I have not cheated on my wife. But God I really want to.

[Concerns]

So here it goes. BPD fam. My safety zone. Firstly, I have not cheated on my wife.

But God I really want to. Having replied to a different thread about lack of intimacy, I will post my feelings here. My BPD/PTSD wife and I haven't had sex or been intimate for a long time. Like so many other stories, the beginning sexual life was fantastic. Once she started to let her true self out, the sex and intimacy was gone. Before her first round of meds, it has been every excuse under the sun not to have it, then blamed the meds, then said she was not interested in sex at all, then she was asexual. We moved. She got a new job, went off her meds, and met a new girlfriend (which is very unusual). At that point, our relationship started to deteriorate. I know exactly what happened but I digress. Now we were "just living like roomates", she wanted a life with someone to love in it and I was not that person. Now she wanted intimacy, now she wanted all the things she rejected for years. She goes out, gets wasted and so far I count 8 men in like 2mths. So she is going out and giving more affection to strangers than to me. I know its not "real" affection but I don't get any touching,kissing,nothing. It's been 5 years. Needless to say I'm hurt and pissed but also I'm a sexual person. I was when we met. This is not me.

I want to be the person I was. I masturbate. I watch porno. I look at Craigslist. Where we live CL is filled with hookers. I look but I will not pay. We simply don't have the money. But if I did, I might. Also I don't want to risk some exposure to my son. So that's out. I don't go out.

But I am wanting. Seriously. I want my wife but that just doesn't seem possible. I'm a man and I have been degraded for too long. The struggle is real. I don't want to cheat but I really want to.

[PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES]

PLEASE - NO RUN MESSAGES This is a high level discussion board for solving ongoing, day-to-day relationship conflicts. Members may appear frustrated but they are here for constructive solutions to problems. This is not a place for relationship "stay" or "leave" discussions. Please read the specific guidelines for this group.

[formflier]

  OK, some stuff to work through here.  How long has it been since you and your wife have had sex?  Did I understand your post that she is going out and having sex with other guys?   If so how are you aware of this?  Is your aversion to cheating a moral thing?  Religious?  I'm asking why not up until now.    We certainly won't be able to tell you it is or isn't ok to go cheat.  But we can help you work through the issue, look at it from all angles, so you can make an informed decision.  I would also encourage you to post regularly and stay engaged with learning about what you can do to lead your r/s to a better place, one step at a time.  We can help with this issue.  Hang in there!        

FF

[MaybeSo]

Of course you want to be sexual with someone else.   You are a human being.

I guess you have some choices to make concerning yourself and your value system.  Some possible choices to consider are:

1-Modify your values and principles to accommodate the limitations of the r/s you have chosen to be in, and give yourself permission to be sexual with someone else outside your r/s.  (Not as payback to wife, but as a form of self care).  With the amount of activity that your wife is engaged in (from your reporting), your marriage is not about sexual fidelity anyway.  It may be about other things, but it is not about sexual fidelity.   If the answer is that this doesn't fit your value system to stray that way,  you have to look closely on how you are possibly already taking steps to modify your value system to accommodate this relationship.  in real life, people do make decisions to modify their value system given real life circumstances.  If staying celebate and married no matter how destructive your partner is behaving and you are not willing to modify that value system... .then I guess you have kind of painted yourself into a corner and you will have to stay celibate.

2-Leave the marriage so you can have a healthy sexual relationship with another person.  This again may not fit into your value system, see above.  I see there are children, so I know it can be complex.  Children benefit from seeing their parents engage in healthy initmacy and they benefit from seeing parents who are happy.  It takes a lot of pressure off them.  But, I also know it's complicated to have children with an ill partner. In theory, it would be healthier and more real for you to have a real relationship with a real woman who is healthy (outside your marriage) then to go to prostitutes or rely on pornography. The former makes you relate to a real person which is a healthy process.   The later usually just ends up in an addictive process that lacks soul.  People who are preoccupied and addicted are not happy, present people.   Not good for you, not good for your kids.  

