Signs of a Problem

Now that I walked through the first years of my marriage, I would like to take this time to discuss something a little more close to the situation that has inspired me to talk about this.

For quite some time I felt the need to discuss my infidelity but had no idea how to express it. My wife knows all about my infidelity. My kids are aware dad did something wrong. My friends have been through hell with us during the time I was seperated from my wife. I felt like I needed to discuss more. I have been blogging off and on for a couple of years now and felt that this would be a great method of getting my thoughts out and helping me move on from this at the same time. Hopefully I can manage that.

I mentioned in the first posting about my wife and I getting pregnant prior to our marriage. Eleven years after that happened we finally discussed one of the biggest obstacles that we faced that led to my infidelity.

My wife equated sex to the fact that her life changed so dramatically. Not that she resented our son, or the kids after, but she saw sex as the vehicle that changed the path that her life was heading. Put me in the mix and you have a great combination ripe for what happened.

My wife, was and is still, absolutely stunning to me. Physically she is amazing (especially after 3 kids. However, sex was something that she put little stock in and I wanted to take lots of stock out of. (I should also mention that my wife has never been with anyone else but me, unfortunately I can not make that same statement). Being a normal man in my early 20s, I wanted it daily, hourly, and more often than that. However, she was not on that page with me.

Several years had gone by. We had three awesome, healthy kids. But our relationship was not going anywhere - especially in the bedroom. We had, what I called, the Window of Opportunity. From Friday nights to Sunday mornings, this was the time I was allowed to make love to my wife. This was something that she came up with on her own and never discussed this with me.

So I knew that at some point during that Window, I was going to get to make love to my wife. However, there were times where she felt bad, or a kid kept her up late into the night, and she did not feel like doing anything but sleeping. Instead of saying that she was tired, sick, etc. she would just say nothing. She would just roll over and go to sleep. "WHAT?!?!?! I followed your rules and now nothing?", would be a favorite phrase I would recite to myself.

I resented her. I hated myself. I hated her. I felt like less than a man. Yet, I still loved her but I had no idea how to discuss this with her. Especially given her lack of communication.