"Why Didn't You Leave Me ?!" Psychotherapist Notes

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

My wife and I have not slept together for 8 years. - He said he jumped into the ice-hole. Almost from the doorway. Apparently, it took a long time to get ready to come. It happens. Tall, thin, about fifty years old, athletic, with an indelible stamp of intelligence on his face. The history is most likely high-tech, tennis, cycling or skiing. About such my grandmother said "Interesting man".

“She's … a good woman. Normal, I guess. We have grown children. She's just not interested in me. In terms of sex, you know? Maybe even unpleasant. I can't even hug her. So, sometimes, for old memory, I’ll stretch, but she already jerks. Not much, but noticeable. At such moments, I almost feel like a rapist. And some kind of redneck. A person doesn't want to, but I … But how can you not want eight years ?! Here you are a woman, tell me, can you do without intimacy for so many years?

Uh, what can I tell him now? No you can not? Is it inhuman? I don't understand how you can live side by side with a person for eight years without hugs, without kisses, without sex? Without making a couple a couple and not flatmates. But this is my experience, not his and not his wife's.

- Why did you come now? Not a year ago, not three, not five …

Such a pair is not one, there are dozens of them, but, most likely, even hundreds or thousands. They live together for many years, because "this is the family", "we will have our children", "she will disappear without change", "we have just been framed" … Sadly, but the man turns, either already entangled in the hikes to the left, or caught red-handed and deprived of an illegal source of heat, or one morning, discovering the absence of an erection, or when the wife suddenly left and it turned out that everything "works" for her with another man.

Often we are talking about couples who got married early, when you understand little even about yourself, and nothing at all about life and about others. "What did we understand about love, and what about hydraulics?" And then it was not easy, a child, a career, another child, another career, an apartment, a mortgage. And no one, no one explained that the joy of touching, which you gave to each other at the beginning, should be protected, raised, and given time. Well, the truth is, 30-40 years ago they thought so little about it, and speaking, in my opinion, was generally indecent. Even under the covers.

So we are not talking. And then, men come to me, already desperate to find warmth and intimacy with the woman with whom they have been living for 20 years. And women … Do you think women don't come? Or do they not want warmth? Even as they want. Only they also come for some reason, when there is already a disaster. And then she sits opposite me and asks through barely restrained tears and anger: "Why didn't he leave me 10 years ago ?!"

Do you know who the "castrating wives" are? Quite a fashionable term nowadays in certain circles. However, politically correct Americans prefer to call it "emasculation" - demasculinization. These are such terrible women who deprive husbands of sex, warmth, intimacy. Sometimes they deprive them of even just initiative and take over power - a wonderful image of nurse Ratched from "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest", or vice versa, they become utterly helpless and unhappy, so that the man has no choice but to take on the role of father - and sleep with daughter, this is, sorry, incest. Or, on the contrary, the world has not yet known such a caring mother as a wife. And again, what kind of pervert would fuck his own mother?

However, if you think that I am now dumping everything on evil women, then do not hope. Still, thank you, dear god, you did not create me as a man. No "toothy vagina" can exist without a toothless penis seized with horror.

How does a woman refuse sex? In general or in alliance with this particular man. How it happened that female sexuality became … Optional. No, as an item in demand, and an object of trade, it is quite flourishing. But this is not about Eros, this is about natural exchange or commodity-money relations. And where does the natural strength and thirst for touch go in the union of loving people?

“No historian has been able to convincingly explain how it happened that during the transition from early civilizations to the period of antiquity, women lost their privileged status. During the time of Plato (427–347 BC), perfect sexual union was seen as a union between The ancient Greeks needed wives only for the prolongation of the family. Pleasure became the lot of a narrow circle of women - getters, or courtesans, while wives lived in abundance outside the walls of private houses, legally bound by marriage. The exception was the poet Sappho from the island. Lesbos, who praised female eroticism and gave us the first vivid metaphors of female arousal and orgasm in the Western poetic tradition (I suppose she was not alone, but she left the most noticeable mark).

The writings of the apostle Paul codified and reinforced for the next two millennia the idea that sexuality is shameful and wrong, and unbridled female sexuality, even in marriage, is especially shameful and sinful. In the course of the formation of the church in Europe and the rise of the Holy Roman Empire, Paul's teachings became synonymous with Christianity, and Christianity became synonymous with Western culture in general."

