Freddie, I am proud of you too! Not just for seeing me as just another person, but for the way you've brought so much of the good stuff inside you onto these pages. You're a good guy, and I don't know your race or any of your physical characteristics either. Likeminded people have a way of finding each other.
Oh, my father's from India and my mother's from Germany, so I'm a mutt, in case anyone's interested.
About sex and marriage, I think it's just imperative for the people inside the marriage to be okay with their arrangement- it's really not for others to decide. In my own case, it was the actual proposal that bothered me. I knew he'd had issues with sex, but not to what extent. He always referred to them in the past tense, as something he wanted to be free from. When he proposed to me, it was on his knee, saying amoung other things "I want it to be just me and you sharing a NORMAL sex life". Now you can go on for days trying to define "normal", but he knew when he said it what I would assume, therefore it was trickery plain and simple. He knew he couldn't do it, not even once. We waited till after the wedding to have sex, so only AFTER I had made a vow did I find out I had been decieved in this very important way. We had already bought a house together, our families were already loving each other, and I was horrified! Had I known what I was in for, I would have negotiated a different kind of arrangement and been prepared to live with it, but the shock of just having been fed bullshit left a wound I never could get over. Having sex with him was horrible, not one good thing to say about it. He made me feel disgusting (because that's how he felt about having sex with me).
Now, in the examples you gave where there were happy years together and one gets sick or injured, well that's just the way the cookie crumbles, and you take the good with the bad, You've built a life together and the future is unknown for all of us. I was mad about the present, which WAS known, not being revealed to me. We didn't have good times to look back on, we were never a "couple" ever- just two people unhappily inhabiting the same space. He thought that once I was there it was my obligation to just accept whatever I got, I didn't share that view. The betrayal of his false promise was with me every moment until I just wanted him dead. Or me. Life was intolerable. Also, he was not willing to let me have fuckbuddies, since he found masturbation satisfactory he thought I should too. So here I was, 33 and looking at an entire life a celibacy, which I NEVER agreed to! It was bullshit. Yes, I would assume if I'd had a strong realtionship with him that included sex, but something happened further down the pike, I would have found a way to get on with my life because I would remember the love that had grown between us during those earlier years, but without that, nothing had grown at all, just my resentment. I think it's impossible (for me) to completely be in love with someone without sex being any part of the picture. I can love an unlimited amount of people, but to be in love is something very different, and sex is an intrugal part of the development of that kind of love. So back to the topic at hand, don't ever offer something you can't give. Don't think she won't know it or feel it. Don't think it's okay to be dishonest with yourself, it's bloody well not! Being dishonest with yourself means you will say things to others that are untrue- they may very well consider that a lie.
Get real, get honest, and get into the good stuff of life with willing partners, make everyone happy including yourself. Oh yeah, and if you want to have fuckbuddies, you should offer your s/o the same option. Just assuming she wouldn't want to do it isn't fair.
