There’s little that’s harder to do in life than manage a marriage with kids. Maybe managing a nuclear reactor or herding sharks, something like that. But otherwise, the stresses of daily life, of time management, of being responsible for the well being of tiny lives, of jobs and mortgages and soccer practices can really put matrimony through the ringer.
Shea Epping’s story of a marriage breakdown is probably all too common, but what she took away from it might not be.
The mother of three shared her tale in an essay for Mom.me , and because it’s the sort of thing a lot of women can relate to, it’s worth examining. As she writes, with her home with the little ones while her hubby was at work, life started to get in the way of things.
After putting the kids to bed one night, she realized that she and her husband hadn’t been intimate in a while.
“While walking up the stairs in our home one February evening almost eight years ago, I thought, ‘Well, it’s been a while. We should have sex,'” she wrote.
“[By] the time he got home most nights, I felt I had nothing left. My husband and I didn’t end up connecting that night—or the next.”
Time seemed to pass quickly before her eyes.
“Before I knew it, three months had passed with zero sex—then four, then five.”
“I’m not even sure we kissed in those months or how many times we embraced. I was tired and had zero sex drive. He was resentful and felt neglected.”
He later admitted that, during that time, he had had an affair. “‘It’s over now but you hadn’t touched me for almost six months,’ he said.”
Stunned by his admission, Shea wrote that the pain was unlike anything she’d experienced before.
“You sit and wait for the pain to come, kind of like when you stub your toe and there’s a second when you feel nothing, then you feel it all. The rush takes your breath away and you wait for it to pass through your entire body.
“Only the pain of your spouse cheating doesn’t go away like a the pain of a stubbed toe—it stays with you. And, in most cases, it gets worse.”
While Shea and her husband are no longer together, she makes clear that it is not because the couple didn’t try in the relationship.
It is more complicated than that.
In retrospect, she can look back and analyze her relationship.
And specifically the role of sex and the lack of it played in her marriage.
“If we were having sex, he didn’t give me a hard time about buying myself a new shirt.
“If we were having sex, he did things around the house willingly.
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“If we were having sex, he acted like he liked me more.”
“If we were having sex, he complimented me, the way I looked and how I mothered.
“If we weren’t having sex, that all went away. He said it was because he felt neglected, unhappy and ignored.”
It sounds like, in general, they just weren’t on the same page when it came to the bedroom.
Although she worked herself to the bone to keep the house clean and meals on the table, that didn’t seem to be a priority for him. “He once told me that he’d rather have the house a mess and no food in the house and a disorganized life, if we were having more sex. Twice a month wasn’t enough for him.
Communication between the couple was definitely not great.
“He’d told me that I’d ‘tricked’ him, since I was more sexual when we first started dating and falling in love.”
“I realized after some time, having sex made him feel more like a man. My “withholding” made him feel less like a man, so he had to go get it from someone else,” Shea wrote.
There was a serious communication issue as well. “He never asked if anything was wrong, or if we could do anything to help me feel more sexual. Or if maybe I just needed some time without sex or a few months without pressure to get my libido back. He never suggested helping out a bit more and working a bit less.
“He just wanted to feel like a man. But it wasn’t my job to make him feel like a man.”
It seems that they what a relationship meant to them was completely different, but Shea only truly realized that once her husband told her about the affair.
What she took from all this introspection about her husband’s affair was a better accounting of her own worth.
“If he couldn’t look at me and see a wife who loved him, birthed his three kids, cared for him, and felt fulfilled and thankful, but who just needed to not feel pressured to give him an orgasm every other night, then I couldn’t make him see all he had.
“A woman’s worth goes way beyond how much sex she’s having with her husband,” Shea concluded.
“Whether he sees that or not is up to him.”
The severing of a long-term relationship is always difficult, and Shea’s story proves that sometimes it is more complicated than simply falling out of love.
h/t Mom.me
