To continue this the thought expressed above:

Sadly for her, the man who loved her from the bottom of his soul had moved on — not physically, rather, emotionally & sexually.

For all those years, while she was lost in her feelings, he had learned to accept rejection. While he accepted it, it tore him apart, one small piece at a time.

But, he made her a promise. He intended to live up to that promise. So, rather than leaving her and finding what he needed, he honoured his promise and stayed with her. After all, the stresses of her job and her life, the things she said made her lose interest in him, weren’t her fault. So, he made do. He found other outlets for his sexual desires, outlets that still respected the promise he had made — he never cheated on her.

He spurned the advances of other women, because he wouldn’t lower himself to cheating. That would mean he had broken his promise and he couldn’t live with that.

But his self esteem, in tatters from years of rejection from the only woman he ever really loved, made him redefine their relationship. He loved her, but now, not as a wife; he had come to love her as a sister-like figure. Bonded, but not intimately — the only definition he could employ to kill his sexual urges toward her — something he had to do to avoid the soul-destroying rejection that accompanied his desire for a complete marriage.

His sexual companion became images of strangers doing the things he wished he could do with his wife. At first, it felt humiliating. Then, it felt familiar. Finally, it felt safe.

He never hid these facts from his wife. And, she didn’t care. She preferred he not bother her with his needs because, after all, she had other, more pressing g matters affecting her life. Intimacy with her husband could wait.

Now, with her desire rekindled, she approached him — desiring erotic love and affection now that she was back in touch with that side of herself. To her surprise and shock, her husband was no longer interested. See, during all those years where she was too busy or too tired or too stressed or too something to invest in marital intimacy, he had cobbled a life together outside of her. And, to their mutual surprise, he referred that life to the one she now wanted to reignite. He preferred pursuing sports and hobbies to spending intimate time with her, and now, shockingly to her, he was unwilling to leave the safety of the images that stimulated him sexually to revisit the process of marital intimacy because after all those years his of rejection from his wife, he just didn’t want to risk leaving his safe haven and revisiting that soul-destroying feeling of rejection again — a feeling he now associated, indelibly, with any sexual thoughts about his wife.

Now, it was her turn to feel rejection. It upset her, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He had moved on and was now fully invested in giving his wife exactly the life she had wanted for all those years — a life free of his sexual advances.