3-Engage in other forms of enriching human connection.  In terms of the need for actual touch, some folks start to do a lot of body work, yoga, therapuetic massage (sensual, not sexual) because people do need to be touched and caressed and to feel connection to others.  This allows for that without it crossing over into areas that may conflict with your value system. If you are connecting well with other people and are touched regularily... .it can really help.  Of course there is nothing wrong with masturbation, most folks do that at times even when they are in a good relationship. But, these are things that some people do until the children are older, and then more options may become available. Luckily, children are not children for very long relative to our life-span.

4-Continue to work on the relationship with your wife so that you two can have a good sexual life again.  But this cannot be at the expense of your own self-care. Well, it can and often is at the expense of self-care on this board... .but that is actually not healthy and can move into and addictive codependent process.  Your self care is of utmost importance for you to stay healthy.

[Concerns]

OK, some stuff to work through here.

How long has it been since you and your wife have had sex?

It's been 5 years. Well, 4.5 but we are getting close.

Did I understand your post that she is going out and having sex with other guys? If so how are you aware of this?

I believe she is. At one point, she was keeping extra underwear and a change of clothes behind the back seat of her car. When she was sexually active, she would buy fem wipes bc she didnt want to smell bad down there. I found a receipt and there was nothing in the house. I walk into the garage and I find a thong laying on the ground. I go out to the car and discovered the cache behind her back seat. I was suspicious already. She would go out with her new single girlfriend and texts would be deleted. She would get incoming messages from men she met that would be deleted on her phone. How did I know? I checked the text logs and compared them to her phone. I looked up one of the numbers and it was a guy with a profile linked to his business and his number was connected to it. I investigated her basically. She denies meeting any men at all. It's just a lie. I expect guys to try and pick her up but I get suspicious when she flat out lies about it. I suppose I don't really have any true evidence but all evidence points to sex with at least one or a couple of them. She did come down with a pretty nasty kidney infection out of nowhere as well.


Is your aversion to cheating a moral thing?  Religious?  I'm asking why not up until now. 


Well, its basically a moral choice. I love my wife and would prefer to have an intimate relationship with her. Cheating takes time and money. My schedule is pretty much on lockdown between work and caring for the kiddo. I don't really have outside personal time. I love my family and I really haven't wanted to risk it. But I am lonely. I've done my best to care for her and, now more than ever, I'm feeling more like a doormat than a valued individual. I know this spreads into more than just satisfying my sexual needs. I've been trying to build the relationship.

[Concerns]

Thanks, MaybeSo. There is some really good advice in that post. Some I haven't considered.

[formflier]

 I don't really have outside personal time.  

       For some reason, this really jumped out at me.  I believe that if you had outside personal time, that you would be more effective in your work and your family.  OK, back to the post.  If she is cheating, do you want to try to save the marriage?    If she is not cheating, do you want to try to save the marriage?  Basically, does it matter?  If so, how much?  Remember, these are your values and your life.    Regardless of what is is actually physically doing with other people, her head is other places, that is obvious.    There is a lot you can do to improve the r/s (without her paticipation) this will take a lot of effort.  She may still reject after that.   Basically no guarantees.  Your answers will determine a lot of the advice I will offer.  I want to assume as little as possible.  When was the last time you guys have a reasonable "hear to heart" talk about the relationship?        

FF

[Ceruleanblue]

Are you able to talk to her without it getting ugly? Can you share your concerns with her, and let her know that you don't want to cheat, but that your needs are not being met, and you wish she would meet them? Can a compromise be reached? Maybe there are some things she needs in order to be intimate with you?

Is marriage therapy or counseling an option? If not, could you check out some library books about BPD, or ones that relate to sex in marriage? I think resentment, and needs not being met can be a huge sex killer in marriage. Is she resentful about anything?

I mean, you could be the best husband, and she might still be harboring resentment. It might be something to ask her about, or to work on.

[Notwendy]

These threads have really made me think of how this must feel from the H's perspective. This isn't our issue as I have felt that sex was essential to marriage and even if things were tough would feel that the lack of this would be a serious wound to the marriage. The issue we dealt with was my H not being happy with what I could do from the heart. It didn't seem to matter what the frequency was- he'd be yelling " we never have sex" if it was two days ago. Although I think he has made some efforts to make things better, I still have my own resentments over feeling that no matter what I did or how much it wouldn't be recognized or even remembered and just became resentful.

