Quote: You and I are both women, right. We both want to feel sexually desirable and beautiful to our husbands.
Interestingly enough, what I wanted was to be loved which manifested as "be important to NOP". Which is about as nebulous as describing "desire." But, it involved wanting him to want to be with me - regardless if it was a function or activity that was high on his list of things to be a part of.
The flip side to the "my spouse desires me" coin, is the "he only wants me for sex." Which coin, as we've noted, has come up in several of our marriages both from the men and the women.
Quote: he might have been able to look at you and see that you were not brimming with desire and still be able to carry thru with it, simply because he recognized that you were trying and loved him with everything you have.
But I really wasn't loving him with everything I have and at the time I can attest that there wasn't a great deal (at least recognizable to me) of expressed appreciation for my efforts, feeble though they may have been. A few of our blowouts involved me pointing out that he couldn't seem to acknowledge the attempts I was making.
Like looking at a beam of light from two different locations - either directly under the beam or to the side, I think perspectives determine how this works out and is viewed in a relationship.
Perspective wise, I think that the higher drive spouse loves their spouse, experiences desire and wants to express sexual longings toward their spouse, that because this is someone they love, they want to express that to the spouse sexually. You're in the direct beam of light. The lower drive spouse usually has the perspective that the HD spouse has sexual longings that need to be expressed, and you, the LD spouse become the object where that desire is expressed.
Desire -> Sex -> Spouse Spouse -> Desire -> Sex
So, the LD spouse may not glean the same internal sense of "I'm special" when being the recepient of their spouse's desire because the perspective is from such a different space.
It does not crush me in the sense that I am weeping uncontrollably for days. More of the feeling that, as I'm standing there quite literally naked, I am humiliated that I'm not having the intended effect. I am crushed at that moment. Afterwards, it usually progresses to being pissed off and then acceptance of what IS. I don't wake up the next day hating myself or thinking that I am an ugly blob but at the moment of...not necessarily rejection...but more like a firecracker that ends up being a dud, I feel like poop.
NOP, Is the post you are referring to the Turning Crank one? I'm not sure which one you meant..?
And I get what you are saying about control and I totally agree that it is not gender-specific. Only that there is a difference between LDwives and LDhusbands. Simply because there is a difference between men and women. LD people do have many of the same reactions (scarily similar, in fact!) but there are certain things about each situation that make it uniquely difficult to deal with. For the wives, we have to deal with the knowledge that all the OTHER husbands out there would kill or die to get hold of us, and the husbands have to deal with the fact that society supports the wives' notion that sex is something for young people and the Tired Wife is justified in withholding.
That's all I was trying to say.
Jenny summed it up much better than I did. That the LD man has a very difficult time admitting that he is LD and taking the proper responsibility for that. The wives at least admit it and are up front about what they will or will not do about it. Too many times the husbands are incommunicado.
Quote: For the wives, we have to deal with the knowledge that all the OTHER husbands out there would kill or die to get hold of us
And you don't think the converse is true? Do you think we're not aware that there are women out there who would love to have a H who wants to ML to them?
JJ worte: -------------- I think NOPkins was HD enough to get the relationship over the "hump" that I can't get over in my relationship. I'm not HD enough to deal with my H showing up with no sign of arousal for scheduled sex and based on recent experience. --------------
Hi, Jenny!
I don't think that my high drive had any real bearing on my persistence. When I truly got to the end of my 'rope', I decided that it was only right that I give my dear wife a "last chance" before I bolted for greener pastures.
Funny how I didn't have the guts or integrity to tell her about the decision I had made (to divorce her if she didn't straighten up). What is really amazing is that she stepped up to the challenge, even though I was sure that I had played no major role in the state of our relationship.
I do stick to projects that I decide to do, very well. In all honesty, I saw the repair of our sexual relationship as a project. Trying to figure out how to do that is the analytical side of the engineer in me.
You can't give attribution to a sex-drive-level as a relational tool, at least in my case. It could be fun if such a thing were possible, but I don't think that it is.
Don't get me wrong. Frustration is often a good motivator, but understanding the causality/effect relationship of the underlying issue is the real difficulty. The perceived, obvious fix for a relational issue, often times isn't the fix at all.
