Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums THE SEX-STARVED MARRIAGE Dealing With Ambivalence

"Yutz" - what a great word.. you've just made my day, LG

If the Marriage Counselor fails to yield results after a few months, then you may want to seek out an AASECT certified Sex Therapist for the two of you. In the meantime:

** Read and apply The Sex-Starved Marriage, by Michele Wiener-Davis. If you can, get your wife to read at least Chapter 1, which is available on-line. If she'll read more, great!

** Read and apply No More Mr. Nice Guy, by Robert Glover. If you have the symptoms of the so-called Nice Guy syndrome, then this will help you find you way out of it.

** Read over SillyOldBear's old thread and see what may apply to you.

** Read over Bagheera's old thread and see what may apply to you.

-- B.

DQ makes a valid point here, V, in pointing out that women love what I call The Chase. Men often think that once they've married the girl, she's caught. Job done. Free sex for life! Erm....no. Women never tire of the chase, and will watch it on the screen, read about it in romance novels, fantasize about it, and want to actively engage in it over and over and over again. The Chase is a big part of what gets them turned on and desirous of you in the first place: your active, demonsrated desire for her drives her desire for you. So pursue her, romance her, seduce her, conquer her....over and over again, for the rest of your lives together. Every time you 'catch' her, let her go and begin the pursuit again. It's the a way in which adults can "play" and believe me, home-base in the game of chase as a kid was *never* so Yummy!

-- B.

Hello, I'm checking in with this dreary update.

This week in therapy Mr. Therapist really went after my wife on the issue of sex. He reiterated to her how important it is to couples, how I have waited for her to respond, and talked about ways for her to get "over the hump" and get involved. Before long, about a half hour, she was in tears because of all the "pressure".

Then she started talking about how ANGRY she is from things that happened 5 years ago or more, and about how she just isn't READY for something like that and how she just needs more TIME.

I feel like she has been withholding sex and affection really almost from the early days of our marriage.
My problem is that I have been waiting 5-6 years for her to start being more sexual again and my patience has really run out. I have been told over and over how when things are better between us, she will OF COURSE feel more sexual. "Maybe later.." but later never comes. Deep down I believe that I have been (and am being) played. Now, even though she has been asked by the therapist and myself to try to be more responsive and less withdrawn and indifferent she is either unable or unwilling to do it. In fact, her demonstrated affection is down a lot from what she was able to do last month.

I am feeling WAAAYYY better about myself, and I have a lot of good things going on in my life. People that I barely even know are more affectionate to me than my wife is. My sister shows more affection to me than my wife. I just feel so bad about this long-term SSM that I now just want relief from the "pressure" of it myself.

So have I reached ultimatum time? I am about 5 months into the recovery effort, and we have been in financially ruinous marriage counseling for 4 of those months. I have been working hard on myself, my wife has really done nothing but show up to therapy sessions. Overall, I would say that the biggest problem is that my wife is exceedingly angry. She is so angry that you might think that I cheated on her multiple times with a harem of women. But I never did anything nearly that bad, and I have been faithful and loyal.

What I have learned about myself is that being in this relationship, the way it is, is very destructive to my spirit. I have learned how much I value being close to a woman, and that it's not all about sex, not even close. Having sex and affection withheld year after year really destroyed my self confidence and self esteem, and has made me feel lonelier than I have ever felt in my life. Now that I have built myself back up I am ready for a more satisfying life on my own, which would be far better than being married to this withdrawn woman.

I want this to work out and have worked extremely hard to recover the marriage to this point, but I feel like I'm the only one trying, and that her anger is compromising my efforts.

V,

if you don't mind sharing here, what exactly is it that she is so exceedingly angry about? What did she say to the therapist?

-- B.

Thank you for your interest, Bagheera. I will present here the things she rattles off when she starts talking about how angry she's feeling. Her anger is very near the surface and seems to bubble up often in and out of therapy. It seems to her like these transgressions happened only hours or days ago. Forgiveness seems very far off, even though most of these things happened 5-6 years ago.

1. After we got married I became too preoccupied with work and focused too much on it, to the point where I worked in the evenings after dinner in addition to a full work day.
2. She insisted on "trying" right away, assuring me that it would almost certainly take a long time for her to become pregnant. When she got pregnant almost immediately, I was shocked when she told me and said something really stupid like "wow.. are you sure you want to have it?"
3. Around the time the baby was born I was having terrible sleep problems. I was on "sleeping pills" that both prevented me from sleeping and kept me awake at night. In the mornings I was such a basket case that I was almost useless when it came to caring for the new baby.
4. As a result of marital problems, our communication deteriorated to the point where we simply couldn't talk to each other. She became so shrill, nasty, and manipulative that I avoided dealing with her by shutting down her attempts to talk. A highly stupid yet common male self defense technique.
5. After we were married I felt so much pressure to be a good breadwinner and hold down my tough engineering job that I didn't really want to go out or be social too much. I was feeling a lot of work pressure then, and made the wrong choice: too much focus on career success.
6. As a result of lots of contemptuous, vitriolic, critical, nitpicking talk coming from her constantly, I began to have a hard time hearing everything she was saying. She would say things, I would forget the details, she would get furious. Lather, rinse, repeat.
7. She feels like I "became somebody else" as soon as we were married, someone who tried to force her to do things that she wasn't interested. She feels like I tried to "turn her into somebody else".
8. After the baby was born and we were already deeply ensconced in a lousy SSM, she wanted to have ANOTHER child. By then I had such grave doubts about our future together that there was no way I would go along with that. She delivered an ultimatum: we could either unprotected sex or no sex. I took no sex.

