The first post

Nobody said it was easy

No one ever said it would be so hard

I'm going back to the start

More than ten years in, and still can't get it right.  This is where I make my stand.  Now is the time, this is the place.  There are no more next times.  No more excuses.  No more promises unkept.  

This is me.  This is my story.  

We were best friends before we became more than that.  I was the only person who dared to stand up to him.  As relationships go, it was a great start.  Except for the one thing that defines a relationship as more than friends.  Even in the beginning of our romantic relationship, intimacy was infrequent.  Sure, there were reasons for that...the long distance between us was perhaps the biggest one...but when the geographical distance between us no longer existed, the physical distance remained.  

I didn't understand why.  We could talk about sex when we were apart, but when we were reunited it just didn't come together very often.  On a long weekend, after not seeing each other for weeks or months, we'd have sex once.  After we were married, the frequency hardly changed.  Weeks...at first one or two, then three or four...without sex, without explanation.  No matter what I tried, I couldn't seem to change that.  

I asked for more.  I offered more.  I begged for more.  I asked why and why not.  The answers were nebulous, mercurial, and never made sense in my oh-so-rational mind.  He was uninspired and not productive.  Or other peoples' demands interfered.  Or I was sick or hurt.  His testosterone levels were low.  Or there were unresolved hurts, disagreements, or other negative energies between us.

I learned to live without, sort of.  The weeks became months.  I trained myself to be functionally celibate.  When we did have sex, it was because he initiated it in a drunken state.  It often was unfulfilling and always humiliating.  He needed to be drunk to be sexually intimate with me.  Still, I could not give up hoping that things could be different.  So many times I tried to work it out, but my efforts got us nowhere.  I felt worthless and hopeless.

After seven years, I got angry.  I didn't want the anger to poison our relationship, so I went to a therapist to learn how to deal with it.  He told me I needed to end the marriage, that it was a lie and a sham and that it would never change.  The next therapist never even heard that I was angry, and instead lectured about attachment and child psychology.

The third therapist, a sex therapist, seemed like she could help.  Sadly, she never truly got involved enough to pose solutions.  It was a two and a half year conversation that went nowhere.  Thousands of dollars, dozens of hours, and countless frustrated tears later I called an end to it.  

I turned 50.  We had our 10th anniversary.  I realized that I wasted my sexual peak and would never get those years back.  

I suggested defining our marriage as one that did not include sex, but surprisingly I was met with resistance.  He wanted another chance to fix it...this time he really meant it and would take responsibility for finding a new therapist who could help.  He's a man who goes after what he wants with unwavering commitment and limitless energy.  But he took no action.  The only conclusion I could draw was that a sexual relationship with me is not what he wants. 

And I got angry again.  Angry at him, but mostly at myself.  I trusted him, and he broke his promise.  It wasn't the first time that he broke a promise to me, but I swear by all that is good and lovely in the world that it is the last time.

So here we are.  About to see the fourth therapist.  The last therapist.  The last promise.  The last chance.  

I'm going back to the start.  Maybe this time I can get it right.