The following story is fiction. It is based on a story I read on Reddit which was reported to be true. It is meant to be read for entertainment. Please save your judgmental proselytizing for someone who will listen.
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My wife and I didn't have a bad marriage. We met in college on a service trip. I was an accounting major at a small Midwestern liberal arts college looking for something more meaningful to do with my spring break. I signed up with a group heading to St. Louis for volunteer work with Habitat for Humanity helping renovate some homes in the poorer neighborhoods of East St. Louis. Linda was on the trip as well and we hit it off. It started out with us sharing a hammer because we didn't have enough tools. She didn't trust me swinging the hammer while she held the nail, so we traded back and forth. By the end of the week we were staying up until past midnight talking and sharing stories from our past. I told her the story about I fell out of a tree and broke my arm at my uncle's wedding. She told me about when she gave herself a concussion swimming the backstroke at a swim meet in high school. When we returned to campus we started meeting in the library after hours. We claimed it was just to study, but two weeks later I walked her back to her dorm from the library and gave her a good night kiss.
Things progressed slowly, but steadily. We met in March of our junior year. Our first kiss was at the beginning of April; by the end of April we were spending as much time snogging in the stacks as we were studying. Neither of us was super religious, but we were both church going, so we weren't in a race to get too serious too fast. By the end of the school year we had actively roaming hands, but everything was staying outside of the clothes.
When summer came along she went home to Kentucky and I took an accounting internship in Indianapolis. We stayed in contact and saw each other every couple of weeks. She stayed overnight at my apartment once and we shared a bed, but nothing happened beyond kissing and cuddling. I visited her home and met her family and we got along fine. However when we returned to college things got more serious. We had really missed each other over the summer and we started making plans for the future. We progressed to heavy petting, getting naked and mutual masturbation. We had sex for the first time in November and each of us was the other's first. On New Year's Eve I proposed and we started planning a June wedding.
Linda got her degree in elementary education. She started working as a teacher's aide and I started at an accounting firm. I passed my CPA exams and started working my way up the corporate ladder. We settled in Cincinnati and bought a nice house. We planned to wait a few more years before having kids, but Linda got pregnant when we were just 24. We were planning on having kids, so we were excited about starting our family. Max was an easy pregnancy. Two years later Marie was born and we had our happy family.
Linda seemed happy as a stay at home mom, but she was also overwhelmed. Keeping up with two small children was hard, even for someone with a training in young child education. She made friends in the neighborhood with some of the other mothers. I was busy at work and left her to the task of homemaking. She was great with our kids through potty-training and teaching them to read. Tax season was always crazy, but then so was end of year reporting and end of fiscal year. I was a good provider and we were financially stable.
Romance started to cool down like any marriage, but we were doing okay. Sex was never super exciting, but we enjoyed it. When we were first married it seems like we had sex every night and extra on the weekends. After Max we were tired and made less time for sex. When Marie came along we were lucky if we had sex every other week. I was understanding and figured that once the kids were grown we would reclaim our bedroom.
When Max was five and Marie was three, Linda got pregnant again. We didn't want a really big family, but thought that three or four was manageable. Linda turned 30 during the pregnancy and like the other two, everything seemed fairly easy and routine. However the delivery was a real shit-storm. The baby's heart stopped beating. The umbilical cord prolapsed. There was an emergency C-section. Linda started hemorrhaging badly. The doctors performed a hysterectomy on Linda. Our little girl lived for just 30 hours before she died. Our idyllic little life was gone just like that.
Linda and I grieved in different ways. I threw myself into my work. She focused on the children she had. Max and Marie never wanted for love and attention, but my wife always seemed fragile after that. It wasn't until two years after our baby's death that we tried having sex. Linda tried, but she was still broken inside. She couldn't relax and sex was painful for her. I didn't even try to finish. She started crying from the pain and I got soft in a hurry. In the next two years were tried sex a handful of times, but it always ended up the same.
