[RivenIN2]

Yes my wife has told me she is not attracted to me anymore. Sex or lack of it is what started this return to MLC hell for me. We had gone through what I thought was the worst of it. I returned home and things were great for awhile. We get along enjoyed each other in bed. Truly on the road to recovery, NOT!! Then she got sick, whenever she takes any antibiotic she gets yeast infections. So that needed to clear up first but seemed to take longer than usual. I became resentful that she was ignoring me and confronted her which led to the "I am not attracted to you" speech. Hell she never had a large sex drive but now it is non existent. At one point during the last 6 months she even said it would be so much easier for her during this time in her life if I would just go buy some condoms and find someone else to take care of my needs so she could be left alone to figure out what she wants out of life. Basically giving me an unlimited "HALL PASS" but while the thought is probably on every mans fantasy list that is were it will always stay for me. I crave making "love" to my wife not a quick get my racks off kind of thing. I sometimes wonder if there is something wrong with me? Why do I want so much to feel that passion from her? Even those times when she gave in to me and had sex it did not satisfy me because she was not really into it and it seems emotionally that is what I need. I want most to feel like my wofe, the woman I love wants me to be her lover again. Lord do I miss that feeling!!

[missybuddha]

Yh it sucks, when your lover of 23 years just pisses off.

[NewBeginnings]

HB ~  What you stated is exactly what my Therapist said to me.  Porn IS addicting.  He explained it to me like this...he asked me if I drank wine.  I said no not really.  He then said if someone does and they start out with a small glass of wine a day and that after a while the person's body drinking the wine will start wanting more and more.  One glass won't be enough.  He said a person might innocently start watching porn but because it is addictive, they will want to see more and more and the porn that they are watching will get worse and  much more hard core.  That is what he is was saying about my H, that I was to good to do the things he was probably wanting to do because it was hard core.  We know this because of a statement my H said to me 3 months before BD.  It was shocking and disturbing to me.  I never put 2 and 2 together until someone on this forum sent me an article on porn stating it is addicting and that it WILL ruin a marriage.  Porn takes out all intimacy in a marriage.  The person watching it lives in a fantasy world.  I never knew much about porn.  I do know my H likes it because I caught him a few times over the years looking at on the internet.  He would watch it during the night and I never knew until I used the computer the next day and when I went in to type a web address, all his previous sites came up.  I always put a stop to it.
Now this last 4 years H has worked out of town and had an apt..  I didn't want him to have internet service because I feared this is what he was doing at night.  Being he was alone during the week, he could look at porn every night.   My worst fears came true.
I now believe that is why he starting having ED issues.  Then he started his EA affair with the OW at work and then it went physical.
His OW is definitely the type to do whatever my H desires.   I definitely agree with HB that Porn  opens the door for adultry.  If porn wasn't bad, then why do these men that watch always have to sneak around to watch it.   Why do they watch it in the middle of the night when everyone is sleeping?  Because deep down they know it is bad news.   I just hope that my H gets his ED issues back while he is with OW, then he will know it wasn't me.   

[Dandy Lion]

Well my H moved to the sofa two years before BD, he also changed his shift to nights so that he did not have to go to bed at the same time as me.  At weekends he would stop working around 7pm and tell me he has to go out again at 11pm to finish work.  I realise now he was just avoiding sleeping with me.

He told me he loves me like a sister
He told me he cannot think of me in a sexual way anymore
He told the therapist that he can't think of me in that way anymore
He told me that I am very attractive and that many men would jump at the chance to have me!!!!!!!!

When I asked why what happened to these feelings he told me he does not know it just went away.

[Musica]

My H was also caught with really hard core porn on the computer before BD ... I couldn't believe he would risk our daughters finding such images ... it was quite disgusting. Of course he tried to justify it, ... all me look at porn, lots of women do too ... etc etc ... That doesn't make it right or good!

He made me feel like I was a prude for not enjoying it ... I knew he was wrong. And I am no prude. It has been hard to forget those horrible things he was watching, and put them out of my mind now, as we are reconnecting physically ... it is definitely harmful to me. There is a lot of research online .... one excerpt ....

WHAT'S WRONG WITH PORNOGRAPHY?

