Here’s an experience that a lady shared with me not long ago.
“I have lived without penetrative sex for over five years and it’s not easy.
“I am just 47 years old!
“My husband is suffering from diabetes and it has knocked ‘his engine’ completely.
“It cannot even stand.
“We were advised to learn how to use sex toys.
“Do you know that instead of considering my sexual needs, my husband started threatening to throw away those toys, accusing me of wayward reasoning?
“He even asked, ‘With four children, what are you looking for again?’
“My husband has become very difficult to live with. Nothing pleases him anymore. The worst is the silent treatment he gives me each time I go out.
“The day that I make extra efforts to look beautiful, he will be throwing a dirty look at me.
“Even when I go for church programmes, this man will be checking the time for me and asking the children to come and check if I am still in church.
“When he kept reacting angrily to the sex toys, I told him to start using his hand to pleasure me.
“Do you know that he would use his hand a bit and put it to his nose?
“Like checking if ‘my something’ is smelly?
“He will even cover his penis with his hands when we are at it.
“It’s like he has made up his mind to be more difficult by the day.
“Although this is a marriage of almost 20 years, I can’t deny that I have been tempted to try my luck with another man…sexually.
“I am a woman in need of a man’s touch but I often end up swallowing my desire.
“To even use his hand to pleasure me, my husband will be misbehaving.”
What a man with this reality needs is love and understanding from his woman, because it’s a struggle to accept this sexual reality.
When his ‘engine’ is not working again, a man is the first to notice it but the last to accept his reality.
Understandably, it’s a difficult phase for the affected and you will be shocked at the unreasonable extent they will go to when they are fighting that reality.
If you check very well, some married women that are accused of sleeping around may be having similar challenges as this sister.
But the focus shouldn’t be on the man’s difficult behaviour but on making efforts to draw him out of his shell and making him stop being too conscious of his sexual challenges.
Men, learn to appreciate the women that still have moral fibers in them because a lot of wives are no longer carrying your sexual problems on their heads!
Frankly, there should be special counselling for such women.
They are really going through a lot. And the ego of the men will be pushing them to be very difficult rather than appreciate the effort she’s making to be by your side.
Men must be more realistic (and not problematic) in grappling with that reality.
Sometimes, it is not your sexual challenges that push the woman outside.
It is the impossible attitude that you are giving her.
Stop taking her endurance and fidelity for granted.
You could push her into dabbling into the hands of another man and even rubbing your inadequacy in your face due to how you are making her feel.
I have come to realise that because some people are not feeling good about themselves, they will make sure a spouse feels worse.
Dear couples; first understand that you can still have a satisfactory sex life despite sexual challenges.
There may not be a “quickie” again but you can learn intentional ways of pleasuring each other.
It’s a chance that life is giving you to really connect deeply!