I liked the podcast, and found it very enlightening. I even believe/subscribe to a lot of this. It's all fine and good but...my wife has absolutely shut down to the idea of being intimate with me, after discovery of her affair back in March. She does not "feel comfortable" with being intimate. I know a big part of it is because she is still 1) in shock from the discovery 2) has some "mid-life crisis" issues and is not even entirely sure she sees a future between us and 3) does not buy in to a lot of this "self-help" stuff. I'm at a total loss. We have both been remorseful, have both forgiven each other, and yet we are at a standstill. I miss my wife so much! I have told her this, and still..."I'm not comfortable". Help!

Thank you so much for this podcast! Something I want to expand on with what Nancy said is the courting process. Running a bath or offering a foot massage for your female spouse are courting behaviors. Oftentimes in marriage these courting behaviors stop. The female spouse falls in the routine of being the maid, chef, and personal shopper for her mate and is no longer pursued by her mate like during those courting years. Being pursued is crucial to keeping her brain thinking about sex. For a lot of us females, sex was great and frequent when we were being pursued by our mate. The lapse in sex came when we fell into our day to day routines of cooking, cleaning, and taking care of our mate without that wooing factor that addressed our emotional needs and feeling our heart desired by our mate. Instead of our heart being desired it was just our body. That is how the feeling of "duty sex" begins for females. During the courting years, we females expect pursuance of us to continue. Instead we marry our suitor only for all of that wooing to stop and turn into us serving him. It feels like being baited and switched. We ask for date nights and get lectures of lacking funds or being tired from work. During an affair, the courting is not happening with the wife but with the mistress. I told my husband what hurt me the most is that he pursued his affair partner in ways I wished he had pursued me as his wife instead. I wanted that kind of attention but he gave it to another woman. He said things to her I wish he had said to me. He dated her while I was at home alone. Any attempts I made at trying to pursue him were ignored by him because he was already pursing another woman. I would wear lingerie and dance for him, give him massages, run a bath for the two of us to share, send him saucy texts. He didn't need that from me because he was already getting validation from his pursuit of the affair partner without me knowing. I would be rejected. With porn, he didn't even need to pursue anyone because he was getting instant gratification at a click. I was obselete to him sexually. That kind of hurt runs deep and makes it really difficult to restore the sexual intimacy back in our marriage. I can attest to putting the courting back within our marriage has helped a lot with easing the pain of infidelity, but the restoration of bringing back sexual desire in me towards him is a very slow process as I continue to heal from his past transgressions that went on for years. If only he had paid attention to the very clear signs that I wanted him to court me and give me the attention he chose to give another woman instead. He was selectively blind and deaf to my attempts and pleas. He is a sex addict and used porn and his affair to cope with his insecurities. He actually convinced himself that I did not love or want him! Can you believe it? He is currently 55 days into his 90 reboot, and plans to begin karezza are underway for when he completes his reboot. Meanwhile we are practicing bonding behaviors and date nights to start over from scratch to rebuild our emotional connection. I'm very nervous but excited for when the 90 days are up!

My husband has been living a double life for our entire marriage of almost 27 years. It has been 2 months since the first disclosure, there have been 6. I am now working with my therapist to get a therapeutic disclosure from my husband and his therapist.
You said we need to create a new life, a better life. What happens to all the very special times from the life before? The births of our four children? Important milestones throughout their lives? Family vacations? Graduations? Learning to drive, etc. The children are completely innocent in this mess that their dad has created and dropped us right in the middle of. What is the right way to incorporate the precious times of the old life with the new one?