Darkness Falls, thank you for your gracious response.
And thank you for posting this topic on the Wayward forum without a stop sign.
Betrayeds justifiably have limited posting privileges here (not complaining about that!) so the opportunities to share information that might be helpful to the original poster and/or to anyone/everyone is also limited.
I feel lucky and privileged to be able to tell our story and address this issue here on the Wayward side. If sharing our experience helps even one person or one couple out there, then that's a blessing for us as well. It is yet another good outcome from a situation that was incredibly painful for both of us.
Upon deep reflection, long before today, I have found that the experience of the dead bedroom was more profoundly hurtful and damaging than Husband's one stupid indiscretion.
I know this: the period of dead bedroom in between the actual incident and the sanitized narrative I received at the time, and the much grittier version of events I received 2.5 years ago, that dead bedroom in between acted as an amplifier to the infidelity. It *definitely* added to the hurt and damage and influenced my perception and reception of the grittier narrative,
even though I knew damned good and well that Husband's previous lack of desire was due to tanked testosterone. Period.
This physical reality was confirmed by the fact that appropriate testosterone treatment corrected the issue and our healthy, robust and spontaneous sex life has resumed without issue. Husband is plenty interested in me, in sex, in sex with me. He initiates. Etc.
Thank God in heaven that the dead bedroom was resolved and our sex life was back on track before the grittier narrative came out. Thank God.
If I was still looking at a dead bedroom and an avoidant Husband when that new narrative dropped, honestly, I'm not sure I could have handled it. I'm not sure we'd have made it. I would be beyond convincing that the problem was anything other than a total lack of interest.
And this is addressing only my pain.
Husband's pain, honestly, was magnitudes greater than mine. He too was living in an involuntarily sexless marriage- only he was the reason, and he didn't understand why. Plus he had all of the guilt of having an unhappy wife, and the embarrassment, and the anxiety, and the confusion.
The man tried *everything* short of quitting his job- which, by that point, paradoxically, would have caused only more stress. And, given his field, would likely have been jumping from the frying pan into the fire, bonus round a whole new work environment, culture, job, etc. with the accompanying learning curve.
Anyway, I believe that, as we all live longer and expect to be vital and engaged over a longer arc in our lives, this particular problem is becoming more prevalent.
Women have access to bioidentical hormones in custom formulations and men have...???
Nothing unless they get proactive and in our case, some years ago, aggressive and persistent about finding help and an actual solution.
I *do* believe that male libido problems and ED contribute to infidelity more often than any of us realize, and not in the ways or for the reasons one might automatically assume.
Infidelity in the presence of a dead bedroom isn't simply about getting laid. IMHO it's much more complex.
Speaking as the wife, the onset of an identifiable issue- like, things *aren't* working more often than they *are* working- and the deepening of the problem as it became entrenched, was incredibly confusing and bewildering to me.
Literally *nothing* changed except my husband's junk stopped working properly. ??? It's not like I aged 30 years overnight, or woke up one morning and stuck my face in the fridge and never came out, or stopped shaving my legs or brushing my teeth. It's not like I stopped loving my husband, and it's not like he stopped loving me. The junk just refused to work more times than it cooperated- and there was quite literally *no* rhyme or reason to it. It wasn't because of or in spite of a bad day, or a particular stressor, or any other physical ailment or condition, or because of an argument, or a bad mood, or a bad dinner, or a kid's report card or a call from the teacher. We tried our best to discern a pattern but there was none- except that work stress was always present, but its impact was unpredictable. Now that we understand it as an issue with fluctuating hormone levels, that lack of a pattern makes all kinds of sense.
As 'the problem' became 'our new normal' (and this was long before there were ED commercials of every type plastered all over the media, and we were relatively young at the time) both of us, retreated. Sex itself became fraught with anxiety. Husband was terrified of failure and I was terrified of rejection.
It was during this period of profound confusion and hurt that I came as close as I've ever come to having an affair myself. Thank God I could not bring myself to do it but I came closer between my own two ears than I like to remember.
It wasn't physical and it wasn't emotional. I refer to it in my own mind as an 'attention affair' or a 'validation affair.' I let a guy hang around and heap attention on me for far too long when I knew why he was there.
So while I will generally go along with the idea prevalent on SI that no spouse 'causes' the other spouse to cheat, and my husband certainly wasn't trying to make me cheat, I do believe that the weather conditions in a marriage can contribute to a wayward's vulnerability.
As far as the husbands go, even though thankfully Husband did not go down this path himself, both of us can quite clearly see how a husband struggling with ED could himself cheat, or attempt to cheat, out of misplaced anxiety.
I have read so many times, here on SI, where a betrayed wife writes that her husband attempted sex with another woman, "but he swears it didn't happen because he couldn't get hard." Of course the wife does not believe this.
Every time I read this, I want to reach out and say, "Honey, it just might be true."
Of course, the wife is so hurt and so crushed that pointing this out to a specific wife on a specific thread will likely not be well received- and even if she's willing to hear it, the knee jerk reaction is that her husband is blaming his lack of performance on her, which is why he sought sex with someone else. And that will only increase her pain.
The problem becomes a huge mountain of an issue between the couple, such that it begins to make its own weather.
The woman's husband quite likely is not testing his fickle dick out on another woman thinking that someone new/younger/older/more attractive/more skinny/more voluptuous/just different will solve the problem.
Likely, he's as attracted to his wife as he ever was, and likely not all that particularly attracted to the AP.
But the abject embarrassment and confusion and guilt over being unable to respond to someone he loves, and whom he is hurting deeply in the process, *could* contribute to a guy misguidedly trying to sort this shit out with someone for whom he really doesn't care all that much. A cooperative stranger, more or less- or even a professional.
It's not an excuse and it's not pretty and it's not the solution and if the AP, despite being an AP, I know I know, is genuinely (but wrong headedly) invested in the guy, it's not a good way to use another human being, despite that person's own flaws and issues.
I suspect sexual health issues contribute more to infidelity than we know.
Anyway, I hope this helps someone out there...
[This message edited by marriageredux959 at 4:23 PM, December 19th (Saturday)]