Do you honestly believe your wife could do without sex?, By Candida

Reasons people give for committing adultery gets more and more atrocious by the day. Gbemi had been married to Yori for four years after a courtship that lasted almost six years. Only, in the last few years, their relationship had disintegrated and when their son was born two years ago, the love-making stopped. According to Gbemi: “Sometimes I felt more like the nanny for his son than a wife. I did most of the chores helped by an inexperienced house- help, on top of which I had a full-time job. But I got no appreciation or affection in return.

“I’d tried everything I could think of to try to fix things. I’d dressed in sexy lingerie to try and seduce him. I’d even tried blatantly asking to have sex. But Yori was having none of it, always brushing me off with excuses. After which he started coming to bed hours after me. It had been two years since we last made love and I was at my wits’ end. Our sex life had always been important to me. In my view it really helps a couple bond. Without it, you’re just two people living together. In the end, I sat him down and demanded we talk about it. I told him: ‘We need to deal with this because no matter what you think, this is destroying our relationship.’

“He looked uncomfortable and embarrassed. ‘I just don’t feel like having sex any more. I’m sorry, but the desire has gone.’ He said, a bit sad. It was a blow – but what he said next shocked me to the core. ‘If you want it so badly, why don’t you try someone else?” I told him I wanted to save our marriage, not leave it. ‘That’s not what I mean,’ he said, ‘you could have an affair. I wouldn’t mind. People do it all the time.’ This was not the way I expected the conversation to go. I wanted him to agree to try harder, not suggest I try with someone else. ‘I want you,’ I shouted at him. ‘I want to have sex with you, not with anyone else. I want my marriage to work! But he’s come up with ‘his’ solution and wasn’t budging.

“He repeated the offer over a few months. I guess he knew I wouldn’t do it. He was just saying it to shut me up. We were at this impasse, stuck in a sexless marriage when I ran into Francis, an old flame. We had gone out while we were at the university and he told me he was recently divorced. He was still handsome, still his jovial self. Even though I hadn’t seen him for over 15 years we got on well and I was still attracted to him. He jokingly said he wouldn’t mind taking me to bed for old time’s sake and I said ‘why not’.

“He looked like the cat that had got the cream. ‘Are you sure?’ he asked. ‘I’ve never been surer of anything in my life,’ I flirted back at him. In my mind, I needed this affair and I was going to make sure my husband found out. This would either save my marriage or ruin it forever. He quickly drove to a discreet motel where a simple meal turned into us polishing off a bottle of wine, and soon, we were slightly drunk. And the sex wasn’t something I would want to remember.

“For the first time in 12 years, 1 had just slept with a man who wasn’t my husband. I was officially an adulterer. Climbing out of bed, I started getting dressed. ‘Why rush off?’ Francis asked. ‘What’s the rush? Come back to bed. You may as well, enjoy yourself now you’re here’. It had seemed a good idea two hours ago, but now all I wanted to do was go home.

“As I walked through the motel, I could feel every eye on me. It felt like everyone knew what I’d done. I felt so ashamed. But it was something I had to do. It was the only way I could think of to save my marriage. On my way home, I stopped at a business centre and sent an ‘anonymous’ text to my husband informing him his wife had just been seen coming out of a motel and describing the dress I had on. I promptly deleted the message before I handed the phone back.

“When he later came home, he looked really beaten. I hadn’t taken off my dress so he could see how accurate the text was. He reached for the phone and showed me the text. I looked defiant. ‘What’s all that about?’ he wanted to know. ‘I did what you advised,’ I brazenly replied. He collapsed into a chair. ‘You had an affair?’ he asked. ‘You must have told me to do it over 20 times. What did you expect when you won’t sleep with me?’ He looked crestfallen. ‘But I never thought you would actually go ahead with it. How could you?’ ‘What do you want me to do? Our marriage is dying and you refuse to acknowledge it. I only did what you said I should.’

“He was enraged. ‘Who was he?’ he wanted to know. ‘It doesn’t matter. It meant nothing. It was just like you said – purely physical’ He stormed out of the house and came home late at night. ‘And what happens now?’ he wanted to know. I told him it was up to him. That I still loved him but I wouldn’t live in a sexless marriage.

“With a lot of dialogue, he confessed to be battling with depression which is what caused the drop in his libido. The real problem wasn’t the lack of sex, it was the lack of communication. I could have coped if only Yori had told me there was something wrong. It is sad I had to do something drastic to shock him into action. I’m not proud of it, but it worked.

“There’s no way I’ll ever cheat again but in a strange way, my sleeping with another man is the best thing that ever happened to our marriage. I believe we would have been divorced by now if I hadn’t. Our sex life still isn’t where I’d like it to be, but we’re working on it and we’re talking, which is more important.”

Credit: Candida, Vanguard