Hi, I guess there is a need for us to talk about intimacy (yes and even sexual) issues, I know I do. I have a very lonely marriage. Can anyone relate?

I hear ya. I can honestly say I have NO idea when the last time (intercourse) was. At LEAST 2 years. I have a "toy chest" the size of a steamer trunk. I don't really like them. I'd prefer the real thing.

Ah well.

I am sorry to hear this, faithmd. In my own case it is my husband who is getting short changed sexually. This is because I am on anti-depressives and they have had the effect of pretty much chemically castrating me. I have zero sex drive and haven't had an orgasm in over a decade. I periodically go through the motions because sex is still important to my mate but this is a mechanical activity for me.:cry This is ironic because I was multi-orgasmic and a real hound for it when I was younger. In fact I used to worry that I wouldn't find anyone to lay me after I hit 40!

By the way, I note that you are a fan of Red Green. He is another one of us pesky Canucks, you know.

Well, I guess many of us have the same problem but with different causes. I am sorry green that those medications have caused this. Your husband must be terrific and understanding.

When we watch tv we see sex everywhere, so what is the real reality in people's everyday lives. What is normal? and is there even a normal for how often couples have sex? But it is not just sex. I think it is feeling loved and desired and that can be wraped up in it.

Thanks everyone for you virtual hugs! Faithmd and Maziemommie what are you going to do about your situations?

While I do not feel desired sexually (and that does do a lot to one's psyche), I know that my husband is not messing around on me, he's not gay (which I surprisingly would be fine with-I've got loads of gay and lesbian friends), he's not a drinker, he's not an abuser, he doesn't smoke, nor does he have any really expensive vices. He loves me very much and he is my very best friend. I wanted someone I could grow old with who would be there with me through everything. I wanted someone who when "things" didn't work any more would still be with me sitting in the swing on the front porch watching the world go by. That is my husband.

True, I am starved for affection, I really miss hugs and kisses and snuggling. But I am weighing out in my mind the physical versus everything else.

I could be much worse off, I really could. I'm fairly content (other than the physical stuff) in all other aspects of my marriage. I also made a committment before God and everyone in that church. My parents have been married 43 years through good and bad, I hope to be able to say the same thing someday.

Well, I guess many of us have the same problem but with different causes. I am sorry green that those medications have caused this. Your husband must be terrific and understanding.

When we watch tv we see sex everywhere, so what is the real reality in people's everyday lives. What is normal? and is there even a normal for how often couples have sex? But it is not just sex. I think it is feeling loved and desired and that can be wraped up in it.

Thanks, nume. My husband is a real honey and he is fond of hugging and cuddling as well as the main dish. He is an affectionate and loving man and I am one lucky woman!

He is also quite content to masturbate, a habit he got into when he was a lonely, acne-ridden teenager. He is one of those guys who turned from an ugly duckling into a swan but who still bears the scars of his teenage loser years. He is even now quite surprised when women hit up on him even though he is a real knock-out. I should mention that he has aged extremely well and that he is 9 years younger than I am. We have been together for 22 years now but we hadn't planned it that way. I thought of him as being merely a fling when we first connected. We were merely work buddies but we both ended up together though our start was careless and ill thought out.

Your comment as to what is normal is a good comment, I think. There is an old Ukrainian folk saying which says that if a newly married couple puts one dried bean into a jar each time that they make love during the first year that they are married and then remove one of these Beans each time that they make love during the rest of their life together they will never empty the jar.

Brand new sex is wild and crazy and passionate sex, obsessive sex. You just can't get enough of your new beloved. Real life and familiarity do intervene, I find. One's love for the beloved may grow much, much deeper but that crazy obsessional desire for that unfamiliar body lessens. This is why some people like to continue having affairs; they like that junky sexual high. They are unwilling to acknowledge that this is a phase, a prelude to a calmer, deeper and more mature relationship.

I think that what you are seeing on TV is television sex and merely that. Sex sells and so it is written into movies and TV. As to what is normal, well, you have done the right thing by posing this question on the internet to real people.

And as for me and my chemical castration, yup, this is a very big bummer. The trouble with the new array of anti-depressants, Prozac and the post-Prozac class, is that while they are a giant step forward for us depressed folk they do have an ugly side effect. In the majority of folks who take the meds this classification of drugs tends to render us without sexual interest or ability to follow through. Now, if I were an old maid I would be pretty damn happy about being relieved of the pressure....

Ive been married for 20 yrs.

The past two years prior to banding we had not had a physically intimate relationship, and i was vocal about being unhappy. i loved this man, i didnt want it to be 'over' but i was NOT okay with the way things had been. I started taking trips to wherever i wanted to go, and staying as long as i wanted. that got his attention first, then i got serious and said to him one day, "look, i want a sexual life, and if you dont want me, then please let me go so i can be with someone who does". It was a hard conversation to have, and we wound up having it several times before it sank in.

then...

banding...then...

about a month into it, we had a sunday morning where we were both off, laying there, looking out the window...and i attacked him.

