Unconsummated Marriage - Biblical Advice needed

[3 Resurrections]

ap481  -  If you are interested at all in researching this therapy method, the first step I would take if I were you would be to purchase the following book and read it from cover to cover.  "The Body Keeps the Score" by Bessel Van Der Kolk is an explanation of how the body processes traumatic memories and stores them, and how the brain can be reprogrammed using EMDR to store these memories in a way that they are no longer able to cripple a person's day-to-day ability to function normally.   It gives a variety of case studies to show the broad spectrum of individuals whose experiences can be helped using this method.  Anyone from the very young child to the very aged is a candidate for this, and the range of trauma can come from sexual abuse, military combat, years of domestic verbal abuse, even witnessing something like a one-time 9-11 tragedy.

What EMDR does is to mimic the way God has given us to process stressful memories while we are sleeping (in the REM phase of our sleeping), only it is done by the EMDR method while the person is awake instead.  Personally, I believe every single soldier or first-responder should be offered this EMDR therapy as part of a job benefit package as a matter of course, so that the level of job stress does not build up over time and leak over into their personal and family lives.

If you are able to purchase this book above, let your wife read it as well.  An older friend of mine whose extensive traumatic history I can appreciate introduced this book to me and it comes highly recommended by many.  As a Christian, we know that God is ultimately the only healer, but He has blessed different means for us to achieve that healing.  EMDR I believe is one of those means.

[ap481]

 

I just wonder why you didn't talk about this with her before you married. Its a massive thing to know that you are going to refuse any sex, and not even have children because of it, yet get married anyway.
I feel for you, and I do wonder if you have seen another lady you like? After all, this has been going on for 20 years now so why wait so long and suddenly now be wanting to leave?

I honestly don't know why we didn't talk about it.   I knew nothing about sex, wouldn't have even know what to ask or talk about.   I guess I just assumed it would happen.   If I knew this was going to happen, I wouldn't have done it. 

To answer your question, in a sense this has nothing to do with sex or another lady.  It has to do that when my mother died 5 years ago, I realized that she was the only one that understood and loved me and my wife never did.    I feel so completely unloved it's overwhelming, and now I realize that the no sex is a symptom of that.   I realize what we have is no marriage at all.  I feel if she would have sex with someone else it wouldn't even bother me because something would be taken away that I've never had to begin with.  Why would I care?   When I realized how abnormal and bad this was, I started to panic. A better question is why would I get married when I felt so unloved by her?   It's because I had no idea what made me feel loved.