Very lovely. Congratulations!
OP - everyone’s right. If this is bothering you, and it seems that it is, this is a solvable problem. From books on getting sexually close, to medications, to intimacy exercises, a lot can be done. I’m going to throw one more out there: stop drinking. Drinking can actually do more harm than good for arousal.
Oh, and if you think it’s contributing to the problem, stop watching porn. No sexual outlet but the missus.
I don’t think you capitalize “total” unless your wife isn’t there, but her niece is.
Aquesta és la raó T’estimo
(hope that came out right - I used Google Translate and chose “Catalan” to translate “This is why I love you”. I’m normally accustomed to trying to translate to Mexican Spanish.)
BTW, send me a private message to tell me where in Spain you live. I study history, and right now I’m into 16th century Europe, during the reign of Phillip II of Spain. (Mind-blowing thing to me: The Habsburgs were Spanish? I’d thought they were Austrian, what with the Vienna thing.)
I don’t want it to be sexless. She’s the one complaining that we haven’t fucked yet. I’m … stuck. I mentioned porn “ruining” me … I started writing porn when I was 14 years old. 1980, long before the Internet. I had kinky fantasies, and wrote stories about them. The Internet (which I found in 1996, when I was 30) simply helped me to make them more realistic.
Thankfully, she let me pick my side of the bed. Both of us were accustomed to sleeping alone in double/queen-size beds, alone. Now, I sleep on the left, closest to my nightstand, and she sleeps on the right.
And we are working on it. Just about got it done tonight. Not quite, but closer than before.
Anyway …
I’m a few days late getting back to this thread, and for good reason. The other threads, which some poster so kindly linked above, all turned into “pile on Mister Rik” situations, and I don’t like feeling like a moron, so I just dropped some of those threads and didn’t come back.
The fact is, I AM married to this woman. I don’t need people telling me now what a bad mistake I’ve made. Whatever I’ve made … I’ve made it. Here it is. I have to live with it. And you know what?
I’m happy with my decision. I have married a very broken woman, who has been married twice before, and has had numerous live-in boyfriends since her last marriage.
Tonight I just had a conversation on Facebook with her son, in which he explained to me why he doesn’t talk to his mother, and why he is never gonna be my “stepson”, just like he hasn’t been the “stepson” to the last six “stepfathers” his mom has had.
I told him that’s fine. I don’t expect to be his “stepfather” in anything beyond the legal definition. I don’t know him, he doesn’t know me. I have somehow, after 50 years, never made any enemies, and I don’t want to start now, so let’s me and him just try to be “friendly”.
As far as my wife, and her faults (with which I’m becoming intimately aware) I’ll deal with it.
I know this is the SDMB, and after 13 years I know how y’all are. But when it comes down to it, I’m a Christian, and I think God put me here for a reason. Maybe that reason was for me to help this broken woman, my wife.
1 Corinthians 13:7English Standard Version (ESV)
7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
Yeah, I’m doing that.
“Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother’s eye.” Luke 6:42
Mr. Rik, even Jesus couldn’t save those who didn’t choose to be saved, and all the good intentions in the world aren’t going to magically “fix” your wife. She has to want to change, otherwise all you’ll be doing is making her feel like she’s not good enough for you. Remember, she’s been married to/dated a string of abusive assholes who I’m sure made a point of telling her she’s bad and broken and useless. That’s how constructive criticism is going to sound to her.
I’m sure your heart’s in the right place, but she needs professional mental help to sort out her issues, not a well-intentioned amateur.
I posted the Luke verse for a reason. You can’t help her unless you admit to your own issues. The fact is, you’re attracted to young women. Every relationship and/or crush you’ve mentioned in your threads has been directed at a young girl/woman and it sometimes causes you to act… iffy. For example the waitress who worked for you at the old folks’ home, where you made a point of looking for her boyfriend at the store where he worked (yes, I know nothing came of it. The point is that you shouldn’t have done that.) That’s not porn’s fault, nor is it porn’s fault that you married a woman of a type you’re not attracted to. If sex matters to both of you, you’re going to need more help than “lie back and think of England.”
I get that you want to make this work. Couples counseling, or go yourself if she can’t/won’t. You won’t be able to do it on your own.
And how is she dealing with your faults? Based on your previous threads you aren’t exactly the model of stability and mental health yourself.
I can’t decide if this is sad or sick or both.
You can be her husband or you can be her therapist, but you can not be both.
And, on second thought, if you’re seeing your wife as “broken” and your mission is to “fix” her, I’m leaning a bit more towards “sad”. You sound like you’ve given up on the whole “husband” thing and are going for the “rescuer” route.
Sounds like he needs a spanking. Obviously that isn’t going to work, but you could spank his mom. Hey! There’s an idea!
As an adult who is presumably not severely mentally deficient, what other reaction could you possibly expect, in this forum or any other?
As slow-motion train wrecks go, yours is glacial. For months you’ve been merrily whistling and checking the timetables, researching maps to find the ideal intersection, loading your car with flammable materials, and siphoning enough gas from the tank to make sure you’ll run out the moment you straddle the track. When you inevitably get hit with 10,000 tons of locomotive, you’ll probably tell yourself that everything happens for a reason. And you’ll be right— the reason is that you took every step to ensure that it would.