There is sex that is just sex, and then, there is marital sex- which I think is what people get married for- a deep connected relationship that is both physical and emotional. Nothing wrong with either, but I think it is important to decide what we want. I think the reason that there are so many issues related to intimacy in dysfunctional marriages is that the emotional issues affect the physical. It is said that sex starts in the brain, and when two people are hurting emotionally, that has to affect it.

Marriage is an agreement and I think people have their deal breakers. I know that no sex, or cheating, would be deal breakers in my marriage. This isn't the reason why it either of these has not occurred, but it is something that we both know would be seriously damaging and at this time, we both care enough about the relationship to not damage it this way. Somewhere, somehow, your wife has decided that this is acceptable - in the sense that she can have a marriage without sex. Not that you force anyone to have sex if they don't want to , or that you force her into a corner, but choosing to be married and celibate is also putting the spouse in a difficult situation. Both are hurtful.

So you want to cheat? Sure, you are human and that is not surprising. As humans, we are driven to be sexual. But unlike our animal counterparts that would just go out and jump on another animal, we are more complicated than that. Also, our actions have consequences. No doubt you have weighed all of this in your mind a lot. You know that cheating may fulfill a need, but it won't help your marriage. The fact that you have not cheated even under these conditions demonstrates your investment in your marriage.

I think Maybeso has made some really good points. The issue of " to cheat or not to cheat" is within you, not your wife, even though the reason for considering it lies with her imposing celibacy in your marriage. I am sure you have considered how you will feel about yourself if you do and the pros and cons of this.

However, as difficult as it is to approach this with your wife, the alternative to "cheating" which is to do something without her knowledge is to discuss this with her, not as an ultimatum but as a expression that being married and celibate is unacceptable to you. She then has some decisions to think about. This may also risk your marriage, but consider that so does cheating. By cheating, especially with a prostitute - you will get sex, and that may be fine with you, but if you wish for marital sex, it may be a poor substitute.

[waverider]

Do you want to cheat (or at least fantasize about it) as you want validation and fulfillment?

It will not be fulfilling if you did, it would either make you feel worse, or it will give you a "grass is greener" feel akin to addiction, and once that door is open it repeats. It is hard, complicated and messy leading to even more deceit. The hole in your life will not be filled it just gets enlarged.

Like most fantasies when you try to realize them you end up with a messed up reality and spoil the fantasy.

Thoughts of cheating are just the physical representation of general dissatisfaction with the relationship.

It often spells the beginning of the end.

[Notwendy]

WW said, more concisely, what I was trying to say. Indulging the fantasy may not be as fulfilling as the fantasy and could result in more damage to the marriage as well as to your well being- feeling badly about it.

Or as Dr. Phil says: "You never solve problems in a marriage by turning away from your partner, and you never solve them by bringing in a third party" 

[Skip]

What are the top reasons you want this relationship to work?

1. I love my wife.

2. I don't want my baby to be heartbroken. Because he would be. He loves our marriage. Like all children, he believes in the sanctity of his parents togetherness. I believe in it as well.

3. I feel with help, our family is better as a unit than split apart.

4. I feel that the approach to my wife's mental illness would be better served/approachable/treatable if we were together.

I don't know concerned, read a few members files over on Leaving where there has been infidelity. The view going in looks exciting and a lot less harmless than the look back at the carnage - the extended families whispers, the talk among friends, the forever loss of the title "a good man", and the most devastated person - the person carry the betrayal wound.

The number one lesson on "values and boundaries" is that we need to walk the talk before we can ask anyone else to follow our lead. After infidelity, there is little you can ask of others.

You're frustrated.

[Samuel S.]

Concerns, I understand the want and the need to even think about cheating. When you, other nonBPDs deal with the constant abuse and horrible behavior that eventually surfaces and yet you feel the need to be there for your SO, it is totally understandable to think about cheating.

I have dealt with my BPDw for the past 15 years. There had been one woman who gave me attention and really seemed to care about me. So, it was obvious that she was rather enticing to me. Eventually, I realized that her care was short-lived, and she was acting like my BPDw. So, that was it.

