I hear you Elinor

"I have known all of love's pain and none of its reward"

Elinor Dashwood: Sense and Sensibility

I can't find this exact quote anywhere, but I swear I heard it in the 1981 BBC mini series.

This is how I feel about my current relationship. He gives me so little apart from a half share in a roof over my head, and some sort of weird brother-like affection. We no longer have sex, because he is not interested.

It is partially my own doing. I broke off the engagement, around the time we discovered we couldn't have children. Because 2 years after his sudden proposal of marriage, I still could not trust him or understand either his sex addiction or his supposed recovery from it. And after several rounds of IVF I realised I did want another child, but not with him.

And now I think to ask myself the question "why did he admit to sex addiction? why didn't he just admit to a little meaningless sex?" He is quite practised at manipulation and lying why would he have been so candid with me? A little slip-up would've been so much easier for me to accept. In fact that's pretty much how I have dealt with it - imagine it was just the end of his "philandering ways"

So here's the timeline

*Trying to get pregnant
*Shock email from ex-girlfriend describing numerous trysts
*Confession from Neil of sex addiction
*Proposal of marriage
*Uneasy acceptance by me
*More trying to get pregnant
*Give up trying to get pregnant
*Try to end relationship admitting I have not properly forgiven him and the only way I can cope is to disengage.
*I actually want him to go off and find someone else to have babies with
*Sex life ends

From his point of view maybe he was only having sex with me to get pregnant, or maybe he was so hurt by me putting the brakes on our marriage plans, or perhaps, he is just getting sex elsewhere. It isn't such a stretch is it? on current evidence.

In exploring "Husband not interested in sex" the answer by barbarafl about half the way down struck a chord. It starts

Wow Ladies,
I feel compelled to respond. I have been in this situation for 18 years. It is only the last year that I truly discovered the real problem. My husband is a sex addict. After lots of research, and therapy, he is in recovery. A long hard road for both of us. There is many levels of sex addiction. Some only use masturbation and porn and some use prostitutes, affairs, etc. There is something also known as sexual anorexia. Where the sex addict will masturbate but avoid intimacy with you.

I can't discuss it with him. In fact if I do he gets angry or facetious saying things like "you nagging me about it is so sexy"

But he still occasionally says he love me, or that I am his love. I think perhaps he needs a mother. His was depressed angry and unavailable to him. Now it seems he is trying to find this lost comfort through me. Here is what would really work: If I were to run the house like clockwork. Quietly and efficiently moving around him, and never making demands on him. Let him lie in, clear away his mess without ever complaining, never ask where he's been or why, defer to him on every decision and opinion... He will love me totally and will reward me with hugs, and adoration, but never sex.

Really folks what's in it for me? A half roof over my head (I work too remember) and stability for Connor. But Connor is not going to come back to me in 20 years time and say, "thanks so much mum for putting your life on hold and living with that man so that I could grow up in a misogynistic, self centred, dysfunctional - yet stable household"

Is he?