My husband and I have had an open marriage for the last two years. Up until five months ago, it was working beautifully. At that point, however, I was sexually assaulted by a former partner. Since that incident, I cannot stand sex with my husband. I completely flip out when he tries to initiate sexual contact. My skin crawls. I become panicked and feel repulsed. I just cannot handle it. Those times when I go along with it anyway leave me feeling enraged and disgusted.
I don’t think this is completely unheard of for someone who was relatively recently assaulted, and I am considering therapy to help me work through it. The immediate “problem” is that I have no difficulty having sex with my boyfriend. In fact, the sex with him is amazing and leaves me feeling loved and whole and wonderful.
This is breaking my husband’s heart. He has become incredibly jealous of my relationship with my boyfriend. He’s depressed. He’s angry. He accuses me of no longer loving him, and he wants me to stop sleeping with my boyfriend until our marriage is back to normal. I feel like a horrible person, but I just can’t do that. I need that outlet. I need that support. And I admit I have a hard time believing that my husband and I will ever be able to go back to the way things were before.
I feel like I’ve already lost my former partner (fucked-up though that may seem) and my husband. It kills me to think about cutting out the one positive relationship remaining. On the other hand, I do love my husband—very much—and watching him suffer like this is unbearable.
Potentially Traumatized Sexual Deviant
I’m sorry that you were sexually assaulted—that’s awful, PTSD, and I hope you went to the police and I hope you’re pressing charges. But I also hope you know that being the victim of sexual assault is not a Get Out of Being a Human Being Free card.
Just because you’ve been victimized doesn’t mean you operate in an alternate moral universe where you’re not obligated to take other people’s feelings into consideration—particularly the feelings of people you profess to love and happen to be married to. Your first priority in the wake of your assault had to be your own physical and emotional safety, of course, but your behavior toward your husband is both cruel and selfish.
If you truly loved your husband and valued your marriage, PTSD, you would’ve put the boyfriend on hold and gotten your ass into therapy without having to be told. It looks to me like you want out of this marriage. But instead of taking responsibility for wanting out, you’re playing the victim card while slamming both hands down on your marriage’s self-destruct button.
To sum up, PTSD: You’re being a total shit. Do you love your husband? Is your marriage a priority? Then start acting like it: Cut the boyfriend off—for the indefinite future—and get your ass onto a counselor’s couch. If you’re not willing to do those things, PTSD, then stop emotionally assaulting your husband and put both your marriage and him out of their misery.
I have two clits. How common is this? I have never been able to ride a bike because I have an earthshaking orgasm as soon as I get on the seat. I come on the bus—the soft vibrations are too much! Walking anywhere in tight pants gets me moaning. Is there anything I can do, or rub on myself, to avoid having multiple orgasms in public?
Two Much Fun
I’ve never heard of someone with two clits—but I haven’t searched the medical literature or sought the opinion of an expert. And I’m not inclined to search or seek when a letter is so transparently fake. (Opaque fakes are fine; every letter that makes it into the column is a good hypothetical question—for every reader save one.) People whose genitals are different or ambiguous or terrifying—maybe that’s not an extra clit but the tip of your parasitic twin’s nose—frequently have questions and concerns, TMF, but multiple earthshaking orgasms aren’t high on the list.
You don’t have a single clit, TMF, much less two. You’re a horny boy with a dick, an e-mail account, and an obsession with/terror of a woman’s potential capacity for unlimited sexual pleasure. And I’m hoping—I’m hoping against hope—that seeing your letter in print isn’t your peak sexual experience. But odds are…
I am a 47-year-old gay man who has a desire to be humiliated and degraded—by a straight guy! How do I make this happen? Do I just walk up to a straight guy and tell him I want to get on my knees and clean his shoes with my tongue while he spits on me and calls me names? Or that I want to eat out of a dog dish on the floor while he laughs at me? How the hell do I make this happen? Please don’t say, “Settle for a very straight-acting and straight-looking gay guy.” I have tried that, and it doesn’t work! The guy must be totally and completely straight! Otherwise, it’s just not a turn-on for me. I’m so desperate that I’m almost willing to pay for it!
Worthless Piece Of Shit
Long odds: If you have a wide circle of sexually adventurous straight friends, WPOS, and you are open with all of your friends about your kinks in a friendly, nonthreatening manner, maybe one or two of your straight male friends might be indulgent/perverse enough to want to engage in a little role-play with you. (And, yes, it’s possible to make someone feel threatened by offering to lick their boots and take their abuse.)
