Unwanted
My confession is that I’d been struggling with monogamy for a long time. Been in a relationship for over ten years now and have a family. There are kinks and desires I have, but my wife has shut down any experimentation and shamed me for it. It’s ruined the confidence I once had, and I have very poor self belief nowadays. I work, do two hours of chores a day, try my hardest, but life is still just empty and every day is exactly the same, with sex maybe once every 1 or 2 weeks and always the same. I just felt unwanted and invisible.
I had started talking to people online, at first just sharing pictures in communities for validation, but then started getting offers to have sex in person. At the time, I didn’t want to and said no to them all, but it got harder to say no. A year ago, a woman surprised me by messaging she had travelled and was nearby, and we hadn’t planned it, but in a moment of moral clarity I said no, because at that point I really wanted to try and fix the relationship. She kept trying to tempt me, it was her kink, but I said no and lost contact with her. It really was a struggle, and it felt like it was pointless suffering.
I tried to quit porn, hoping it would help, but it made things much worse. I managed to make it several months without looking at porn, but I felt anxious constantly and not confident. It made things harder in my relationship, because she didn’t want to have sex any more often. I tried to bring up experimenting, but it resulted in a fight and me feeling more shamed and empty, so I gave up, and then I relapsed and went back to porn.
After coming back to porn, it felt empty. I kept trying to improve the relationship and try something new, but my partner wouldn’t budge and said she was fine with things the way they were. So I decided to enter the cheating world, to put myself out there and see what was out there. I was so excited to see what was out there, and then … nothing.
I posted pictures of myself, contacted maybe 50-100 women with messages I took some time to write personal messages to … I got maybe 5 messages back but then no further replies, and then only 2 women got to back and forth communication with … but those fizzled out as well. I wrote an ad on the online affairs reddit, I put some time and thought into it, and the only reply I got was a scammer. After weeks of putting myself out there, I feel even more unwanted and invisible than ever.
And also, I’m now nearly 40. My body and my face will start to fade soon. I’ve put so much work in to staying healthy and in shape, and even then I’m invisible. I wonder if there was any point to it.
I look through reddit and I see the same thing time and time again: women put out a personal ad or an image, then edit it to say their inbox has been flooded with hundreds of messages. And then I see countless other men like me, writing personal ads and posting images that get no attention, or what little attention they do get is drowned out by downvotes from other men or maybe women, it’s hard to tell which. I try to put more effort in than what I see, but I realise in the end I’m just like them all … all in all, I’m just another dick in the wall.
So my confession is I failed at my relationship, and I tried to break my vow and even failed at that too. I failed at being faithful and I failed at being unfaithful. I am denounced by the married community, and rejected by the adultery community. I am unwanted, invisible, and empty. I have no inherent value. Sex used to be the one thing that really made me happy and feel successful, and now I’m getting older and I feel like it’s gone. At this point, I don’t know what there is nothing left to do but go through the motions, repeating the same week after week until my time is over.