Re: New member, very very sad

[Guest guest]

Hi , I feel for you right now, I really do because I know what you are going thru. What leaves me stunned sometimes is when over the years I come across stories like yours on this forum and realize that I could be reading my own. I agree with you that problems with your husband weren't just about him but also the effects of your illness and the way you dealt with it such as the rejection of him ect. and then the way it made him feel about you. I think that in my case this also happened and back then I too thought I was so incredible lucky to be with someone who I loved and who was also such a good friend and who was there to support me thru this difficult problem but like you the years of rejection took a toll on him and he didn't feel the same about me anymore and he started not treating me as nice and then told me one day when I was in California for my grandmothers funeral not to come home that he would send my things in boxes

because him and a girl at work had a "connection" that him and I didn't. This is someone who from the time we started going out, we saw each other everyday and he supposedly loved me so much. Everyone I knew was surprised we broke up and assumed that I had broken up with him since everyone always thought he was so in love with me. This is someone who I trusted and loved with all my heart. I think we can go back and say I should have done this or that different but look at the situation here. I too was shy about what was happening to me and I didn't have a name to put on the problem for a long time this wasn't something very well known. I think also whether I did know in the beginning or not and discussed it right away with him I don't think in the long run it would have made much difference because I think deep down some people just think this problem is too weird. Also what you said about your husband liking this other women

because she was strong. I read somethings that my boyfriend wrote about this women at work that he had a "connection" with and alot of it was about her being so self confident. My boyfriend even told me that she had reminded him of me when I was well. I tryed to make him see that it was because she was healthy and I wasn't and that is why I wasn't self confident and happy. Anyway I could go on and on about the criticisms of me that he said my favorite such as he wished I had cancer so he would know what was wrong with me, things he would never of said if I had been well because when I was well I wouldn't of put up with one minute of that dialog but because like you I wasn't well and felt needy, like I needed some shred of love and compassion I put up with a lot of crap trying to make him understand what I was going thru. Looking back, if I could do it over again, I would have put the phone down when he called me in California to tell me not to come home and

never spoken to him again. The reason I say that is at least I could have kept my self respect. I don't want to gravel to someone who tells me lies and wants me to beg for their love and apologize for being unhappy sometime because I was in pain. I ended up staying in another state and he would call me several times a week and visit me every year and it caused me so much heartache and only because he was the one who wanted to stay friends and looking back now only to make himself feel better. Keep your self respect and just because you have been hit with a terribly difficult disease don't criticize your self for how you handled things you did the best you could with such a strange problem and don't let him criticize you either you have enough to deal with. As for my boyfriend I don't think after all these years he is really much happier without me from what I hear from friends. As for your husband let him go, let him do what

he thinks will make him happy and I think he will see that sex doesn't make people happy it is the love behind it that really matters in this world. Take care and at least know your not alone. Lots of Loving thoughts to you.Baukti" M. Fieldhouse" wrote: Hi,This group was recommended to me by someone on the Surviving Infidelity forums. I'm very sad because I have lost my husband and I think that it is largely because of my sexual problems.My husband and I have been married just short of ten

years. Before this happened, I thought we were the happiest couple in the world, and I was the luckiest person. I thought this right up until the night in mid-October that I pulled into a dive bar down the street and my headlights picked out two people standing in the parking lot, making out: my husband, and his co-worker. The one who had been making advances toward him since summer, advances which I had been told were diligently being repelled.Let me back up and tell it from the beginning. My husband and I had a short but intense courtship. Everything was great between us for a few years. Everyone always thought we were the greatest couple because we enjoyed so many of the same things and appeared to be inseparable. I was extremely happy, probably the happiest I'll ever be.But, something happened. I did not have a lot of romantic experience when I got together with him. I'd had only one serious relationship,

in college, and although that lasted more than a year it never actually progressed to being a sexual relationship, so my husband was (is) my first and only sexual partner. Sometime in 2000, something started going wrong. I started avoiding sex and I wasn't even really sure why. I have always been shy about such matters and I couldn't bring myself to talk to my husband about it, because I didn't even understand what was wrong. Eventually I realized that the problem was that sex was starting to hurt. I thought it was just in my head and I needed to will myself over it or something.Around late 2000 and early 2001, we had a marital crisis. WS had gotten increasingly unhappy over my avoidance of sex. He felt rejected and unattractive, and I understand that and now feel very bad about it. He sat me down and told me that he was unhappy. He said he had developed feelings for someone at his work (his previous

