I grew up in a conservative Christian family, didn’t start dating until my twenties and married in my early thirties to a beautiful woman with whom I have great kids; my family life is wonderful, but my sex life is not. Though I’ve used pornography off and on since I was a teenager, I was quite naive about sex and was a virgin when I married. My wife doesn’t really enjoy sex and sometimes is averse to it, so sex has become very mechanical. Two years ago I started going to strip clubs to find some relief from my sexual frustration, and I met a beautiful dancer who is a very intelligent college student. I enjoyed talking with her and often would tip her $100 just to talk for 30 minutes, then last month she told me she had started escorting for a few clients she had met in the clubs. It was awkward with her the first time, but by the third I was fully relaxed and uninhibited, and I felt like a huge knot inside me was untied.
I discovered your blog around the same time as I started seeing my lady friend in private, and it has been a great encouragement to me; I have a few questions I hope you can help me with. First, my wife and I are in counseling for our sexual problem, but do you think she can potentially grow sexually and be freed from her inhibitions? Should we be seeing a sex therapist rather than a regular marriage counselor? With regard to my companion, I would like to know if you have any general advice (since I’m such a late bloomer), and also if there are things I can do besides being a good client (clean, on time, respectful of boundaries, courteous, and donation upfront), to show her that I really appreciate her.
Most of all, I thank you for showing care to clients like myself. It is meaningful to learn from your experiences and benefit from them. It seems unfair that I haven’t even paid you for your advice!
From what you’ve said, you have a good marriage in every way except for sex, and you don’t want to ruin that; so you need to be careful and discreet so neither your wife nor any neighbors or church members find out. Since you’ve been reading my blog you understand that sex workers are caring professionals who help men (including many like yourself) to deal with sexual urges you couldn’t otherwise explore, but your wife and others probably wouldn’t understand and there would be major unpleasantness. I’m very glad to see that you didn’t mention any sense of shame or guilt with your escort; if anything, it looks exactly the opposite to me (“I felt like a huge knot inside me was untied.”) But it’s also important that you not let yourself get carried away; when a person has been sexually repressed for years as you were, the feeling of sexual release can be intoxicating, and can interfere with your judgment. So keep seeing your escort (who sounds really perfect for you), but if you start getting feelings as though you’re falling in love with her you need to step back mentally and recognize that it’s the hormones talking.
A sex therapist might indeed help more than a general counselor if your problem is due to culturally-inflicted hang-ups rather than other issues merely reflected into the bedroom. However, it’s important that A) you find the right one; B) you are very patient; and C) your wife really and truly wants to get over her hang-ups. It won’t be easy, and she will probably never be as uninhibited as your escort; after all, you yourself know the kind of brainwashing she got, and it’s much worse for women than for men. I’m assuming she is in her thirties, and it’s not unusual for a woman to mature sexually during that period; however, if she’s much past 35 and you don’t see any signs that she really wants to loosen up, I’m afraid the prognosis isn’t very good. I’m not saying it’s hopeless because human nature is a complex thing, but in order to correct a sexual problem one has to recognize it as a problem in the first place, and some sexually repressed people simply refuse to admit that it is.
You may find “Advice for Clients” helpful, plus my answers to reader questions in two previous Q & A columns; however, it seems to me that you already know a lot of that. It’s not necessary for you to compensate me in any tangible way, but if you really want to you could send me something from my Amazon wish list; please don’t feel you have to, though.
(Have a question of your own? Please consult this page to see if I’ve answered it in a previous column, and if not just click here to ask me via email.)
agree with Maggie’s advice.
In addition, I’d recommend reading Athol Kay’s married man sex life primer and putting it into action:
http://marriedmansexlife.com/books/
I’ve found this is the best framework out there for married men, including me, to address these exact kinds of long term structural issues with the wife.
The fact is, marriage is a sexual relationship at its heart, and if that’s not right there could be many issues leading to that. This book helps you figure out what is within your control to improve, and if you do that long term you will see the sex improve.
