My husband of 44 years of age was an ex heroin addict about 10 years ago, and has been on the methadone program,. He is down to 25mg, and is taking testosterone shots due to his low testosterone level. We just got married on Feb. 12 this year, and have had sex twice since then. We didn't even consumate the marriage. Even when we had sex, I did all the work, and no intercourse. I have a very high sex drive and he won't even try and make me happy, even though he likes to receive oral sex and says he likes to give it. I will give it to him, but he says he has no drive to reciprocate. I feel like I am getting nothing out of this relationship. I give him massages, and bj's all the time, and he does get erections, and has only given me oral sex once, and when he did, he pressured me to hurry up , which didn't make me orgasm since I can't when I feel pressured. I can and have given him oral sex with nothin in return because I love him and have gone on for over an hour each time, but when he's done it to me, he won't do it for more than 5 minutes and I feel like I'm on a timer. I also give him massages for over an hour, and when he gives them to me, he stops after ten minutes at the most. He says he loves me and has never been maried before although he has 3 kids from different mothers. He has grown up on the streets and is one of those bad boys, but he has never abused me physically in any way, however I feel that this is pshycological abuse and makes me feel guilty , using the methadone as an excuse. He is on such a small dose, and with the testostorene injections twice a week, the doctor says that this should more than help offset the methadone, and give him his sex drive back. Due to his lifestyle (he has done some illegitimate things, and we are total opposites, but does not do that type of thing anymore and is really trying to live a legitimate life), but we are from total different sides of the track. I was brought up in a proper family, with manners and although I wasn't very wealthy, I owned my own home and was independantly wealthy. When I met him, he had nothing. In the last year we have spent over 250,000.00. When we met, he lived with his parents, and young son. I don't know what to think anymore. I know it wasn't due to the money becaue he didn't know I had it until about 8 months into the relationshp when he proposed to me. I never tell any dates that I have money, and purposely don't drive an expensive car or wear expensive clothes because I have been used for my money in the past. I don't beleive I'm being used because like I said, he didn't have a clue that I had money and I never spent it except after he propsed to me and was quite shocked that I had this much money. He has a young son and wanted so badly out of his parents home, as well as a female figure for his son because the mother is another crack addict and he has sole custody but will not let his son see his mother due to her habit and the way she makes her money to support her habit. I'm about 5'4 and considered very attractive, am about 130 pounds, which isn't overweight , but not skinny either. He's about 6'6 and says he can't preform oral sex on me due to his height, which I don't buy into because I've always dated men that size, not because I wanted to , but it just happened that way.
I don't know what his problem is because he keeps blaming it on methadone, yet the doctor says he is on such a low dose and with the testosterone, he should have a sex drive,. I feel like I get nothing out of this relationshp because all the things I used to love to do, and that he told me he liked to do, he won't do with me, such as dancing, going to live theatre, taking walks, movies, going out to dinner. Even when we go out to dinner, which is basically the only thing we do , maybe once a month if I'm lucky, he reads a newspaper and I sit there alone. I've been angry at him for doing this because I feel ignored and rude that he is reading and doing puzzles while we wait for our meal. He then rushes me out ,and I rarely even get to finish my meal. My life consists of cleaning for him, taking care of the house, and his son (who calls me mom), his laundry, and basically feel like an unpaid maid. He is very old fashioned and has a huge ego and ;pride and refuses to let me work, becauise he thinks it's his job to take care of me and protect me. He has a bad temper,and when I start to talk about how unappy I am, he starts to yell, and due to his size and his ability to intimidate me, I just cower and don't raise my voice. He has thrown things, broken things, and said he will break everything around me, but will never hurt me physically. I left my adult kids in another province because I really fell for this man, and figured my kids are all in their mid twenties and are all getting their phd's and basically have their life there. I am new to the province and do not have one friend. He moved provinces because he couldn'tg stand the fact that his parents always told him what to do and felt they treated him like a child, and in many ways, he