There’s no joy in this for anyone, participant or spectator. Adieu, and lotsa luck.
Ah, yes, the Karpman Drama Triangle strikes again:
Right now the dials are set to her as Victim and you as Rescuer; how long do you think it will take for you to be switched to Persecutor? Honestly, do you think it’s a coincidence that she’s has four husbands but the fifth is going to be the one that fixes everything, right up until the point where he becomes just like the others?
Lovely! Congrats to you both.
I think y’all are making this way more complicated than it really is with the rescuer/victim stuff. And all the other stuff too, in my opinion.
I have my suspicions that this is more about alcoholics finding drinking partners than anything else. They just gotta dress it up as romance cause they’re Christian. All alcoholics rationalize their crap. It’s nothing new, just a slightly different dance.
More like helping each other drowned, than saving each other, to my mind.
But then, it’s the internet so how could any of us possibly know? I’m going to hope my guess in wrong and wish you both great good luck!
(In part because I think you’re REALLY gonna need it!)
Was this after you asked him if he was going to change the last name of his children to yours? I mean, you seemed pretty excited about that a couple of months ago. You said you’d love it, but you never answered anyone’s question about why you even expected that as a possibility.
Out of curiosity, did you get married in a religious ceremony? Do the people at your church have any comments that are measurably different from the SDMB comments?
That’s kinda sweet in its own way. Then again, I see Leaving Las Vegas as a love story.
Also it’s a fun, inexpensive way of adding spice and variety to your love life.
This is exactly correct.
From the Wikipedia article on Ephebophilia:
(bolding mine)
Your ephebophilia has and continues to interfere with major areas of your life. It has certainly resulted in serous dysfunction - hence this thread.
To reiterate what Azeotrope said above - that’s not porn’s fault. And it’s certainly not porn’s fault that you can’t resist talking about teeny titties or whatever.
If you actually love this woman, please deal with your underlying problem.
First, congratulations! I wasn’t that old when I got married (32) but was old enough that it entailed quite a few adjustments over personal space, etc. You get used to it, after some negotiating over stuff you can change vs. stuff you probably won’t be able to about you and your partner.
For the sex, I’ll channel Dan Savage and say that sex isn’t all about the dick and the pussy. Get used to being with each other naked. Rub, kiss, lick, roll around with, etc. Don’t make it coitus-centered, and don’t pressure yourself to perform. Just enjoy happy-fun-naked-time with your wife. Plenty of lesbians don’t use phallic toys; you can get her off in any number of ways. She can have fun playing with you too, whether or not anything happens. The most important thing is that you guys work on it together and have fun doing it.
Also, don’t give yourself another outlet. If you’re jerkin’ it to hot young t&a on the screen, your dick is going to laugh at you and claim that it already gave at the office when you ask it to stand up and be counted. Give him no other choice and I guaran-goddamn-tee you he will be like, “Hey, what’s this? Want MOAR!” eventually.
Just so you don’t feel like a freak, I know from personal experience that sex stuff is weird. The common anxiety when I was young was premature ejaculation. I masturbated a lot from when I first figured it out when I was about 11, to the first time someone else touched my dick when I was nearly 18. And it was literally years after that before I could reliably come from intercourse.
Why? I’d trained myself to ridiculous levels of stamina in my masturbation sessions in the mistaken belief that lasting longer was always a good thing. It is not normal for a 20 year old to fuck for 5+ hours without coming. My first long-term girlfriend at the time was more than a little bit of a nymphomaniac kinkster, but even she would tap out, or I’d end up with chafing problems to go along with blue-balls like you wouldn’t believe.
Eventually, it got better. It took “practice” and basically carving new neural pathways, but it got better. Now, I’m an average dude who finishes in an average amount of time. Yay? 
Just look what you have to look forward to! A future of mediocracy like mine awaits.
Katharine Wright, Orville and Wilbur’s sister, got married for the first time in her fifties to a man she’d known as a student at Oberlin College (Orville did not take it well, unfortunately). Love can bloom at any age.
And that’s why I’m not offering her any criticism, constructive or otherwise. I’m just showing her love and showing her that I think she’s a worthwhile person.
I know my own issues, and I’ve admitted them to her. Though I didn’t go into any specifics about my past “crushes”. Especially because one of them (the big one I made a thread about) was the same woman who volunteered to do all of our wedding photography for free (and who happened to break up with her boyfriend within two weeks of Mrs. Rik and I announcing our engagement).
Just to clarify, I’m actually only her third husband. In contrast (/comparison?), my mom is my stepfather’s fifth wife, and they’ve been married happily for more than 20 years now, after some very rough patches in the beginning.
I never actually asked him about that, and didn’t honestly expect it anyway.
Yes, we were married by my pastor, after some premarital counseling. It was a very small cermony.
Mr. Rik, all I can say is I hope you two work things out and I wish you the best. For realsies.
My wife was 54 when we married, it was her first. She said she never found someone she felt she could live with any length of time and she was doing fine on her own. Don’t know why I was the one. For me, it was my third. Her only real regret was no having any children. Her brother, he is now 57, has never married and likely never will.