What I have found to be helpful is to be around people, professionals and families, who have similar interests. They have been so heart-warming. They have been great to be with in only non-intimate ways, but only as human beings worthy of respect and time.

In the meantime, I am still with my BPDw and getting guidance in order to determine the next path to pursue. OnceConfused recommended a book entitled "The Five Languages of Love" which is really great and meaningful. I am about to read the chapter entitled "Loving the Unlovely" which hopefully can help me that much more so.

I hope you find your way to have a meaningful life with or without your SO. After all, you are alive and deserving of love, respect, and trust.

[ArleighBurke]

Concerns: I feel for you - I'm in the same situation. I often wonder about having an affair as a way to be able to stay with my wife, to stay with her her illness, and be able to enjoy my life at the same time. It sounds exciting, and a neat solution, but deep down I know it won't work.

I love my wife and I miss her so much. I miss being happy with her, fun, sexual - I don't know if I'll ever get that back. Even now, we have functional sex, but it's not emotional sex. It's less and less fulfilling.

I need to make the tough decision - as do you. As other's have stated, perhaps you can get to a mindest where you are OK to cheat. Where you are OK that when people find out, that you are able to still stand tall. What about your kid? How would you feel if you found out your dad stayed with you mum for years "for love" while having a mistress. I agree with your reasoning, but this is an emotional issue, not a logical one. For me, I know that having an exciting mistress would become an addiction. I would not be satisfied - I would want more and more time, then time outside the bedroom, then weekends away. And I would start to compare my wife with my mistress... .For me, it would certainly be the beginning of the end. And what would my wife's reaction be when she found out. How would it affect custody, asset splits... .

No. The tough decision is to stay married, or to leave and not be married. To stay I need to find out how. I love affection, hugs, kisses - how do I get that? Perhaps I can get ok contact with friend's wives? Be above board, but make sure i hug them hello/goodbye. I have a 8yr old daughter - I can snuggle on the couch with her (for a little while - i need to be careful there too). Kissing? Skin? My wife doesn't kiss, but she seems OK with me spooning her. I can't get everything in the world - perhaps I put these physical desires with my desire for threesomes, sports car and drugs that I'll never have either. Instead I will get nourishment through sports, friends, interests - I will make all others areas of my life fantastic - so i don't notice the void between me and my wife. Perhaps that will work. Perhaps with time she and I can work it out.

Or I leave. Find my happninees elsewhere. Yes my children will grow up in a split home. But stats say that this is better than growing up in a home of unhappiness. I will always wonder if I did the right thing - whether I put in enough. I will never know.

Sometimes there is no "right" choice - it's about choosing the least bad solution.

And it sux.

[Notwendy]

What about the wives? Do they not have desires or wishes for physical contact?

I don't know the answer to this. I do know that having small children can fill a need for hugging, and indeed sometimes overwhelm a busy mother. I can recall being "needed" all day long by the kids, and then when my H came home, what I wanted was a moment to myself. But this is temporary- kids grow, being able to take a break by myself, - and the need for physical affection was still there.

I also became aware that I was more affectionate with my kids than my mother with BPD was with us. Not so much now as they are older, but it isn't unusual for me to hug my kids. I can not even remember my mother hugging me. When I visit now, there is that brief hello and goodbye formality, but it is a cold, quick gesture.

I think I may have a clue to the lack of physical contact. I think it is from some kind of emotional trauma or painful feeling and it is self protective. There was a time in the marriage where my H refused affection and it felt hurtful. He wants it now, and he says I should "get over it". I think he is right. However, physical affection can also bring up sadness and fear.  It is puzzling that this sadness has been something that is so difficult for me- which makes me wonder if it is linked to the feelings I may have had as a child, having a mother who didn't show affection and has "rejected" me at times- so when my H did it, it was an emotional trigger.

For women who were sexually abused, I can only imagine how difficult this must be.

But you know, sooner or later, we are going to do something that is hurtful in marriage, even if we don't mean it. So, when you were initially with your wives, the sex was great- and you had not hurt her yet. But once you did, it may have been a trigger for her.

