Sex,love,marriage,babies,porn,strippers,reality/fantasy

[weary]

Well, if you desire to go to a strip club, consider that this would displease your wife.

And that is the primary reason for not doing it.
On the other hand, there is that struggle I have in all areas of my life with balancing my feelings/wants/needs/preferences against someone else's. If I would be happy if I did X but my wife would be unhappy if I did it, and if I would be unhappy if I did Y but my wife would be happy, my tendency and my gut instinct is to do Y no matter what we are talking about, by default. In this particular case, her feelings are probably more justifiable and societally acceptable than mine.

she is your "oneitis"

I honestly never heard that term before, and just looked it up, and you hit the nail on the head. I have had a number of discussions with my therapist or group about whether it is really about her, an idealized fantasy version of her, or just the idea of anyone like her(and she is the placeholder). The thing is, I am attracted to other women, and think about being with other women, but the strength of this obsession probably has to do with the fact that I really connected with her and thought I got something coming back the other way as well.
Sometimes I feel like my wife is the only person that ever would, could possible love me and be attracted to me, and yet her behavior and problems make my life a living hell a lot of the time and she doesn't live up to basic things that I think most people want/expect from a spouse. The dancer opened up the possibility of that statement being false - that my wife is not the only one who would/could have those feelings for me. That was important and transformative. My therapist says that to me all the time - that as much as what I did hurt my wife and was not the most skillful thing to do, that the experience with the dancer was very important growth for me.

The fact is, my friend, that you are married, and presumably did so voluntarily. Thus, your wife is your sexual partner. You two promised, likely, to only have each other sexually for the rest of your lives.

you promised in your wedding vows to not act out that

I can acknowledge that to all parties, what I actually did and the things that are in my head are not compatible with being married, and that is really painful. It makes me feel like a horrible, shitty person not just for what I did, but also for thinking and feeling what I thought and felt and what I think and feel to this day. So fucking guilty and ashamed.

But by the same token, there are so many ways in which I feel like she is not living up to her end of the bargain of being a spouse/partner. But they are not as clear-cut and indefensible as infidelity, so I get push back against those. She can basically do whatever she wants as long as she doesn't cheat or leave. For a long time, she thought that as long as she would say "I love you" and give me hugs and kisses and have sex, then that was all she needed to do to be a wife. Not to take responsibility for herself or anything else. I think she knows better now but still doesn't know how to do it enough or consistently.

(How this makes any sense to me, that one person can satisfy all of another persons needs forever, is unfathomable to me.)

The sex with my wife itself isn't the problem. It is a lot of the issues around it (sleep schedules and other personal care, birth control/having kids, etc, general respect for schedules and feelings). We have great sex when we have it. I'm just really upset with her a lot of the time, even when I'm not on the outside, and we are getting along and actually having a pleasant or fun time together, there are all of these unresolved issues under the surface. I feel like all of these problems get swept under the rug over and over again, and they sit on the back burner and simmer. Either I bring up how I feel all the time and we fight and are miserable and I end up getting emotionally and mentally broken all the time, or I don't so we can live our lives and have some peace, but then she decides that everything is OK when it's not. Fear is her only motivation to change or do things, except as Yoda says, fear leads to anger and anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering...

[weary]

You may want to consider what is causing you to desire to do this? What is the underlying urge?

Excitement?
To feel desired and desirable (even if I know it is fake)?
To pretend that attractive women want to be in my presence and want to take their clothes off for me, even though they are doing it for money?
I don't think that there are rational answers.
My therapist thinks that when I started going a few years ago, it was an act of rebellion - breaking the rules and doing something I wasn't supposed to. I think I was depressed and lonely and thought that some boobs would cheer me up. I guess that's the urge now, is to find something that will soothe my depression and anxiety, but I guess also give me some hope for the future (even if that hope is completely 100% fake).

When I first started going to the clubs before I met and became friends with the dancer (Ms. Oneitis), I was anxious about running into someone I knew there and being embarrassed, and I really didn't feel comfortable talking to a lot of the dancers, because I didn't feel like I really had anything to talk to them about, and the conversation felt very forced and fake. It was completely different with Ms. Oneitis - she was real and sincere and genuine and just comfortable. I felt like we had known each other for a long time. With other dancers it was a little creepy when they would come over in their lingerie and sit on your lap or hug you or something... it's like "who is this strange woman and why is she touching me this way?" With her it was completely different.It took me by surprise and really scared the shit out of me and the last thing I wanted to do was to keep going to that club and spending time with her like that. I wanted to just be friends in real life and not that way, and she had good boundaries that prevented that completely at first and then slowly began to become permeable, but not completely. The more I got to know her as a person and a friend, the less I wanted to know her as a dancer and the less our relationship felt like a "business transaction". I asked her out for coffee before I even knew what I was doing, and not because of romantic or sexual desire but just because I felt really happy in her company. The strong sexual desire and romantic fantasy really grew gradually over a period of months, and she was responsible for its escalation as much as I was. She was the one who kept putting the brakes on, though, and ironically a lot of it was out of concern for my marriage.