Somewhat shorter odds: Don’t have friends like that? Well, there are a lot of BDSM groups and orgs out there that are mixed, i.e., they have gay, lesbian, straight, bi, and trans members, and most host mixed play parties. Get involved with one, be open about your kinks, and you’ll meet a few kinky straight male tops who would get a kick out of slapping you around.
Best odds: Pay for it, already.
I’m a het male professional in my mid-20s who wants to find a female dominant partner. Pro-dom services abound for stereotypes like me, but I’m looking for a D/s relationship rather than just playtime. Predictably, I can’t find one. Women I meet randomly are mostly socialized to want dominant men, and kink personal sites like FetLife only make my plight look even direr: Nearly all the doms are either pros or in their 50s. It’s a given that dominant women my age are unicorns, but how can I maximize those slim chances?
Seeking Unrestrained Bitch
By keeping your kink personal ad updated—unlike unicorns, kinky younger women do exist, and you want them to be able to find your ad when they troll on FetLife—and by reconciling yourself to the fact that most submissive straight men in D/s relationships met vanilla women who weren’t perverts themselves but were pervertible.
CONFIDENTIAL TO LGBT YOUTH: Please check out the new, improved, expanded, and totally awesome It Gets Better Project site: www.itgetsbetterproject.com. And please don’t kill yourself.
Just wanted to congratulate you on the It Gets Better Project! Did you see that Hillary Clinton has now contributed? THANK YOU from my bottom of my heart.
Dan rocks. So does cake.
Awesome column as usual, Dan. Bravo.
Hey SUB — Are you reading this? If so, are you East Coast, West Coast, or in the middle?
~ Unicorn
To PTSD, I gotta say that I do believe that you feel bad and I can believe you aren’t doing this on purpose. However I also think you have earned the verbal lashing Dan has given you. The fact that you are making yourself feel miserable for what you know are cruel behaviors does not make those behaviors any less cruel or your husband suffer any less.
Let’s review. You were assaulted. This is terrible, no doubt about it. You elected to not seek help. This is monumentally stupid, but not terrible on its own. You then proceded to punish your own husband for the ensuing trauma. Had you become unreceptive to sex generally it would have been bad but understandable, as long as you comitted to getting help. However you are effectively telling your husband “Sex is disgusting. With you. With my boyfriend it’s awesome!” This is not OK, assault or no assault.
Either divorce your husband so he doesn’t have to put up with your emotional abuse or put bf on hold and get therapy.
We didn’t get a lot of details in PTSD’s letter (as I understand is necessary due to editing), but it’s entirely possible that the husband is doing something differently (probably not his fault!) that is resulting in her being triggered, but it isn’t happening with the boyfriend for whatever reason.
If she kicks the boyfriend out of her life, she’s losing out on a source of support AND a potential answer to solving this problem. It’s possible that with therapy she can work out why it is that sex with the boyfriend does not trigger memories of the assault, but sex with the husband does–and the answer is almost definitely NOT that she has stopped loving her husband and wants out of the marriage.
Just because her boyfriend is her secondary (from what it sounds like) doesn’t mean that their relationship isn’t important, or that it should be dropped just because the husband is having problems. The husband should realize that his wife’s reaction is likely due to the complicated and confusing ways that our brains react to trauma, not something personal. They should see her healthy sex life with her boyfriend as a path to healing and returning to having emotionally-safe sex with her husband.
addendum: reading your response to TMF, I immediately thought of “Tiny Hats” http://www.cartoonbrew.com/site-news/cbt…
Ever kiss the the tip of a parasitic twin’s nose?
Nope, just doesn’t quite have that ring to it.
@5: First of all, it’s not “monumentally stupid” that she hasn’t sought help before. Many assault survivors have a hard time telling people, at least partially because of victim-blaming reactions. I’m not accusing you or Dan of victim-blaming, but the “verbal lashing” is not helpful, because it implies that she has control over how she’s reacting, and that isn’t the case.
Something is triggering her when she’s with her husband, but not with her boyfriend. We don’t know what that is, and she might not know what that is, but her different reactions are not her fault. I may have PTSD (in the process of finding out) from a trauma, but whether or not either of us meet the official criteria, I do have triggers and it sounds like that’s exactly what she’s experiencing. Triggers are weird, and it can be hard to figure out–especially right after it happens–why some things are triggering and others are not. I’ve been triggered by a pillow.
