc. Typical story. And his anger with me about not meeting his needs was such a turn off. It felt like I was giving giving giving and all anyone in my life was doing was demanding more from me and it was never enough.

He would tell me I should just take more time for myself, but then if I did, he would complain about being with the kids or make sure I knew what a bad night he'd had when I got home  or just be really short with them.  I did everything for the kids and the house and our lives even though I worked full time too. He would act like there was something wrong with me for not being interested, when in reality he was just so needy about it and totally not understanding of my needs and my feelings, and it was so not sexy. It became just one more thing to check off my list of a bazillion things to do. He didn't seem to get that having children was going to mean that his needs were going to need to take a step down for at least a little while.  My needs were basically completely disregarded by him, but he whined about his own needs constantly.

Anyway, about a year into the second child's life, he was in a really bad place with the perceived lack of sex and he did have an affair with someone at work. It was utterly devastating. I have never been so surprised and hurt in my entire life. It is something I will never get over and on will always remember the pain of that first week after he told me like it was yesterday. Utterly crippling for a year, and then lingering pain for two years following.

It's been four years now, and we did stay together, but I will never forgive him or respect him in the way I would if he had owned that a lot of our unhappiness was something that was his fault too and really worked to meet me part way to resolve our issue rather than just being selfish and taking matters outside of the agreement we had in our marriage.

Now all that said, I'm not sure what it would have taken for me to realy get how unhappy he was. I'd like to think that if he had really stepped up and truly acted like he cared about me rather than just demanding that I be an outlet for his sexual needs, that that would have helped. If he had said "this is so serious to me that I am contemplating divorce and here is the name and date of the counselor I have found and scheduled for us to talk this through," it would have made a the difference. As it was, we chatted about counseling a couple times and it always fell on me to get it scheduled. For someone feeling way overwhelmed anyway, adding something to my list of things to take responsibility for was just another nail in the coffin. Need something done?  It's much sexier to take action on your own to make it happen than to whine and expect your wife to come up with solutions to your problem.

So from someone who's been there - don't cheat on your wife.  Be totally honest with her about how bad it's gotten for you, book a counselor (seriously) to show her how important she is to you, and do some serious soul searching about how you contribute to her lack of sex drive. Do some reading about what turns women on and think about your wife and what has turned her on in the past. Have some conversations about. Ask her. That would be a good date night over wine conversation - loosen her up and show sincere interest in what is sexy to her.

And for Christ sake, get her off the pill. If anything kills libido, that's it. Don't cheat on a woman and complain that she is asexual without taking that incredibly obvious step. [/quote]

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