CW: depressive relationship stuff, sex, generally being a SadSack.

First off, both myself (37M) and my wife (36F) are in individual therapy and we’ve been married for about a decade now. She went through life with untreated anxiety, depression, and emotional dysregulation (turns out, likely on the spectrum) as well as complicated grief and I am working through a life of untreated ADHD, childhood trauma (great mix!), and sexual dysfunction. These are important to the situation but also putting it out that we’re already getting help.

So early in our marriage, I woke up about 3am on a work night to loud voices, as she and our roommate were up drinking in the living room, which our room was next to. I was incredibly annoyed but then, clear as day, hear her say “MrSadSack has a small dick.” Up until this point, I’d never felt insecure about my size as I’m about average and rarely had a problem getting sexual partners off (more to it than PIV - toys, oral, etc). When I brought it up, she assured me that it was more that she was used to longer but less girth and that she enjoyed my girth much better. Any time that it has come up she’s assured me that she basically didn’t know what she was saying at the time and is very happy with my size.

Fast forward to any 4 years into the marriage and my wife loses her mother. She is hit by the deepest grief that I’ve ever seen. Her libido goes away and I get to be on the receiving end of her anger phase of grief (with extra from from ADHD/RSD and early childhood trauma making my particularly sensitive to anger). Before anyone takes me the wrong way, yes, of course someone who is dealing with the fresh loss of a parent isn’t going to be interest in sex. I mention it because it’s what she attributes as the point where her libido changed.

And after six years, it hasn’t come back. It’s marginally better as she’s no longer on hormonal birth control and gets some drive when ovulating but outside of that, it’s generally a dead bedroom. It’s also a bit better because early on she was misdiagnosed and put on meds that seriously messed her up, leading to any sexual advances or interest being angrily rejected. So, as asked, I gave her space but the years of rejection really undermined my sexual confidence.

During the course of this I also developed ED due to a mix of hormonal imbalance, medication (hooray for antidepressants and ADHD med side effects), and stress as the sole provider due to my wife’s legitimately debilitating anxiety and packing. I was put on TRT with supplemental tadalafil to try to overcome the hormonal imbalance and compensate for the medications’ side effects. It isn’t always effective, however, I generally give her multiple orgasms when we sleep together.

We’ve discussed non-monogamy in the past as I’ve been generally comfortable with the idea and am ambiamourous. Generally, it’s been limited to allowing her to explore her bisexuality with other women, with her insisting that she has no interesting in being with any other guy. However, she’s also offered it for me to sleep with other women because my already fairly high libido has only been increased by the TRT, leaving me sexually frustrated nearly 24/7.

Recently, she brought up the idea of opening the relationship again. I responded that, yes, I really think that she should see about exploring that side of her sexuality and that I was ok if she wanted to see women without me but would also be down if they wanted me to join (but not required). So…I rather misread that. She was interested in hooking up with a guy. I hesitated but accepted, not sure why I was feeling off about it but stated that I wanted us to learn more about it before really getting into it as she hasn’t had any experience with consensual non-monogamy and we’ve been monogamous since the beginning.

We installed Bumble and she helped me create a profile. She immediately got a match and started chatting. As a guy, who is honest about being married and looking for casual non-monogamy, of course, I got nada, with the app not helping by giving 9/10 potential matches clearly stating that they only wanted long-term, monogamous relationships (I fucking hate those apps). The kick in the gut came when she started making plans to hookup with the match on the weekend. I have trouble with my emotions, and am about the least jealous person that I’ve ever met, so, it took me a bit to realize that I was feeling terrible and figure out a bit of why. We talked and she called it off, and we both uninstalled that shitty app.

Fast forward to this week and I finally managed to process why, as someone who is very much open to non-monogamy, why it was bothering me. Probably, a bit obvious to someone with a less fucked up brain or more experience with non-monogamy. From my perspective, I’ve been supporting her financially, emotionally, and getting her mental healthcare that she didn’t have access to when she really needed it. I stood by patiently, giving her space to work through her extremely prolonged grief, while sexually frustrated out of my mind and having little but rejection for years. It wouldn’t be us high-fiving and being happy for each other’s sexual experiences, it would be me, sitting home alone, possibly working, still sexually frustrated, and while the woman that I love and lust after goes out and sleeps with a stranger. I tried to communicate this to her as I wanted her to understand what’s going on in my head. I failed epically but eventually got some of it across. But during the course of the last 24 hours, she’s finally been honest in that the ED is a problem, she has been thinking about fucking other guys, and she was just trying to spare my feelings over the years and did, in fact, mean it at the time when she told my roommate/best friend at the time that she thought I had a small dick.