It could be that her husband reminds her of her assailant. If he has a similar body type, or smell, or personality in any way, that could be it. If they’re having sex in their home and that’s where she was assaulted (or even where she used to have consensual sex with that partner), that could be it. In her letter she mentions trying to go ahead and have sex with her husband anyway–because that’s what she thought she was supposed to do–and being triggered. It’s possible that her well-meaning attempts set her back with her husband because now when she thinks of sex with him it reminds her of that, which reminds her of her assault.
It’s an incredibly good sign that she is able to have sex with her boyfriend. It’s completely understandable that her husband is taking that personally, but they all need to understand that it’s not about him… it’s just about the way our brains develop memories in response to trauma, and how that can be strange and unpredictable and incredibly hard to conquer. If she breaks up with her boyfriend–especially if she does it out of some sense of obligation to her husband, but doesn’t really want to–it will just create further resentment and trauma. They all need to work together to support her and her husband through this, not start cutting people out of their lives.
It may be a good idea to scale back sex with the boyfriend for the time being, but that’s a conversation he should be involved in. Cutting him off unilaterally (whether that’s just sex or in an emotional capacity, too… but I don’t think the husband would be satisfied if he stayed on in an emotional capacity, because he’s feeling hurt and jealous…) isn’t fair to anyone involved.
You may have a “bifurcated clitoral glans” (it’s not common, but it’s not abnormal either), but you don’t have two clits (your clit is actually as large in volume as an average penis, and includes a heck of a lot of stuff that you can’t see.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clitoris
Is it possible that she blames the husband on some level? If it was his idea to open things then some part of her could be thinking it’s his fault that she got hurt.
@6, I can’t believe you’re blaming the husband! It is horrible that the woman was a victim of sexual assualt, but like Dan said, that does not give her a right to treat her husband like shit and continue to have fun loving sex with the boyfriend!! What about his needs and feelings? There is such a thing as being to feminist, and it sounds like you are willing to give anybody who was assualted a free pass to treat ANYBODY badly. I wonder if you would feel the same way if the genders are reversed? As Dan always says, your 1st responsibilty is to your primary partner. She shoudl stop seeing the boyfriend right now, because now she is just perpetuating the cycle of abuse by emotionally abusing her poor husband.I have known plenty victims of abuse, my mother being ome of them, and sometimes you just have to call them out on their hypocritical bullshit.
If SUB is in the Vegas area, I am currently available. >>
And to PTSD, here is a resource for poly-friendly professionals so you can get help from a therapist who won’t jump to conclusions about your open relationship:
http://www.polychromatic.com/pfp/main.ph…
@12: I’m not blaming the husband, and I’m not taking her side just because she’s a woman, or trying to give her a free pass. But I think she already does recognize that she is hurting her husband (albeit unintentionally), so I don’t feel the need to browbeat her on that. And I don’t think that what she’s doing to her husband is emotional abuse. This isn’t a case where you have to pick one side and say that person is to blame, either the husband, the wife or the boyfriend. If we’re going to blame anyone, it should be her assailant.
I want her husband’s pain to stop, and I want her pain to stop, and I want that to happen without causing additional pain to her and her boyfriend if possible. I just don’t think that her reactions to sex are her fault, or that stopping things with her boyfriend will make things better–I think it will just make things worse. I think they all need to come together and (with the help of a therapist) figure out how to be mutually supportive.
Dan’s reaction is something he’s done a few times… his idea of an open relationship is one where the primary partner gets to call everything off and force the other primary to break up with their other partners at a moment’s notice. I don’t think that’s fair, or healthy, or stable. There are ways to resolve this without forcing this woman who has already gone through so much to lose someone she loves.
Look at you SUB, getting all this attention…looks like you won’t have a problem nailing one of us down – or rather getting one of us to nail YOU down…
I read TMF’s letter and the first thing I thought was “man I wish I had two working penises, that would be awesome.” I have no idea how that would work biologically speaking, but it would make getting laid a lot more interesting.
I have spent too much time thinking about this already.
SUB, if you find a vanilla who says she’ll be perverted for you, please make sure she will actually do it BEFORE you fall in love/marry her. It would have saved me a lot of heartache if I hadn’t beleived my bf when he said that a wedding ring was a prerequisite for tying him up.