workplace, not where he is now) and that they had not done anything inappropriate but that he felt I should know. He thought that his feelings for her were a symptom of his unhappiness. We went to marriage counseling together and sorted some things out. But the thing is, through all of this, I still never admitted to my sexual problem. I started having sex again more often to make my husband happy, but it still hurt. I could still enjoy it once I got started, but it was hard to bring myself to start because of the anticipation of pain. Through all of this I felt terrible, of course. I felt like we didn't have a full relationship, and that I was not much of a wife, and it made me very sad.Over the years I started avoiding sex again. Finally, I realized that this couldn't be normal and something must be really wrong with me. Sometime around 2004 I finally told my husband that I thought something was wrong with

me. He was so glad I told him. That night when he came to bed he hugged me and said, "I'm glad you told me that." Now he knew it wasn't anything about him. But I still didn't know what to do. I didn't have any health insurance at the time, nor a regular doctor. I went to Planned Parenthood every year to get my exam and birth control pills. So, the next time I went, I asked about my problem. The nurse practicioner said that I was getting older and needed to use more lubricant. (I was only 30 at the time, and already used plenty.) I had to come back in six months due to an abnormal Pap smear and at that time I raised the issue again. This time the NP said I had a yeast infection and that was causing the pain, so she prescribed a yeast remedy. Six months after that I came back again and this time was told that if I hadn't been having sex very often for a while it might hurt a bit when I started again. I knew that wasn't

it either.Eventually, I did have health insurance, and I decided that PP wasn't going to help me, so I made an appointment with a doctor who my husband had seen in the past. It took a while to get in to see her the first time, so that brings us to around Christmas 2006. I told her about my problem and she wanted me to make another appointment for a pelvic exam, so I did that and came back again in January. She examined me and could not find anything wrong, so she referred me to a gynecologist. It was a male doctor, and I was terribly squeamish at first having never seen a male gynecologist before, but since he was an expert in this sort of disorder, I decided to bite the bullet. My husband felt a bit sorry about my having to see a male doctor but I told him that it was more important to me to actually get better.So I saw the GYN, and he diagnosed me with vestibulodynia, which I had read about (under its other

name, vestibulitis). I had really hoped I was wrong about having it.For most of the rest of 2007 I got put on various drugs. He tried Cymbalta, but it made my already-high blood pressure spike so I had to go off it. Then he put me on increasing doses of Lyrica, which didn't help either but did cause me to get so lethargic that I fell asleep standing up in a line at the amusement park. Then he tapered me off that (which caused a massive two-day anxiety attack) and put me on increasingly huge doses of desipramine, which makes my mouth so dry that it sticks closed sometimes.In late August, WS confessed something to me, something that he had been unable to decide whether to tell me at first. The previous week, a woman at his work (the Other Woman, henceforth OW) had been out at a bar with him and another co-worker. OW suddenly announced (in front of the innocent third party, who ran to the bathroom in

embarrassment) that "I want to f--- this person," referring of course to my husband. I ranted about what a nasty person OW is (she has already been married once and it ended in less than a year because of her cheating) but I didn't put any blame on my husband. Then he told me that there was something else bothering him. He said that he'd told his best friend (a woman, but not the OW) about my vestibulodynia. I had asked him not to tell anyone about it. I got a bit angry and he said that he needed to be able to confide in someone about it because the whole thing was hard for him. He further said that his constant state of sexual frustration was something he thought other people picked up on and that this was why OW made a pass at him. I reminded him that I couldn't help it but that I was trying my best. Over the next month, WS told me that OW had also been doing things like text messaging him to say "I'm alone at home

