Therapy and Cheating

A couple of random thoughts are bouncing around in my head.  The first is cheating.  Rep. Weiner is a wiener for tweeting and lying about it.  The AP story HERE made me really think about it though.

This week Wednesday was therapy day.  I should add that while the therapist has quite a bit of experience with gay men including those who have come out later in life, she has very little (none until now) experience with "mixed orientation marriages".  All was tooling along fine, going over issues in the relationship when C brought up sex.  Being good Irish (former) Catholics we don't spend a lot of time talking about sex even with each other, never have.  But it was a good thing.   Our sex life is very infrequent and strained.  The effexor has just made it that much worse.  If there is anything worse than not being able to get it up, it's being able to get it up, but not get it off :-).

Anyway so we're talking about sex.  C mentions that she gets confused because it is still possible for us to be intimate even though I identify as gay.  We talk about the brain being the main sex organ and that love and caring can be there even if pure animal lust is not.  C mentions missing being pursued.  We both talk about fear of rejection.

Then the kicker.  The therapist says, "It must be comforting when you are able to be intimate."  Without hesitation or looking at each other C and I say in unison, "No, not really."

Wow.  Sex has changed so much in the past 6 years.  Sure I think it had started to change a lot sooner than that.  But I mark it to about 6 years ago now when I was first able to say to myself "I'm gay".   Then things really changed.  Sex changed so much that shortly after that C looked at me in the middle of sex and asked THE question.  "Are you gay?"  I answered as any man in my position would, "What do you mean honey; of course not!!"

C said something to the effect that it is so very different now.  And no it is not comforting.  Sometimes sex is downright unfulfilling or even downright disturbing.  But it has been rarely, if ever, comforting in the past several years.