About Me

This is one of a trilogy of articles that ‘set the stage’ as it were for Marriage Of One.  It doesn’t matter what order you read these in, but their purpose is to give you a background to the personalities and circumstances involved.  I apologise if they seem a bit long, but these articles are therapeutic to me and who knows you may see something of yourself, your partner or a close friend in here.

The other articles are About Her and About Us.

I guess before we go into all the details of my marriage it makes sense (at least to me) to say something about, well me.

I am 35 years old.  I am an introverted but not exceptionally shy.  When I got married 8 years ago I was not as confident as I am now – a transformation that my wife must take some credit for.  She is very supportive and is a great friend and partner.  That should tell you something about why I haven’t left her.

I am easy going but tend to suffer from stress at times.  In my life up to the early years of marriage this was almost always work related.  My marital life stress increased over the years.  The stress manifests itself in occasional irritability, tiredness, but more significantly in psychosomatic conditions such as skin rashes and even digestive problems.  The skin conditions persist continuously now, and I believe that the fact that I have this marital problem (and the politics it has introduced in our relationship) has aggravated it.

By and large though, I am healthy, if not as fit as I would like to be.  Gym and exercise time disappeared some years ago.  I try to stay mentally and physically conditioned however by eating well and doing daily stretch exercises for a few minutes.  I do not drink to excess or smoke.

I have no religious scruples and am pretty much an agnostic.  My morality is mostly based on mutual respect and non-interference.  It means that I can and generally do get on with most people.  From the way other people relate to me, I think I am respected and trusted.  I feel valued by the people I interact with and I am generally kind and courteous to people.  I don’t feel any different around my wife Susan.

Why am I still here?  One answer is the friendship and partnership that we genuinely share.   We are better together than apart.  The sum is bigger than the parts.  But I also am seriously cognisant (I have thought about it and still sometimes do) of the effect on my children if I left – not just the effect of a divorce, but also on their own future relationships.  If I left (and I did not get custody which is quite likely as Susan is a good mother), then they will get their information on sex and men from her.  It’s bad enough that my life has been tainted by Susan’s issues; I would not want this to pass to my children.  More so because two of them are girls.  Whilst I am with them I feel that over the next 5 to 10 years I can hopefully help them into puberty with an openness and honesty that Susan would struggle to express.  I can shield them from any negativity that Susan may have when they ask questions about sex and hopefully I can get them to have a healthy and enthusiastic attitude to life, love and sex.

Out of introversion

I said I was introverted.  My childhood years were spent in a rather complex environment the net result of which was that I got myself an inferiority complex.  I was never good enough.  It ruined my chances of making friends.  It ruined my early socialising and was a disaster for my sex life as a teenager and young adult.  But one thing I was very good at was self-reflection and internal dialogue.  Usually destructive, sometimes constructive it ensured that I always knew which way my emotional compass was pointing and trying to figure out why.  But I was well into my 20s by the time I realised that something was wrong with me.  That I was missing out on life.  Until then I knew I was shy.  I knew I was a shrinking violet.  But I assumed that given enough time, things would work out.  I’d fall into company, or bump into the girl of my dreams.  When I was about 23 I found out I was wrong.

I set about trying to ‘fix’ myself with some self-help books.  And it took years but I eventually started to make a difference.  The path to change was marred by the same set of circumstances that made me such a deep introvert in the first place.  But I gradually took control of my life.

Sadly, it is not easy to change the effects of 20+ years of the experiences of your formative years as a child then as an adult.  And through my 20s although small improvements were made I kept sliding backwards.  As a result, I made few friends and no girlfriends.  My opportunities definately increased, but I discovered then that I faced another handicap:  I had no experience to draw on to make relationships – either platonic or otherwise – work.  I was in my mid-to-late 20s and I did not know how to retain friends or how to behave around women.  I watched colleagues and associates and it all came so naturally to them – with their benefit of a normal growth of life-skills.

That all changed when I was about 26.  I felt I was at a cross-roads.  I met a girl and I badgered her until she agreed to go out with me.  Luckily the whole badgering took place over the phone, so I really only had to modulate my voice to sound confident and cheery.  She was not keen on me at all.  I guess she could see a loser from a mile off the one time she had met me before.  Eventually we went out.  I didn’t expect anything to come of it, but I felt I could at least chalk up a date to ‘experience’.  More to her surprise than mine (I already knew that once people got to know me they usually liked me), we had a nice time.

Over the next few months we saw each other every couple of weeks as friends.  Then astonishingly SHE made the move to the next step.  By then I was infatuated not just with her, but the difference it had made to my life and my self-image.  Suddenly I could hold my own in a conversation and proudly start sentences with “My girlfriend and I…”!  There was a spring in my step.  I was happier at work.  I started working for extra qualifications – something I had been demoralised to work on until then.  I started to pay attention to my appearance because I was going out more.

