Dear Amy: My wife and I are in our late 30s. We have been married for about 20 years. We stopped having sex three years ago.
My wife says she’s not interested in sex anymore. I tried to have her go get help, but she refuses. She is constantly in contact with a male friend. She says they are just friends, but she hides in the bathroom to talk to him. I want to trust her. I want to believe that they are just friends.
When I try to talk to her about him, she gets mad at me.
We have three kids, and I am getting frustrated and want to leave, but I feel that I need to stay because of the kids.
At this point I feel so lonely. Any suggestions on how I can get her to realize that I have needs? We both read your column. – Lonely in Ohio
Dear Lonely: Your wife already knows that you have needs. She knows this because she has needs too. It is easy for her to tell herself that your needs are simply sexual while hers are complicated and emotional, and so the gulf between you grows.
Instead of focusing on the sexual issue right now, your goal should be to re-establish an intimate, emotional connection with your wife.
It seems fairly obvious that she has established a connection with someone else. Every time she hides in the bathroom to pursue this relationship, she shuts out her family. “Emotional affairs” are every bit as insidious as sexual affairs, and it sounds as if your wife is engaging emotionally with someone else.
Of course she doesn’t want to discuss this with you, because she doesn’t want for you to interfere in the connection that is feeding her needs.
Happily married couples know that they can only bring people into their lives that are “friends” to their relationship. This doesn’t mean that spouses can’t have individual friendships, but that everybody must respect the primacy of the marriage.
This situation is serious but before ditching your marriage, I hope that you will pursue answers through counseling. You will feel less lonely the minute you discuss this with someone who understands.
Dear Amy: For the last couple of years, I have been finding myself in awkward social situations in which my husband will tease female dinner guests about seeing them naked, or talk in my presence as though he’s sexually available. He flirts with pretty waitresses, whether it’s the two of us, or worse, if we’re with guests.
My reaction is usually to laugh because I don’t want to make a scene. But I find his comments inappropriate and hurtful, and I wonder if other dinner guests pity me. I have been asked how I put up with him on several occasions. He hates to be told what to do or how to behave. We have been married for 25 years.
Do you have any suggestions? – Diminished in Oregon
Dear Diminished: Your husband will continue to diminish you as long as you tolerate it. He might continue even after you have stopped tolerating it, but won’t you feel better if you stand up for yourself? Nobody likes to be told what to do or how to behave, but we all occasionally have to face the truth of how our behavior affects other people.
You need to tell your husband how his comments make you feel and ask him to stop. Then you should act like someone who has a backbone.
The next time this happens, you can say, “Wow, Jerry, I really didn’t find that funny.” If he continues, you should simply get your stuff together and politely and discreetly leave the scene of the crime.
Readers have reported that when they have responded to this sort of so-called “humor” in a straightforward way, they wonder what took them so long.
Dear Amy: I don’t order items over the phone often, but I do get unsolicited political calls (even though I’m on the national “Do Not Call Registry”). These calls are very annoying. These so-called “polls” are actually worded in order to convey information about the candidate they’re pushing.
Because this is unethical, I never vote for those candidates because I feel if they’re unethical enough to use this tactic, they’ll be unethical in office too. These calls are irritating, and they backfire.
Because this is prime time for political calls, please get the word out that courtesy and ethics matter. – No Calls Please
Dear No Calls: You heard it here, folks – courtesy and ethics matter.
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