Mixed orientation relationships - married to an asexual lesbian

Perhaps this is as good as it gets. After all, what is ‘a successful Mixed orientation Marriage’? Next month we will come to the first anniversary of my wife’s coming out as a lesbian. And we’re still together, still exclusive and faithful to each other, and intending to continue that way.

What a year of trauma it has been, mostly for me, but some for her too. The ‘d’ word has been spoken, divorce. We’ve looked at all the other options: an open marriage, one side or both. Perhaps we’re going for the hardest option, or perhaps it’s the easiest, the one involving the least change. We both felt too old to start new lives. After all, there’s no guarantee of finding a better, more compatible partner if we separate. We’ve invested a lot, most of our lives, in THIS relationship. And there’s a lot of good in it. We like each other; we talk together, we do things together (and apart). But we’ve never had much of a sex life, and now we have none.

We’ve agreed on a weekly cuddle, on a fixed time and day, and being the eternal optimist that I am, I can’t help hoping that this may become a little more… But I think that for now, my wife simply isn’t able to give any more. Her long (30 years!!) struggles against her lesbian attractions and nature has left her asexual. So there’s very little of the intimacy that for me is such an important part of a marriage. The total giving and opening up, the vulnerability, the no hold-back, the intimacy, the desire for the beloved other. And we’re both mourning this sexual component of a loving relationship that we’ve never known and now will probably never know if we stay together as we plan to.

But there’s a very deep intimacy all the same. She trusted me, she shared with me her deepest struggle, her darkest secret. We are friends and perhaps even lovers, but without the sex. Can this be enough for me? And for her? We’ll see. But it’s already a lot. But I have to learn to live with the present, with what I have, rather than dreaming of some future and improbable miraculous change. This can be a good day, with lots of good things in it, even without sex. Perhaps this is as good as it gets, and this is success, not the miracle that I have long searched for on the web, in trying to apply to our situation, our relationship, someone else’s experience. With some magical way of arousing a lesbian who has no desire for me at all, but a lot of tenderness and affection all the same. There are no secrets, and there is trust. That’s a pretty rare and precious gift too. There are no guarantees for the future – but that’s true of every marriage. Ours are just lived with a far greater realism about the fragility of all relationships.
But there are days when I could scream with frustration - or hurry to take more of the anti-depressants without which I'd have seriously gone off the rails.
Brassyhub

Im sorry this is a lump in your marriage. I think sex is very important in a marriage. Its a connection like no other. God wants this in your marriage.

1 Corinthians 2-6

2-6 Certainly—but only within a certain context. It’s good for a man to have a wife, and for a woman to have a husband. Sexual drives are strong, but marriage is strong enough to contain them and provide for a balanced and fulfilling sexual life in a world of sexual disorder. The marriage bed must be a place of mutuality—the husband seeking to satisfy his wife, the wife seeking to satisfy her husband. Marriage is not a place to “stand up for your rights.” Marriage is a decision to serve the other, whether in bed or out. Abstaining from sex is permissible for a period of time if you both agree to it, and if it’s for the purposes of prayer and fasting—but only for such times. Then come back together again. Satan has an ingenious way of tempting us when we least expect it. I’m not, understand, commanding these periods of abstinence—only providing my best counsel if you should choose them.

I wish the best for you, whichever decision you two face.

Well I guess everyone has their right to their own opinion but I think that any two people that can find common ground and can harmoniously express the love in their hearts in an emotional, mental or physical way, that is grounds for a good marriage.
Divorce is not an answer anymore than an amputation solves a problem. It only is something you do if you try everything else and there is no workable way.
If two people are friends and you do not belong to an organization that tells you how you should behave, then you are free to choose in my opinion.

It's admirable that you both want to find a way to make this work. I think I too would be reluctant to let go of a relationship that has so much good in it. I hope you both find a way to feel satisfied and loved.

This 'period of abstinence' was not decided together, and certainly not wanted by me. It's been well over a year now.

Knowing that this is how your thinking make me think you have your answer. You just need someone to tell you its ok. Your young and full of life. Put your heart in a jar and close the lid or turn the jar upside down. Listen to your head.