"Vagina. A New History of Female Sexuality". Naomi Wolfe

So, "no sex" is not about the late Soviet Union, it is about the entire West, to which we refer ourselves. Where femininity and femininity are at best projected onto the image of the Virgin Mary with her incomprehensibly conceived baby Jesus. A totally asexual story. Yes, of course, 60s, sexual revolutions, children of flowers, perestroika, widespread use of contraceptives. But sometimes it feels like it's only "for young people." And not for couples who have lived together for some rather long time. Moreover, there is already "no sex" not only for a woman, but also for a man, if he remains within the framework of the commandment "do not commit adultery."

This is at the level of society, but what happens in a particular couple? Why, after all, do two stay together when a woman refuses intimacy, and a man agrees with this situation? By the way, it happens the other way around. Love is always a space between two poles - free creativity, seething passion and reliability. And it is precisely this tension of the poles that gives strength to living feeling. When a relationship is nourished only by reliability, Eros leaves them. Both man and woman continue to hold on to imaginary security and cut off more and more from themselves. "Optional". Not vital. Something without which you can survive.

- After all, no one is 100% happy. You are an expert, you should know this.

- Probably no one. How happy are you? - I did not receive an answer.

Moreover, the further, the more difficult. After all, so much has already been invested, so much endured. So many days, months, years without sex, without warmth, without intimacy. And now to give it up? This is about another agreement with the devil, a tacit agreement: "I refuse joy, but for this …" Safety? Which? Financial? Emotional? The presence of someone unloved to the gnashing of teeth in your old age? Is the family filming against the background of Pushkin? It is important not to be afraid and ask yourself these questions. So, just in case. Suddenly it turns out that you are not so fond of water in glasses.

Only conflict can break a pact with the devil. No, not these little pricks of irritation that permeate relationships when Eros and desire leave them. Real talk about what's going on. A conversation that removes the veil of secrecy from what everyone already knows about. Conflict openly often means breaking the devil's spell. But you have to go into this conflict like a samurai, having accepted death in advance even before the battle. You understand that this collision may cost you the life that you have held with a stranglehold for so long.

That life will no longer be, you will have to sacrifice it, for the sake of the opportunity to become happy yourself and give a chance for happiness to those who are next to you. With or without you. And it doesn't matter that you have long given up on that bright, alluring, promising all life, as in your youth. Now you live in a very understandable box, where you know every corner and every hole through which you can sometimes breathe. This is nothing that is cramped and pressing, but it will probably be convenient to bury.

You will have to sacrifice such a familiar, familiar Sacrifice complex. And not only you. You have been living for so long "not for joy, but for conscience." For the sake of a "helpless" partner, for the sake of children, for the sake of keeping face in front of someone, for the sake of financial stability. You are so accustomed to the role of victims that the transition to aggression occurs completely imperceptibly. "Leave me alone, you fool!", "Always you!", "Take it yourself!", "Don't pull me!", "Why children again?!..", "Don't shout!", "I am tired and want to sleep!". Words that were previously impossible are becoming commonplace. Clashes replace contact, your "we" may still be alive, its energy is still rushing between you like lightning.

Then it goes away. You are … "adjusting." You are totally alone, but you still remain in the same place. Stubbornly, with your teeth, hold on to the status quo, not daring to admit any of the possible realities. In fact, conversation is much broader than sexuality, although there is little that can give us a fuller sense of life, intimacy, trust. A conversation about allowing yourself to finally talk about what's going on between you before it's too late. Break the contract with the devil and make a contract with each other, if possible.

When we enter into a relationship, it is good to understand that we enter into a contract with each other at different levels of our personality. At the parental level, we agree to take care of needs and protection, at the adult level, we agree to talk in words about what is happening to us, at the free child level, we agree to be happy together. We usually don't say anything like that. It's a pity. If only because especially quickly we forget that we were going not only to "pull the strap" together, but also to rejoice.

In general, if there is no sex in your couple, you are most likely not going to a sex therapist. First of all, it makes sense to admit that you have been living in a "not fed and not buried" situation for many years. But at the same time you do not dare to open Pandora's box. Your business. Just do not forget that at the bottom there was Hope))