It is true that having more sex is part of the goal, but having more sex with your spouse because THEY WANT TO is the real treasure to be sought.
Fortunately, having sex frequently is a good way to force a couple to face the underlying causes of the issues in their relationship.
What I think that you need to do, Jenny, is tell your husband why you are upset and find out why he feels that he is a piece of meat. I certainly would never want MrsNOP to feel that way. I know for a fact that she doesn't. How would I know that?
I think you are doing extremely well with your hubby.
-NOPkins-
I will ferret out an affair at any opportunity.
-An affair is the embodiment of entitlement, fueled by resentment and lack of respect. -An infidel will remain unreachable so long as their sense of entitlement exceeds their ability to reason.
My point is that society does not BOMBARD you with the message that all wives are horny and brimmin with desire, and you go home to the ONLY wife who is not.
That is the plight of the HD wife. Look, I'm not saying it's easy being a HDH. Only that there are unique challenges to each and in some ways the chicks have it worse. You fellas could fill up an entire thread on why it sucks donkey dongs to be the HDH's, I'm sure.
Nopkins - when you reached the end of your rope did you let go or did you tie a knot and hang on? What I mean is. Did you mentally let go and take advantage of the seesaw effect or did you really dig in to your marriage as a project? I find myself alternating between those approaches and I can't always figure out what causes the progress or the regressions.
I think that Jenny is feeling something akin to what I do. We desperately want our spouse to want to have more sex because THEY WANT TO and YET the only thing in the relationship that seems to create more sex is pressing (aka forcing) them to be sexual out of a sense of obligation to the marriage. That feels like crap. I know there is no magic pill and I cannot tell you how we appreciate the wisdom of you and Mrs. Nop.
Karen, who is looking for her mojo before heading home
The discourse on this board is always smart, but this thread, today, is brilliant.
Honey wrote
Quote: That the LD man has a very difficult time admitting that he is LD and taking the proper responsibility for that. The wives at least admit it and are up front about what they will or will not do about it.
To expand on that (or maybe reiterate it), society expects men to be HD and permits women to be LD. So it's easier for an LD woman to admit she is LD, but harder for an LD man to admit that he is LD. She is admitting something socially acceptable (even expected); he is admitting something embarrassing, something that makes him seem less of a man.
HP wrote: --------------- Jenny summed it up much better than I did. That the LD man has a very difficult time admitting that he is LD and taking the proper responsibility for that. The wives at least admit it and are up front about what they will or will not do about it. Too many times the husbands are incommunicado. ---------------
I understand what you (and Jenny) are saying. What I am saying is that the real problem (relationship) is simply being couched in terms of finger pointing.
I also understand that all of us want to be 'special' in some way. That extends to us circumstantially. We all want to have special circumstances. In practice, even if it were true, it offers little to no help for the underlying problems.
I don't believe that either side of the coin is more noble or more beset by wrong perception. The coin is a coin and is has its intrinsic value only when considered a whole coin, not heads or tails.
If you want to continue the improvement in your relationship, the 'need to blame' is the very next thing that you must address.
-NOPkins-
I will ferret out an affair at any opportunity.
-An affair is the embodiment of entitlement, fueled by resentment and lack of respect. -An infidel will remain unreachable so long as their sense of entitlement exceeds their ability to reason.
Lillie, Thank you for putting this into words for me. I have been doing a collossally bad job of it today. (and hijacking Jenny's thread in the process)
All I was saying is that, in addition to the usual SSM stuff, we HDwives also have to contend with the other cultural bulloney and all that it entails. It really does add another dimension to the problem.
I just bought my W a piece of lingerie she requested for Christmas/Hanukkah. Well, not exactly a piece of lingerie. You do sleep in it. They don't sell it at Victoria's Secret, though. It was a flannel night gown. I got it from L.L.Bean.
It sucks donkey dicks that I just bought my wife the most unsexiest thing she could possibly wear, and she will, no doubt, be happy with her present.
She hasn't asked me what I want. I think she goes out of her way to try to guess what items I want, in order to avoid asking me that question. Truth be told, y'all know I could do without anything "material" for presents. Last year she got me a great present: a bicycle. I really like it. There is nothing I want from her this year, except for her to be my loving wife.