Anyway, the point is, I am desperately yearning for the happiness I felt with her. Not that I expect to find that in a strip club. I wasn't expecting that when I first went there, and everything that happened caught me by surprise. That's why I still fantasize about her and frequently think about contacting her. It's not the strip club part of her life (which I think is in the past) - it's the fun person part, it's the good mom part.

I feel like I'm extremely fucked up. A really sick person. You know, if my wife could get her shit together and I thought that we would be able to have kids and she would be able to pick up some of the slack so I don't have to carry so much of the burden of our household, I would be really happy. I just have a hard time believing that anymore. And I can't get my shit together enough to decide what to do about it, because we keep floating from crisis to crisis, from stress explosion to deep depression, and I am constantly afraid to express my feelings to her for fear of the aftermath. But they come out sometimes anyway at inappropriate times, except for the ones that are buried so deep that even I have trouble accessing them.

[oak]

Weary, I have a warm regard for you, a brotherly sort of love. Admiration, even. What I admire is your honesty, and your willingness to feel.

IMHO, you are not "extremely fucked up". I'd say you are "garden variety fucked up". That is, no more fucked up than me, or alot of other people.

Here is how I see you (and myself too!), while we are not as low-bottom as this person, the theme perhaps applies:

I love this show "Intervention". A few years ago they had a very proper Southern belle, an outgoing woman in her early 50s. She also struggled with alcohol.

One day she passed out, face-first on her front yard. What struck me is her 10 year old son blithely rolled past on his scooter.

What I am getting at is not that you are fucked up as that low-bottom woman (I think she got sober). What I am saying is people who can't/won't hide their hurts anymore are the lucky ones.

I am glad she passed out on her lawn in broad daylight because then she couldn't hide anymore.

You claim to be "fucked up" only because you are not willing to hide, to stuff down a secret that millions of other men do every day.

Fortunately you have a safe forum here to be honest. Hooray!

How many emotionally poor people do not have such an outlet. You, me, and the alcoholic lady can't/won't hide our hurts.

Forgive me for trying to put words in your mouth.

Some thoughts as I read:

While not my sexual cup of tea, I know alot of guys like strip clubs. Perhaps it was transgressive and "dangerous" for you to go, at first, because of your career role. Like you mentioned.

Transgressive can be sexy and addicting.

As far as being attracted to all sorts of women, my heteronormative sample size of 1 (ie me) is *constantly* attracted to all sorts of women.You are not alone there!

(Again, I am deeply baffled how marriage is supposed to prevent this. But that is another story.)

I do not know how old you are weary, but as a 37 year old man I can wholeheartedly, unequivocally, clearly state that at ages 35 to 40 a man is just starting his most attractive years. 50 is a prime, prime age for men to be successful.

(Personally, I was that nobody kid that no woman noticed until I turned 29. Then....everything clicked at once. It also happened to many of my friends.)

So if you are forty, you are very young in your attractiveness. You have another 25 years of great potential. And even men in their 70s and 80s clean up too.

And at no age do we need to lower our standards.

So much for age.

As far feeling guilty, speaking only for myself, I have learned to try to listen from feelings, and to see what I can learn from them. What is my unconscious or conscience trying to tell me?

As far as her not living up to her side of the bargain, part of the sexual life is the physical.


You mentioned elsewere about her lack of showering? Smell can be seductive, or repellent. No gender is overly innocent or overly guilty in this important consideration. It must be maintained for a happy sexual experience.

Please grab a big grain of salt, as I offer a suggestion you may want to consider.

This is what I would do if a girlfriend was slipping:

I would tell her on Friday, say, to clear her schedule for Tuesday night. I'd tell her to be ready at 5 pm, and give a suggestion of how to dress. I wouldn't tell her what we were doing.

Then at the appointed time, 5 pm on Tuesday, I'd show up, walk her into the cleaned car. We'd go for a hike, dinner, dancing, whatever. The content doesn't matter.