Our marriage became a business relationship. I earned money. She raised the kids. We shared a bed, but romance was gone. When she looked at me, she felt like a failure as a wife. When I looked at her, all I could think of was her crying out in pain when we tried to have sex. I still loved her and lusted for her, but she just couldn't make herself aroused or feel sexual. Fancy lingerie gathered dust. We were kind and polite to each other, but we had a dead bedroom.
I like to think I was a good husband. I didn't beat my wife. I wasn't an alcoholic. I never cheated on her. But it didn't matter. Nothing I could do would get her aroused. She didn't like kissing me anymore. I would offer her back massages only to be turned down. The level of rejection I felt from her was intolerable.
When I turned forty I had a bit of a mid-life crisis. I felt like the prime of my life was slipping away in a loveless marriage. Max was high school junior and Marie was a high school freshman. I had been promoted into management so my work responsibilities involved more personnel meetings and less time at the office. Linda was involved in community and school activities. I started working out at the gym. I needed an outlet for the energy I wasn't using for sex, and lifting weights seemed like a good outlet. I got into a cross fit exercise class and saw steady improvement in my strength and endurance. I started to believe that I was a good looking guy, despite all evidence from my wife.
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Max went to college at Purdue University majoring in Civil Engineering. He liked the idea of building bridges, although I suspected he was more likely to be designing waste water facilities, but I wasn't going to rain on his parade. On the drive home after dropping him off Linda and I didn't say much. She was saying how different things would be without Max and how it wouldn't be long before Marie was gone too. I didn't say anything, but I started thinking. Did I want to live the rest of my life like this? Was I willing to go to my grave without ever having sex again?
Two days later I had "the Talk" with Linda.
"Linda, we have a problem. I love you very much, but I am unsatisfied with our sex life. It has been years since we've had sex. Without a physical sexual relationship I find it very hard to feel an emotional connection with you. Right now I feel like we are nothing more than roommates. I want more than that."
"Tom, you know how difficult sex is for me. I've tried so hard, but it just doesn't feel good. It hurts? It really really hurts. What do you want me to do?"
"I don't know, but I need sex. I'm not willing to stop having sex for the rest of my life."
"Well I don't need sex. I'd be happy going the rest of my life without sex. We've had our children. There is no reason why we need to have sex anymore. Why can't you be satisfied with what we've got? We have a beautiful family. Things have been going well. Why isn't that good enough? What's your problem?"
"My problem is that I need sex. I'm tired of masturbating in the shower every night. I've been feeling miserable. I feel like a failure because my wife doesn't find me attractive. How am I supposed to feel about myself when my own wife doesn't even like kissing me?"
"I like kissing you; I just don't want to get your hopes up. If I start kissing you you'll get all hopeful and I don't want to let you down."
"Are you afraid kissing might lead to sex?"
"Sex is very painful. So, yes, I'm afraid it will lead to you wanting sex. I know you want sex, but I have very negative feelings about sex. When I think about kissing, I think about sex which isn't a happy feeling. I'm sorry that I can't be the wife you fantasize about. But nothing is going to get me aroused anymore. I'm sorry I'm such a disappointment for you."
"Listen, I don't want to argue about this. I don't think there's anyway I am going to be happy in this marriage anymore. I love you, but I don't intend to live the rest of my life without sex. I just wanted to let you know ahead of time. Marie will be heading off for college in two years. That's how long we have to figure out a solution."
"What does that mean? What are you talking about? Are you going to divorce me?"
"That's a possibility. I need sex. I can get sex from you or I can get it from someone else. I'd rather get it from you, but it'll be your choice."
"I can't believe you would expect me to have sex knowing how painful it is! How can you ask that of me? Don't you love me?"
"I do love you. That's why we are having this conversation. I'm letting you have say in how this proceeds. I see three options. You could start having sex with me. Maybe that means regular blow jobs if intercourse is too painful, but there are things we could try that we haven't tried yet. We could get divorced. I'd pay alimony, but I don't want you accusing me of cheating on you. I'll stick around until Marie is in college and I will pay for college, but once the kids are out I'm going to stop wasting my life."