My guess is that your wives may miss this as much as you do, but they are so scared, hurt, that they may have even disconnected from the feelings. It's hard to reach out when you now have been feeling rejected for so long, but perhaps there is some way you can begin to reconcile this, probably through counseling.

Another insight to your wives is that being touched by my mother gives me the creeps. The same hug from a trusted family member would feel good, but with her, it is like getting goosebumps all over. Because she rarely is physically affectionate, maybe she feels this way when someone is affectionate to her.

I have no proof ( and if someone did it, they are surely long dead by now as mom is elderly) but I suspect she was sexually or physically abused when she was young as her behaviors suggest it. However, I have no proof as everyone in her FOO maintains that nothing is wrong with my mother or any family member on their side.

I don't think anyone really was affectionate with me as a child although I don't recall being physically abused in any way. There was emotional abuse and I have had personal counseling for this. I do not have BPD , but have done a lot of work on co-dependency. I don't think it would be possible to grow up in my family and not take away some behavioral and emotional patterns to work on.

So, when I began dating and boys would be physically affectionate with me, hugging and kissing was overwhelming - in a good way, but overwhelming as I had not experienced much of this at home. However, like most early dating experiences, they didn't last past the emotional complications of relationships. We would break up, cry for a while, move on.  My marriage was different. My H had hurt my feelings, yet expected to continue the physical relationship but in this context, physical affection felt painful.

Imagine the black and white thinking world of a person with BPD. People who do not cause you to feel hurt feel good, and people who do hurt you activate the abuse feelings when you are touched. My mother touching me makes me want to run away. Imagine my H activating that memory.

From my perspective, it seemed my father did everything he could to make my mother happy. Yet from her perspective, she was a victim- of him, of her kids, and saw things that way. Because of the nature of BPD, we would inevitably trigger this. We are humans, we would inevitably do something that would result in her feeling pain and rage.

I don't know if this helps at all. For me, I don't have BPD and I don't see things in black and white. I have also worked diligently at understanding how I was raised and undoing patterns of thinking that are not good for my relationships. But I can see things from moms world because, in part, I learned from her.

Ironically, it may be easier for someone with BPD to be physical with someone she doesn't know as well, because that person has not had the chance to get into the complicated and potentially hurtful parts of relationships... .

If your wife feels that you have hurt her, then getting physically close to her might feel painful to her. You may have to start slowly- work harder at letting her know she is safe. She may fear that if she kisses you, it may be a fast trip to the bedroom, which she may not be able to manage at the time. But I think, she wants affection too.

[Concerns]

Well, exactly. I haven't cheated on my wife bc I don't really want to. Like MaybeSo said, adjust or don't. I understand that this type of longing isn't satisfied by excursions to greener pastures. It always seemed instinctively connected to her illness so I let it go until I thought we could get her some help. I was foolish to think this bc I didn't know anything about BPD at the time. I just knew she had a problem. Yet, a manifestation of her illness is to destroy the relationships around her. She proceeds to isolate and one of the methods of isolation is to deny/withold sexual intimacy that help build the relationship in the first place. Oh, the carnage... .I don't want to be a part of that. 

Well, her parents are our neighbors and they caught on to her cheating about the same time I did. They knew something was up with her.

She has actually given me permission but that, in itself, is a slippery slope. And I just don't believe her when she says it ok. I'm not going to jeopardize my custody. I almost feel like I'm being purposefully trapped to look worse than I actually am as some counterpoint to all her behaviors that jeopardize her own custody in the event of a divorce.

[formflier]

  So, what is your plan?    That's probably too big a question for right now, so I'll follow that up with.  What is a step you can take "in the right direction".  There are lots of things you can do with tools and lessons to help turn down the temp a bit in your r/s.  Ultimately this comes down to the kind of life that you want to build for you,   and your family.  Balance by the reality check of what is possible with a pwBPD.  You won't really know what is possible, until you have been consistent with tools and (hopefully) therapy for a while.  What are the parents doing/saying about this?        

FF  

[waverider]

At the end of the day you will have to make a choice, even if its a bad choice, even if all choices seem bad. Living live by default rather by choice disempowers you.

It is much easier to live with things if it is by choice, even doing nothing is ok, as long as its an educated choice.

Otherwise we get stuck in the victim mode.