Feb 2013 Update [1]

There has been discussion about me on the forums lately so I decided that I should write an update to my blog. This update is not about Karezza really. It is more about my whole philosphy on sex going forward.

Some people seem to have the impression that I am martyring myself for the good of my marriage. That is not true. What is true is that I have come to some understandings about intimacy in my marriuage and I have made my peace with them.

There are two key points:

1) My wife has ALWAYS had control of when sex happens in our relationship. I was pretty much ready to go anytime but she was more discerning about the whole thing :) Sex only happens when she wants it to happen. There is no need for me to make a conscious decision to give her the reigns. She has had them since day one.

2) I had a strong emotional need for sex. I used to lie to myself and say that it was a physical need, but I now recognize it for what it was. I had low self -esteem and a need for personal validation from my wife. I wanted her to want me. My favourite way to get that validation was through sex. I was emotionally addicted to sex.

It does not take a genius to see that 1 and 2 above are a lethal combination. You have a man who has attached his sense of personal worth to something (sex) that is 100% under the control of his wife. What happens when she does not want to have sex? His sense of personal worth drops and he blames her for it.

That is essentially what I did to myself. I created a covert contract with my wife in which she was required to have sex with me so that I could feel good about myself. That worked so long as our sex life was rolling. However, after we starting having kids our sex life declined and the whole thing went off the rails.

For the longest time I tried to resolve this situation by working on number 1. I tried as hard as I could to get my wife to have more sex. However, this approach failed miserably. The more that I pressured her, the more she resisted. It became a viscious cycle in which I pushed, she resisted, so I pushed harder and she resisted even harder. Eventually I gave up because it was wrecking our marriage.

Since then I have shifted my focus to resolving number 2. I have invested some serious time and energy into examining my own psyche to figure excatly why sex was so important to me and how my sense of self became so dependent on it. I could write a book on this subject, but I don't want to. That is my personal stuff. Suffice it to say that I figured myself out. Most importantly, I decided that my happiness CANNOT be dependent on sex. A person should never allow their own personal sense of worth to be based on things that other people control. To do so is to give away your personal power.

I also figured out that my wife does not want that power over me. Most of her resistance was based on the fact that she disliked how needy and dependent I was about sex. She could sense how badly I was addicted to sex and it really turned her off. She did not want to be party to that weakness of mine.

She could have made it easy for me. She could have blocked off one night a week to spread her legs and think of England. For the longest time I could not for the love of God figure out why she would not do that. Now I am incredibly grateful that she didn't. It would have been easy for her, but it would also have been wrong. She knew that I was being weak and needy about sex and she knew that I was capable of much more than that. God bless her for it. God bless all women who put their foot down and say "enough is enough, stop using sex to hide from your insecurities. MAN UP!"

The point of this post is to say that I am manning up. I have successfully disentangled myself from the sex addiction. I have kicked the masturbation habit. I am back in right relationship with sex again. I am currently not having sex, but it is not a hardship. I do not feel like a martyr. I feel FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!! There is no neediness. There is no insecurity. I can enjoy sex if it is available because I love it, but I can also wait patiently because I don't NEED it.

Number 1 has not changed at all. My wife is still 100% in control of when sex happens. The only difference is that it used to drive me up the wall and now I am totally at peace with it. I am ready when she is, but there is absolutely no rush. Number 2 has been resolved, and that makes all the difference.

P.S I know that some people will want to critique this post and poke holes in it. You are free to do that. However, I want to make sure that the main point of this post does not get lost in the debate ... I do not consider it a hardship to go without sex while my wife works through her own issues. It is not uncomfortable for me. I am not suffering, and therefore there is no martyring going on. Two years ago I was suffering. Now I am not. The situation changed because I changed, not because my sex life changed. I think that is very, very important. Number 1 above was only a serious issue because of Number 2. Now that number 2 is gone, Number 1 is a minor inconvenience at best. Would I like more sex? Yes. Is it critically important? No. When my self image was no longer threatened by the absence of sex it stopped being a big issue.