you sound like an awesome guy, it is all your wife's fault, you deserve a medal for only cheating twice, I'm impressed, you are the shit
yep
you are the shit

I seriously doubt that you are marriage material in the way that I understand it.

Do your wife a favor and set her free.

Then go pursue your boundaryless life.

I would post in Cheaters Anonymous.

That said, you both have to get on a similar page sexually or your marriage is doomed. Lack of sexual desire is often related to what happens outside of the bedroom. Definitely pursue couples (and individual) counseling, and stop cheating while you are sorting this out. It adds to your problems.

I agree with GG's advice above. People on this forum generally are either betrayed partners or former cheaters who are in recovery. For us betrayed spouses, hearing you have *only* cheated twice during marriage (plus however many times when not married...it's ALL cheating) is not something we will be sympathetic about. Does your wife know or are you continuing to lie and deceive her? Have you exposed her to STDs that she does not know about? Whatever else you do in this life, tell her the truth if you have not done so. She deserves honesty and to know if her health is at risk. There will come a day when your equipment no longer functions the way you want it to. If you define yourself by only your wants, needs, desires, prowess and kinkiness you will be nothing but a shell when you can no longer perform. Something to think about as it is part of the normal aging process.

You're in the wrong room cheaters Anonymous is where you need to be you're going to get blasted by a bunch of people who are hurt and here you are, a perfect Target representing exactly the kind of deviant who is destroying their lives. You're going to receive a transferred verbal beatdown. Now to Circle back to some actual advice, or perhaps question. How the heck could you possibly have lasted 10 years with someone I did not sexually satisfy you? What made you even consider getting to that point in the relationship where you knew you were not happy or fulfilled but then went through with the biggest commitment you could possibly make? It sounds like you doomed yourself to either unhappiness or the inevitability of seeking other people out. I Think there are famous comedians who boiled relationships down to incredibly simple points that relationships are basically eating with someone and having sex with them and a bunch of stupid details in between and if you don't like eating with them and you don't like having sex with them you don't need to be together. Obviously this is an overly simplistic and comedic way to view things, but if you're into certain things what would make you think shelving them permanently would be a sustainable model? To answer my own question it is not, your relationship is doomed and the fact that you have exacerbated that by straying multiple times only adds additional nails in the coffin. At this point you owe this woman to let her go and seek out someone who actually loves her and is happy with her. Having an arid sex life is a subject for therapy not an excuse to break your vows. If a middle ground cannot be reached then that's it. So in that sense yes, it is that simple. You either think in terms of yourself or you think in terms of partnership and if you're only thinking of yourself then you are not fit to BE in a partnership. You should be afraid of yourself, I just hope you don't have kids with this woman because they will suffer because of you, and your inability to put yourself second.

A big reason my marriage ended was over sex - with wife telling me how she was somehow troubled by it, and that she needed to talk to her therapist. It went on for years. I gave up and pulled back. Once she noticed she did not have me tethered, she tried to tell me she was OK to have sex again, but by then, my attraction to her was gone.

Women and men need to understand that when they marry, they must take their partners' well-being every bit as importantly as their own. When it comes to sex, there is a particular contract. When you pledge 100% monogamy to the other, it is absolutely incumbent on both parties to satisfy the sexual needs of the other. When a spouse walks away from that, the marriage has lost one of its fundamental pillars. If the restrictive spouse refuses to see this despite honest communication, the marriage is rightfully sacrificed. The trouble is, of course, the very high cost of that move, so affairs result.

My wife treated me horribly but I've had to pay her and will continue to pay her lots of cash. My kids are grown and gone but the cash keeps right on going. It hurts and is wrong, but that is how some people are made, and I married one of them.

Take control of your own life. I'd rather pay this money and have a happy life than worry about stuff like money but be miserable. I am in a happy and healthy relationship now and it has been worth much pain to get here.

