A number of years ago, I met a wonderful woman. She was kind, smart, hard working, pretty, and wonderful in just about every way. We fell in love and were married.

I should have paid more attention to her feelings about sex, because on our wedding night, I found out it was the first day of her period. And she naturally didn’t want to make love to me. She’s one smart lady, and details are very important to her, so I can’t believe it just “slipped her mind”. So I waited for about a week until it was over. Then we made love, but it wasn’t like I had imagined. She had apparently given sex a lot of thought. And she had made up her mind it was her wifely duty to submit herself to me. She thought it was in her marriage vows to submit herself to me sexually and she was going to live up to her vows, no matter what.

But the more times we made love, the less and less I enjoyed it. When your lover holds their breath, tenses up, and grimaces, it takes all the joy out of it. I could tell she was having a hard time with making love to me. So we talked about it a lot. But nothing was solved. It wasn’t because making love was painful for her, she just didn’t like it. She didn’t want to see a marriage counselor, because she didn’t see anything wrong with our marriage. And I tried to suggest some cleanses to her, I thought maybe that would help. But she doesn’t believe in herbalism or natural healing. In her thinking, if I would just stop trying to make such a big deal about sex, everything would be just fine.

So I stopped saying anything about sex. We just avoided it, and it wasn’t a part of our life. I didn’t have sex with anyone else, I wanted to be true to her. But after more than twelve years of not having sex, I can’t continue with it. Nothing is going to change unless I make it change. I love her, but I have to take charge of my life and live the way that will make me happy. Otherwise what’s the use of living?

But we are such good friends that I can’t see us being apart. It would just ruin my life if we ever split up, each going our separate ways. If that happened, I think I would cry forever. I love her dearly, but I’m not in love with her anymore, if that makes any sense. It’s like we’re more like brother and sister than husband and wife. Although, she’s very devoted to me in every way except sexually.

We own and manage our business together. And it’s a very successful business. Not in the total amount of money we make, which isn’t very much at all, but in the amount of money we make in the time we put into the business making it. Our total income isn’t all that impressive. Last year we only made about 75k. But the impressive part, at least to me, is that we only worked about 300 hours to earn that income. If you work 40 hours a week, that’s about 2000 hours a year. So you can see where I get all the extra time for other things.

I love working in the business because each part of the work is so diverse I never get tired of doing it. And I get such a good feeling from what we do, and helping the people we help.

We have structured the business so that each one of us does one half of the work. And neither one of us can do the other’s half. So if we split up, the business would fail. And neither one of us would have any income. We would both be out on the street, homeless and alone.

I find the extra time I have very useful to me. I like to help people, and I spend part of it helping people who have terminal illnesses. I practice herbalism and natural healing to help these people, but not as a vocation. My business is completely different from this. I do this just to help them to get on with their lives. And what I do, seems to have helped several people to heal themselves. It’s a long story, but I donate my time and sometimes the herbal formulas I make up. It’s very satisfying to me and gives some meaning and perspective to my life.

I don’t want to be without my best friend and my wonderful business partner. I don’t want to loose my income. But I desperately want a sex life. So what do I do. After years of contemplation and soul searching, I came up with a possible solution. Whether it will work or not, I don’t know. It seems more like a fantasy than any kind of reality. I sure wish someone could point me in the direction of a real solution to this mess of a life I have.

If anyone has any ideas or thoughts on all of this, please jump right in and let me know how you feel. I will be so grateful for any input or advice you can give me. Please share your thoughts and experiences with me, please. I need all the help I can get.

T