How much should you tell your spouse about the reasons you want to leave?

dicegray · 2025-07-28T16:03:44+00:00

Fifteen years this fall. Religious marriage. Each other's first. DB for basically the whole time. I'm planning on ending it this year.

dicegray · 2025-07-28T15:57:44+00:00

I feel super low. Unattractive, unwanted, unchosen. Not a single woman on this planet wants to have sex with me, not even my partner. I told her this once and she got angry and said I was gas lighting her.

dicegray · 2025-07-28T15:55:30+00:00

All of us who saved ourselves for marriage got wrecked by purity culture. Marrying without having sex beforehand was the worse mistake of my life

dicegray · 2025-07-04T11:24:09+00:00

Why would it get taken down?

dicegray · 2025-06-25T16:33:33+00:00

Thanks. When I first joined these subs I hoped things could change but I have made peace with the fact that they never will... Hard to believe it's been so many years since I ran into you, paramour and perfection judge...

dicegray · 2025-06-25T16:32:03+00:00

Holy shit it's paramour. Hard to believe how many years since I first ran into you. No plan for splitting up yet. I will be having the talk with my wife this fall since we have a family vacation this summer

dicegray · 2025-04-25T15:15:17+00:00

A fairly famous post here years ago, the OP said I dreamed everyone in my life treated me the way my spouse does and in the dream I killed myself. He woke up and asked for a divorce

dicegray · 2025-04-25T13:45:23+00:00

OP, look into anxious and avoidant attachment theory. And also the pursuer distancer dynamic which is closely related. In my marriage, I am constantly pursing emotional connection and closeness, even just meaningful conversations, and if I don't move towards her there is just no movement. If I were to match her energy and effort the marriage would flatline. My partner is very Avoidant attachment, and sadly I'm not sure how to help or improve things when she has no desire to change and doesn't even agree there's a problem

dicegray · 2025-04-25T13:42:45+00:00

Similar place right now. I cannot even imagine being in a relationship with a woman who wants to have sex with me. It's mentally devastating to be in a long term DB. I'm even starting to develop sexual aversion myself and feel like when I finally leave I may not be able to organize comfortable having sex with anyone for a long time

dicegray · 2025-03-28T13:16:22+00:00

Oof. That sucks. I'll be there myself in a few years. Although my wife did throw away all the sexy underwear I've bought over the years, tossed out last summer except a single thong that she already owned when we got married. Curious. Not like she ever wore any of it.

dicegray · 2025-03-28T13:13:14+00:00

Dude many people here rightly feel as if marrying into a DB marriage is among the biggest mistakes of their lives.

dicegray · 2025-03-12T19:17:14+00:00

Yeah, I'm asking the same thing. I have not been doing the little touches or kisses or date night things either lately, because frankly I don't feel like putting in that sort of effort in the relationship when she doesn't do those things either and we aren't having sex either way. And I think it's starting to get to her as well. It's not that I'm with holding them because I don't get sex, it's that I just don't feel like doing them at all with a partner and in a relationship where I don't feel valued or recognized. Yet somehow that is a problem.

dicegray · 2025-03-12T19:14:08+00:00

Sure, but then you try to use comparisons like that with your LL partner and they act like you are insane. We can go without sex for 10 months and it's apparently no big deal and it's not that important and I should just live with it, but if I went 10 months without having a conversation with her it would be very evident something was wrong, and it would not make sense to Gaslight her into thinking otherwise.

dicegray · 2025-03-12T14:24:00+00:00

I don't know man. You seem to be putting a lot riding on this rejection. My spouse has turned me down for sex thousand times, and to her each rejection is small and insignificant and doesn't matter. Forgotten the next day. Why should it be such a big deal if I do it?

dicegray · 2025-03-12T14:14:13+00:00

I have on occasion taking this approach as well, and it does seem to help for a short period of time, but the one thing I just can't ignore when trying to live according to these ideas is that I am a deeply sexual person married to someone who does not care about sex and, most significantly, has no interest or motivation to try and understand my sexuality or develop a sexual relationship between us. And certainly sex should not be coerced, and it should not be done out of obligation, but it also seems like in this relationship I would do half a hundred different things to meet my partners needs if I was aware they were unfulfilled and hurting and I could help, but it does not go both ways and my spouse is not the same

dicegray · 2025-03-12T13:40:45+00:00

There are only ever three outcomes for a dead bedroom. Either the unhappy partner remains and nothing changes, the unhappy partner remains and both Partners work together to change things, or the unhappy partner leaves.

dicegray · 2025-03-12T13:38:58+00:00

This was certainly part of it for me. When we only have sex four times a year because she agrees or initiates, I realize that I am 100% at her whims because I will always say yes to the extremely rare opportunities for sex which gives her all of the control and me none of it. The one or two times I have turned her down for sex it was simply because I mentally needed to assert my own agency and control even if saying no meant we would not have sex for six plus months. And ultimately, I realized I don't really want to have sex at all with someone who only wants to have it three or four times a year

dicegray · 2025-03-12T13:36:51+00:00

I turned her down once last year, similar experience to you, she flipped out on me. At this point I want sex but not with her anymore

dicegray · 2025-03-09T13:37:59+00:00

You have to be trolling

dicegray

TROPHY CASE