Hello,

This is my first post. Your post convinced me to join.

There’s nothing comes to mind that I can tell you that might help. Your story sounds similar to mine although it sounds like you and your wife have a way better relationship, and perhaps you’re dealing with this better than I. After 13 years of blazing cannabis daily I quite literally burned holes in my lungs and only just got my edible recipe working in time to stop smoking before it got too painful. I now eat as much as it takes to get at least 4 and sometimes 8 people high, daily. Part of this is to mask the intense longing I have for sex as well as frankly a proper cuddle, and partly to manage being around my wife who is pretty horrible to me.

For me it was only about 6 months in, and it was ostensibly not anxiety but pain during intercourse that triggered my then girlfriend to cease any and all physical intimacy with me. I have a vivid memory of trying to give her a hug when I got home from work, she acted like I did when I was a small kid and my granny said “come give granny a big kiss!!”. She would freeze up, tense and bear it, then immediately find something fascinating and urgent that needed her attention in order to break free. Kisses were deflected to her cheek. I’m not talking about anything violent or oppressive here; not grabbing her or initiating sex, just a simple sweet hug and no tongue kiss. Needless to say any stronger advance hinting at sex was rejected.

It took a long long time for her to even recognize and concede that this is a problem. There’s a limit to my patience and tolerance for having zero loving contact. I hate my life and often wished it would end. That’s not an option now I have two kids. I’m seriously considering joining tinder but I don’t know if I can face that. We can’t afford to separate although she has said many times she wants to, and so have I. However, we both don’t want to have a failed marriage and broken family. We were once good friends but it’s hard to find that anymore. She says I’ve hurt her (emotionally) too many times, and I have, but the way I see it, that’s a handful of occasions compared with some 5,000 days of torment for me. She thinks that she “tried”, so that’s good enough. I really struggle every day. Going to the city is hard as I see young women with sexy bodies and die inside.

Especially hard is the way she treats me, I work hard, I’m nice to her, I do my best, and she finds something to blow up about. In the course of ensuing argument I become the bad guy. The terrible guy who didn’t do the dishes on time because he was working so hard on another task, and who didn’t just take the abuse and neglect and still be jolly and buy her nice thoughtful gifts.

I was hoping to find something useful in my experience to share, but it seems I’ve instead hi jacked your thread to vent my own problems. Let me think some more and maybe I’ll post again.