I find it interesting that you say men masturbating doesn’t mean anything to them. My new husband seems to prefer it over being with me. He tells me he loves me, and I feel he does. We have a dream relationship except he doesn’t find me arousing the more he gets to know me.


I’m considered beautiful and never have felt threatened by the girls in his Playboy magazines. I can compete with them. In fact, I was asked a few years ago to be photographed by them. (I’m in my mid 30s). The issue is that masturbation and his fantasy world please him more than being with me.

Only a year ago, he lusted for me. Now that we’re married he doesn’t. He’s affectionate and romantic, but it never leads to sex anymore. Masturbation CAN be damaging to a marriage!

I asked him to share his fantasies, if I can act them out. He said nothing would work cause it’s still me, and he can’t get as hot with me since he can’t separate his emotions for me.

He said that fantasy is one dimensional, therefore it’s going to be better. So I’m damned. He still wants to pop his Viagra (he’s in his late 40′s) to have sex with me once or twice every two weeks, but I can tell he’s doing it cause he’s supposed to.

He touches me like it’s all mechanical. I hate it. It is like he is on auto pilot and follows with calculated movements. He is not there. I can tell, and I don’t even want to be with him now. We’ve tried to talk this out, but we don’t know what to do.

I don’t know if I can get him to go to a therapist, but I certainly get crazed when I read masturbation isn’t a problem cause it is here! Once he was HOT for me, and the sex was great. Now our emotions and masturbation are driving us apart, and we’re only married six months.

Other than that we have an amazing relationship and are best friends and loving. Just not sexual! The closer we get, the worse his desire is for me. Any suggestions???? Thanks for letting me vent.

Joan

Joan, when we get a spate of letters coming from one direction, we sometimes post a representative letter on the website. The letters you saw were coming from two directions. One, “My new husband touched himself once, and now I feel like a complete failure as a woman.” And two, “I know I can murder people with an ax and be forgiven. However, I’ve been touching myself and think I am now damned to hell for eternity.”

Let me give you two comparisons to your husband’s situation. Imagine you spent 30 years using a qwerty keyboard nearly every day. Now convinced of the superiority of the Dvorak keyboard, you try to retrain yourself. It’s tough. There’s a huge amount of interference learning. After awhile you get fairly good with the new keyboard, but you still find when tired or stressed, that 30 years of practice is barely under the surface and keeps trying to come to the fore.

Next way of looking at this: A boy grows up in a dysfunctional household. As a way of coping with the craziness, he invents a fantasy life for himself. When he is younger, the fantasies are mostly Walter Mitty-ish…scoring the winning touchdown in a football game, shooting the winning basket as the buzzer sounds.

As he grows up, the imaginary life morphs a bit, and he gives ‘interviews’ about current affairs to imaginary people in his head. He is still functional. He can hold a job and seems pretty normal interacting with other people. But he spends more time with the noise in his head, than with the real people in front of him.

Can he change? Yes, if… If he really wants to be more grounded in reality, he can be. But it is a long, slow process. The contents of consciousness are not easily changed.

Your husband can alter how he interacts with you, but he must want to. Then regrounding himself in reality will be a slow, though rewarding process. Living in fantasy consumes an enormous amount of psychic energy, the kind of energy which can be much more productively channeled through life, not through virtual reality.

Until he understands virtual reality is not real, don’t expect a change. Your husband was like this before you married. Like all problems which pre-exist a marriage, marriage will not make it evaporate.

You are saying two things in your letter. One, we have an amazing relationship, and two, we have a marriage-ending problem. You need to decide which statement is closer to the truth. One of those statements needs to go.

Wayne

Wayne, thanks so much for your reply and time! I think you are right on the mark with your first scenario. He said to me it’s been what he’s done since he’s been young just to switch off after the stress of a day.

It was driving me crazy so we had a big talk about it last night. He said it’s compounded that he finds it difficult to look at me in a sexual way now that I’m the ‘sweet thing’ he wants to take care of and look after. The more emotionally involved and closer we got, the less he could treat me as a ‘sex object’.

He also said he feels shy and slightly inhibited. He is normally a very shy type of guy. In business from day to day he owns and runs a major company though. He is forceful at work–but personally a very shy gentle person.

He is willing to go to therapy he said, as he agrees he’d like to look at me in the way he did when we dated and open up sexually. Guess I can’t ask for more than that. That offer, combined with your letter, makes me feel better and hopeful. Thank you again for taking the time to help me. It’s very appreciated.

Joan