Dear Annie: There have been so many letters in your column about women not wanting sex. How about hearing the other side?
I am a 57-year-old man, married for 25 years. Overall, it’s a good marriage, except I am not interested in sex with my wife. She has gained 100 pounds. I lost weight myself and had to fight her every step of the way.
Seven years ago, I bought her an expensive exercise machine that she said she wanted, even though she never uses it. She gets offended when I encourage dieting or exercise. She has had some major health issues, and when she decided she only wanted to work part time, it forced me to work overtime. I stood by her through all this.
I am now semi-retired, and money is an issue. A couple of months ago, she began pressuring me, asking what’s wrong that I don’t want sex. When I finally told her it is her weight, she didn’t speak to me for two days. She thinks we need counseling, but I am concerned that she would hear only what she wanted to hear.
I have had opportunities to cheat but asked myself each time whether the available woman was worth losing half my house and half my pension. So far, the answer has been no. But I don’t know for how long. — Kansas
Dear Kansas: We think there is also some resentment behind your reluctance to be intimate with your wife. We understand that you don’t believe counseling would help, but please try nonetheless.
Dear Annie: You printed a letter from “Noisy Dog Next Door,” whose neighbors’ dog barked for hours on end.
Our neighbors have four dogs that also bark nonstop. We mentioned it to them several times. They apologized, but nothing changed. We hesitated to call the neighborhood association, because everyone would know we were the ones complaining.
We finally stumbled on a solution last summer. We set up a tower fan to help lower the cost of cooling our home and discovered it also drowns out the sound of the barking. We now run the fan 12 months a year. — Memphis, Tenn.
Dear Memphis: We’re not sure that would work as well in Minnesota as it does in Tennessee, but thanks for the idea.
Annie’s Snippet, credit Martin Luther King Jr.: “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
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