Is honesty always preferred?

Quick question for AC:

Your husband's lack of sexual passion for you: was it always there? (i.e., YOU always had to initiate, he NEVER was all over you physically?) Or did it manifest AFTER you "came out" to him about your feelings for other men?

He's never been all over me physically. It's a challenge: he's very enthusiastic in bed. But I can't go through my day (or week or month) with a roommate-type of interaction, and then get myself in the mood to offer sex.

I don't think my "coming out" to him changed our sexual dynamic. All it did was feed my appetite for sex. Which I actually think he has enjoyed, since he likes having sex, but just doesn't seem to know how to seduce me. Yet when I've said so in so many words, he's horrified to think my horniness was brought on by someone else.
 
I don't know how steeped he is in Indian culture, but my sense is that the reason he believes it to be such a terrible thing might be less about impropriety and more about it saying to the world that he's not enough of a man for you. To "let" you do this would be a sign of weakness in him -- not you, you're just a woman.

The way he describes it, it's more that he went out on a bit of a limb marrying an American (we are notorious for our high divorce rates) raised by twice divorced parents, so if I prove not to be the morally upstanding wife he assured his family I would be, it reflects badly on his judgement. Considering that many marriages are still arranged in India, and his father was mailing him stats on various bride choices until we announced our engagement, he was asserting himself pretty strongly when he chose a love marriage with an American. Ironically, the only divorce among his siblings is from the one arranged marriage -the carefully selected Indian wife up and walked out on her husband with all the money she could grab! He remarried for love.
 
Anotherconfused- good for you staying the course and pacing yourself. It could take forever or never happen that you get to have sex with these men, but you have integrity and I like that. It makes me grip harder on to my own.... I commend you for staying with this struggle and having grace.

Lets hope that in time and with more understanding that he sees you can be trusted and be a partner he can be proud of. You are not wrong in your thinking and in who you are, but it is a really difficult mix the one you have with your husband. Picking something and trying it out is really all one can do I think...

The DADT thing is tricky. I am crap at it. I can't keep secrets to save my life, so I keep my distance from my Leo and benefit from his company and conversation. I know it seem ludicrous to some, but its working for now. I try not to think beyond that.
 
What I meant was more than the slippery slope glide path. There is the potential for compounding effect. Trying to apply logic and reason to a partners emotional responses is very difficult if not impossible.

So the 9yr old has already picked up on something. Has your husband hear those remarks?


With him being Indian just tell him he's being romantically outsourced...happens all the time here. Now he'll know how American tech hotline works feel.:) Just spend 3 hrs on the phone with guy India for Dell.
 
What I meant was more than the slippery slope glide path. There is the potential for compounding effect. Trying to apply logic and reason to a partners emotional responses is very difficult if not impossible.

So the 9yr old has already picked up on something. Has your husband hear those remarks?

Can you explain what you mean about compounding effect? It sounds like you've been in my husband's situation and through a lot of pain because of it. Do you think there's something I can do to make this all easier on him?

He's all done talking about it from what I can see, and when he doesn't talk about it, I'm not sure if everything's all right, or it's only fine when he's not confronted with it by having to discuss, share feelings, and so on. I had all this drama going on in my mind last time we got sexy together, and he comes out with "It's so nice to have these moments when everything is perfect." Maybe he really is fine.

My 9 yr old definitely realizes I love other men besides her dad. She has no awareness yet of sex (she doesn't watch a lot of movies...), so as far as she sees the world, I married Daddy, and I love Grandma, my daughters, my best friend since preschool, and other special male and female friends who are part of our lives. She has never seemed uneasy about it, and I think her comment actually came from a place of loving this man too. It's nice because he has built relationships with all of my family, my husband included, so my daughters have no reason to feel threatened or confused. He and his family are like extended family.

I was thinking about the drawback to waiting until my kids are grown. This man is so much older than me -he'll be 80 by then! Maybe not quite so sexy. I'd rather enjoy him now. This is tough.
 
Hi Anotherconfused,
You and I have a similar marriage, it seems, although I'm married to a woman. I've never cheated on her, but she is uninterested in sex and recently told me that I can be with other women too. I'm also insisting on talking with her about it, and she's probably most comfortable if everything is kept very quiet.

I totally get how hard it is on the ego to always be the one initiating, even if your partner does have sex, it's hard to know they probably don't really want to and are doing it to be a good spouse. Being turned down sucks too. There's still a lot of grief in me over the loss of the sexual part of this relationship, which used to be great.