I wholly recognize the good things that we have and that we share in our marriage. And I don’t want to lose that. I am wholly decided to stay together, whatever it takes. There is no question about that. I am not trying to push my wife away, to give myself a pretext for looking elsewhere. When I looked honestly at what I want, me, not ‘us’, I came to the conclusion that what I most want is to grow old (older!) with the woman I have loved and still love. I have loved, honoured and cherished her and continue to do so. One regret is that I have long felt that there was something missing, lacking, a physical intimacy, and I hoped and prayed that it would go away or change, but I didn’t force the issue. When I look back at my journal, I have been frustrated for a very long time about her frigidity, her lack of warmth, her lack of desire. This is nothing new. So my ‘needs’ have long been real, if partly imagined as well. On the principle that if something is lacking, that’s all that you see and feel. What is new is my understanding of why, and of how hard this must have been for her.

But while accepting my wife as a lesbian, I had not fully understood that for her this clearly means no more effort to satisfy me. I wrongly believed that there might be some possible compromise. She says that she is at peace, and I take her word for it. She’s not living in frustration. So this is about me, about my needs and my wants. There’s an element, perhaps, of ‘convenient excuse’ in her 'coming out'. No-one can reasonably hope or expect a lesbian to feel desire for a man, even a husband of 34 years. I puzzle over the difficult distinction between ‘effort’ and ‘violence to self’. This applies to both of us. And how do I discern what are my wants and what are my needs?

A friend tries to encourage me with talk about ‘the better that lies beyond’. But I have been patient for years and years on this issue, and it’s only got worse, objectively worse. Our lives are less full (other than the move) and we have more time, including more time together. Rare sex is now no sex at all. And yes, there are other things in life, and in relationships. But this is an important, normal part of most marriages. But not in mine. My desire is part of who I am and what I am.

Up-date. This coming Friday, tomorrow, will be the second anniversary of my wife's coming out to herself and myself as a lesbian. I continue alone in therapy. I try to fill my life with other interests, activities. But there's still a great big hole where a sex-life isn't. I repeat daily a mantra: 'peace and plenitude'.

As someone has said, these words are just labels. But what lies behind them? My wife said, 'I'm bi-sexual...no, I'm a lesbian'. And the fact is that she now has no desire, for me, or for another woman. That's where we're at. So she's at peace, and I am not. One early thought that helped me was: 'she's still the woman you've always loved, but she's trusted you enough to share with you her deepest darkest secret'.

Our experience of Imago therapy has been inconclusive. It's a help for 'normal, straight couples', but seems (to me) to have little to say for MOMs like ours, or about how to handle TGT. But there's one exercise that I am finding a help: 'Visualization of love. One minute, three times a day. Close your eyes, take several deep breaths, and visualize your partner. Refine the image until you see your partner as a whole, spiritual being who has been wounded in ways you now know about. Hold this image in your mind and imagine that your love is healing your partner's wounds. Now visualize the energy of love that you are sending to your partner coming back to you and healing your wounds.'

My wife has said that she wished we could go back to pre-coming-out. But we can’t and the truth IS better than untruth.

A part-answer is to try to live fully in the present, and really focus and savour all the good little things. I cherish friends and friendship more, the few who know, the many more who don’t.

My therapist (I continue in therapy alone) tries to help me to accept that any changes will be slow and take a long time. I need to talk more with him about ‘future thoughts’. He tells me that we none of us know what the future holds (true!), that the chances of us dying together are slim... But doesn’t this open the door to simply terrible thoughts of suicide or wishing that our partner would have an accident? Simple ways that ‘fate’ could take the pain of choices and living out of our hands? ... Is he trying to give me some more hope? Is it important to have hope? I’ve been feeling that my only hope is to give up any hopes of change in my wife and in our relationship and work on change in me, moving from resignation to real acceptance.

But still dream and long for a passionate loving relationship. .. With a partner who desires me...

Wow, what a situation. I don't envy your struggle, but respect the effort that you're making. Good luck.

This is just my opinion, but I think both of you need to go your own way and get a divorce. It sounds like your sexual frustration is growing and I personally think you need to find someone you can be with before your frustration turns into resentment and you lose the closeness and friendship you have.

I know this is one of the older responses, but I wholeheartedly disagree with this sentiment. It's perfectly okay to abstain from sex in a marriage, since marriage isn't necessarily about sex. I know successful queer/asexual/straight/whatever couples who don't have sex and are perfectly fine with it. It has absolutely nothing to do with a satanic force.