-Chained Unicorn
@15: Yes, what she is doing is emotional abuse. It’s reprehensible and her being attacked does not, as Dan put it, give her a “get out of being a human free” card. She is knowingly causing her husband distress and she is knowingly doing something he has expressly told her he is not comfortable with and rather than getting therapy and trying to actually work through her own issues and the issues of her marriage, she’s just ignoring her husband and his wishes and running off to fuck her boyfriend. That’s not helpful to anyone, that’s just being avoidant and making a bad situation even worse.
If the boyfriend isn’t a completely terrible person, he will understand when she says “we need to cool it for now because it’s ruining my marriage.” If PTSD isn’t a completely terrible person, she’ll cool things off with her boyfriend until she gets her head in gear because what she’s doing is killing her marriage and if I were the husband in this I would already be talking to my lawyer.
It’s a *relationship*, kids. That means you put at least a modicum of thought towards each other’s feelings and wishes once in a while. If you can’t do that, then you shouldn’t be married – open or not.
or trying to give her a free pass.
Yes, you are, when you write–
her reactions (are) not her fault
First off, assigning blame is useless, and usually leads to the various hard feelings present in PSTD’s situation. Second, taking responsibility and assigning blame are two completely different things. PSTD’s reactions are her own, and there’s no fault involved.
I had my own reactions to PSTD’s letter, and found them in Dan’s 2nd & 3rd paragraphs. PSTD writes like she really *wants* to love her husband like she used to, but she’s not feeling it, and is acting on those feelings. She has two choices: she chooses to act on her desires to love her husband, or admits that the love simply isn’t there anymore & takes steps accordingly. Either way, it’s up to her.
And this is actually quite healing, because it takes her out of the victim mode, and puts her back where she truly belongs: In the driver’s seat of her own life.
@sacculina — It’d be helpful if we knew what was going on with the boyfriend, exactly — does he even know about the assault, does he know about the state of PTSD’s relationship with her husband, etc.? It feels like a good secondary partner should be more considerate/aware of the whole situation. Yes, the writer needs comfort in a time like this, but the point of a secondary partner is the fact that they’re the secondary partner. Sure, generally that means less of the responsibility but it sounds like this is rapidly reaching the point where all three of these people need to sit down and have a chat (possibly with one of the therapists your mentioned) about how this triangle is balanced.
And if it comes to it, if this boyfriend is someone worth having in this relationship, he should be willing to back off for a bit if he is in fact part of the problem.
I’m not arguing with you, but like you I feel like that something’s been left out — not as much from editing, but possibly something that PTSD didn’t think was important or vital to add. (Maybe her husband wants her to press charges/speak to a counselor and her boyfriend isn’t asking her to confront what happened.)
@9 (aka Junior Therapist):Yes it is monumentally stupid that she hasn’t sought help. Her marriage is falling apart. She’s rejecting her husband and mourning the loss of the man who assaulted her. I doubt that hubby is as cheered as you are that “It’s an incredibly good sign that she is able to have sex with her boyfriend.”
Dan’s right… she’s using this event as an excuse for her cruel and thoughtless behavior. Doing that helps no one, especially herself. She’ll be stuck there as longs as she continues to wallow in it. No one says she HAS to have sex with her husband, but she should at least work through it with at therapist and figger out what to do.
Best odds: Pay for it, already.
I am *so* glad I wasn’t drinking something at that point.
I’d say she can’t help how she feels about sleeping with one and not the other, BUT Dan is absolutely right overall because she *can* help what she actually *does* about it.
She *can* talk to both of them, outline the problem, and get herself into some kind of therapy if she wants to keep the relationship she has with her husband. Not doing that is the cruel and thoughtless part. And shoot, if I were the boyfriend and saw her dumping her husband like that I’d haul my ass out of there too.
PTSD’s reactions may not be her fault, but WHAT SHE DOES ABOUT THEM 100% absolutely is.
Part of them is to recognize that this source of support is a source of pain for her husband.
Now you can argue that he should be more open, more accepting, whatever.
But when you commit to marriage, you commit to holding THAT PERSON’S desires and feelings equal to your own, and treating them with respect.
And what that means is that when the problem is *yours*, and part of what you had before is broken – whether it’s your fault or not – you get yourself help, and you place primary importance on fixing that part.
What’s that you say? She needs to fix herself first before she fixes her marriage? EXACTLY. Fixing herself will be PART of what helps to fix her marriage.