When i hear "it cant happen overnight" i think "bull malarky. you make up your mind to switch it on and then you do the work to keep striking it till it lights" and its true, IF thats what you really want.

a conversation with a friend about "daily excercise", and now we are rediscovering things. I thought this beast was dead. It wasnt completely. it took a little while on life support but now is on its own beating heart.

im overjoyed.

im also aware that since i typed this, it will likely slow right back down. LOL...seems the MINUTE i leap for joy about something, the whammy hits and im left looking into the camera going "what?".

He is also quite content to masturbate,

That's my hubby to a "T" He is very content to masturbate as well. For him it came from not only his teen years, but from many lonely years after his divorce.

Thanks everyone for you virtual hugs! Faithmd and Maziemommie what are you going to do about your situations?

I have been married now for 8 very lonely years....

we have been together for 14 years total....

we now have a beautiful 19 month old (miracle)....

things for us literally changed overnight---

our wedding night--- to be more specific.

We had our friends, from out of state, staying at our home.... (already been together for 6 years at this point, and no honeymoon was planned)...... so the night before our wedding "they"/our house guests, were going at it like bunnies- so did we. The day of our wedding was a disaster for me the bride, and the groom was oblivious to the issues, and that night after we had a great dinner with our guests, "they" once again could be heard going at it..... when I approached my "husband" this second night, OUR WEDDING NIGHT.... he refused me and said.."you are my wife and I don't want them to hear us".

We had lived with these people for two months (before we moved at one point) and the night before we were married it was just fine.....eight years later ......SO HOW DO I DEAL WITH THIS ISSUE???? I QUITE FRANKLY AM STILL CONFUSED TO THIS DAY.... how should I deal with my situation?

I have had about a million thoughts of what, if anything I should do.... with no conclusion to this date..... time just keeps passing us by. We went to counseling for about a year and I participated in every thing they asked us to try, I have read books and asked for advice etc....

I am regularly as disappointed/lonely/rejected now, as I was on my wedding night.

I've been in relationships that are totally sexed crazed and others that are jus stable. In my husbands case we are just best friends. The sex is okay, the chemistry is just okay, the passion is just okay. But at the end of the day, I am really happy with the stability he provides.

julie...i can relate.

i had a friend translate a thing for me from hebrew once that read something along the lines of "all women are in the relationships they truely want".

do you think thats true? it really made me think. at first i really objected to it, but as ive thought on it, ive wondered about it being really dead on. Im not saying that we want to be lonely, or that we want to feel isolated in our marraiges...just that we have lost interest in doing the "work" needed to maintain them? ..even then, i know its not ALL on OUR heads..but do you see what i mean? there is work involved to keep things going. Sometimes we just cant compete with the memory of ourselves....when we first got together and had all that fire.

in my own two year stretch this time, there were LOTS of times i cried myself to sleep....but in truth, he was laying right there next to me, and i could have objected to the living arrangements much earlier, i just didnt see any point in it. NOW i wonder what was i thinking? Body image? was that it? well heck im still a whopping 275, but i dont FEEL 275 anymore, and im "dancing" daily! (woo!)

im rereading this as i type and i know it has to sound crazy.

I guess the question is...do the women still in isolative marrages and relationships want OUT? or do they want things BETTER?

what do you really want?

lizrbit, you hit the nail on the head with this last post. MANY nights I have laid next to him crying. But I guess it was my choice and I think your old Hebrew saying may be right.

Maybe it will change when I am thinner, I dont think so, but I've never been a niormal size since puberty, and that happened in about the 4th grade for me. He met me fat, married me fat. Course I got to 100lbs heavier this past year than when I met him (in 8 years). That's hard to say, hard to face and hard to write. But I did. Strangely enough, he never said a word, and my clothes didn't change size much (other than jeans), is it possible he never noticed?

Do you think we just settle? Afraid of confrontation? I have spent many nights lying in bed with 10 yards of space between us wondering, praying and never solving.

Mazziemommie, I wish I could tell you what to do but I can't. But its true the years just slip by and when we don't deal with the issues, face them, they just get shoved under more and more pounds of fat.

I think for me it is shame. I don't know if I could sit down and just talk to someone about it all face to face. I am going to get to that point I think. I am starting to face it, admit it- things aren't right.

