My husband and I have been married a year and a half. We have been together for 5 years. he seems to feel that sex is the answer to everything.When I come home from work after working 12 hours he wants sex. If I’m depressed, he thinks sex can cure everything. He claims he is never too tired. He pouts when I tell him I’m not in the mood.He is 52 years old and often acts like a teenager where matters of sex are concerned. There was a time I would love to cuddle with him. But he always wants more. I am currently going through menopause and realize that my lack of sexual drive can be attributed to that. However, I also know that being made to feel like a sex object is another.I know my husband loves me a great deal. He is a recovering alcoholic/drug addict who has been clean for 18 years. However, I wonder if he sometimes isn’t substituting one addiction for another. I say this because when we were dating and the sex was very good, he still found it necessary to see someone else.We have both been married twice before this and I know he has encountered this problem in his other marriages. I don’t know what to do anymore. I often feel guilty and give in just so I don’t have to hear the nagging or the manipulative words he uses to try to make me feel guilty. He wants my attention at all times when he is home.
The problem here is that your husband has a very infantile, orally fixated personality. This type of disturbance is caused by his having been either emotionally starved as a young child and/or overindulged. The end result in both cases is a person who is a bottomless pit of need. His need is so huge that no amount of feeding satisfies him. This explains why he needed to have sex with someone else even when you two were having great sex. You need to see him as he is. A baby who needs his bottle (used to be his liquor bottle or pill bottle). Now he’s substituted these other bottles for mommy ‘s breast, and mommy ‘s undivided attention. I also have the sense that you are afraid that he will cheat on you again if you don’t give in to him. So basically you are being held hostage. Put out or be put out, is the way your relationship works. I wonder if you have discussed your feelings with him. If you haven’t, that ‘s the first step. You will likely need to have this discussion in front of a neutral third party, such as a good couples therapist. In the session, describe his behavior and the effect it has on you. He needs to become aware of the fact that he isn’t really dealing with his core issue–that is, his feeling of emptiness. Quitting the booze and the drugs, doesn’t heal these feelings. By filling the void with sex, he manages to continue avoiding getting in touch with the painful feelings that fuel his addictive behaviors. His only solution for him and for you is for him to feel his real feelings.
