“Dear Dr. Kim”

Advice

“Dear Dr. Kim:

“Not only has my wife now gone off sex altogether, she won’t even kiss me. She says it makes her feel “dirty and disgusting” and that it’s just not something she wants to do any more. I don’t understand where this has come from, but it’s beginning to break my heart.

“I’m 55 and she is 49. We have been married for 20 years and now have two grown-up children. While we’ve never had the most exciting sex life, we always used to make time for a bit of intimacy. Now she no longer touches me, and even when I try to kiss her or cuddle her, she makes it clear how uncomfortable she is about it. I’ve tried everything but she is making me feel unattractive and unwanted.

“How can I solve this problem? I miss feeling close to her.

— Rejected, Cambridge

Dear Rejected:

Of all the ways a woman can reject a man, telling him that intimacy makes her feel “dirty and disgusting” has to be the most brutal.  So why is she doing this to you?

She’s having an affair.

No point whining about it;  it’s a done deal.  If you don’t want to get a divorce, move all your stuff into another bedroom (you should have one, as your kids are grown), and then start living a separate life from her:  women, friends, late nights and so on.  When you go out, don’t tell her where you’re going or when she can expect you back.  If she asks if you’re seeing another woman, tell her it’s none of her business.  Tell her that “closeness” is a two-way street, and as she’s walked away from you, you’re not going to beg for it.

Don’t even bother negotiating with her, and don’t listen to her if she wants “things to go back to the way they used to be”.

By the way:  if she’s not having an affair, then she has psychological problems that are so profound that there’s no point in you trying to understand or fix them.

In either case, my advice is the same:  dump her and get on with your own life.

 

2 comments

  1. Why should he move to another room? Put her crap in the other room and let her sleep on the guest bed. She is the one breaking fidelity in her marriage. Then inform her that she either seeks counseling (on her own and with her husband) whereupon you will inform said counselor of her brutal and uncaring treatment. Let her sleep on the uncomfortable hide-a-bed with the closet space a quarter of what she’s used to. She’s the one who wounded the relationship, let her be the one who is uncomfortable. Oh, and make sure the kids know why mom is sleeping in the guest room they’d normally stay in.

    “But wyseguy”, you say, “what about the Bible saying love your wife?” You know, if I wake up in the middle of the night and my neighbor’s house is on fire, love would look a lot like breaking and entering and felonious assault after I kick in their front door and drag their unconscious bodies out to the sidewalk. Regardless if this woman realizes it or not, she is the one who poured gasoline on the living room floor of her life and struck a match then thought she could go sleep safe and sound in her bed. And maybe, she needs it spelled out under no uncertain terms the pain she has inflicted and continues to inflict every last day she stays in a relationship she has no desire to remain faithful to (yes, sexual neglect of this form is infidelity) or stays in a relationship with severe mental health issues. Either way something must be addressed in her life and she shouldn’t get to be comfortable while she decides IF she is going to do something about it. Be prepared to forgive if there is actions which correspond to a true change of heart, but that doesn’t mean make her comfortable in the interim.

    Remember folks, if the roles were reversed and she had reason to suspect he was cheating on her, leaving his stuff in a pile of garbage bags on the font lawn and hiring a locksmith to change the locks would be a perfectly acceptable response. As such, I don’t think it a bridge too far or even unchivalrous to move her stuff in to a guest bedroom and forbid her to sleep in the marital bed.

    The hard reality women need to start facing in our society is they frequently suck just as much at marriage as men do. They just suck at it in ways that are more socially acceptable to neglect/mismanage and far too often a woman’s infidelity is often blamed on her husband anyway.

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