So, here I am, probably about as emasculated as a guy can be without cheating or physical emasculation, with insecurities and anxiety that I didn’t even know I had paid bare and stamped “confirmed”. Sexual self-confidence completely shattered but still sexually frustrated. How do I recover from that? How do we as a couple?

Radical acceptance maybe. But I don’t think that I’m comfortable anymore with pursuing non-monogamy. Who is going to be interested in pursuing a casual relationship with a married man who’s wife doesn’t want to sleep with him but wants to sleep with guys who are more well-endowed and functional? I don’t even have confidence going for me anymore. Nor do I have a cuckold fetish.

She’s trying. Putting up affirmations for me and asked me for a date to a film that I’ve been really looking forward to, which I fucked up by asking her, with my newfound insecurity, if she had cheated on me during our relationship and she’s not talking to me at the moment. I’m just feeling defeated by life, genetics, and whatever the fuck else there is to be defeated by. I’m glad that I’m already in antidepressants because I’d be in a much darker hole.

UPDATE: Thanks folks for the encouraging words and frankness. I’m still pretty damn low and there’s been ups and downs over the weekend (pretty awful this morning) but, at least I’ve got a bit of candlelight in these depths and can maybe feel a bit of a breeze coming from the top, even if I can’t see it yet.

A couple of clarifications: A lot of human relationship issues rhyme, but they’re not all the same. In my getting my hurt off my chest, I’ve definitely left out a good deal of context.

A good deal of the while situation has been caused by previously untreated mental health issues, for both of us. The biggest one at the moment being her complicated grief. Something that I also experienced in my teenage years that messed me up for a long time.

For those unfamiliar, think of the process of grief line a train (not a perfect metaphor because grief is often non-linear but it works here). It has these stops on the way to rejoining the mainline and integrating into normal life (sadness still comes from time to time but, new joys and fond memories do too). In complicated grief, the train derails, stranding the person in the acute phase of their loss. So, for six years, she was stuck between roughly the 1 week and 3 month point of someone experiencing the loss of a parent. More fucked up is that one of the likely contributing factors is her siblings denying her her right to participate in the funeral by knowingly scheduling it, on another continent, less than 48 hours after death.

So, while she’s progressed in therapy a lot, she’s still not integrated with the grief, which, in addition to anti-depressants, has led to extremely low libido and inconsideration. No, not an excuse for the behavior but context to understand why she acted shitty.

We talked a lot and she has apologized and continues to be regretful and try to help me out of this hole. In regards to her feelings on my size, I pushed the matter for her to be honest about it, even though it happened about 9 years ago, because I had trouble believing her and it would occasionally surface. She has said “I was a stupid little girl who didn’t know what she was doing or saying or what she had. I’ve never had girth like yours and it’s the best that I’ve ever had.”

When it came to the size and ED impacting satisfaction and her thinking about sleeping with other people, she told me that she wasn’t fully honest with me from the start because she was afraid that I would be devastated. She tried instead (successfully) to get me to see a doctor about the ED, leading to the discovery that I have a hereditary hormonal imbalance and that my psychological meds (anti-depressants and stimulant ADHD meds) are also contributing. We’ve both put on some weight over the years, which probably impacts how well we can do the do in some positions like spooning which she used to love.

Of her thinking of sleeping with other people, she said “I only want to be with you but, sometimes I really just want to be taken. I was horny and frustrated and didn’t realize how it would hurt you to suggest it because you’ve always been open to open/poly stuff.” Here’s where the grief and my ADHD/RSD came in. I haven’t even tried initiating for a long time because 10/10 times resulted in rejection. I used to be a 3-5 times per week guy BEFORE the TRT raised my libido to about that if a confused 15 year old. I’ve not been discussing it because it makes her feel terrible and under pressure to perform for me sexually. So, she wasn’t cognizant of the level of sexual rejection and frustration that is my being. Having participated in open/casual relationships back in Uni, I also wasn’t aware just how unbalanced things get by adding “married” to the male status.

I don’t know where the I’m going with this update because I’m still pretty messed up but, I will say to those that suggest divorce, etc, that I feel that this would be akin to divorcing someone due to the impact of cancer or other chronic disease. Yes, I’m hurting but I’m not prepared to do that this woman that I love dearly. It may be that we do need to explore other forms for our relationship when we’ve healed but, we’re in this for the long haul.

UPDATE 2:

Just a further clarification. The moment that I expressed that I was not ok, the attempt at opening and seeing someone else was stopped immediately. She didn’t understand (nor did I) how hurtful it was.