Dear Ken: My wife and I have been together for 25 years and married for 20 of those. We have three wonderful kids all in their late teens. We love each other, respect each other and have a lot of common interests that we enjoy doing together.
Our sex life was never hot and heavy, once a week or so at the beginning, but for the past 15 years it’s been virtually non-existent. I’ve done everything I could possibly think of to change things around, but nothing seems to work.
I am at the end of my rope on this. I don’t know where to go from here. Should I continue to struggle to make our sex life a reality, or would I be better off going out fishing?
I’m the only one holding the rod,
maybe I should go fish with it.
Dear Rod: Years ago a well known advice columnist took a sex survey geared toward her female readers. The response was astronomical, but I can no longer remember if it was 20 thousand or 50 thousand. Either way, survey takers world wide would kill for those kinds of numbers.
50 percent of the respondents said that they would be perfectly content to never have sex again. It sounds to me like you married onto the wrong side of the percentages.
At this point you have a few options. The one you should rule out immediately is cheating on your wife. Nothing good will come of that. If having a sex life is that important to you, then leave her and start over.
Which brings up divorce. Sounds to me like the two of you get along fine except for the lack of sex. Divorce will just make a mess out of things. They never go well. There’s a good chance you’ll wind up broke and all the things you’ve worked hard for will go away, including most of your fishing gear. You’re kidding yourself if you think she’s going to let you walk away without making you miserable somehow. You’re kids will never understand since they only see the two of you as getting along. One of you will become the bad guy and I’ll bet it won’t be her.
Since you get along, you can simply accept the fact that you’re her companion and that’s all you’ll ever be. I’ll bet she’s not even aware of your frustration, everything is fine in her eyes. She’s got a companion to grow old with and keep her company, what more could she want? You’ve got all these things you’ve accumulated for the past 25 years, good times with your wife, memories of things you’ve done with your kids that will last a life time and 95 percent of your life probably isn’t too shabby.
Can you live with that?
The thing you have to do immediately is stop trying. Stop doing anything you’ve been doing that you thought might get yourself some. It’s not going to happen. You didn’t do anything wrong and you can’t do anything right to change the situation. She’s not interested in sex and that’s that. Quit wasting time thinking… if only I did this, if only I did that… you’re just wasting brain cells that would be better off thinking about fishing.
And yes, you should go out fishing. You’re change of attitude about having to please your wife in the hopes for sex should free up a fair amount of time. I’ll bet you go grocery shopping with her, don’t you? Well, stop that. She knows how to drive and I’ll bet she can lift up to 20 pounds and knows how to push a shopping cart. You know how pathetic guys look following wives around pushing shopping carts. Look at the guys faces the next time you pass one. They’re just like you, hoping they’re earning getting laid points, but their expression will tell you they even know they’re wasting their time.
That’s three hours of your life you could be out fishing. Besides, you don’t see her climbing up on the roof with you to clean out gutters, or getting up on a ladder to paint the house, or cutting the lawn, or shoveling the snow, do you? It’s a trade off, you do what you can do and she can go do what she can do by herself. You don’t need to be there.
Speaking of things you need to do, start looking at just that. How many of the things that you do around the house need to get done while the sun is out? The floors don’t care what time it is when they get cleaned. Neither does the bathroom. I never do laundry while the sun is shining and you shouldn’t either.
Doing household work while the sun is shining is a waste of perfectly good fishing time. The rivers and creeks are flowing along at normal levels. Smallmouth bass are busting minnows on the surface. Great blue herons are stalking the shore lines and deer are coming off the islands to warm up in the sun. Why in the hell would you want to be in a house cleaning a fucking toilet while all this is going on?
The toilet can wait.
One last thing, get a subscription to Playboy or Penthouse. They may come in hand for those days where you really wanna get yourself some.
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Sitting around a bar, drinking beer and doling out advice as long as it somehow relates to fishing, hunting or the great outdoors. Otherwise, I’m not all that interested.