Externalizing the Internal Monologue: On Digital Honesty Spilling Into My Real World Marriage

The following post was inspired by TerriblyTorn13.  If you aren’t familiar with her blog, I highly recommend it.

For many years, Ashley and I have talked, on occasion, about what works well and what doesn’t in our relationship.  We tend to come to the same conclusion each time.  In most every respect, we have what most couples dream about and never achieve.  We’re best friends, and coming home to each other is the best part of our day.  We share equal financial responsibility for our household, and an equal share of the housework.  We talk about our work and lives outside of our marriage, and we take an active interest in what has happened to each other when we’re apart.  Sure, there are a couple of things here and there that we could do differently, but this usually amounts to little more than whether the dishes are done every night or every other night, or who will scoop the litter box.  Our marriage really is a partnership in most every respect.

That is, until you get to the sex issue.

I’ve mentioned it before, but it bears further discussion.  For the past three-plus years, Ashley has been decidedly asexual.  This wasn’t always the case, but her once dynamic, sexually curious side seems to have disappeared.  We usually make love only once a month, if that.  This may not seem that bad when some couples have sex once a year, but for a young couple married less than five years, this is a very bad sign, an indicator that you may end up in that once a year category.  This is the last thing I want, because I wouldn’t remain in a relationship wherein I can’t be physically intimate with my wife.  It would be like being married to my sister, someone I love but with whom I could never, ever be intimate.  I know it would spell the end of my marriage.

And today, I told her so.

It’s hard on both of us, me leaving for weeks at a time to go on research trips, and we make it a point to talk via Skype as frequently as we can.  During our conversation today, I cracked a joke about her showing me a little webcam skin.  Her response, coupled to an exasperated sigh and a roll of her eyes, was, “God, don’t be so gross.”

When she said that, I suddenly thought about all of the things I’ve been putting here.  Pouring my thoughts and memories and exploits into an anonymous, honest venue.  Hearing the feedback from my readers.  Reading the hatemail.  Forcing myself to dwell on what I do, why I do it, and why I can’t be more honest with her.  I realized, on some emotional level, that I hold so much resentment and frustration because of her refusal to help with my sexual urges.  In that instant, her words just made me so fucking angry.  And I never get angry at anyone, much less her.  Why the hell is that gross?  What the fuck is wrong with wanting to find sexual pleasure in the woman I love?  I wanted to scream at her, tell her everything I’ve done, and what I planned on doing at that moment just to spite her.  But instead, I just closed my laptop without a word and walked away.

An hour passed before I finally came back to my computer.  She immediately called me, and I could tell she had been crying, a lot.  She’s an emotional girl and tears up frequently, but when she cries out of grief or fear, her face takes on a drawn quality.  Not sickly, but drained, emptied.  It broke my heart to see it, because I had caused that, by losing my temper and letting myself get caught up in my emotions.

She asked me if I was mad at her.  I told her, yes, I am, and I have been for a very long time.  She asked why I was mad.  I told her because I have tried to be a good husband.  I have tried so hard to change who and what I am to make myself worthy of someone like her.  I told her I fail a lot, and that I have let her down, whether she knows it or not, but I struggle every day to overcome my own issues.  But I need her to be more than a partner.  I need someone who will do more than put her head in my lap to watch a movie.  I need a lover.  I need her to be the one and only thing I think of when my body is screaming for release.  But she can’t be that thing for me if she always refuses to be involved with me sexually.  And if that doesn’t change, as much as I love her, as badly as the very thought makes me ache down to my bones… I will eventually leave her.  And when it happens, I won’t feel guilty about it, because I will have become so bitter and angry that loneliness will be a better alternative than suffering through a failed marriage.

That’s not verbatim, but it’s damn close to what poured out of my mouth.  When I was done, Ashley stared me, mouth agape.  I suddenly felt very self-conscious, and I waited for her to start crying.  But she never did.  Instead, she wiped her eyes and asked me how long I’d felt like this.  I told her years, and didn’t she remember all the times we talked about how upset I was because we no longer had sex?  She did, but thought it was an immediate thing, like “I’m not getting sexed up right now, so I’m mad!”  I was just as shocked as she was.  We’d had dozens of conversations about it, and she had never understood what I was saying.  It had never registered to her that our marriage could be in real danger if we didn’t find a solution to this.  Today, it did, and it scared the hell out of her.  So she asked me, “What can I do to fix this for us?”

We talked for a couple of hours about it.  During our discussion, I learned that sex has never stopped hurting her.  She experiences physical pain before and after, and it makes her not want to be intimate even when her body is really feeling it.  I asked her why she never told me.  She said, “Because I love having sex with you, and I didn’t want you to think you had to change something.  You’re just too big for me.”

Makes me feel like a bit of an asshole, but there it is.

Anyway.  We don’t know what the best solution is, but we have agreed, when I get home from this trip, we’re going to sit down and talk about this, try to figure out what she is willing to give, and what I am willing to concede.  Ashley doesn’t want our marriage to fail, and neither do I.  We’re going to see if we can make it work better for both of us.

I think writing this blog has been therapeutic in some respects.  I don’t know if your stories and feedback gave me the push I needed to really confront Ashley about our problems, or if forcing myself to be honest here made me want to be honest with her, too.  Hell, maybe I just snapped.  But I feel that I have begun to look at myself a bit differently over the couple of weeks I’ve been working on this.  And I now have real hope for what may change in my marriage.

Thanks for keeping up with me, folks.  Psychiatrists are quacks, but you people are not.

And no, I’m not leaving.  I have a hell of a lot more to say and share.  I just like the way that last sentence sounds.