I have learned about what I did wrong in the above and have worked to make changes. As for #7, that is something I still struggle with. This problem arose because my wife seemed to have no interest in domestic activities, such as dishes, laundry, cleaning, shopping, or cooking. In those days, I felt like since I was bringing home almost all of the income, she should do some of the house stuff. And, she had agreed to that. But she backed out of it, and I responded by trying to get her to live up to her commitment.

I don't mean to be defensive. I accept responsibility for the things I did wrong and I have tried to make changes to make things better going forward - if there is a forward. My wife contributed and did any number of bad things herself along the way, but she does not yet take much responsibility for our problems, although she does take some. This is probably why she remains so angry and forgiveness seems so far off.

Please let me know if this is what you're after, or whether you'd like more details.

Thanks V;

If you haven't figured this out yet (and I think that you have), the best thing that you can do is to NOT be defensive, and ACCEPT the wrongs or hurts that she lists as valid, apologize for them, and express your determination to do all that you can to produce a healthy, happy relationship in the future. You can't change the past and neither can she --> you can only move forward together and DO better from now on.

In cases like this, you have to make a choice: would you rather be RIGHT or would you rather forge a better relationship? Obviously, she is still stuck on being RIGHT, which leaves you as the one to extend the olive branch. At some point, she will either have to accept that olive branch and learn to forgive, OR she will need to let you go your own way. You'll have to decide how long you are willing to stand there holding it out.

You know, I wonder about how late in life the two of you married. Is this a first marrage for both of you? or are there past relationships/marriages that are potentially haunting (psychologically) your own? What were your past relationships (yours and hers) like? What was your courtship period like?

The impression that you last post is leaving me with -- which could be very much wrong, so please correct me -- is that your wife looked at the "biological clock," noticed that her time was almost up for having children of her own, and she subsequently "settled" --> married someone who perhaps wasn't her ideal mate, but who was "good enough" to try and settle down and have kids with before she was no longer able to. She wanted to start trying to get pregnant the instant you got married, and then made it a prerequisite for sex....sexual blackmail. Didn't you guys talk about your preferences for having kids prior to getting married?

The problem with the above scenario is that when a woman "settles" for a Nice Guy, rather than someone that she has some real sexual chemistry with, you generally get an SSM and a very frustrated Nice Guy. And no ladies, I'm not being sexist here: men often "settle" too, and produce frustrated goodwives in the process.

What does Mr. Therapist say about all of this, V? What course of action is he working on?

-- B.

I AM avoiding being defensive. I have been extremely contrite since January, and trying to figure out how to make changes in my life and in my attitudes where possible, not just apologizing. My wife is a "actions speak louder than words" gal, so apologizing doesn't have much of an effect anyway.



All true. I am really twisting in the wind, and if I decide to stick it out here I will continue to be for some time. She says that she "needs more time" for good feelings about me to return now that our relationship is on the mend. Probably, that is something that I am just going to have to figure out how to cope with. I keep trying to talk her out of it, to start giving something back, especially wrt affection and intimacy. But she won't budge. And I am terribly worried that (because of the Nice Guy stuff) that if I don't continue to push and assert myself and what I need that nothing will ever change. So this is really messing with my head at this point. Should I err on the side of patience, even with all of this Nice Guy stuff in the mix?



This is the first marriage for both of us. We were married in 2003, when she was 39 and I was 41. I don't know whether past relationships are a problem for me, but my childhood sure is. I am working with the Glover book ("No More Mr. Nice Guy) and it seems to have been written about me. I have a lot of work to do on myself and I'm on it. Some of it seems easier now that I've been going to a men's group and getting REAL about my life for the past many months. But assertiveness, setting boundaries, and that kind of thing are pretty foreign to me. I am worried that I/we have made too much of a mess of this relationship to recover. On the other hand, our problems seem minor compared to some here, there are no Other People (at least not that I'm aware of) and we are both still here despite a horrendous period of about 4-5 years.

I think that I am going to have to "have faith" that she can come around and recover after some more time, but the problem I have is: have faith in what, exactly? I am very concerned about her apparent tendency to withhold affection and sex, and I am having a very difficult time giving her the benefit of the doubt given our past. Then again, aren't I supposed to forgive her and forget about the past, and focus on what she needs from me now? It's all very confusing.