She does not get to treat her husband and his desires and feelings as disposable in the meantime. She committed to more than that when she married him.
On the BS radar btw – nobody here, not the husband, not Dan, told PTSD to give her boyfriend up. They said “stop sleeping with him – for now”. She can still see him. He’s still there. But he probably has to backburner because he is distracting from the primary issue she has to solve.
I would be much more willing to accept PTSD’s argument that the sexual portion of her relationship with her BF is too important a support to give up right now if AS SOON AS she figured out that fucking her husband was making her skin crawl, and fucking her boyfriend wasn’t, she ran her butt into therapy, and was working on processing it. If she was asking her husband to come to therapy with her. If she had a therapist backing her up in any way shape or form based on intimate knowledge of what was going on in her life.
But she doesn’t have any of these things. Why not?
Because she discovered she had a problem. And instead of looking for help – from the obvious sources – to solve it, she has allowed it to continue and asked everybody around her to allow it to continue while she does nothing ACTIVE to help her get past it.
That’s a form of unreasonable entitlement and it’s pure bullshit.
She doesn’t get to ask ANYBODY to put up with that. Not and realistically expect them to go along with it.
@21: I’m intrigued by the point that maybe the BF doesn’t even know about her assault. Maybe that’s colouring her experiences with him (and away from her husband) … he’s someone who can representative the world outside that painful sphere (which her husband, informed, unfortunately occupies).
I agree with comments that believe she’s not communicating enough with ANY of them, and certainly not doing herself any favours by not hauling her ass NOW into therapy (with her husband, and potentially, with her boyfriend too … all together, or not).
I think it’s a very good sign she still wants sex with anyone, but I do sympathize with the husband: He didn’t suffer any assault, but he has been witness to her pain, and now he’s also suffered a treatment that basically puts him on the level of the man who caused her that.
LW needs to get to therapy now. Once she’s there, maybe she’ll find she won’t need to rely on her BF sex so much as her outlet, her source of support. It sounds like right now because she doesn’t have any other avenues, this BF’s help is becoming disproportionately important.
What I thought was most telling was the last paragraph of PTSD’s letter, where she equates the loss of her husband with the loss of the THE GUY WHO ASSAULTED HER.
I’m guessing that’s why she hasn’t sought counseling/pressed charges, etc – In a situation like hers, many victims feel conflicted and guilty for still having feelings for the person who violated them. It sounds like she’s lumped her husband in with that situation/emotion, for a variety of possible reasons.
Either way, to PTSD: Dick therapy with the boyfriend might be healing, but it’s intentionally, unacceptably cruel to a person you allegedly love.
Cut the husband loose (there’s no indication you actually WANT to heal things with him in your letter, just that you’re sorry he’s sad), get therapy. Maybe try being single entirely while doing so. Being assaulted doesn’t mean you have to be alone, but it doesn’t sound like the sex you’re having is helping you deal with it in a healthy way.
@15, the thing is, relationships are hard. All relationships, and I understand that. I realize she feels horrible too. Actions speak louder than words though, so by emotionally and physically rejecting her husband she is causing emotional damage to their relationship. The husband has actually communicated to her that he would like her to pay attention to HIM, focus on their relationship. She is married to him, so yes, she should do as he asks and stop being so self involved. I agree they should go to therapy, but I think the husband and wife need to work on their problems first with the therapist, because otherwise there could be ganging up on the husband from her and the boyfriend. So either she should focus on her misused husband that did not sexually assualt her, and therefore deserves the respect of HIS wife or she should get a divorce and leave the man alone. She is showing no consideration for his feelings, and that is emotional abuse. Especially the the way she fails to attempt to handle anything in any sort of respectful way.
Re PTSD: the first thing that occurs to me is that maybe sex with the husband feels somehow obligatory, and this sense of obligation is linked to being forced, i.e., assaulted. The boyfriend is entirely optional, so it doesn’t trigger the same reaction.
That said, PTSD, what you are doing to your husband is indeed abusive to him, and if you continue the way you are going now, you WILL lose him. Dan laid out the two things you need to do, if you don’t want that to happen:
1) Fucking Get Help. NOW.
2) Drop the boyfriend until you are no longer revolted by your husband. You may not be able yet to have sex with him without being triggered for a while yet. But I guarantee that his hurt and anger about you continuing with the boyfriend while shutting him out will only fester and prevent the healing between you.