in august 2013 we had a miscarriage, in October 2013 we had a successful conception that resulted in the birth of our son. he is the only living being that it was natural for me to love more than myself. i do not have any track record for other people caring about my needs as well as and as careful as I do it myself. my self centeredness is a big issue here and i am only recently able to own that. oddly it was the woman who fulfilled my fetish that made the breakthrough on that. the thing is that i was born with damage to particular parts of my brain that makes empathy and other emotions very difficult to deal with and to experience in the same way as other undamaged people. i am not sure i possess the capability to care for my wife, or anyone other than my son, in a way that is appropriate for the situation. telling me to feel is like telling a quad amputee to climb everest. perhaps a professional versed in my brain damage can teach me specific techniques to deal with this. i am not sure as of right now. the miscarriage and pregnancy took my wife to emotional planes that i cannot possibly fathom. my response was to withdraw and give her space. the problem is that i am her sole source of emotional support. she has no one else other than me to provide it. she took my actions as a direct and purposeful insult to her and processed it as a signal that i just did not care enough to be there for her when in truth i just did not know how. her attitude was that of course i know how, everyone knows how, youre human right? the only way you dont know how is if you dont want to know how. this reinforces my preexising self view of defect and worthlessness and causes me to withdraw farther. sex drops off, fetish develops, solo at first, and then onto an outside partner and now here we are. if normal sex returned i could easily discard the fetish play but her hurt over my lack of reaction to her reproductive experiences is too potent to her and i just dont know if that can be overcome.

So she knows you cheated on her? Not all betrayed partners can or will overcome or move past infidelity. Those who do move beyond it do so at an individual pace. It is something that may be forgiven in some circumstances but is not forgotten. I will say you have some good insights and seem to be truthful with yourself. Individual counseling is essential regardless of how your marriage turns out. Your lack of empathy and other feelings/responses can't be restored in your brain but, there are good therapy techniques such as DBT (among others) that can help you to learn to identify and then manage/modulate feelings. Your fetishes & sexual hyperfocus could be attempts at self soothing because you can't sort out emotions or feelings. The right therapist can offer tools, exercises and counseling. What you describe is what is seen in narcissistic personality disorders (I understand your personal situation is due to brain structure) character disorders, and some autism spectrum disorders. I would think some amount of individual progress could be made if you were motivated and had the right therapist.

No she does not know. The answers to a lot of the questions you ask I am absolutely ashamed of. I battle with viewing myself as a monster, and as someone fated to screw up my own life. My feelings for my wife do not effect my actions. I don't understand why not. When I say I love my wife, I am not sure I mean that in the same way as other people. My excursions with outside partners was never about wanting to leave my wife, or wanting to be in a relationship with the other people. The other women served a specific purpose to me. I am currently at a place mentally that I would not seek any additional partners outside of my marriage, but I don't trust myself over the long term. I do sometimes wish that my sexual desire would completely die. Not having to satisfy those urges would make my life much easier. When I got married I knew that I would be making a sexual sacrifice, but I thought I could live with it and behave in a typically monogamous manner. I want to be what my wife deserves. The thing is that I also want lots and lots of crazy sex and she doesn't.

A bit of background.... before I got married I had a few mmf 3somes with a buddy of mine and either his gf's or mine. A few years into my marriage my wife got drunk and tried to initiate a threesome with this same buddy. I was totally into it, and had no intention of stopping it. The thing is the next day she claimed she didn't remember initiating anything and accused me of taking advantage of her drunken state. I assure you I did no such thing. It was really this event that marks the beginning of her withdraw from me. Leading into her miscarriage we had already dropped off from several times a week to several times a month. After the miscarriage I felt completely guilty about wanting sex from her at all. The thing is that when she drinks her sexual inhibitions completely drop and I feel ashamed to say I like her much better that way. Even though I know I am no predator I feel like one for thinking these thoughts. I don't want her drunk and not in control, but I don't understand why there are so many barriers to sex when she is not under the influence. I think it is because she still carries some grudge against me from the botched 3 some, and from the lack of emotional support during the miscarriage/pregnancy. I know my marriage will not survive a reveal of my infidelity. I feel that revealing it to her would be akin to telling her I don't want to be with her, and that just isn't true. I am truly lost.

So she is feeling some mistrust and regret about the 3 way. Makes sense. But here's the thing about us betrayed....we KNOW already something is afoot. We suspect things. We think there is something wrong with US. We try hard to do better, try harder, fix things. We fear we might be cray cray. But when it all blows up (and it always does) and the truth comes out, the lies and deceit are way worse than the physical betrayal. She is sensing all of this but has not identified your betrayal for what it is...yet. This is why things are off, she seems distant and doesn't enjoy sex. It takes the mind a long long time to catch up with what the heart and the body already know or suspect. She deserves the truth. Especially if you have put her at risk for STD. Did you know many miscarriages happen because of STD? Did you know that she (and you) can be symptom free now but years down the road get a diagnosis that can be life threatening because of an undetected STD? Did you know throat cancer is on the rise and the leading cause now is STD not tobacco?