It was my first love.  At 26.  Pitiable.  But for me, it was a beginning.  Of course, it was all naive.  A dream that I had to wake from.  I was not so immature that I didn’t know that some relationships work, and some don’t.  This one when through the stages, passion, sex, doubt, then parting.

I was depressed for a while after this.  But I also knew that if I had done it once I could do it again.  The world was suddenly my oyster.  My outlook changed from “here’s another girl who thinks I’m a loser” to “here’s a girl who might actually like me”.

My next relationship however was my marriage.  It doesn’t matter how this happened, suffice it to say it did, and it happened very quickly – to give away anything more would undermine the anonymity of this site.  Under the circumstances I think I have done well out of it.  After all some men really are married to women who would struggle to be brides of Satan.  Susan is a saint.  But what this meant is that all those skills I had developed and was hoping to refine were now focused on making a marriage work.  That meant relationships with in-laws as well as of course Susan.

Love, romance, sex and intimacy

I know women need to feel loved to have sex and men need to have sex to feel loved.  Cliche, perhaps.  But for my part, I do want romance too.  I used to send sexy and non-sexy text messages to my wife in the early years of our marriage.  Usually they were ignored.  Or just simply acknowledged.  Never reciprocated.  I gave up.  I’ve done the wining and dining thing too.  I’ve done the weekend’s away.  It has never helped.  Spending time together?  Done that too.  I still am a romantic at heart, although Susan never sees that side of me now and probably thinks it doesn’t exist.  Externally it has all but been crushed. My romantic life is now confined to the obligatory gift on Valentine’s Day (never sexual) and maybe an arm around her whilst watching TV or a movie together.

Physically, I want a varied and exciting sex-life.  I want to experiment, try new things, laugh and play with my wife.  I like ‘straight’ and oral sex.  Never tried anal – and probably never will – but you can’t miss what you never had.  I think I get turned on by sexy lingerie (can’t be sure – my wife has never bothered to try it on me) or sexy dancing (been to lap/pole-dancing a couple of times and would love my wife to try it – even just as a joke).  I enjoy kissing, feeling my wife’s breath on my face or neck as my arms caress her back and hair.  I’d also like to try light bondage (but I am definately not into S&M), but have never had the opportunity.

I want sex for fun, for relaxation, for intimacy, for expression.

New Problems

In 8 years life and the world does not sit still, and as you would expect people change.  Susan has changed in many ways and so have I.  My changes have been compensatory.  I have had to find ways to cope with the lifestyle that has been thrust upon me.

The most dangerous thing I’ve noticed about myself is that I’ve lost the will to engage fully with life.  That is, I’ve lost my enthusiasm for life, friendship, love, romance and sex.  I rarely if ever feel excited or passionate about anything.

I find comfort in my work now.  Whereas before it was ‘just a job’ and I ‘worked to live’, now I find myself ‘living to work’.  I’m by no means a workaholic, but I find it easier to retreat into the study at home that to stay with Susan either on the sofa or in bed.  My aim is to work till late and drop into bed at the end of each day so tired that I am asleep in minutes.  And my plan works in that respect.  Before I started this habit I would frequently lie in bed for an hour or more running old thoughts and conversations with or about Susan again and again through my mind, getting agitated or depressed or angry.

But there’s more.  Particularly over the last 3 years, as the depths of Susan’s problems became clearer I found escape in pornography.  The motive was two-fold.  One it was a true escape to some kind of sexual fantasy.  Secondly I wanted to kill any sexual desire in ‘real’ life.  If I was sexually sated by masterbation a couple of times a week, then I wouldn’t be thinking of sex the rest of the time.  And the plan worked.  By and large I just let Susan be.  And by and large that’s how I’m living now.

About a year ago though it became clear that masterbation as a substitute for sex had affected me.  First of all it was completely unsatisfying.  Deep down I still wanted the emotional aspects of sex and the all-body physical sensations that can only be satisfied with having a willing and understanding partner.  Secondly I found that I had become a premature ejaculator.  I now find that I am unable to have sex normally.  I rarely last more than a minute after penetration.

Once I recognised the problem I tried to take control.  I started to limit the frequency and type of masterbation and learnt techniques to delay myself.  But guess what?  It take practice.  And where – or rather on whom – do I practice?  Susan?  Practice once every 4-6 weeks?

I feel this could be the beginning (if we are not already in it) of a new vicious cycle.  That is, Susan avoids sex because she is not satisfied by my performance, and therefore works less on her behavioural improvements, and has sex less.  This in turn reduces my opportunities to practice and prove otherwise to her and so on.

And a final thought:  my own detachment from Susan sexually could itself be harming any chance of her improving.  Because I am no longer cajoling her or treating her like I find her attractive, she could be withdrawing into herself even further.