Options

To my dear wife:

Now that I've turned 70, I realized that I don't want to spend the rest of my life as a celibate. I've also had it with the humiliation and depression I've been dealing with the last few years.

Anyone else reading this would expect that I'd been cuckolded or somehow been dealt badly in our marriage, but as far as I know, you've been faithful throughout the 45 years of our marriage. It wouldn't have surprised me if you hadn't been, since you were married when we started dating. But if you've ever cheated on me, you've hidden it well.

And surprising me more than anyone, I've also been faithful. There have been opportunities, and women who've made it known that they were interested, but I've never slipped, or even come close.

Which is probably why I find everything so humiliating. And in case you're confused by that, let's go over our sexual history.

We fooled around while you were still married and through your divorce. We ended up in love, and got married.  We made love frequently, and made two kids before things started going south.

First, we aborted our third kid. Your idea, you said you couldn't handle three kids. When I argued, you said it was your body, and you did all the work with the kids and I basically had nothing to say about it. I should have argued more, but I didn't -- and as I said, "we" aborted our third kid. I accept my share of the blame, but I have always regretted that I didn't put up more of a defense for our child.

As I said, we made love frequently, daily before the kids and still several times a week thereafter. Then one night in bed when I attempted to initiate some cuddling, you said, "No." You didn't think I was helping enough with the kids or around the house or whatever. Paying the bills wasn't enough.

I took this to mean sex was now on a quid pro quo basis. I was familiar with this -- overseas in the Army, I learned that this was how all whores operated. They usually did it for money, but since your money was your money and my money was our money, I'd effectively be paying you with our/your money, so services was our currency.

I really don't know that I did much differently -- I assumed that if we had sex, you felt that you'd been paid.

This was the first time I considered divorce, but decided that I'd have to wait until the kids were out of the house. That was years away, but I felt that I had to tough it out and wait.

The abandonment of lovemaking and the move to prostitution did relieve me of any responsibility for your sexual satisfaction. In prostitution, the goods, services or money tendered is the expected satisfaction. From then on, I just worried primarily about myself. That probably contributed to your growing lack of interest in sex, but in hindsight, I think you were already losing interest. You almost always seem to have orgasms, but after the abortion something was missing, and it was ever harder to get you interested in fooling around. And that was even before you changed our sexual relationship.

Well, the kids grew up and moved on with their lives, but our life wasn't bad, and we'd achieved a good lifestyle. I was content and didn't look for a divorce.

Things were good until they weren't. I think you finally lost all interest in sex. I suspected you were becoming disinclined when you put on weight after the abortion, and never made any effort to lose it. I think that was your first attempt to discourage me. Together with the weight gain, you began telling me you didn't like your breasts touched, and took to laying in bed with your knees drawn up to prevent me from caressing anything other than your back, arms or belly.

Then most of the time, massaging your body put you to sleep (or at least the pretense of sleep) before anything approaching a sexual nature was achieved.

Even when we reach any type of foreplay, sex could still slip away. You had a nasty habit (and not a good nasty), if you had an orgasm from foreplay, of rolling over and saying "I'm going to sleep now!", leaving me with a throbbing erection without any way to deal with it. I considered forcing myself on you, but that's not me. I toyed with the idea of divorce again, but you didn't pull that stunt too often, and life was comfortable enough to put up with it.  I should have just beat off and sprayed the ejaculate all over you.

Then things got worse. You developed an odor, an acrid, penetrating odor, from your vagina. When we'd have sex, just a whiff of it was enough to deflate any erection. I though maybe nature had pheromones that, instead of attracting a male to a female, would repel one from a withered, no longer fertile vagina. I attempted to research it, but never really found anything definitive.

For a long time, I didn't talk to you about it because I didn't want to embarrass you, and frankly couldn't believe that you couldn't smell it yourself.

I had hoped that it would clear up, that it was temporary, and I put up with all the humiliation that goes along with losing an erection while having sex. I kept trying to "bully" through with it, sometimes making it through, but more and more frequently losing it mid-stroke. The odor got so bad that I had to sleep facing away from you, because any shift in the covers would puff the smell into my face. Having sex in our bed began to resemble having sex in a sewer treatment plant, with dead, rotting animals adding to the aroma.

After months of humiliating incidents, I finally broke down and told you about the odor. After a gynecology appointment, you told me that your gynecologist said there wasn't any odor. When I said there was and your doctor must be nose-blind, you refused to do anything about it -- you wouldn't talk to any other doctors or even douche. Basically, you were telling me, fuck you, if there's a smell it's your problem. I think you were perfectly happy with anything that stopped us from having sex.

I thought a lot more about divorce, even looking into possible outcomes in California. But then you had breast cancer, and needed my support. Luckily, a lumpectomy and a year of radiation therapy helped you become a survivor. But your illness made the thought of divorce unacceptable for a few years.

When I still insisted on having sex, you decided that we'd only do it missionary style, and your hips hurt, so you could only move your knees about a foot apart. Now the weight you put on worked in your favor, because to insert my penis into your vagina, I had to push against the fat of your thighs. I would just barely be able to get my penis in, when I would run out of leverage and get pushed back by the thigh fat.

About then, the odor would become overwhelming, and I would start wondering why I was putting my self in the position to be humiliated over and over again.

From that day on, I swore I would never have sex with you again. When I felt an erection coming on, I would try to suppress it. I wasn't always successful, either in the suppression or the planned celibacy. So the humiliation continued.

Over time, though, I became better and better at suppression, and got fewer and fewer erections as I convinced my subconscious that you weren't appealing. And you never questioned our not having relations -- you seemed perfectly happy not to have any.

My only acceptable outlet was masturbation. For that, at first, I was always able to become erect. Porn and literotica.com helped. As time went on, though, it became more difficult to achieve orgasm, sometimes taking hours. I think I've forgotten just what sex should be.

After several years, I've also seemed to have forgotten how to get an erection, even when masturbating. Sort of engorged is basically the state I now achieve, with almost no rigidity. I guess that falls under, "Careful what you wish for!"

Which brings me back to the beginning of this letter. At seventy, I realized I don't want to spend the rest of my life without sex, and I have to consider my options.

So I went to the doctor's, to talk about erectile dysfunction. He didn't see anything as a problem, and prescribed sildenafil, which should remind me how to "put lead in my pencil".

Up until now, I've allowed you as the woman to make most of the decisions in our sex lives, so I'm going to let you choose the option you would prefer:

Option 1: You and I have sex, when and how I want it. And nothing is off the table, including anal. You'll find it humiliating -- well, I've been humiliated, and you haven't cared. I could go instead for exhibitionism, and have you flash or display yourself in public. But, that's not just between you and me. I'm assuming my humiliation is private to us, although it wouldn't surprise me to find that you've discussed it with all your friends and family. But I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt.

Option 2: If you choose not to have sex, then you give me permission to have sex with other people. You, of course, would have the same privileges. Not choosing Option 1 means you default to Option 2, either in conjunction with Option 3 or by itself.

Option 3: Divorce, which would open Option 2 as well. Personally, I believe our lifestyle would be better were we to stay married, but as always, you have the option. Of course, you could choose Option 2, and decide later to opt for #3.

So, the balls in your court, and they're probably blue. I'll give you a week to make a choice, after which we default to Option 2. Perhaps I'll start with your friends who have seemed interested over the years.....

Love,

Your planning soon to be loving husband.