This is interesting, and I realize this was a reader asking for advice and not someone telling you about his life, but for me what’s missing here is how she shows him that she loves him. The impression I’m getting is of a woman who was never excited about sex, at least not with the man writing, and for me sex is so much more than the act of copulation. In fact, I get the idea of a woman who actively shrinks away from his touch.
I can understand sticking with your wife when you have problems, I’m currently facing a very nasty cold front from that direction as well. However, I understand the cause in my case (I don’t make enough money at either of my jobs to make her happy), and in my experience this usually blows over. However, I can’t understand remaining in a marriage that was always passionless.
Of course, there are other ways to show love and even passion without sex. (I have a tempestuous and totally platonic relationship with a woman who genuinely loves me, and gets furious at me when she sees me doing self-destructive things.) So maybe something like that is present here. I hope so, because otherwise I feel like I read the tale of a man leading a dreary, sexless and loveless, life.
It’s hard when there are kids involved, and the truth is a man can have a perfectly satisfying life getting all the affection he needs from escorts, but still I wonder if this marriage is really quite so rosy as advertised.
The wife could have a medical issue … and experiencing minimal or no sex drive. Happened with my wife and when it did – she panicked about it because we had always had sex at least three times a week when I wasn’t away. She suddenly started avoiding it. She’s over that now and it’s all hot again (thank God) … either it’s over or she’s figured a way to “fake it” for me … but the smile on her face tells me she’s happy with it.
We men need to take some responsibility for choosing these wives. We usually know what their “boundaries” are well before we marry them – I realize the writer here didn’t but most men do sample the wares before the wedding. Different women have different boundaries and I think it’s a bit unreasonable to try to force a change in them.
Having dealt with this few times in my ministry. You best bet is to keep your secret life secret unless it becomes part of the therapy to let your wife know what is going on.
That said, Maggie is right about C – if it becomes clear she is never going to open up sexually, you are going to have a problem. It will eventually pour over into your other areas of your relationship eventually so be advised even if you keep this a secret it will still affect your relationship with your wife.
Unfortunately, coming from a conservative Christian background myself, I can tell you that religion like that is the worst thing for sexual relationships. It truly is repressive indoctrination. If she has had a lot of it she may very well need the shock of a revelation that you are seeing an escort to realize what is going on.
My two cents.
http://www.reddit.com/r/DeadBedrooms
All I can do is echo what others have already said: be careful, and good luck.
The apparent genetic existence of asexuality (as a birth orientation of men and women, same as hetero-, bi-, and homosexualities) and of Lifelong, Generalized female sexual hypo-interest/arousal (meaning, genetic traits of very-low-to-no libido, low-to-no spontaneous desire, and/or low-to-no responsive desire) complicates how to approach this sort of dilemma.
Neither of those atypical genetics has a “cure” (nor essentially needs to be cured, no more than a man being born with genetics to be 5’4″ needs a cure; they potentially present special challenges in a world where the normal ranges are otherwise, but they are not in themselves “illnesses” nor “dysfunctions”). All the counseling in the cosmos can’t manufacture sexual interest/desire if the absence is genetic.
If one or both of these genetic atypicals is at the root, then, regrettably, that wife can never become someone who experiences either a spontaneous or responsive need, desire, or urge for sex.
However, assessing the root cause or causes isn’t easy, since multiple roots can exist, and root causes can entangle to the point of prohibiting dissection.
For instance, if an asexual woman is also sex-aversive (NOT all are — some asexuals will happily consent to sex with a partner, out of love, even though she herself never has a need nor desire for sex with any partner; an asexual woman may even be extremely uninhibited, having little to no reluctance about any sexual acts, even though she experiences no urge nor need for sex with anyone), then the aversion may be so predominant that it obstructs the fact that she would feel no need for sex with any partner even if she wasn’t sex-aversive.
Yeah, it can amount to a lose-lose sexual dilemma.