I get the pressure to cheat, and I definitely have thought about it a time or two, but didn't want to do that to her and to me.

What 'glue' do the two of you still have with one another, now that the sex is gone? Do you still want to be with him? For now, my wife and I are very loving with one another, just not sexual, and that's worth keeping. Your mileage may vary. In terms of being truthful, I think it's always best. However, the degree of detail your husband wants about your other partners might be very low, beyond knowing they exist, which seems okay to me as long as everyone is clear about that and you know from him what exactly he does and does not want to know.

Personally, I'd want someone close to me to know when I was on a date or sleeping at another persons' house, for security reasons if not anything else.
 
He's never been all over me physically. It's a challenge: he's very enthusiastic in bed. But I can't go through my day (or week or month) with a roommate-type of interaction, and then get myself in the mood to offer sex.


I wonder if sex therapy might be helpful, to help the two of you communicate what you need to feel sexy, desired and in the mood across whatever cultural differences you have.
 
I feel for you, Rootlet. It sounds like your situation is more dire than mine. My husband at least enjoys sex -I never get the impression that he is going through the motions for my sake. I guess an analogy might be a chocolate truffle. He'll happily eat one if offered, but is not spending any time longing for truffles, missing truffles, making time to go buy truffles, or eagerly awaiting the next time he gets to enjoy one. For me, sex is a lot more central to my life, and so is romance.

We still have plenty holding us together, not the least being our shared love for our two daughters. There's still no one else in the world I'd rather be married to. We share some interests, although we spend less time on them together than we used to. (I've been unhealthy for 6 months, which is really a contributing factor to our overall marital frustration.) I wouldn't throw in the towel over this.

Sex therapy would horrify him. Marriage counseling has been a hard sell, and he has finally agreed, although we haven't started. I do tell him what I like/want/need, but he claims he just can't flirt and never has. He has become expert at touching me in all the ways that I like once we are into it, but it's the in between, when daily life just sucks the intimacy right out of him, and I don't feel like we're close. He's willing to work on it. It's just that it's been a problem for 9 of our 12 yrs of marriage, and I've been bringing it up off and on for at least the past 7. It doesn't feel like we get anywhere.

It's sad, because I get the sense the healthy polyamorous relationships I read about don't involve bringing in another partner to make up for shortcomings with the first partner. I already feel like I "use" these men to put me in the mood for sex at home, which isn't fair to them, especially since neither of them have women to have sex with in their lives right now. On the other hand, if your spouse doesn't like camping/knitting/tennis, it makes sense to find other people to do those things with. My man doesn't like flirting.

There is clearly no simple answer.
 
Recently my husband announced that I am free to do what I like with other men. This astonished me. I haven't acted on it because I have no idea what made him say it. If I were to have sex with another man, I'd want my husband to know (and accept) who and when and why -before it happened. Yet, he resists theses conversations again and again. I get the feeling he really does not want to know about it.

I suspect this is one of those times when a "Well, duh!" reply would be most appropriate. It is *obvious* that he doesn't want to know anything about what you do--and doesn't care that you do it. Why are you trying to force knowledge of it all on him?

I don't have any interest in knowing when and where my wife has sex with anybody else she gets involved with. Were she to try to force discussions on me to inform me of that, I'd move out soon enough and wouldn't discuss anything with her until she stopped trying to force discussions on me that I categorically refuse to have. She can respect my choice in the matter or I will leave.

My question to you is why you lack enough respect for your husband to leave him be about the matter? He doesn't want to know, so stop trying to force it on him.
 
It is *obvious* that he doesn't want to know anything about what you do--and doesn't care that you do it. Why are you trying to force knowledge of it all on him?
...
My question to you is why you lack enough respect for your husband to leave him be about the matter? He doesn't want to know, so stop trying to force it on him.

Does this really feel like a lack of respect to you? My conversations with him have been an attempt to understand whether he really does mind or not, whether I get involved sexually with other men. I'm not trying to tell him what happened after the fact -I'm trying to find out if it's ok beforehand. I'm not sure how you could conclude that he doesn't care what I do. He says it would hurt and make him unhappy. I'm concluding that it's not at all ok with him.

Did your wife start having sex with other men without first making sure she had a good understanding of how you would feel about it? Is it disrespectful to want to know the repercussions before making such a big change to a marriage?
 
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