I'd give this hypothetical gf a reason to groom herself, give her something to look forward to, and a chance to expand her horizons as far as how she views the relationship.

And then repeat.

Of course, meanwhile I would carefully watch my grooming, be fully present to listen to her, and consider what she needs/desires as a significant other.

After a month of Tuesdays, if she gets with the program, then great! If not, I'd dump her.

We all have different standards for cleanliness, communication, and lifestyle choices (children being a big one).

Hopefully these issues were brought out before the wedding.

If not, life can be long.

Again, just my two cents.

Alot of people feel like you do, weary. You are just one of the rare ones to be honest about it.

[weary]

can't/won't hide our hurts.
You claim to be "fucked up" only because you are not willing to hide, to stuff down a secret that millions of other men do every day.

Wrong. I still hide and stuff down my feelings and secret shames all the time. I am starting to open up more on here, with my therapist, in group, and haltingly with my wife.
I feel like I have to hide feelings that will cause others (my wife) pain or to look at me in a negative light. And it's wrong to be dishonest and lie or withhold feelings, so that means I have to force myself to feel what I'm supposedto feel instead of what I really feel. That's how I was raised, that's how I acted most of my adult life, and that is my major contribution to the messes in my marriage, career, and other relationships. That "willingness to feel" you say you admire is a new development derived from therapy and introspection that is difficult, painful and not something that I do we'll or consistently.

And at no age do we need to lower our standards.

I am 40. My wife is 39. I want to have kids. She says she wants to have kids, but she doesn't have her shit together. I don't have all of my shit together either, but I am and have been functioning as a responsible adult for a long time even when saddled with more than my share of responsibility and not being able to rely on her for help/support. There are biological issues at stake here (more for her than me obviously). But here's the thing - suppose the kids or any one of a number of other issues is a deal breaker and we get a divorce. If I want kids with someone else, that someone else will have to be younger than me at that point, and factoring in the time for a divorce, the time to meet someone and end up developing a relationship to the point that something like that would happen, she would have to be substantially younger. And I don't see myself possibly being able to have a relationship with a woman that much younger than me. Why would a young, attractive, intelligent woman want a fucked up, damaged failure like me? What would I have in common with a woman 10 years younger than me?

RIght now (and for a long time), many of my wife's choices and habits and behaviors are and have been unacceptable to me and difficult and painful to live with. I don't dislike her or hate her, I don't think she is a bad person, or a stupid person, or a lazy person. I believe that she loves me and she wants things to be better and she is trying to change. But what if she can't? Does it make me a bad person, a bad husband, in violation of my marriage vows to have things that I don't want to live with for the rest of my life? Am I allowed to set boundaries? What are appropriate behaviors/actions on my part if those boundaries are not respected?

This is what I would do if a girlfriend was slipping:

I appreciate the suggestions, and later I will describe ways in which I have attempted to do these things that have met with some success and occasionally backfire horribly, but overall have not led to consistent changes in behavior. I don't want to have to do all of the heavy lifting of setting priorities and agenda anymore.

[weary]

My wife and I had sex yesterday morning for the first time in probably 3-4 weeks. It was nice, but there are so many conflicting feelings that are stirred up in that period of time, especially now that the frequency has dropped off and we are going through a period of time with so much stress. Thinking about how angry/resentful I am toward her about so many things. Thinking about the dancer, and the female friend I'm having some feelings for, and whether I'd rather be fucking them instead. Whether they would be willing to tell me that they were ready to have a baby with me, and it wouldn't be some future at-some-unspecified-time-or-maybe-never-once-I-get-my-shit-together thing. My wife feels so close and so connected to me after we make love, and sometimes I do, but other times I feel so lonely.

I love her so fucking much, but I am so tired of the way she behaves and how it hurts her and me and our relationship, while at the same time she is able to convince herself that everything is OK if I'm not actively mad at her. I can't really call it a fight, since we weren't yelling at each other the whole time, but a very emotional and draining 4-5 hours, with lots of crying and falling apart and some raised voices and tension. I still have a hard time explaining the extent of it. We had a 4-5 hour "discussion" yesterday afternoon/evening. We used to have these 1-2x a week like clockwork, and they have been occurring less often lately and are more civil than they used to be, which I guess is progress, but also means I am avoiding conflict by not bringing things up as often. I am able to vocalize that I am sad and scared and exhausted and drained and talk about all of the ways that I feel like shit about myself and my life and feel like a failure, but I still struggle to articulate the things that I am mad at her about, that I want/need to be different, that I need and want from her. I got about 5% of it out, and it led into several hours of defensiveness and shame on her part. It's so hard - she admits things that she has difficulty with, and admits things that she has problems with, but its as if she just expects me to tolerate things in perpetuity. And I feel like it's not fair to be angry at her if she's trying her hardest. And she is afraid, and I am afraid.

