Mrs. AN has said that the things she did in the context of the A were mainly for her, not for the AP. This is consistent with a comment, I believe it was Hellfire, who commented that in a dom/sub dynamic, it is the sub who holds the power, the safe word, the ability to decide when and where to say "no". The dom/sub thing is mainly for the sub. Putting those concepts together, Mrs. AN decided that, while married, she would do things like the following for herself:
-Sent her first upskirt snapshot to another man, while refusing to do so for her BH.
-Took another man's penis willingly into her mouth, presumably for the first time in her life, for the purpose of experiencing what it feels like to service and pleasure a man, while refusing to do so for the BH.
-Denied her BH sex, so she could save it for another man.
-Surreptitiously took sexy photos of herself with her unwitting BH in the frame, to please another man.
Etc.
As others note above, we can dissect Mrs. AN's psychology and hypothesize about her whys, but in the end, these facts will remain the facts that are part of Mr. AN's storyline.
On top of that, for the nearly 2 years since Dday, she has steadfastly refused any sexual acts with Mr. AN other than dark room starfish. Now, she has agreed in concept to take one baby step toward improving the sex life -- paying a visit to a sex therapist -- and a bunch of voices are encouraging Mr. AN from the sidelines to give her a chance. Keep in mind that she has not yet, to my understanding, actually seen a sex therapist. Further, she has made it clear that her stark limits on acceptable marital sexuality remain intact. The impression I have is that she will maybe try to get better at starfish sex.
In other words, I personally see the landscape ahead for Mr. AN, within the context of this marriage, as bleak and barren. As I said in one of my first posts, the Plain of Lethal Flatness. Eventually, as he makes his way across that desert, he will start ruing having decided to take the first step, his thirst so great, no oasis in sight.
Yet, as my own Devil's Advocate, I don't believe I have ever seen a thread that describes a more starkly textbook Madonna/whore complex as this thread. Clearly Mrs. AN has problems. The stunted sex life Mr. AN has endured all of these years is not consistent with the tenets of any Abrahamic faith as practiced in any modern developed nation. They are of her own making and they have roots in what to me seems a profoundly dysfunctional relationship with an extreme and private species of religion, a beast of her own creation. Mr. AN has presumably known this since before they were married, and he endured the ascetic bedroom for all of these years.
Mr. AN has not specified the religion involved, nor has he stated whether he shares a perhaps slightly more dilute version of the same religion, but I have certainly contemplated that he must, simply because it's unusual for a person like Mrs. AN, who adheres to such extreme religious practices, to marry a non-believer. In any case, the marriage in some ways behaves like a marriage to an addict. Being married to an addict is really hard. On one level, kudos to Mr. AN for toughing it out.
What is clear (at least to me) is that the Madonna/whore has always existed inside of Mrs. AN. I used the metaphor of a balloon in an earlier post: you squeeze it on one end, it gets fat on the other end. That is Mrs. AN's sexuality. The affair, with its lurid details, was almost an inevitability. The marriage end of her sex balloon is squeezed with a chastity belt made from about a dozen layers of duct tape. Mrs. AN shared the plump unbound end with the AP. Mr. AN is wheedling for her to now remove maybe one or two of the layers of duct tape from the marriage end. It almost feels like it's only a matter of time before there is a second similar affair.
Mr. AN has likely known this their entire marriage, at least at a sub rosa level, and yet he has toughed it out for the 20 years they've been together, even raising at least one child to teenage years. I have always wondered if he did this because he actually shares the religious views, perhaps aspires to be as stark a practitioner as his wife, or if it was the fact that they had sex before being married, which Mrs. AN must almost certainly view as a nearly mortal sin, and he has therefore remained with her out of a sense of guilt or atonement.
Time will tell. I hope Mr. AN will return here and update us on how they are doing. In an idle moment I was daydreaming about a betting pool in terms of when Mr. AN will conclude that his marital sex life will never achieve any sort of normal level of sexual joy. I honestly believe there is no path to that place for this couple. That, coupled with the mind movies that will accompany Mr. AN if they ever try any new sexual act, to me make the future prospect for this marriage a sexual hellscape. Yet, as HO has pointed out, Mr. AN's last post said he would kick the can down the road yet again and give sex therapy "the old college try", and therefor it is incumbent upon this community to show him some grace. I do admire his apparent ability to repeatedly reset to a beginner's mind. He clearly has a deep and profound well of love and concern for the well-being of Mrs. AN.
[This message edited by Butforthegrace at 4:41 PM, Thursday, March 23rd]