is one, because he refuses to take responsibility for many things, and procrastinates to the point that he has lost a lot of money due to missed deadlines, etc. We are now broke and he's totally stressed over this, but I also noticed when the money was gone, he started to treat me differently, which I dont' understand because when we met , I made him beleive I didn't have any. He wants to open up an escort agency , and although I am against it, he has done this in the past and was very successful with it, but due to his heroin habit in those days, he lost everything. I told him I would answer phones, even though I'm not happy with this business, but his attitude with me is that he doesn't want me tainted with anything and that I'm the only clean thing in his life and wants to keep it that way. I'm starting to think that our non existant sex life is psycholgical and it's almost like the men , who when their wife have a baby, look at her as a mother and can't touch her sexually anymore. I read something about Elvis Presley being that way and have researched this enough to know that some men are like this. I feel totally alone, very sexually frustrated, and basically stay home and cook, clean and watch his son. When we first met, the fist 6 months , we had a great sex life, and he was on a higher dose of meth back then so I know it's not the methadone. After he proposed, the sex started to diminish to the point that since we got married this February , we have had sex twice, and it wasn't anything to brag about because I didn't even orgasm. I know he loves me, and he makes gestures and does little things like bring me flowers, and that sort of thing, but I dont' know what the problem is and if its' psychological. Every time I bring up that we should go to a marriage /'sex counsellor, he gets very angry , yet I don't beleive I can stay in a sexless marriage and am considering leaving him, except I have no skills, all my money is gone, and am basically being held hostage becasue he's bringing in the money and I have nowhere to go. I've been in abusive relationships before, and my kids were against me marrying someone after knowing them for only 8 or 9 months, but in the beginning things were so awesome and I thought I found my soulmate. I do know he loves me and it's just one of those things that a person knows. He is extremely protective of me, but not controlling. He cares about me , but I'm starting to think he's not attracted to me sexually. I dont' beleive he's havingg an affair because all the people in his life, have told me he is very loyal to the women in his life , who he happens to be with and because of the way he is, I know he can't have sex with someone he has no attraction to. I'm 45 and still turn heads and get hit on all the time, yet my own husband wont' even touch me. Even when we go to bed at night, he turns his back to me, instead of cuddling, and listens to these radio shows he's hooked on, and I feel that I'm not even getting attention in bed,. No passion, no romance, and I can't count the amount of times, I have come on to him and been rejected, or have taken his hand and put it on me, with him taking it away after a few minutes. He wont even touch me, and I've told him even if he won't have sex, its' fun just trying to be intimate. In the morning, we'll have our morning coffee and he ignores me and reads the paper. I feel like we've been married for 60 years. My parents have been married for over 53 years and are still lovey dovey, and hold hands, kiss, etc. He won't even hold my hand in public, or kiss me. He is tounge tied, and has promised me he would get it snipped because he uses the excuse that his tounge is small to not kiss me, but it's been 6 months and he refusess to do it. Can this be methadone relatated or is something psychological going on here, because I'm ready to leave this marriage even though I love him so much. I just can't bear the thought of sexless marriage and one where there is no more romance. I'm middle aged and feel trapped in a marriage where a man does love me, but won't touch me. I feel like we're roomates and not lovers. Any suggestions, especially with the methadone situation would help
Methadone and loss of sex drive?
Question posted by indigo1111 on 5 Aug 2011
Last updated on 1 June 2021 by Kingbuba
4 Answers
Any and all opioid s can DESTROY your testosterone. You need to have it checked regularly. I have been on 200 mg shots every two weeks and now that has stopped working. Thank goodness I can go up to 400. Every aspect has been impacted. I may be 67 but we were enjoying sex every three days. Now it is only on the day of the shot. We will be talking soon!
Indigo1111, I would absolutely discuss therapy with your husband. You said he doesn't physically abuse you, but throwing things, breaking things, etc. is definitely a form of intimidation. These behaviors are known to escalate.
His actions towards you in the beginning of your relationship are completely different now. I am doubtful it has anything to do with his methadone use.
