SHE NEVER ENJOYED SEX WITH ME

I’m devastated. My wife and I have been married for 10 years and I believed we had a wonderful marriage. She recently decided to see a therapist because of traumatic experiences in her past that she wanted to work through.

Her therapist called me in and shared a letter with me that my wife wrote to her about our sexlife. In the letter she says she’s never enjoyed our lovemaking and has been faking all the time. When I asked my wife about it she told me her therapist didn’t have her consent to share the letter with me.

For me the issue is that seeing what she wrote has changed the way I look at my wife and made me emotionally cold towards her. My wife wants to lodge a complaint against the therapist for transgressing the rule of confidentially but the bottom line for me is what she told her therapist and the impact it’s had on me. What should I do? Hurt, email

The therapist was wrong to discuss the letter with you without your wife’s consent. This is a matter between your wife and her therapist and needs to be sorted out between them.

However, the content of the letter does concern you and obviously affects you. Have you talked to your wife about it and asked her what bothered her about your lovemaking and why she felt it necessary to fake her enjoyment? Your wife may be suffering from inhibition of sexual desire and might have been “faking it” because she didn’t want to hurt your feelings.

Many people suffering from inhibition of sexual desire don’t feel like having sex with their spouses but do in fact love their partners very much. Not feeling desire for a spouse doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a lack of love and devotion.

It’s understandable that you now feel emotionally distant from your wife because of how the content of the letter made you feel. Ideally you and your wife need to consult a different psychologist, someone trained in couples and sex therapy, so you can try to resolve this issue in your marriage and get to a point where you both enjoy your sex-life.