Sex Makes This Marriage Unbearable

 I wrote a hub on a different profile titled "Why I Stay In A Loveless Marriage", but could not salvage it to post on this profile, unfortunately.  In a nutshell, I stay because I can stand it.  More than anything, I want to be a full time mom at home with my two small children.  So my desire to be at home with them supersedes my desire to move on with my own selfish needs (or should I say 'wants'?), such as working again (i.e., being around other adults - yes I am more interested in the social interaction than the work itself!), or dating again, or going out with my old friends.

During our engagement and marriage, my husband has cheated on me several times (that I know of) with prostitutes.  We have lived in separate bedrooms since 12 days after we married when I unearthed all the sordid little details of the secret life he had been living.  After getting married, we had sex once in a year and a half, and that is when I got pregnant with our second child.  The very night she was born, my husband got a hooker. This is the last one I am aware of, but he has become much more computer savvy and difficult to monitor.  Oh, and he travels for work, so who knows what he's up to on the road. 

 We never really argue at all now, and he makes a good living, so we live in a nice house and have everything we need and most of what we want.  We went years without being intimate, and that was fine with me!  Believe it or not, you can actually block out your sexual needs, or at least I could.  I moved to this city when I married and have no real friendships here, so I stay at home with my children playing and doing fun stuff with them, every single day.  Sex just stopped being part of the equation for me.  Don't get me wrong, I still think about it!  I'm not that far gone yet! 

My point is that overall, my basic needs are being met:  I have shelter, clothes, and food.  My children are happy, healthy, and are having a great and fun childhood.  So I'm in a loveless, sexless marriage?  It's temporary, and I CAN STAND IT! 

Until about a month ago, I could say that I had sex once in 3 1/2 years (when I got pregnant with our second child). I could also say that I could stand being here and staying in this sham marriage. As the years passed with no intimacy, it almost became a comfort to know that I didn't have to deal with him physically. My love for him turned into nothingness for a long time. I had no feelings for him either way. It must have been after I found out he got the hooker the night our daughter was born that the nothingness turned into full fledged HATRED.

Now I hate him with every ounce of my being. When he is around, I think to myself "I hate him" dozens of times a day...literally. I know that is not healthy, and I have tried to stop doing that, but it is beyond my control! My mind thinks it before I can stop it, it's like a reflex. What has also become a reflex is that I recoil when he touches me. That's right, I said touches me. All of a sudden, he thinks he can touch me! Bluch, yuck. What is going on here? I was going along just fine with the way things were...I could definitely stand it and felt like I could stick around a little while longer. But now, whoa, with the touching...I am definitely NOT comfortable with where this is going.

Before this experience (marriage, cheating, love lost, hate gained, no intimacy), if you had asked me if I would prefer years of abstenance versus having frequent sex with someone I didn't like, I'm quite certain I would have chosen the latter.  Frankly, I was a very sexual person and the thought of being otherwise was completely foreign to me, pre-marriage.  I know I would not have wanted to go YEARS with absolutely no sex!  The alternative would at least provide me with fulfillment of my physical need.

I guess this is what they mean by life experiences changing you as a person.  Now, if I was given the same choice, without a shadow of a doubt, I would choose abstinence.

 He is absolutely relentless in his pursuit.  I cannot even walk by him without him grabbing me and forcing me into his lap.  He gropes me constantly.  If he hugs me, he reaches down and squeezes my bottom, or if he hugs me from behind, you know what he reaches around and squeezes.  I AM SICK EVEN THINKING OF THIS!!!  It makes me ILL, people!  Really!  When I have to kiss him, I pinch my lips together and try to make it even a miserable experience for him.  Yet it is not.  When he hugs me, my arms hang down at my side and he begs me to hug him back.  Yet it is not enough to make him stop hugging me.  When he pulls me down to sit on his lap, he wraps his arms around me so tight that I cannot escape.  I get so angry, and in the most irritated tone I can, I say, "STOP RESTRAINING ME!!!"  When we're sitting, he grabs my feet and starts massaging them, then up my leg, then up my shorts or skirt, and I just want to kick him in the gut.  I even PRAY that he won't come into my room at night!  I've tried drinking wine, taking anti-anxiety pills, just laying there like a dead body, but nothing is making this easier.  I am really sick about it and really don't know what to do next.

I am not reciprocal in any way, shape, or form.  He tells me constantly how sexy I am and how great I look, but I do not say such things to him.  He is not physically attractive to me; on the contrary, he physically repulses me, but I think I've written about that in another hub.  He touches me constantly and I CAN'T STAND IT!!!  I really don't understand why he continues when he is met with coldness every single time.  If it is obvious someone does not want me in that way, then I definitely won't continue my pursuit.  He just isn't willing to give up.  He says it will get better and I need to try to be open to this 'reconciliation', for lack of a better word.  Why do I always have to be the one who has to get over the cheating and make everything better?  I don't want it to be all better!  I was just fine the way things were...before all this physical contact!

Weeks ago, he started bringing sex up in the conversation, and started trying to massage my shoulders, etc, and was obviously moving things in that direction.  It was weird, to say the least, because we hadn't even talked about sex in years.  I told him repeatedly that I did not want that anymore, and that I was fine with life just how it was.  He went through hours, DAYS, of begging me...BEGGING for sex.  He told me to just "pity F" him, in fact.  He's said it would help him with stress, with work, make him in a better mood, give him more energy, I mean to tell you, he has given me every "reason" in the book.

So he has broken me down, and I have allowed it to happen.  I am SICK about it, and that may be the understatement of the year.  In regard to those "reasons" why sex would help him, well, I haven't seen any of that come to fruition.  What a shock.

I want to just say no.  I want to tell him that I am not comfortable with this physical contact business.  I don't want to have sex, I don't want to kiss, I don't want to hug,  It makes me so mad when I think about all that he has done to me and all the times he has cheated and betrayed me, yet here he is getting to have it all still!  He never has to suffer consequences for his actions.  I want to say, "If you need sex so bad, you can go pay for it like you have done in the past."  And you know what?  I wouldn't care in the slightest little bit.  I would welcome it!  Get him off my back - you can have him, and you, and you over there, oh and you too!  Take him, all of you! 

I know I can give my body and not my mind, but that doesn't make me feel much better right now.  I have worked so hard to lose over 100 pounds, and I know I look better than ever.  Why should HE get to see or touch this body!  He shouldn't get to have anything to do with what I have worked so hard for, and it makes me ANGRY that he enjoys this body (as it lies there lifeless. haha). 

 Taking into account that I am ignorant in the ways of separation and divorce, I find myself thinking that I have one clear alternative to this current life.  I could take the children and move into my mother's small house 2 hours from here in the country, in which the three of us (me and the kids) would share one room.  Thank God I have a place I could go.  It would be temporary, so that I could find work and try to save some money to get our own place.  I don't know how long that would take.  I don't want to leave the kids every day, but at least my mother would be with them (or one of them that is, as the other could go to school).  I have friends there that I would be able to see, I would have more freedom (even now, my mother is really the only one who helps me with the kids, even more than my husband), I would have my own money, I wouldn't have to answer to anyone...there are lots of pros.  The cons are a lot of material things for the kids, mostly.  But the one con that seems to weigh heaviest for me is not being able to stay at home with them.

 If what I want MOST in the world is to be a full time stay at home mom, then I have to just shup up about the unwanted sex and just do it.  I wish there was a way to make it more bearable.  I am still to the point where I think I can stand it, but if the sex continues to make this marriage unbearable, then I may end up changing my mind sooner rather than later.