And I do know exactly what you describe about your feelings for your wife, "needing" all the sex etc. My husband of 30 years was a serial cheater. Male, female, mmm, mmf, mf, any hole will do. It wasn't love, it was "I just wanted to have sex with a lot of different people". My husband is emotionally retarded, a covert narcissist. I was lied to, deceived, made to feel unwanted unsexy, told I was batshit crazy for actually thinking he could ever ever do these things. But I knew, I knew, I knew and I was right. I never wanted to be right about this. I have PTSD from years of this kind of mindfuckery. All I ever wanted was the truth. So I really do understand your mindset better than you would ever believe. And therapy CAN help you learn to fix the broken parts of yourself. But you have to WANT to do the very hard work. And it requires you to be honest. If you can't tell the truth then please just set your poor suffering wife free.

just to be clear, the botched 3 some happened before i ever cheated. she thought i arranged the 3some before hand when it truth it developed spontaneously. she knew i had shared gfs with this friend b4 and she just got herself drunk one night and went for it and has blamed me for not stopping her ever since. the thing is that for a long time i did feel responsible and like a defective person because i didn't want to stop it. i knew i didnt tamper with her drink, she was pouring her own. i didnt even tell her at first that she initiated. i still havent given her the details of how hard she went for it bc the guilt would rip her apart. im already fighting a sexual asault from her teens that she never got treatment for. i do feel that at some point i need to tell her about my 2 cheats. i will test myself for std and if anything comes up i will move up my timeline but for now i need to defer to the counseling that has yet to happen. today i found a guy versed in dbt i see him next week. we also have plans to see a marriage counselor. my cheating is really a symptom of the fact that i cant supress my impulses and put others first. i need to learn that, if it is learnable. i feel without that help i am doomed regardless of what happens with this or any future relationships. my experience with the 2nd woman is what woke me up. i just spent years thinking i was broken and destined to fail and not born with sufficient equipment to fix myself. i tend to fight back against people that tell me i can get better, even mental health pros. i am not even convinced that i deserve to get better. i often think that most people who know me would be better of without me. let us see where therapy goes. it is my last shot at life.

Therapy alone isn't a magic bullet. You have to be willing to expose all the unpleasant parts of yourself in these sessions or it's a waste of time. It will be difficult and unpleasant but focus on the end game-your mental health. Good to hear you are at least getting yourself tested for STDs. Glad you found someone versed in DBT/CBT because all the "talk therapy" in the world isn't effective for these situations. You need practical tools to apply to every day interactions, lots of homework, practice, and real time opportunities to put these tools & skills into play. Marriage counseling is helpful but please do not allow that therapist to take the codependency model on your wife as in "So Sue, what did you do to contribute to the demise of your marriage"? This will only hurt and alienate her further. Ask me how I know. And I too have been given the *gift* of childhood sexual abuse and was raised with a narcissistic adoptive mother and grandmother (plus a new found narcissistic birth mother) which when compounded with the lies deceit and betrayal of adultery in my case resulted in complex PTSD. Life can suck but for me none of them get to win by destroying me. I'm stubborn that way.

it is a difficult path ahead because i already engage in a fair amount of self loathing. if the therapist outright takes her side and reinforces the loathing the therapy cannot be successful. i already know im the scum of the earth. its a big part of why i havent gone to therapy thus far. i had the opinion that need for therapy and defunct emotions make you a weak and worthless person. the jury is still out on that but i am starting to change. i deal with emotions by switching them off completely. i feel too extremely in one direction or the other that i can't function. and i get into situations where 1000 other people all feel the same way about an event and im the weirdo that doesnt feel anything at all. and then i tell myseld that i am superior to them bc i am able to master my emotions but lately im realizing more and more what a crock of shit that is. the thing is that i dont know any other way to be. i need to learn, if it's even possible, or my life has no hope at all

Do not give up. I read your posts and get creeped out that the things you say resonate with me to my core. I felt crazy, broken, self-loathing, yet I thought I was superior. I also actively tried to purge every last bit of emotion from my being. I thought I was close to being fully purged, but in reality was out of control with emotions. All of this masked the real problem: I had been sexually abused as a very young child. I found my root cause and dealt with it, and everything else fell into place. There is hope. Do some intense soul searching and maybe you too can find peace. Best of luck to you.