and it's a chilly night" and things like that (even though at the time she was living with a fiance). He had me go out with him and OW to "send her a message" and she brought her boyfriend so he claimed to think that everything was resolved. (He should have just ceased having any contact with her, of course. But I trusted him, and I knew he didn't want to give her up as a friend, so I didn't insist he stay away from her. I did tell him he ought not be alone with her.)In mid-September I had gone back to my doctor's office for a follow up on my blood pressure. My regular doctor had moved out of state, though, and I was now seeing another doctor that she recommended. This new doctor asked whether my sex problem had been resolved and I said that the GYN was still trying me on various things but that nothing worked. She asked, "Have you tried seeing a physical therapist who specializes in pelvic pain?" I said I hadn't

and she suggested that I should at least give it a try. She recommended me to someone.So I started PT, twice a week. It was about the most humiliating thing I could imagine, but I did it in the desperate hope that it would make a difference. Meanwhile, the GYN prescribed Emla cream to try to make sex comfortable enough to be doable. (I don't know why he didn't do that earlier.) Between the cream and the PT relaxation exercises, I started to think that I might be able to start having sex again.But, in mid-October, the parking lot incident occurred. One night I could not figure out where my husband was, and my friend suggested I check some of our regular hangouts. So I pulled into Local Dive's parking lot and they were standing there making out, arms completely wrapped around each other. I laid on the horn in a fury, and after a horribly long time (perhaps five seconds) they finally realized someone was

honking at them and split up. When they saw me, she turned and walked away as fast as possible and he slowly came to the car with a hang-dog look. Afterward he swore that this was the only time he had ever done something like this, that he didn't really have any feelings for her, etc. I tried to reconcile with him.Near the end of October, he went to visit his best friend up north, and when he came back he sat me down again and told me that he had realized something. "I feel like our relationship is more that of best friends than a married couple." I pointed out all the things we did and shared together and he said, "companionship is fine if you're in your 50s, but not in your 30s. I'm too young for that." He said that he'd kissed OW because "I'm not going to be attractive to people like that for much longer." He said that he'd considered separating from me and "dating" me, but realized he couldn't really afford to

live separately and also that he might decide he liked being apart from me after all and so it would be "stringing me along."I tried to reason with him in various ways at this point. I'll spare you the details. The long and short of it is that I told him that I thought we could, and should, start having sex again (my PT person said I needed to start again and to have him help me with exercises). He said that after so long without he felt kind of funny "thinking that way" about me but said this would probably go away over time.So I bought a cute little chemise and tried to make myself especially attractive. And we did have sex again -- three times over a couple of weeks -- and with the cream it was actually enjoyable for me. I felt like I was finally getting better. But my husband now started avoiding sex with me. He kept rejecting my advances, telling me I was making him uncomfortable, and he made some

insulting remarks about how I wasn't very romantic about it, and he also didn't like the fact that I have to apply the cream 30 minutes in advance for it to work properly and so things couldn't be totally spontaneous. One time when I went to put it on during foreplay he testily said, "I don't want to *see* you put it on!" On another occasion, I tried putting on the chemise along with a silk robe that he had previously always found very sexy, and he said, "I told you I just wanted to have a normal evening at home, but there you go again putting on that slutty outfit. You can't go from ice queen to slut in five seconds." I was terribly hurt and sad and frustrated.Then, right after my birthday, I went to stay a week at my mom and dad's, with the idea that it might help us like it did during our previous crisis. Instead, his emails to me started out warm and affectionate but gradually got briefer and more cryptic

until I knew something was wrong. When I came back, he sat me down, told me it was over, and I spent three hours or so begging him to reconsider. I asked him to come to counseling with me; he refused. I asked him to give us more time to work things out. "How much time?" "A year -- give it a year and if you're still unhappy then leave." "A year is a long time. I'm 33 years old. I'm not going to be attractive to people much longer." He again said that he is too young to settle for a relationship of companionship. I told him that after ten years people's love isn't going to be intense the way it is at the onset of a relationship. He said, "Yes, but they should still be 'at it.'" I said we could be at it again if he would quit rejecting me and he said, "It's too late. By the time you told me about your problem, we were already getting distant from each other. You pushed me away until there was nothing left." But I first