We are worth loving, each of us are. Now to believe it!

nume130: I TOTALLY feel your pain. My first marriage was to a gay man. He never told me. We were in bible college, so both christians. I think he wanted to be hetero so badly that he married me...I was only 19! We had 5 years of misery, when I caught him, via a friend, having a homosexual affair. We stayed together another 2 years, in counselling, because "I can change" kept coming from his lying lips. Well, a case of the crabs and a sexually transmitted virus later, I kicked his sorry butt to the curb. He went on to marry ANOTHER christian woman, whom I warned ahead of time. They lasted 2 years before she caught him cheating. We rarely had sex (enough to make 2 kids) and I always initiated it! He LOVED oral, hated giving it (sorry I know I am being VERY graphic here). He made me feel so ugly every time I would bring up the fact that I needed him to initiate it from time to time....he told me he just wasn't attracted to me because of my size...I was 220 when we married and MAYBE 250 when he said that line of bull! He's a terrible dad, abandoned his kids and only has contact with them on Birthdays and Christmas. He only pays child support because I have it docked from his wages...he's still in arrears...

OK...why am I going into all of this?????? Honestly, consider, if he's not wanting sex with you, he's not truely heterosexual. Men want sex! I'm not saying he's cheating, but I am saying that he's probably not hetero. I for one believe that men can abstain from homosexual activity due to christian faith, but apart from a divine miracle, I just don't see a man being passionate about a woman after living the 'lifestyle'. I could be wrong, and hope I am.

I am not a proponant of the attitude of "if I'm not happy, I'm getting out". I think people are far too lazy and selfish these days and don't care what it really does to children when they won't even try to work out differences. However, there are abusive and adultry relationships that need to be severed.

I have now been married to a wonderful Christian man for almost 10 years. Our sex life right now sux...why? Because I am 250 and he is 430. It's just a physical problem, but not one of uninterest. We can't WAIT for him to be banded (probably August) and for both of us to drop enough weight to make love comfortably. He's a loving and supportive man, that still grabs my butt and boobs, kisses me and makes suggestive comments to me, so I still feel desired. I just know we need to make health improvements so we can re-ignite our passion

OK, I wrote a virtual book here. So I'll stop

I have been married now for 8 very lonely years....

we have been together for 14 years total....

we now have a beautiful 19 month old (miracle)....

things for us literally changed overnight---

our wedding night--- to be more specific.

We had our friends, from out of state, staying at our home.... (already been together for 6 years at this point, and no honeymoon was planned)...... so the night before our wedding "they"/our house guests, were going at it like bunnies- so did we. The day of our wedding was a disaster for me the bride, and the groom was oblivious to the issues, and that night after we had a great dinner with our guests, "they" once again could be heard going at it..... when I approached my "husband" this second night, OUR WEDDING NIGHT.... he refused me and said.."you are my wife and I don't want them to hear us".

We had lived with these people for two months (before we moved at one point) and the night before we were married it was just fine.....eight years later ......SO HOW DO I DEAL WITH THIS ISSUE???? I QUITE FRANKLY AM STILL CONFUSED TO THIS DAY.... how should I deal with my situation?

I have had about a million thoughts of what, if anything I should do.... with no conclusion to this date..... time just keeps passing us by. We went to counseling for about a year and I participated in every thing they asked us to try, I have read books and asked for advice etc....

I am regularly as disappointed/lonely/rejected now, as I was on my wedding night.

Are you saying you haven't been intimate since the night before your wedding? 8 Years ago? (((((Hugs))))) I feel for you, I really do. Wish I had some constructive advice to offer.

"OK, I wrote a virtual book here. So I'll stop "

You dont have to stop. This is just the place to talk about it. I dont know about you guys but i find its a huge relief to talk about this, finally, with other women who know what its like to have been in this boat.

I dont find that anywhere and i live a very protective life. I wouldnt DREAM of talking to anyone i know in person about this stuff. Id be so scared it would come back to me or that someone would use it out of context to hurt me with.

i dont want to go one year ever again without intimacy. Ever. Im willing to do whatever it takes to keep that good. I dig it. I dig everything about it. Im GOOD at it! When its right it makes me crazy sensually happy.

Musicalmomma: I wrote this to another gal, who wrote me in private but I will use some of it here. You know I didn't want this to be a discussion about gay or not. BUT in saying that, I do appreciate your comments though and I thank you for sharing your own personal experiences. I just don't know what to believe right now. My faith about this whole issue is before God right now. I do know that he has never been unfaithful to me. I do know that he is very dedicated to God and wouldn't want to ever go back into the life style. Regarding did he make the full transition to heterosexual...I feel shaky... I'm not sure what I feel. I wish I could put in words what I feel, but then I would have to know how I feel so I could say it! I'm scared.

But I started this thread to talk about the results of lack of intamcy in marriage. There are lots of reasons why us ladies are not experiencing intamcy. Every one of us has a reason. They are all different, but we are all experiencing the same results. We lie awake at night, we cry, we feel lonely, shame and sadness etc. We miss the tenderness and comfort. We are all wanting. We will all come to our own conclusions about what is best. I wanted an anonymus place to just say my feelings out loud. Eventually I want to get up the courage then to say it to someone face to face and then I want the courage to change my situation. Every one has been wonderful to share and be supportive. Thanks! I agree with you lizrbit I dig it too.