If he doesn't agree to see a therapist, I would suggest you see one by yourself/for yourself. I am a middle aged woman as well, please don't use that as an excuse to be in a miserable marriage. Theres a whole lotta lonely being with a man that treats you this way. Good luck!
I hope you will consider seeing a therapist for some support. Print this post and take it with you and give it to the counselor. There is a lot of conflicting info on your husbands part and he does sound emotionally abusive, whether you know that or not. You think he didn't know you had money, but I am pretty sure someone else told him you did and now he is stressed because you are broke. All this can be fixed, a therapist can guide you. I doubt he can be fixed, and escort services ae usually illegal, check with an attorney for that, but I think you will find this is illegal, no matter where you live. You deserve much better than you are getting, hope you realize that. Only you can change this, and as long as you stay with him, it is NOT going to change. You can't change someone else, just yourself. Patti
Hey indigo,
I think you rhusband has some psychological issues he needs to deal with. Between the testosterone shots and minimal methadone, I don't think he should have a libido problem. I would demand marrital/sex counseling. If he truly loves you he would want to work on the relationship. That being said, he may have a problem with depression which can zap ones sex drive and make one not want to participate in life's activities. Again, it would take a trained professional to determine this and your husband would have to be willing to seek help. If he is refusing to face the problems in your marriage then he is basically refusing you. Maybe you can help him see the error of his ways by expressing to him that your needs are not being met and you need his help. If you can stroke his ego, he might respond favorably.
If you are going to stay in the relationship, you are going to have to politely continue to try to talk to him in such away that he feels unthreatened. Maybe you could start in marrigae counseling and then he would come around. Leading by example might work. Without his participation not much you can do but take care of yourself.
Wish I could help more,
Laurie
HI Laurie
Thanks for your comments. I've tried asking him to go to counselling but he refuses to go. I treat him great and am always stroking his ego. I am starting to feel that he only wanted me to be a mom to his son and an unpaid maid. He won't talk to me, not even in bed. He turns his back on me every night, puts on his headphones and listens to radio shows. I try to lie on his chest or encourage him to do things like spooning, but he claims he can't sleep without these shows. Whenever I try to talk to him, he says I nag him. The funny thing is that when we had the money, he was romantic, treated me great, we had a sex life, and as soon as he made me fall in love with me and knew he had me hooked, and the money was gone, I feel like we're just roommates. I'm beginning to think he is cheating on me. His daughter came to me recently and told me that he was cheating with an ex of his and because I am very close to her, she felt that I should now.
His entire family is encouraging me to leave him and have offered to have me stay with him and have flat out told me that with all of his ex girlfriends, things are good for a while, then the same situation happens, once he has them hooked, the sex stops and from what I've been told, these women all left him for the same reason and have left him to live with his family while they got back on their feet. I felt I was different because I'm the one he actually made a commitment to and married. He recently pawned my 20,000.00 engagment ring for his business, and I'm devastated over this. He didn't even buy the ring with his money, but with mine and although he also pawned the jewellry I gave him , which amounted to over 10,000.00, I felt very hurt that he took my diamond engagement ring to pawn. He makes interest payments on it every month so it doesn't get sold, but he's totally bankrupted me now and will never be able to get it back. He is a very intelligent man, has great business ideas which always start off great, and after he gets to a certain point, and spends the money to invest in them, he gives up and has told me he does this sort of thing because of fear of failure. I'm beginning to think that he's sabotaging this relationsip for the same reason, fear of failure. I refuse to live in a sexless marriage , but am torn because I married him in sickness and in health, good times and bad, and took and still take my vows very seriously , but I don't know if I can go on living with man who has no romantic feelings for me anymore. He tells me every day how much he loves me, and how he could never live without me, but he doesn't show it. I'm stuck in a situation where I have no friends because I'm in a new province, no car to get around because he ended up selling my car to start up his business and even that , he has run it to the ground. I don't know what to do anymore and have gone to therapy on my own. The therapist thinks that he doesn't respect me enough to try and find a solution for our problems , especially the sexual ones. He will either go to bed first, or wait until I'm in bed and asleep, but we never go to bed together and its' obviously because he wants to avoid the sex problem. This behaviour just started within the last month. I've caught him pretending to sleep and have also at times pretending to sleep because whenever he finds me asleep, he tells me the next morning that he was feeling amorous, but couldn't wake me up. I