I don't know how to describe all the things that are fucked up. I can't even communicate it to her, because I honestly think that she doesn't understand how fucked up things really are - she thinks that her behavior is a lot closer to normal or acceptable than it is. And she acts like certain basic things are impossible or at least impossible now, and maybe "someday" she will learn how to do them but she can't right now. She doesn't take care of herself - she stays up all night and sleeps all day. She does not follow doctors instructions for how she takes medicine that affects her sleep, judgment, brain chemistry. When she is loopy on meds she eats ravenously, and she hasn't exercised in months, so she has gained back a lot of the weight she lost. She doesn't shower, get dressed or leave the house many days. The only days this week that she did so were Wed and Fri. She is still in pajamas now (Sun evening) that she put on Friday night.

She doesn't pick up after herself, and most of our house looks like a bomb went off. It takes her a really long time to do everything - and she chalks this up variously to her sleep disorder and being tired all the time, ADD, an undiagnosed learning disability, not knowing the right way to do things, not being good at estimating how long things take or keeping track of time, etc. I work full time, she has not had a job in 10 years, and I do the majority of the household chores. She is back in school getting a second bachelors degree nearly 20 years after the first, but she is down to only taking 1-2 courses at a time and getting into such a ridiculous frenzy whenever she has a paper due that she is literally yelling at her computer, crying, stomping around the house. For a long time, she thought that as long as she was "providing emotional support" she was fulfilling her responsibilities as a wife, but when you demand emotional support much more than you give it, you end up with a net negative in that category, especially when your husband is afraid to rely on you for emotional support because you are always falling apart and anxious/depressed to begin with.

All I managed to get through in our discussion yesterday was about her picking up some of her messes around the house. And she gets anxious - if I give her a long list of everything that bothers me, she is overwhelmed by it, and afraid if she doesn't get everything done that I will leave her (so instead, she doesn't do any of it... huh?). And she needs me to tell her what to do, and prioritize things for her, and validate the effort that she's putting in even if she can't get things finished. Like her picking up after herself is all about me. It's not. It's about basic respect of herself, her stuff and the home we share. She acts like everything is an unreasonable burden, because I think that she believes that it is for her. And this is not the hard stuff, and this is not even stuff that I feel is asking her to go out of her way to do something for me - this is for her and for us! All I got to was if I tell her one mess to focus on at a time, and I am patient and open-ended with how long I give her to do it, and I recognize and validate the efforts that she puts in... then maybe she can get it done. So maybe at that rate, she can pick up her various messes by 2016 and then I can start focusing on convincing her to do some of the regular chores around the house. Of course, by then she will be 43 and it will be too late to start having kids, but that's OK because she will still probably be all screwed up with her sleep and her medications still anyway. But I will have to bite my tongue that whole time, because if I still get frustrated with the house being a mess or any of those other things, well, that will kill her momentum and motivation to keep working on them.

I feel like I'm screwed no matter what. I can't deal with her behavior and the chaos it causes forever. The longer things go on, the less likely it is that I will ever be happy. But I can't communicate the things I need to her without everything degenerating into her being defensive and me feeling guilty - things never change enough or change too slow. I don't think I could deal with the stress and guilt of a divorce, especially on top of the career stress that I have, and I am afraid of what it would do to her and me. And as much as I believe that I have a lot to offer any woman and that there are women out there who would make responsible, equal partners that might actually be interested in me (and I think I actually know some of them), I don't really believe that I could start over and make anything work.

[manuel_moe_g]

I am able to vocalize that I am sad and scared and exhausted and drained and talk about all of the ways that I feel like shit about myself and my life and feel like a failure, but I still struggle to articulate the things that I am mad at her about, that I want/need to be different, that I need and want from her. I got about 5% of it out, and it led into several hours of defensiveness and shame on her part

Out of context this sounds bad, but I am so proud of you, weary. This is objective evidence that you are learning to better communicate your needs. This is so much better than 6 months ago. I am really proud of you.

She doesn't take care of herself - she stays up all night and sleeps all day. She does not follow doctors instructions for how she takes medicine that affects her sleep, judgment, brain chemistry. When she is loopy on meds she eats ravenously, and she hasn't exercised in months, so she has gained back a lot of the weight she lost. She doesn't shower, get dressed or leave the house many days. The only days this week that she did so were Wed and Fri. She is still in pajamas now (Sun evening) that she put on Friday night.

