My disabled body repels my wife

DEAR BEL THE simple question — is my marriage broken? If so, is it broken irrevocably?

I’m a 57-year-old disabled man, confined to a wheelchair, and my disability will worsen with time. Each day, my dependency on others intensifies and I see myself as a burden on my wife, family and friends.

These feelings are magnified by my wife’s coldness. No longer are there any spontaneous acts of real romance, and intimacy has ceased. I haven’t been passionately kissed in over ten years, and we sleep in separate bedrooms. When I ask if she loves me, I am met with silence. I do everything I can to show how deeply I love her. All my approaches for sexual intimacy are rejected — if I do touch her, she recoils, and her body language screams repulsion.

When she wants to make a call, she leaves the room and goes upstairs, knowing I cannot follow. We no longer socialise with family or friends, so my life has become a mere existence without any joy.

I desperately want my marriage to work, but every time I try to start the conversation of what we need to do, I am again met with silence.

I feel she stays only because she worries about what people would think if she deserted a disabled husband. Help.

WILL

There is no ‘simple’ answer to your question and the only clear thing is that you are very unhappy and need help. I feel sorry for you, although I realise what you need is some sort of strategy for coping and not just pity. Let’s just leave the issue of your disability to one side. That may sound unfeeling, but let me explain.

Over the years, I’ve received many letters from men full of anguish because their wives no longer wish to have sex.

Snogging tends to end when passion goes to sleep; there’s nothing unusual in that, nor in the painful truth that sexual chemistry fades even in happy marriages. So I want to set your woes within that larger context.

You say your wife seemed repelled by your attempts to kick-start intimacy. That must do great harm to your self-esteem, so I suggest you avoid it. Oh, I understand why you try, yet since it’s fruitless and damaging I’d try to shift your mindset rather than change her.

I worry that you are becoming depressed, so I suggest you talk to your doctor. It would also be helpful for you to discuss your marriage with experts at relate (relate.org.uk), but further talking to your wife is essential.

You say she answers with silence, but perhaps that’s because you are asking the wrong questions. Don’t demand to know if she loves you or anything that will drive her further within herself. Instead, confide that you worry about the future and the burden your increasing disability will lay on her.

You could address the lack of socialising and try to work out what has happened. Say you would love to see more of family and friends, and perhaps frame this in terms of happy memories of when you were first together. You could emphasise how good it would be for her if you were to invite people round. Neither the lack of sexual intimacy nor your disability are reasons not to see other people.

Surely, this is something you can do something about? Yet not expressed in terms of the marriage being ‘broken’ (a negative), but instead as a way to create more fun in the future (a positive).

Don’t ask her what’s wrong; frame the talk in terms of what she would enjoy. Try shifting the mood from your sadness and low self-esteem to ways of throwing open your shared life to others.