My wife and I cheated on eachother while we were dating. We broke-up for a couple years, got back together, dated for two years, were engaged for a year and have been married for going on 7 years. Getting over infidelity is hard. It requires you both to forgive each other and, to a certain extent, forget. You both have to be willing to let your guard down and that blind, "dumb trust" to return.
What, if anything, has the counselor suggested as possible ways to work through this impasse?
Nothing really. I mean we have 3 options. Work on sex life. Get engaged/work on sex life. Break up. She can't do the first without the second. I still don't think I can do the second without the first. I'm not sure-I feel like i'm lying to her and i've told her that. It really does beg the question though-is it worth it for me to risk it to gain our relationship and try to win it back? In her mind if I don't propose we haven't tried everything we could. There could be regret from that. But I would also regret lying in that I planned on mairraige without knowing our sexual life by engaging in engagement. Like what would I regret more? I can't really know unless I try
The problem is not the sex life. It is a symptom of no trust. You need to talk to each other about the cheating. She needs to understand why you did it, why it's not going to happen again, and why you are smitten with her. If you two cannot work that out, then you have no business getting married in the first place.
This needs to happen when you are dating. You are going to have and "engagement-moon" then engagement is going to bring on a lot of other stressors (planning a wedding, friends and family expectations, money, etc.) and the engagement won't be about fixing this fundamental issue.
I've been considering saying somethign along the following.
I am a sexual person and it is not in my best interest to advance a relationship without that. You say you need engagement to feel 100% commited to. I need constant sex to feel committed to you. Either our relationship becomes sexual and we have an outstanding sex life, or we should seperate. Our sex life has to stay outstanding for a long period of time before I will consider advancing our relationship. I hope we can work through this but I know you feel like we've done all we can do.
Sol is right, this isn't how sex works in a mature relationship, but at least you are communicating what is important to you.
She doesn't trust you and can't open up physically, and you waited until you were confronted with a life of celibacy to say something. You were both happy to live together as BFFs in the meantime. You are in this whole catch 22 because you both don't know how to communicate and have been sweeping your issues under the rug rather than dealing with them.
Communication is something you are supposed to figure out when you are dating not when you are engaged to get married.
To be really honest with you. You have spent the majority of your adult lives together reinforcing bad habits. Your peers have had a lot more practice and experience cycling through relationships to find what works. I think both of you have a lot of growing to do and you grow the fastest when you change the paradigm and learn from new people.