didn't beleive it and pretended to sleep one night, and the next day he told me all the different ways he tried to wake me up, yet I was awake and he didn't do any of the things he said he tried to wake me up, and I'm not sure if I should confront him with his lie about this because if he did it this one time, the odds are that he's done this before when I really was asleep. I'm a light sleeper and it just didn't make sense to me that he couldn't wake me up. I got to a point that I told him if he felt like being intimate, he needs to wake me up because at this point I'll take anything I can get. The therapist posed a question to me, and that was, what was I getting out of this relationship? I couldn't give her one thing because I'm not getting anything out of this relationship and I can't figure out how I can love someone so much, stay with him when I really am not getting anything from this. I'm too young to live in a sexless marriage and I'm seriously considering leaving him now but I have nowhere to go, other than to take up his family's offer to stay with them until I get back on my feet. I'm currently on disability due to a car accident a couple of years ago and can't work. With the amount of money disability pays, a person can't survive on this. I went from being independatly wealthy to being bankrupt all within a year that I met him and I'm starting to think he was using me for the money after he found out that I had it, but it's confusing because he didn't know I had it until after he proposed. When I said yes, he went out and bought an expensive ring, but he used my money to buy it, so it doesn't even mean anything to me because it was bought with my money. This guy has brought me down to a level I've never been in , yet I've brought him up to a level he's never been in and I'm extremely resentful. I try to hide the resentment but I don't think I can do it anymore.
Hey indigo,
You are in a bad situation to say the least and need to get out in my opinion. Maybe going to his parents will shake him up enough to get him into marriage counseling with you. Living with increasing resentment is only going to send your down the path of no return. Shaking up his world sounds like the only alternative. Be firm about it too. Don't return over night when he comes begging. Let him live with his choices for a little while. Let him know what the conditions are before you are willing to return. Tough love isn't easy but very necessary sometimes. You don't have to threaten divorce right now. I know you want to honor your marriage vows. Doesn't mean you have to be emotionally abused. Set some clear boundaries with your husband and them be sure to stick to them. You deserve to be honored.
Laurie
Hi again Laurie
You are like my therapist now and I'm very grateful that your taking the time to chat with someone you don't know. You sound like a very caring person :)
I'm just going to comment on the statement you made about tough love and leaving. He's the type of person that if I do leave, he has too much pride to come to me and will never do it so I know if I threaten divorce, which i've done on occassion, he's flat out told me, to make sure that i mean it because once I say the word, he's out of here and according to his mother, he is not the type to beg for someone to come back. He has too much pride and that pride shoots him in the foot.
The only reason I'm staying is because I do love him and I know that he will go back on heroin if his life falls apart, just like he's done when his other exe's have left him, Based on his past history, when things are bad, he starts to use again and I dont' want to be responsible for making him go back on heroin again after he's done so well for the last 6 years. I know he will becaue he's told me he's had thoughts about it but made me a promise that whenever he is having thoughts about it that he will talk to me so that I can convince him how much he would loose if he did this again. He has told me during arguements that if I leave him, I won't be leaving alive and I don't know if it was said in anger or not, but he's also said it during times when we do actually talk, that if he can't have me, nobody else will. His problems are all related to his parents and the abusive past he has had with them , and although they treated him and his sister with physical abuse, his parents have changed and are not those type of people anymore. His biological mother (his father is remarried, but he calls his stepmother mom), has emotional issues as well and used to leave him and his sister alone when they were 6 and8 to go out and meet men from across the country. Her sister lived next door and would ask her to look in on the small kids and this time of his life messed both him and his sister up becaue they basically had to fend for themselves. They ended up callign their father and telling him they were hungry and that their mom has been gone for over a week, and their father came immediately to pick them up, but that wasn't any better because he was an alcoholic who physically abused them on a daily basis and chldren's services weren't really around in those days, nor did one call them. My husband ended up leaving home at 13 because he ciouldn't take the beatings anymore and basically has lived on the streets where go got hooked on drugs. His sister stayed with the dad, but was getting abused until she left home at 15, so it was a very difficult childhood . He hates his biological mother and my therapist thinks that his hatred for her has projected onto other women, including me, and that he hates all women deep down, and always needs to be the one in control. What I can't understand is why I love him.