As far as her past relationships, I really don't know anything. Believe it our not. She has played that very close to her chest, and there have been few details divulged. I don't know why, but I should try to see what I can find out.

Our courtship period was nice, with good and sometimes great sex. One interesting thing - we started having sex very early on and we had a very strong bond that arose from that. We dated for about a year before we got married, and we started having sex about a month after we started dating. I believe our bond may have masked important problems that I might have been able to figure out in time if we hadn't started having great sex almost right away.



I have often wondered about this myself. How much of a "marriage of convenience" am I in? How could I really understand this? What if it's really true that she wants to come around and fully engage but just needs more time? This is really vexing me right now and I have a hard time keeping my mind from spinning around on it. Before we were married, she made it absolutely clear that she "wanted to have a kid", and I said that I would be okay with A kid, but told her BEFORE WE WERE MARRIED that I was not interested in having more than one. Did she "settle"? I think that she may have, but without realizing it. And in the end, I probably did too. I really had no idea that she would tend to be so judgmental, demanding, endlessly critical, fussy, disorganized, sloppy, and so forth. But I love her anyway



Well, this really is the main thing to be worried about in my situation, isn't it?? I worry that "giving her more time" is really unlikely to change anything. Then again, our R was so messed up that it's actually possible. But I'm not taking chances. I'm not going to sit back and wait. I am going to try to un-Nice Guy and figure out how to get my needs met, hopefully in this R but I am ready to move on if I decide I need to.



We go to 2 sessions per week, one single session which has been for me (up till now) and a couples session. He has so fare mostly hard on improving our communication. He has been mostly bending over backward to accommodate my W and addressing her myriad demands, but lately he has started to shift more toward getting intimacy restarted in the R. But W has been extremely resistant to this.

Mr. Therapist has done a little EMDR on me for childhood stuff, but has strangely mostly acted as a cheerleader for my recovery courtship/caretaking effort. Going forward, starting Monday the W is going into the single session to work on her ANGER.

Finally: A Question For the Master
Bagheera, I seem to be stuck in a terrible Catch-22 in the "basic affection" category. By "basic affection" I mean hello/goodbye kisses, hugs, light touching, holding hands, all non-sexual stuff. Mostly, I try to "act as if" and give some affection to her. Mostly she just "takes" and does not give much of anything back. If I hug her, she just stands there usually. If I kiss her, it's just a paternal peck on the lips or cheek. It seems like it works inside a very narrow range: too much/too often is "pressure", and too little/not often enough is "withdrawal" (by me, according to her).

I am having a hell of a time figuring out how to deal with this Catch-22. It makes me feel really weird to have to be affectionate with someone (W) who is so disengaged, but not doing it seems to make things even worse. Have you experienced anything like this, and do you have any ideas on how to deal with it?

Bah...no "master" here, V: I still struggle with some aspects of my own SSM recovery daily...and screw up sometimes...and then dust off, and keep on going.

Firstly -- bravo on the NMMNG work, and way to go on finding a support group for you in that regard. Keep at it, and keep improving yourself, for YOURSELF!

Second -- my opinion is that I think that you should set a deadline for seeing some kind of significant progress in your relationship --> some moves on her part to start meeting *your* needs / desires for a change, and not just her continued focus on her needs and her anger about the past. You should not just continue on indefinitely -- she needs to get in the game also. Personally, I gave it one year from the time that I started busting my butt to set my marriage straight: if nothing had noticeably improved after one year from the time that I bagan my work, then I was prepared to walk. HOWEVER, I also shared this information with my wife, so that she understood fully what was at stake. Informing your wife well ahead of time (months) is key. She deserves a chance to make changes too.

Others will disagree here, and think that setting an arbitrary time frame is unfair and inflexable to the situation. In my own case, however, it was the ONLY thing that really got my wife up and moving and trying to make changes. Otherwise, she was prepared to enjoy the changes that --> I <-- was making, feel justified that she had been right all along and that I had finally "seen the light," but admit to no mistakes and make no changes in *her* behavior. I firmly got the point across that IF we were going to stay together, then we BOTH had to work on meeting *each other's* needs, and each work equally hard to make positive changes. Otherwise, we would be separating permamently.



Her anger is seeping through here too, and you're still being punished, apparently -- while at the same time, you are expected to keep delivering. All I can advise you to do here is: do what feels NATURAL and AFFECTION to **you**, regardless of her response. If you are feeling honest affection and want to show it, then do it, for your own selfish (non-sexual) pleasure, in addition to whatever she gets out of it. Once it starts to feel obligatory and is done grudgingly, it loses its effectiveness, altogether. If she asks you why you're backing off, then tell her the truth --> that because she doesn't return most of the affection you show her, its hard for you to continue giving it to her in a one-sided fashion.

I know that you're trying to meet her needs and "prove yourself" a changed and better man to her, but continue to keep a lot of the focus on YOU, and do what's good for YOU, for yourself: else, your efforts won't be sustainable and will lead to more resentment and frustration on your part.

-- B.