My wife and I have come to a barrier in our sex life. In the past, I have struggled with severe pornography addictions. After receiving counselling for my erectile dysfunction, my wife and I went on to have a beautiful 10 years of marriage with an active sex life. Up until recently, my wife has been perfectly OK with indulging me in my various fetishes, such as peeing. Now though she no longer seems interested in having sex with me, and has even started sleeping on the couch on our scheduled ‘spicy date’ nights. I feel as though we are falling apart and I’m not sure how to fix it. What should I do? Is it time to go back to counselling?
It’s not your kink that’s causing the problem. Since your wife has been “indulging” you in that for many years, it is far more likely that this shift in her behaviour is due to some other problem or problems. These could be relational in nature – such as a growing underlying anger or resentment about something she feels is unfair – or perhaps she is going through something physical, such as hormonal changes. Going back to counselling is essential because you have clearly reached an impasse that is not going to be resolved without help. You need to begin talking to each other again in a useful manner, and you may still have some work to do on the self-hatred you feel regarding your relatively common fetish. Some partners who join in fetishistic behaviour simply to please their partner can understandably start to feel resentment if they are not able to experience their preferred vanilla style at least part of the time, so it is possible there may be a need for renegotiations about that.
Pamela Stephenson Connolly is a US-based psychotherapist who specialises in treating sexual disorders.
If you would like advice from Pamela on sexual matters, send us a brief description of your concerns to private.lives@theguardian.com (please don’t send attachments). Each week, Pamela chooses one problem to answer, which will be published online. She regrets that she cannot enter into personal correspondence. Submissions are subject to our terms and conditions.
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