Yesterday my husband and I had an "appointment" to have sex.  We live in a small place and it's awkward around our 13 year old.  So we had scheduled it for the morning when he is asleep.  It didn't happen....again.  
My husband says he wants to be in our marriage.  We are reading books out loud to each other, we are close in so many ways.  We have become very honest and very open. He says he loves me.  The problem is we have been having sex only 6 to 10 times a year.  I've been addressing this topic ad nauseum for years.....no progress.  I thought that eventually we would solve this, so I have been trying to deal with it.  Then finding out that he fooled around with a guy three or four times in the last four years, I just can't process it.  Maybe it would be different if we had an active sex life, but we don't.  It's a sad state when we both masturbate instead of having sex.  I am being very blunt and I hope you don't mind.  I don't see a way out of this type of pain.  It's completely messed up.  The only options I see are these: see a sex therapist/or take a couples intimacy course or separate.

We have done everything we can to avoid separating because we love each other and we don't want to break up our family.  My husband lacks attraction to me....it comes and goes.  He has to be in the "right" mood.  When we do make love, it is great...(we both agree it is.....it just doesn't happen very often.  I'm starting to think he has a very low libido or maybe porn is the problem or I just don't know and I'm starting to not care.

I wrote this yesterday:
I have decided that I am enough. Me, with my very round stomach that hangs down where "it's not supposed to"...that has scars from C section an appendectomy and laparoscopy for ovarian cysts.....
The breasts that hang down much lower than they used to....the wide bum and wrinkles and crinkles, most beautifully when I smile.....I have earned all this and held onto this....

My body with it's hypothyroidism and premature ovarian failure was getting ready to be older when I was young. I have entered menopause three times. Once when I was thirty three when I mistook hot flashes, night sweats and head aches for certain illness, only to be diagnosed as old before my time...ovaries...no longer working. Hormone replacement in high doses returned my "womanly glow"....then to have my baby through IVF using an egg donor, I was plunged back into menopause before being ramped up with daily injections of hormones so my womb could accept this miracle. It was the best gift that Gwendolyn, my donor could have ever given anyone, that little tiny red headed baby boy. Adoption by another way.
And then the oddest, most profoundly difficult time....nursing my baby while having intense hot flashes because I didn't want him to receive hormones in my breast milk. The irony was that even though I was back in menopause, my breast milk flowed and flowed. And finally because my doctor didn't want me to be in menopause at age forty, I was back on hormones when my babe was weaned. Now, in my fifities, I have been in menopause for five years....so glad that roller coaster ride is done.  My God, I will embrace my older self.

Where did we get this idea that fat on our bodies, the extra pounds we've held on to, the age we've glided into means we are diminished....less than?

Mostly by men and what they and we miss about our younger bodies.
Why are old men dignified and old women, crones?

Our only focus should be on strength and health, especially mental, but also physical.

I have decided that I am enough and anyone who wants me thinner can take the journey with me instead of sitting on the sidelines rooting for another team. 

Thanks for reading, lovely people........