Marriage is absolutely a place to "stand up for your rights." Both of you need to do what is best for yourselves. If that means staying together, then that's great. If that means getting a divorce and working on building a platonic friendship, then that's okay, too. Sometimes the most loving thing we can do for a partner is to let them go.

I hope things become easier in the future.

From your posts, you seem both incredibly dissatisfied and still holding out hope that your wife will change in some way. Your wife is not going to change. She is not sexually attracted to you and does not want to have see with you-- and never, ever will. It seems clear that you are sexually frustrated and want to have sex again. The only way to do that is to go your separate ways.

No, she's quite happy and at peace, being pretty well asexual, as far as I can see/understand. And I am not expecting any change. That's been one of the big changes for me, to give up any hope of change. I am dissatisfied, yes. But I don't just want sex. That I could get with a prostitute. I want to be desired. But that's just not possible. So strangely, I am more at peace now, knowing why there's no desire. Knowing that we in fact can both mourn what neither of us has found. And simply, it's a lot easier living knowing that there's no sex on the horizon, rather than hoping, 'next weekend, we should be able to find the time, will she feel like it?' And I've also given up dreaming that another book, another person, could provide some miracle answer. For us, the only answer is to go on the way we are, grateful for the good things that we share - and allowing ourselves a little sadness for what we've never had together.

Next Monday, I have my final therapy session, and I've been off antidepressants for 10 days...

I cannot help hoping that as our environment becomes more tolerant, there will, in future, be fewer couples like ours, trapped by our own expectations, and others', in a mixed orientation marriage. That today's young people will find it easier to accept their difference, their homosexuality.

I wondered if there was someone else who was experiencing what I've been experiencing - or at least close to it. Thank you for sharing your story Brassyhub, I really do appreciate it.

My wife and I haven't been intimate for a long time now. I would say, thinking back, we've only had sex once in the past 3 years. She hasn't come out as lesbian, however she has admitted she feels attracted to other women, though she says she hasn't acted on this either, as she really isn't that interested in sex at all.

We do share closeness, in hugs and small kisses, but the intimacy that we used to have seems to be gone (for good it feels) and it feels like a part of me has gone with it.

I enjoy(ed?) sex, but also I enjoy the touch of skin before and the quiet closeness after. As time goes on I feel so many mixed emotions. I've suffered from depression well before we met, and this situation is contributing to me starting to sink back down at the moment.

I feel resentment towards her - why did she marry me if she knew this was the likely path we would take? I also feel worthless, and my self esteem has taken a pretty big hit over the last years. I mean, this is the woman I chose to be with, and she feels no intimate attraction towards me?

You mention that this has been a 30 year struggle for her, but do you mind if I ask how long you've been married for?

Ratchet and Brassyhub, would it have been better (or be better) for your wife to not share this secret? Is it better knowing even though you have new levels of loss?

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We've been married 35 years. My wife did say that she regretted coming out to me, when she saw how devastated I was. But I said, no, I'm glad to know the truth. It's better than not knowing. Or so I believe.

Ratchet: it's not about us. It's about them, the way they're made. They didn't chose to be this way, to feel this way.

I feel that I’ve been amputated of an important part of me. My sexuality. And I have been. That’s the reality. That’s what it costs to make our Mixed Orientation Marriage ‘work’. On the one hand, nothing has changed. There’s no more intimacy, and I’ve given up all hope that there ever will be. So there’s no ‘compromise’, and I’m having to accept what I swore I would not and could not accept: a sexless marriage. So part of me is furious that all this time, trauma, therapy, investment of self and money has been to absolutely no avail. Furious with God who led me, who led us both, to this terribly frustrating place (for me at least). Furious with the years and years of unanswered prayers. Prayers that she could change; prayers that I could change, and lose all my natural desires. And the other part of me has to recognise a new strength in the midst of fragility, a resilience, a slightly amazed understanding that I’ve never been seriously tempted to infidelity. My deepest longing is not for sex, but for intimacy, and perhaps we have at least something of that.

Of course, many other couples face similar challenges, due to problems of age and health. But I am not mourning something that I’ve lost, but rather something that I’ve never had.

