My husband rejects me for prostitutes
DEAR BEL I’D VALUE advice about how to carry on living. For 23 years, my husband and I have both worked hard, raising our two boys and the two children from my first marriage.
I’m a teacher; my husband has his own business. Two children still depend financially on us.
Two years ago, I discovered my husband had met a Thai girl en route to Australia.
Within three days he’d become so besotted he’d agreed to be her boyfriend and ‘take care of her’ at £400 a month. They planned a fiveday break at a Phuket resort at a time when he said he’d be working in South Africa.
The holiday didn’t happen, as the girl’s husband discovered the secret. Furious, my husband spent the same period away on a trip with a South African prostitute he met at a hotel casino.
He told me about it when I flew out to join him because he wrongly thought I’d guessed. Those two weeks of acute misery changed my life. I realised just how unhappy he was and why my efforts to persuade him to make love over the years had failed.
He confessed to visiting eight or nine prostitutes on a previous trip to Thailand, but said he didn’t actually need sex and I must accept that he didn’t desire me.
(I should add that I’m very slim, pretty, vivacious and affectionate, and desperate for cuddles from him and no one else.)
Things got better — but ten days ago I discovered he’d fallen for another bar girl, rented hotels etc, and now longs for the light-hearted, carefree fun they had. Again, I’ve flown out to join him for our joint holiday, only to find there’s no chance of intimacy for me.
He says he reserves the right to have flings and that he doesn’t like sex, so he won’t sleep with me. I’m full of anguish and don’t know what to do.
BEVERLY
YOUR statement: ‘I realised just how unhappy he was’ has something saintly about it. The trouble is, saintliness can be irritating, even unbelievable. Most women reading this will want to hug you and shake you in quick succession for allowing yourself to being treated in such a disgraceful way.
I know it is very hard indeed to call time on a marriage, especially when you still love the offending spouse, as you do. If you didn’t, you would be all too ready to seek those ‘cuddles’ from somebody who will appreciate you — and find you sexy.
To invoke my male readers for a second — surely most will take this idea of a bloke dating bar girls for ‘romance’ and not sex with a huge pinch of salt.
‘Yeah, right!’ they’ll say. Of course, he could be gazing at the full moon and whispering sweet nothings to his prostitutes, but somehow I doubt it.
This man is persistently deceiving his loyal wife to enter into commercial transactions with sex workers, refusing to show any physical affection to his wife, hurting and humiliating her with his lack of desire, and lying through his teeth every step of the way. And he allows you to take a long flight for the privilege of hearing your piece of soiled goods whine about missing his paid-for bit on the side.
What do you want me to say, Beverly? That you should understand, forgive and put up with this sorry situation?
There is only one way forward — short of you kicking him out and changing the locks before he gets back from his next business trip.
It is obvious that you urgently need to go through a process of counselling with Relate, to discover why this man has become so very ‘unhappy’ (bah!) that he is prepared to put his wife through anguish in pursuit of his selfish desires.
Of course, he’ll refuse, so you must play hardball (probably for the first time in your life) and tell him it’s a condition of you staying.
In the meantime, go to counselling by yourself. You need to start understanding why you have tolerated an intolerable situation without fighting back.
Look in the mirror at your lovely reflection and tell yourself you deserve more.