My Current Situation

I've pretty well caught up to the present.

I believe I've grown a lot in being able to express my emotion in a healthy fashion, in controlling my anger, in seeing life and the Bible and God more honestly. I have better friendships. I do a better job of exercising and eating right.

Ironically I still look at women as much as ever. With better internet technology I look at pictures of women and read erotic material more than ever. I do believe I've grown in the way I look. I take much more care to look women in the eyes and respect them. However, I am still a shy nerdy type in many ways. I often stare when I shouldn't and get too shy to make the correct eye contact or say the right thing. I do not see this as nearly the problem (or sin) that many Christians do, nor as I once did.

I am much more focused on controlling myself around my wife, Maria. However, I am far from perfect an can still offend her by being interested in and distracted by a beautiful woman or a sexual scene. I also can offend her by getting angry when I shouldn't.

Maria has now been in steady counseling for many months, maybe over a year. I have not heard an outburst of anger from her in quite a while. We are also in counseling as a couple. It all has helped us. However, we still have a lot of distance between us. I still am scared of sharing with Maria how much I really like looking at other women. I'm scared of bringing up stuff. Maria has often been quiet for long periods only to eventually blow up into irrationality. I don't wish to set her off. We often seem bored with each other. Some of it is natural -- we know a lot about each other. Sometimes I feel like she's the last person I want to talk to. That's not so great.

Our sex life has tapered off. Before Maria got into her current counseling, she was yelling at me more and more. I like sex, but I felt stupid and wrong having sex when we were mad at each other so much. I really didn't want to have sex with someone who yelled at me and insulted me. My coldness seemed to affect her too. With the yelling down I feel better, but I find I often don't know where we stand and I don't want to push it.

Maria takes medicine to help with her emotional issues. This medicine often makes her tired at night and removes sexual desire, which also hurts our sex life. At times she is willing to let me have sex with her even though she's not aroused. I appreciate her kindness to me, but most of my fun is tied up in her having fun too. Sex is communication, after all. If I want self-gratification I can masturbate. I'm usually not very happy when we do the one-sided sex thing, and it tends to make me avoid sex unless I think she'll really be into it.

Thanks for letting me share my issues and my past. It has helped me. I plan to continue to posting. Obviously I still have issues as does my wife and our marriage. Writing about them helps me sort things out. Just since my recent spate of posts, I've become a lot more committed to working on our relationship. Despite our problems there is a lot of good in our lives.