You claim to want both of them. You may eventually get both of them back. But there is no good way to hold onto both of them right now. If you don’t give up the boyfriend for the time being, for the sake of the husband, you WILL lose one of them.
I’m 100% with Dan on PTSD. I also echo other comments: she doesn’t have to give up the boyfriend FOREVER AND EVER OMG. Just cool it down for a bit, work on herself/her marriage, and when she is feeling less skin-crawly and her husband less jealous, the arrangement can be re-negotiated.
However, I have this sneaking suspicion if PTSD were a good poly, this would have already occurred to her. There is no excuse ever for assault, but it feels as if she’s using it as an excuse to become further involved with the secondary and drift from the husband. Frankly, while reading Dan’s response, I was impressed, because I probably would have been even harsher on the LW.
Thanks for the answer Dan, you’re a swell guy.
@4 Middle.
@13 Nowhere near there :[
I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned the best option for WPOS – find an anti-gay politician. Or preacher. Whichever.
@32 Yabbut… them guys were covered here: Please don’t say, “Settle for a very straight-acting and straight-looking gay guy.”
PTSD’s story is so sad. Everybody’s posting on this like it can be fixed–and maybe it can’t. No husband could not take personally, “I can’t have sex with you because you remind me of my rapist”. The loss of trust and intimacy for both of them is pure poison. Add the fun poly wrinkle of I can still have amazing sex with my boyfriend and you’ve got a house burning down to the foundation.
Life sure ain’t fair.
“Dan’s … idea of an open relationship is one where the primary partner gets to call everything off and force the other primary to break up with their other partners at a moment’s notice.”
What exactly about the word “primary” don’t you understand?
If you run into a rough patch, and keeping the relationship with one or more “secondaries” is more important than the feelings of the “primary” then the “primary” has become the lesser of the two considerations. That’s the definition of “secondary.”
“Primary” is not synonymous with “can be trusted to put up with my shit more reliably than anyone else.”
I agree with many posters in this thread, that while PTSD may be not be able to control her feelings, she can control her actions. And right now her actions are putting her spouse into quite the personal hell.
I’m kinda surprised that her reaction to her spouse hasn’t bothered her so much that she hasn’t made fixing it top priority in her life, and instead keeps bonking the boyfriend. When either my SO or I have serious stress, grief, trauma, health problems or depression in our lives, the other person puts sex on hold if that is necessary while the problem gets worked through. I would hope most truly committed couples would have similar priorities.
@ 18 – My heart goes out to you – but why are you still there?
You’re supposed to be the one putting the chains on, not the one wearing them.
@32 Yabbut… them guys were covered here: Please don’t say, “Settle for a very straight-acting and straight-looking gay guy.”
@ 34 – You’re right. It may not be possible to fix her marriage. Maybe fixing herself pulls herself away from a marriage that wasn’t or no longer is right for her.
But she damn sure won’t know until she tries. Until she starts thinking from the mentality of a Survivor rather than a Victim.
Because a Survivor legitimately gets to say – “This incident affected me badly and changed my life. Even though I tried *my best*, I couldn’t recapture what it was before and I had to let it go.”
“Victims” don’t.
Dan is exactly right about PTSD, and that marriage needs to end now.
WPOS: I’m a straight guy here. I don’t really need my boots cleaned, but I am frequently in desperate need of someone to clean my floors, do my dishes, or clean my bathroom. I’m sure there are plenty of straight guys who would love free cleaning help and some of them would be willing to degrade you. Thought about posting ads offering to work as a housekeeper?
Sorry about the duplicate! It hung for ages and when I refreshed, after coming back to the computer, it posted it again, apparently…
@34, I couldn’t agree more with you. It’s really sad an unfair.
Here’s my take: PTSD isn’t guilty of her reaction to her husband and boyfriend. But (and again perhaps because of the abuse) she’s avoiding the difficult, hard, yet necessary look at her life; she’s avoiding the responsibility of confronting the situation and deciding what it is that she wants to do, and why. She should try to get some therapy, preferably together with her husband (and maybe even her boyfriend, if she can find a sufficiently open-minded therapist) and work through these issues.
Is this difficult because of the trauma of having been assaulted? Well, this trauma is precisely one of the best reasons why she should seek counseling. She is avoiding a problem, pretending it doesn’t exist or will somehow solve itself spontaneously. Contacting Dan and asking for advice is already a step in the good direction; at least she isn’t just running away from the situation. The next step indeed has to be to get help. Counseling.