In our culture, you will not get support, but you have every right to feel frustration over this.

I feel like I'm screwed no matter what. I can't deal with her behavior and the chaos it causes forever. The longer things go on, the less likely it is that I will ever be happy. But I can't communicate the things I need to her without everything degenerating into her being defensive and me feeling guilty - things never change enough or change too slow.

You don't deserve this burden. I hope you can stay strong to manage day by day, which is the best anyone can ask for.

Please take care, I feel bad that you are still suffering.

[weary]

Out of context this sounds bad, but I am so proud of you, weary. This is objective evidence that you are learning to better communicate your needs. This is so much better than 6 months ago. I am really proud of you.

That means a lot. It feels like baby steps, and too little too late. I feel like I keep running over the same ground over and over again - I try to communicate my needs, I meet resistance, I back off, and I avoid bringing it up for months afterwards. I am trying to close that gap. There is just this huge separation between what I think is reasonable and what she feels capable of, and it scares both of us. I am so bad at setting boundaries, because I don't know what reasonable consequences are for violation of them.

In our culture, you will not get support, but you have every right to feel frustration over this.

I was a little confused by this comment. Did you think that I was complaining that she gained weight? That's not the issue - I am worried about her health in that context as well as the greater context of her behavior. We were around the same weight when we married, and by 5 years later she had gained about 70 lbs and I had gained about 40. To her incredible credit, she lost about 120 lbs (and I have struggled to lose 30) and has kept most of it off. Even though she has gained some weight back, she is stable at about 100 lbs below where she was. There are consequences to that (in terms of how she feels about herself, her wardrobe, etc), but I was not registering a complaint with her appearance or attractiveness as far as that is concerned. The not showering, on the other hand... she was asleep when I left for work this morning (after coming to bed somewhere around 5:00 ish am, and she still hasn't showered since Friday).

I've gotten really off topic for this thread and this part of the forum, and I apologize. I should probably focus on the issues that are more specifically about sex here. Maybe I will start a new thread on another part of the forum to continue venting about my marriage issues in general.

[weary]

So I need to get back to the topic I started with and try to address some of the marriage issues that don't involve sex in another thread.

Why do I want to go to strip clubs and look at, touch, smell, other women? I don't think I have a sex addiction. I haven't been to a strip club in over two and a half years. I have a wife that wants to have sex all the time and I don't have sex with her as often as either of us would like. I do sometimes feel guilty about the frequency of porn use and masturbation, but I think it is just often the most convenient and simplest and most effective way to distract and relax myself. It can be replaced on any given day by something nonsexual (e.g. video games, yoga, etc.).

Why am I obsessed with having a partner who is strong, competent and confident, who can support me as much as I can support her, who can have a truly mutual relationship with me, who doesn't just want the fun stuff but also is willing to do the hard work, who doesn't just want to fuck or make love but wants to have my babies and be a great mom, who doesn't just want to focus on her own orgasms but sometimes wants to just tease, please and entice me? OK, that last one is not all that fair. My wife is good in bed and does not neglect my needs, but I also don't always speak up and really ask for them. But still - why am I not fucking my wife every night like she wants me to? Why am I dreaming of other women? Nameless, faceless other women, random strippers, or specific people - the dancer I became close to and infatuated with in 2010, my friend in the therapy group who is going through a divorce?

This came up when I was talking to a male friend from my therapy group the other day, and I wanted to see what people on here think. Was my relationship with the dancer an affair? Was it cheating? According to my friend's standards, if I didn't put my dick in her mouth or her vagina it wasn't cheating. There was emotional involvement. There was physical contact that was probably inappropriate. At least a certain amount of it was authentic and not "acting".

I never intended to cheat on my wife. I certainly never went into a strip club thinking I would fall in love or even make a friend. I was afraid to talk to anyone at first, nervous, afraid of being seen by someone I knew, afraid I was a gross pathetic pervert. But when I met her, it was like we had known each other for a long time, and we spent so many hours just sitting and talking. It was so comfortable being friends with her, and I so wished that I had met her under a different context so we could just sit and be friends without the sexually-charged, noisy, alcohol-fueled atmosphere. Over time, we connected on many levels, and when I started having feelings for her, I felt safe enough to vocalize them. And when our relationship escalated, generally she was the one making the moves. God, I feel so pathetic. I just want that feeling back. I remember sometimes driving home from the club after seeing her and being so delusionally happy, a happiness that I didn't even remember was possible. I also remember getting really upset and angry driving home, because I was really angry at myself because I want to feel that with my wife, not with someone else. I want to feel that for the person that I have made a committment to, that I have invested over a decade of my life into, not some person that I hardly know. But as much as I have many strong feelings for my wife (positive and negative), I still have not been able to recapture that happiness that I felt with that dancer. And I feel really guilty and ashamed about that.