Hey indigo,
I'm glad to here you have a therapist and I would have to agree with her. He has serious issues that he is not dealing with and projecting them on you. In fact, his addictive behavior is a symptom of that too. You are obviously getting something out of the relationship, even if it is negative. Negative attention is better than no attention at all. You are the onlly one who can decide what you are willing to live with. It isn't your resposibility to keep him clean and if you were to leave and he returned to the drugs it would not be your fault, it would be his choice and his fault. Not enabling his inappropriate behavior is key to his staying clean. He needs to learn that there are consequences to his behavior. By allowing him to neglect you is only helping him to stay sick in his addictive behavior. He is being very self centered, a perfect example of addictive behavior.
Getting off the heroin is only part of getting clean, learning to change mentally is the other part.
I encourage you to seek the support of others we are living with an addict such as you would find in a Nar anon meeting, the sister group of Narcotics Anonymous for loved ones of the addicted. Here is a link to help you read about this group and find meetings near your location.
http://www.naranon.com/about/aboutaddiction.html
Use the tool bar at the top of the site page and under information is a link to finding meetings. These people have been or are were you are right now.
I once was married to an addict (cocaine). Unfortunately he chose his drug over our marriage. I can honestly say that I understand where you are and want to encourage you to take care of yourself and not let the illness of addiction bring you down with him. See he maybe free from heroin but he has only addressed part of the addiction until he is willing to look at his behavior. As an addict myself, learning to change our attitudes and behavior is the biggest part of recovery. Otherwise we are not truly recovering, only free of the drug, not the illness.
I am here for you. I will be willing to friend you and I invite you to write me a private message anytime. Once we are friends just click on my avatar and it will give you the option to private message.
Take care,
Laurie
Had to respond and give you my perspective, that is from a male view point, hope you don't mind. A comment was made that you should gt out and now, which I strongly disagree unless I'm missing something like your being abused physically and yes even mentally mentally. You stated that you do love him and are married, to just give up and walk out because of some sexual issues in my opinion is the easy way out. Again unless I'm missing something else and if I am I apologize. You said he is on medication and restorer one. Yes this should help, however medications like methadone do slow sex drive for a lot of people. Maybe he is still not receiving enough testosterone. Depression as somebody stated is also a huge factor which can be treated with medication and counseling. Communication is key and I'm sure your are trying but keep letting him know your true feelings, suggest couples counseling and yes at some point, when your ready, ultimatedum should happen.
I guess what I'm saying is marriages take work, to just walk away without giving everything you have would be the easy way. Again I'm sorry if I missed something in your comment and certaintly wish you happiness. Best of luck...
I have read this comment four times and am still very confused.
After re reading this comment several times I first would like to apologize and make it clear that you should not and do not deserve to be abused like you have been emotionally. As a professional in public service for over twenty years, I can assure you that abusive people wheather it's emotional or physical they do not change without intensive therapy. I'm not saying they can't or won't change, I'm saying it takes time and the commitment by that individual to change . All the pressure and threats usually don't work. They have to want to change and it usually takes that individual hitting rock bottom, different for all to do that. Again I apologize, after reading several times, it became much clearer to me. Leason learned for me and that is to read everything more than once before responding.
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heroin, methadone, testosterone, sex
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