It may be too late already. Maybe because of the assault; maybe because of issues that existed before but were painfully brought to the surface by the assault; it feels like she doesn’t want to be her husband’s wife anymore. Maybe I’m wrong (hell, she’s the one who should be asking herself this question, not me), but it does seem to be a plausible explanation. If that’s the case — if what she really wants now is to have her boyfriend as her husband and to leave her current husband — then that’s what she should do. For herself, so that she isn’t in such a guilt-and-blame-ridden situation that tears hearts apart. And for her husband, so that he can start the slow and painful process of healing and have another go at finding happiness with some other women.
Please, PSTD and hubby: get your asses into a therapist’s office, and start communicating. I don’t know if your relationship can be salvaged; maybe it’s indeed too late. But you have to understand what is going on, so that you can make the best decisions for your lives. Do that as soon as possible, or else the resulting emotional catastrophe will be much worse, for both of you, and for much longer.
@34: Well, she did write in asking for advice, after all. The presumption is that she wants to at least try to save it.
On the whole, though, I agree: it sounds pretty damned doomed to me. Even if she takes Dan’s advice, she is going to resent it.
My honest reaction is that the husband should change the locks and tell her it’s time for her to earn a place in his life. Their existing marriage is, if not dead, certainly lying in a crumpled, twitching, heap, vomiting blood. It’s time for a hard reset. If she wants a life with him, she can damned well pursue him. Whether she steps up to that challenge, or feels a huge relief to be set free, will tell both of them all they need to know.
Dear TMF child,
Look up “bifid clitoris” on Google. You will find that “two clits” is often a result of horrible birth defects affecting daily issues such as taking a normal pee or worse. Not really funny anymore, is it?
Dear TMF child,
Look up “bifid clitoris” on Google. You will find that “two clits” is often a result of horrible birth defects affecting daily issues such as taking a normal pee or worse. Not really funny anymore, is it?
PTSD made me wonder if her issue with her husband is a semi-unconscious feeling that he should have somehow protected her from the assault, a “responsibility” none of her secondaries would have, and since the husband “failed” there are resentment issues messing up their sex life that don’t apply to her boyfriend. just a thought
@45 Symptoms of a bifid clitoris do not include constant orgasms brought on by movement. It is a physical anomaly which is usually accompanied by other deformations and defects. It isn’t particularly “funny” but the letter writer’s supposition that having bifid clitoris means constant sexual arousal is kind of hilarious.
@15
Sacculina wrote:
“Dan’s … idea of an open relationship is one where the primary partner gets to call everything off and force the other primary to break up with their other partners at a moment’s notice.”
This isn’t just Dan’s view. It is the ONLY arrangement that I, and many others I know, would accept as a foundation for an open relationship. Sex is fraught with emotional danger. Open relationships are inherently dangerous, and in my experience they work only when there is absolute security in the primary relationship. Each partner knowing that they can go back to the security of monogamy whenever they feel that need is what mitigates the dangers of the open relationship, and allows it to happen.
I would not be involved in an open relationship that did not have that “instant veto” clause built in, and I have seen, over and over again, the misery that results when that sort of rule is not present and taken very seriously.
If PTSD was truly serious about maintaining a “healthy” relationship with her husband (yes, “healthy” does imply a sexual component), she would have gone to therapy (*any* sort of therapy, well, besides getting her dick needs met by her BF) long ago. I think that the posters who mentioned the idea of her revulsion being tied into an underlying resentment for her husband are correct. She should either move forward or start cutting ties.
@15
Sacculina wrote:
“Dan’s … idea of an open relationship is one where the primary partner gets to call everything off and force the other primary to break up with their other partners at a moment’s notice.”
This isn’t just Dan’s view. It is the ONLY arrangement that I, and many others I know, would accept as a foundation for an open relationship. Sex is fraught with emotional danger. Open relationships are inherently dangerous, and in my experience they work only when there is absolute security in the primary relationship. Each partner knowing that they can go back to the security of monogamy whenever they feel that need is what mitigates the dangers of the open relationship, and allows it to happen.
I would never be involved in an open relationship that did not have that “instant veto” clause built in, and I have seen, over and over again, the misery that results when that sort of agreement is not taken very seriously.