told him in 2004 -- years ago now -- and we seemed to be doing fine in the interim. He says I "lied to him for years," a lie of omission I guess, and that this is somehow roughly equivalent to the way he betrayed me with OW. He denied, though, that any of this was about OW. He said he was not going to get involved with her and that he just wanted to live alone for a while so he could see what it's like to be independent.So he drove me back to my parents' house and left me on their porch, at 1:30 a.m. He hugged me and said, "I'm sorry. It will be all right. We'll both be stronger."Hmph.That was Tuesday. The following Monday I met with him at a cafe to discuss the terms of what I thought was going to be a trial separation (as that was the impression he left me with). He informed me that he'd already been to a lawyer and signed a divorce complaint. I again argued for separation. He said, "What's the point

of that?" I said, "In case you change your mind." He said he was not going to change his mind. I said, "How can you be so sure?" He looked me in the eye and said, "Because I'm not in love with you."Awful... just awful.And within a few days after that, he emailed me and told me he is in love with OW. He says our problem is that I am smarter than he, but weaker. (He used to like that I was smart, but in recent times he has seemed to hold my intelligence against me for some reason.) By "weaker," he means that I am very conciliatory -- he has a quick temper and can be a jerk sometimes, and when that happens I usually try to pacify him. Apparently that's not what he wanted; he likes OW because she can put him in his place and hold her own when he's wrong about something. And he likes her because she is his intellectual equal. This is why they can be equals, and we were never equals. But I don't buy any of that

as being his real reason.Basically what this comes down to, then, is that (it seems to me) my husband left me because he knows I won't be able to have the sex life he could have with a wild thing like OW (they've been messing around in the stockroom so much at work that he got reprimanded twice about it).So, everyone tells me that this isn't about me, it's about my husband. But I don't know if I can really say that. Perhaps if I had been open about my problem earlier, things might not have gotten so bad. He has certainly made that claim, saying that the issue isn't that I have a medical problem but that I "lied" about it for so many years. I don't know what to believe. I do know that this may not ever have happened if I had normal sexual functioning, and that makes me feel awful. It also makes me feel like I am unlikely to ever find anyone else, either. I thought I was so lucky that my husband understood

about my problem and was supportive -- since he was, up until this thing with OW happened. Having to start a relationship by telling someone that we won't be able to have a normal sex life seems like -- well, like I might as well get used to being alone. And what makes me angry is that I know that he knows it will be hard for me to find another relationship.Meanwhile, he doesn't have to be alone. He gets to be with someone else. The unfairness of it makes me so angry. And I'm still in love with him, and I think of all the wonderful adventures we had together over ten years, all the things we shared, all the little private jokes and happy moments and such... and it hurts terribly.Thanks for reading my story. aka BunnyHugger

Looking for last minute shopping deals? Find them fast with Yahoo! Search.

[Guest guest]

Hi ,

I'm so sorry to hear what you're going through. I can somewhat relate

to your feelings. Even though our relationship lastet much shorter

than your marriage I had very similar feelings when my boyfriend left

me. He was the first man I ever loved, and I thought we would get

married, or at least be together for a long time. We seemed to be such

a perfect match. By now I'm not so sure any more that he really loved

me. He was playing games, even though I still don't know what kind of

games or what for. And I will never know. And I felt especially sad

after the breakup because I thought it was my fault. But that's not

true. It wasn't my fault. But he manipulated me to make me believe it

was my fault. That is what your husband tries to do. And that's maybe

the worst part of it, that after all of this he wants to make you feel

guilty. It's not your fault at all.

It takes time to get over the grief. What made me suffer the most in

the beginning was the thought of never seeing him again, of having

lost this person, who was so important in my life, forever. But I'm

getting better every day now. It's easier now because I have accepted

that he wasn't the right one for me. Now, I'm angry at him for all the

lies, for playing with my feelings when he knew how vulnerable I was.

I also often felt, and still feel, that I will never find the right

man. And I still find it quite hard to accept this. I don't know if

this is true. But I guess many of us have felt this way before. And I

want to believe that for most of us it isn't true. Of course it's more

difficult to find someone when you demand a great deal of a a new

partner. But you don't want to be in a bad relationship any more. You

want to be with someone who loves and respects you. I think you will

find that man someday. But for now, there's no hurry. Take your time

to mourn the relationship and to get over it.

Oh, and whenever I feel scared about the future, I remind myself of

what Australians often say: " No worries, mate. " It's simple, but it

helps. So: No worries, . The future will be fine.