There are endless ironies. There’s so much on the Web about reviving flagging libido, and I’ve been searching - with absolutely no success at all - for ways of reducing my libido. Life would be so much easier if I was as asexual as Eliane! Then there's the new female viagra - but it's out of the question for post-menopausal women, like Eliane, and even more so for those who have had breast cancer...

May this new year bring each one of us some peace. If not peace in its fullness, enough peace for another year.

OneWorld: I've thought about this quite a few times, and I'm still not entirely sure either way. Knowing does answer some questions, and I guess I prefer to know.

Brassyhub, reading and thinking about what you said, yeah, you're right, being angry at someone for something that isn't of their control is unfair.

I put a bit of thought towards it, and I think the best way I can put an analogy together to describe it to someone on the outside is like this:

As best as I can figure it, her way of viewing our relationship is like a roast dinner. The different parts of the meal represent all of the aspects of our relationship, friendship, companionship, trust, love, family, intimacy, and so on. You can eat well and feel fulfilled without having to eat everything on your plate - if you don't like beans, you leave them and eat everything else - maybe compensate by having an extra helping of roast pumpkin. The meal still fills you up and you enjoy it.

To me the relationship is more like a cake. The aspects of the relationship are represented by the ingredients, and while you can still make the cake if you leave an ingredient out, the cake isn't quite right. Depending on the ingredient left out the cake may taste a little funny, it may be too soggy, or it may just crumble altogether.

That's about as close as I can come to explaining my situation - hope it helps anyone who was curious.

I really like this analogy, Ratchet. For both of us, the 'cake' isn't all there. There's an important ingredient missing. And there's nothing we can do about it. We stay or we leave: that's the only choice that we have. But there's little or nothing that we can do to change our partners.

It will be three years since 'coming out' in a few days. And I am feeling sad that nothing has changed, but encouraged that I am, slowly, sticking the pieces of myself together. Feeling, understanding that this is not my 'fault'. I didn't cause this. I am not inadequate and a failure...

I don't want to step way out of bounds here, but how about moving in a mistress for the both of you?

Thats the optimistic viewpoint; the pessimist (me) would say, great - now theres TWO women in the house that hes not sleeping with!

Im sorry! I dont get it either!

We have looked at all the options, I believe. Including looking for a bi-sexual who would be happy to have sex with both of us... But it's not just about sex, at least for us. We both feel the need to a deep relationship before sex... and we're both deeply attached to each other and deeply monogamous by nature. And 'just sex' runs the ethical risk of using someone else just for my pleasure. Again, a problem for me.

This is why I have a dog. I have a spouse that has holed up in our room for a year, quit house work, sex, life and left me hanging. If I want to talk to her, I have to go to her room but can't stay long because she'll upset one of us.

Needless to say, she's leaving in a few weeks and a divorce in 6 months.

On the private Facebook group, Str8sbook, we were asked, all straight spouses, what The Gay Thing has taught us, what we have learned through this experience. Here are my musings:

• To look beneath the surface. What looks like a perfect couple/family/marriage may hide great pain and suffering. So a great sense of care and compassion for all this hidden burden of pain. It is the invisibility of TGT that is an important part of its poison.

• I am forced to work on myself and my past: the only area that I have some real handle on. So some healing of ancient (childhood) wounds.

• A sense of mystery, of having to accept things that I just don’t understand. To trust that there is still some loving reason and purpose, even if I don’t now see any glimmer of it.

• A simply massive increase in my knowledge and understanding of sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular, even as I lose the modest sex-life that I used to have!

• I am now a LBGT ally, but not an unconditional or uncritical one. I expect and demand some reciprocal compassion and understanding from them.

• The limitations of God and prayer. Some things do not, cannot change. However much you try. However much you pray. However much you want them to. TGT is one of those things. At least in 99.99% of the time.

• The pain is endless and excruciating. But life goes on. Is it any ever easier? Perhaps, a little. But we straights (we humans?) are stronger than we ever dreamed.

• Very few friends understand, can understand. Our pain is an embarrassment to them, they don’t know what to say.

• The very foundation of our lives, of our being, is shaken. Our judgement, some of the basic, most important, most thought-through choices of our lives now look like a mistake. ‘Does that mean that my whole life is founded on a mistake or a misunderstanding? Or can it still in some way be redeemed?’

• Does our MOM, our Mixed Orientation Marriage, give something to others, despite us? What does it give to both of us? Are we really better together than apart? Yes, at least for now.