by Ross S. Olson MD
Why do some people get so hot and bothered about sexy pictures? Is it because they are repressed or something? Why not just let everybody look at what they like? It doesn't hurt anybody, does it?
The truth is simple but sometimes hard to express. Sex can be beautiful. Sexual attraction may lead a person to seek out a mate, and help to bond a lasting relationship in which children can be born and raised. That is what it was designed to do. But uncontrolled sexual impulses destroy lives and damage society. Essentially every honest adult will have to admit that they have had sexual thoughts that they KNOW should never be acted out.
How is pornography destructive? Sexual images are extremely persistent. Men often can remember in great detail the images that got them started and continue to be affected by them. But the major danger is that the intensity of the material tends to escalate because after a while the mild stuff is no longer as stimulating. The images become associated with masturbation and it is the nature of orgiastic activity that it produces a desire for repetition.
When sex is kept within the context of marriage, this habit-forming tendency helps cement the commitment and motivate a couple to work out the inevitable problems that go with human relationships. But sexual stimulation with pornography, because it is devoid of human interaction, is intensely selfish and becomes quickly jaded. Thus the fantasies need to become more explicit, more bizarre and more blended with violence to achieve the same level of excitement. Finally, images alone are not enough and the desire to act out the fantasies becomes powerful. Since the focus has been consistently on selfish pleasure and the pictures seen as objects, the transition is sometimes frighteningly easy.
So pornography makes monsters of susceptible people. Rapists, child molesters and serial killers uniformly are addicted to pornography, and to say that some who use pornography do not reach this extreme is beside the point. For some, it "only" makes sexual fulfillment in marriage difficult if not impossible. This is because the patterns are so hard to change and the pornography user finds the mate inferior to his fantasies. With pornography, the danger is so dramatic, why play around with it?
But we also need to think about the subjects of pornography. They are not simply those people who have made a career choice to enter the sex industry. Young girls, (or boys for the homosexual community), are approached and dealt with according to their vulnerabilities. Those who are rebellious are lured into what sounds like excitement. Those who crave attention or approval are told they would be great models. They might be photographed decently but have their faces attached to computer-altered pornographic websites. Some believe that the pimp is their boyfriend and have their minds slowly twisted to the point that they become exotic dancers, pornography subjects or prostitutes.
Pornography is not a victimless crime. The users and the subjects are both devastated and the societal cost is immense. It is only the subject of debate because of human nature. Sexual behavior is very highly rationalized -- people are capable of justifying anything they really want to do. The profit motive is powerful for those who make this a business and, in the case of pornography, organized crime controls the major portion of it. Smokescreens, such as preservation of free speech, are off the point for that principle does not mean we can say anything we wish. Yelling "fire" in a crowded theater or maliciously slandering another person are not protected. And we are not just talking about Venus de Milo. Even though there are individual differences in response to nude representations, pornography is light years removed from real art.

Its big business.

[dollard]

When I asked xh if he found me attractive, he said yes, but the spark was not there and he wanted passion.
When I asked him if sex was better with younger ow, he said no, but it was different
When I asked him if younger ow was prettier, he said no, even though I am older than her she is not prettier
When I asked him why he wanted to stay with her, He said that we were married 25 years, man was not meant to be monogamous and he needed to move on
He has been with ow/now wife over 4 years, and I beleive ow is out prowling for other men.

I am still scratching my head for why he is with her

[StandandDeliver]

For most of human history, erotic images have been reflections of, or celebrations of, or substitutes for, real naked women. For the first time in human history, the images’ power and allure have supplanted that of real naked women. Today, real naked women are just bad porn.

For two decades, I have watched young women experience the continual “mission creep” of how pornography—and now Internet pornography—has lowered their sense of their own sexual value and their actual sexual value. When I came of age in the seventies, it was still pretty cool to be able to offer a young man the actual presence of a naked, willing young woman. There were more young men who wanted to be with naked women than there were naked women on the market. If there was nothing actively alarming about you, you could get a pretty enthusiastic response by just showing up. Your boyfriend may have seen Playboy, but hey, you could move, you were warm, you were real. Thirty years ago, simple lovemaking was considered erotic in the pornography that entered mainstream consciousness: When Behind the Green Door first opened, clumsy, earnest, missionary-position intercourse was still considered to be a huge turn-on

http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/trends/n_9437/

[Thundarr]

Wow, HB, I didn't need that.  One of the things that changed with W leading up to BD was that she started viewing porn in her phone and trying new things in the bedroom.  Really exciting new things.  I thought it may have been her getting comfortable with her body and just being more adventurous.  I never looked at it as the reason she left me.  Maybe it is what ended my marriage, as she did tell me she wasn't attracted to me anymore and that I hadn't aged well.  Perhaps she does equate a loss of physical attraction as "not giving a $hit about someone."

Maybe there is no crisis in my sitch, except for the one I'm in now.


EDIT- Thundarr stop the PITY part, I will get out my violin.
You are cycling here. And I thought you were doing well, pick your self up and get with the program.

[StandandDeliver]

I particularly like the following quote from the same article:

After all, pornography works in the most basic of ways on the brain: It is Pavlovian. An orgasm is one of the biggest reinforcers imaginable. If you associate orgasm with your wife, a kiss, a scent, a body, that is what, over time, will turn you on; if you open your focus to an endless stream of ever-more-transgressive images of cybersex slaves, that is what it will take to turn you on. The ubiquity of sexual images does not free eros but dilutes it.

[Thundarr]

It's like a ghost on my post (but I know why).  But, really, I took HB to say that immoral behavior from both my W and I is what brought us down rather than her being mentally immature and "broken.".  It seems that just when I start to not personalize this someone points a finger, and I highly respect HB and many others here.  Just a kick in the balls I didn't need this morning is all.