My wife (F29) and I (M31) are emotionally separated but living together and I’m feeling guilty about masturbating. /u/thisismysillyaccount Sex

My wife and I have had a couple of really tough years. A quick recap: long distance from family, lack of reliable childcare, deaths in my family, opposite work schedules, my struggles with fatherhood and suicidal thoughts. My failure to get the counseling I needed when my wife needed me to. COVID’s amplification if everything negative.

In July she told me her feelings for me had changed. We started working on things, but this was the last time we had sex with each other because shortly after, her brother committed suicide. It felt like all hopes of reconciliation were dashed, and it’s felt this way up until a week ago when she told me that she needs to know she can trust me to not revert to the man I was when life gets hard. And she agreed we can see a marriage counselor in a month or two. (She needs some space first, she is just starting a new LPN job and is currently a 2nd year nursing student. There’s a lot on her plate.)

While I am hopeful that we will be able to come out of this as a husband and wife, I also am feeling incredibly lonely in the meantime. Our only physical intimacy right now is 30 minute foot massages that I give her 2-5 times a week. Before this we had incredible sexual chemistry. Right now, She spends a lot of her free time reading smutty romance novels on her kindle. I looked at some of her highlights and they were really sexy things, including a lot of passages on anal play which we were really into, even though she was shy about it. Part of me can’t help but be jealous because I’m so desperate for intimacy with her but I know it’s no different than my having watched porn.

The thing is right now, I can barely get hard unless I’m thinking about her. I masturbate to memories of us having sex and fantasies of having sex with her in the future. Reading the things she highlighted made me incredibly horny, and this is honestly the longest I have gone without sex since I was in high school. So while I’m desperate for any intimacy, sexual or not, from her, I’m also feeling so incredibly guilty for masturbating to her, because we’re not there in our relationship right now. Is it wrong to feel this way? I’m worried that this is the only thing that makes me horny. I don’t know what to do here. I feel so sexually frustrated on top of everything else and I don’t want to feel guilty over something like masturbating. And feeling guilty is literally causing me to lose my erection while masturbating.

My wife and I have had a couple of really tough years. A quick recap: long distance from family, lack of reliable childcare, deaths in my family, opposite work schedules, my struggles with fatherhood and suicidal thoughts. My failure to get the counseling I needed when my wife needed me to. COVID’s amplification if everything negative.

In July she told me her feelings for me had changed. We started working on things, but this was the last time we had sex with each other because shortly after, her brother committed suicide. It felt like all hopes of reconciliation were dashed, and it’s felt this way up until a week ago when she told me that she needs to know she can trust me to not revert to the man I was when life gets hard. And she agreed we can see a marriage counselor in a month or two. (She needs some space first, she is just starting a new LPN job and is currently a 2nd year nursing student. There’s a lot on her plate.)

While I am hopeful that we will be able to come out of this as a husband and wife, I also am feeling incredibly lonely in the meantime. Our only physical intimacy right now is 30 minute foot massages that I give her 2-5 times a week. Before this we had incredible sexual chemistry. Right now, She spends a lot of her free time reading smutty romance novels on her kindle. I looked at some of her highlights and they were really sexy things, including a lot of passages on anal play which we were really into, even though she was shy about it. Part of me can’t help but be jealous because I’m so desperate for intimacy with her but I know it’s no different than my having watched porn.

The thing is right now, I can barely get hard unless I’m thinking about her. I masturbate to memories of us having sex and fantasies of having sex with her in the future. Reading the things she highlighted made me incredibly horny, and this is honestly the longest I have gone without sex since I was in high school. So while I’m desperate for any intimacy, sexual or not, from her, I’m also feeling so incredibly guilty for masturbating to her, because we’re not there in our relationship right now. Is it wrong to feel this way? I’m worried that this is the only thing that makes me horny. I don’t know what to do here. I feel so sexually frustrated on top of everything else and I don’t want to feel guilty over something like masturbating. And feeling guilty is literally causing me to lose my erection while masturbating.