I still think about calling/texting/emailing the dancer. I think about telling my friend from the therapy group that I think she's attractive, I think she's an amazing and dynamic person, and I would totally ask her out if we were both divorced. Both of those are terrible ideas. Why do I want to do those things?

[oak]

I can offer my thoughts, weary, as a cisgender, kinsey zero, never married, no children, male rake.

[Caveats: everything I say has a million exceptions, is heteronormative, sexist, ageist, and true only in the most broad terms. Also it assumes that the "survival and replication" model/theory describes reality somewhat accurately.]

[But having said all that, what I write below jives with what I have observed IRL. Take or leave as you like.]

So why the lingering longing for a lithe dancer?

My meandering answer:

Monogamy

Marriage and monogamy, so far as I can tell, are probably several thousand years old. Maybe a hundred thousand years old.

The controversial book "Sex and Dawn" is a better authority than me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_at_Dawn

Survival and Replication

The male desire for a never-ending succession of young and beautiful women to impregnate, so far as I can tell, goes back several million years. However long it goes back, I suggest it goes back much further than monogamy.

Long story short, women trade "replication" value (youth, prettiness, facial symmetry) for male "survival" value (confidence, dominance, providing).

[I am paraphrasing, however imperfectly, Mr. Matt Ridley's book The Red Queen]

Evolutionarly speaking, a man has very little to risk by a random sexual encounter: a little bit of time, and some sperm. Thus it is in his interest, genetically, to have as many children as possible, to pass along his genes.

A woman risks much more: 9 months of pregnancy, and years of nurturing the child. She wants to choose her inseminator wisely, so she looks for high survival value in men, so he will provide for her and the child. She tries to maximize her replication value, which is a valuable addition to a man's genetic legacy. Win-win.

So

The dancer, weary, I am guessing she presented herself in a hyper-feminine way, in a hyper-sexual environment.

Did she maximize her appearance of replication? Blond hair, blushing cheeks, and firm breasts are all signifiers of youth. Like all great seductresses (I also highly suggest "The Art of Seduction" by Robert Greene) she used all the senses to lure you in.

Plus, if I may be so bold, you got the secondary gain of doing something transgressive: going to a strip club. Perhaps the fear of "getting caught" turned you on. It was safely "dangerous".

As far as porn and masturbation, I am of the firm opinion that a man should ejaculate regularly. I am very skeptical of those who say otherwise.

And what is porn other than an endless parade of new replication value? (Or at least the appearance thereof.)

So, I thought you are very normal, weary.

So you are in a marriage with a woman you love, so it is not appropriate for me, as a single man, to offer my thoughts on your marriage, since I have no experience with marriage.

In the most broad sense, I think the cultural lip service to the superiority of monogamy is at odds with the old, and more primal, male desire for many offspring by different women.

Thus your conundrum.

[weary]

I think your analysis is correct, Oak. I have Sex at Dawn on my Kindle (I've had it since hearing an interview with the author on Science Friday or Radiolab or some similar podcast a long time ago), but I haven't gotten very far in it due to a backlog of work reading, self-help books and books on how to stay married or deal with being married to a crazy person.

I want to add one thing, though. I think the reason that monogamy works for many people is that there is an exchange. You give up sexual and reproductive freedom in exchange for getting other tangible benefits of having a partner that you can depend on and having the security that generates. It is therefore not surprising that my desire for other women has increased as my dissatisfaction with and pessimism about my wife's behavior and the likelihood of it changing has increased.

The thing about it is, the desire and attraction is not just physical or sexual. The women I am attracted to are physically attractive, but there are personality aspects that to me scream out good, responsible, dependable partner and mother. It is not coincidence that they are both mothers of small children and appear to be very good mothers. It makes me feel kind of fucked up in the head. I understand the biological reasons for it, and I think I understand some of the psychological reasons for it. But I still feel guilty and ashamed, because of how society works and how I'm "supposed" to feel and act. And the difficulty I still have in resolving and even discussing some of these issues with my wife.