Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums THE SEX-STARVED MARRIAGE The saga continues

globule,
I started posting here last July and have with the help of these wise folks on the board have gone from not caring if my H went outside of marriage to get his needs met to really cultivating the HD side of me. If you have read my current sitch, you'll see that my H is not positively responding to the changes I've made. I want to stress that my H is unique and that you may reach your nirvana within your R.

glob, I'm really curious about what you did the other night that was so unforgiveably awful that you are back at ground zero again. I'll bet if you told the tale here, you'd find that most of us would go, Huh? Not that our opinions matter more than your W's where you and she are concerned, but it might give you some perspective. Besides, you keep mentioning it... I'm getting really curious.

Are you making excuses again about not answering my posts? What did I already tell you about that? Don't make me come down there and ... uhhh ... that getting in shape doesn't have anything to do with kickboxing or karate does it????
Ok, ok, I'm getting to it. Keep your pants on. (maybe a poor choice of words, lol).
No karate, sometimes kickboxing but not my favorite. This morning I just ran on the treadmill again because my step class was cancelled. Hate the treadmill because it's so boring but at least I get to listen to the Ipod instead of the music in the aerobics classes.
Now for some on topic posting...

The aftereffect of the EA are still with me and very strong. I find myself daydreaming a lot about OW, even a month later.

I wanted to comment on this first since we do have a common bond here. Everyone on this board was right that I needed to make a clean break with OM before any real progress was going to be made. The carrot was always dangling with a sporadic email here and there. When we finally said we will not contacting each other any more things improved dramatically.
Lil made a great point a while back about not demonizing the OM. She was so correct. I look back on my experience with OM and see so many positive things that came out of it. Yes, it was SO HARD to break away completely but you know what, I STILL feel just as good about myself today as I did with him. I think you may be fearly that you will return to "the old Globule" which I was too. But, those FEELINGS that the OP gives you are something that will always be there now. We can't take it back and wouldn't want to. The experience changed us PERMANENTLY.
I have fond memories of OM but I do not yearn for him or even have any real desire to speak to or see him.
I am willing to bet that you are still struggling with contact with OW, maybe even talked to her recently. Maybe you don't want to admit it here because you are ashamed and this board is for improving the M. Well, you know how I feel about this and if that is true you SHOULD talk to us (or me in particular) because holding that secret is painful. I wouldn't judge you if you just felt like you couldn't break it off completely yet. I sort of did it slowly and that worked.
It is obvious OW is still a HUGE part of your thought process and that is dangerous. You admit to thinking maybe it would work out with her in the end. Your carrot is still dangling big time and you need to address this FIRST before TRULY approaching you W and the M with 100% determination to fix it.
Listen, I am no role model for how to do this since I am going thru the same things but I may be a few weeks ahead of you on the whole OP mess. Vent away about it. I am all ears!

you are absolutely right about the W needing to put some effort in. Even in just the past few months, it seems like the few topics we have talked about, we have gone over and over and over with no real progress.
BTDT. H and I would go down cheeseless tunnels all day and night. Wanted to bang my head against a wall.
I've got to get her to start reading some of these books or something. She did get on ivillage for awhile and was reading about "clashing libidos" but I think that lasted for all of two days. The W and I were doing Dr. Phil's Relationship Rescue workbook for awhile there, but she said that she hated it because it was too sad.
My H did the same thing! I bought SSM and he made it through a few chapters and said it was too depressing and made him feel bad. No sh*t sherlock Talk about only wanting to deal with happy/good/painless feelings. He drove me batty.
A few months after we were first seperated, we were in MC and I remember an incident beginning of December, H and I were on the couch and I was trying to give him a kiss (at this point the C encouraged us to have some physical/sexual contact), well, my H made this tight lipped face and needless to say, the kissing was a bust.
I didn't realize it at the time, but that was a turning point for me. I was SO HURT but all of a sudden, I no longer felt desperate to make it work. I looked at him and thought, this is about you and not me. I have been busting my butt the last 3-4 months and you are going to insult me by not even giving me a little kiss. Ugh. I was looking great, working out, dressing sexy, being sexy, being confident, holding stimulating conversations, etc etc.
NONE OF IT WAS GOING TO WORK UNTIL I TOTALLY DETACHED AND GOT MY OWN LIFE. Until then, he thought all of this was "for him" and not sincere. Well, I showed him differently and went on with my life, had an amazing R with OM, brought out parts of me I wasn't even sure were in there, made me feel incredible about myself, just like your OW did. H needed to here about this R otherwise he was not going to understand how/why I had changed. You need to share these feelings with your W too. She will not change until she UNDERSTANDS where you are coming from. I think she assumes you are just going to go back to being "normal" Globule and life goes on, "we'll just forget about the A", FAT CHANCE. Like I said, it changes you as a person, and in our cases, I think it is for the BETTER. I feel so much stronger and more confident about myself, don't you?
I need to go pick up D from school now but I'll write more later. Hope you can relate to most of this. I feel better just writing it to you

"gone from not caring if my H went outside of marriage"
WOW! I haven't had a chance to read through your story yet, but I can't imagine the pain it would take for you to get to that point. Actually, I almost can. I know this may sound weird but I almost wouldn't care if my wife had a PA. At least it would make it clear to me that she CAN be physical when she wants.

"really cultivating the HD side of me"
That is what I want to know more about. If somehow my wife would just start getting in touch with her physical desires (the must be in there somewhere), it would go a long way to fixing our problems. I know I've got a lot of problems too, but I've got a mindset to fix them.

"H is not positively responding to the changes I've made"
Well, let me put it to you this way, and I don't say this to make you feel bad about your situation. If I saw my wife even trying to come my way a bit, you can be 100% sure I would notice, I would help as much as I could, and I would be VERY grateful (in whatever way she wanted). I'm sorry your husband is not that way. From what I am hearing about HD/LD on this board, the change that you made is an amazing one and speaks well of you as a person. Be proud of that. You have given me a lot of hope just knowing your story.

I'll definitely find the time to read your old threads, but again if you have any brief nuggets of wisdom about LD wives or transitioning to HD, feel free to "pollute" this thread with them.

globule,

Quote:

---

(A) I felt like I could say anything and she would listen to me, understand me, and not judge me
(B) I felt like we had the same general goals in life
(C) I felt passion when she looked at me, or smiled at me, or on those brief instances when we touched
(D) I felt like she cared about me
(E) I felt like she was willing to make time for me
(F) I felt like she admired me
(G) I felt like she was attracted to me physically
(H) I felt like it wouldn't have been much effort to get into a mode where we could ML (although that is a guess)
(I) I felt like she would be open to doing new things
(J) And everything that I just mentioned I felt for her in return and she appreciated it openly

---

I could only aspire to be this good.

Are there small steps your W could take to begin to achieve these things? Is there a way to convince her that there is something in it for her (beyond sexual bliss, which for a fair number of LD folks is an abstraction at best). Is she athletic? Does she appreciate that her body can sustain and bring forward life? Is she amazed by nature? What does she love to do?

globule,

Thank you .

I am not a saint, I've made my mistakes and inflicted pain in this M, but I am open to fixing it. Any marriage that has lasted a decade has issues on both sides. Ours is no different.

No one gives up/denies themselves something as fantastic as fulfilling sex with a loving partner frivolously. There almost always is a very good reason for doing so. Dealing with those reasons can be a very painful task.

Gosh, I looked back at a few of my posts and didn't realize how much I was "dropping the hint" as they say.

Well if you must know, three things happened:

(1) Our counselor told us (and my wife agreed to this) that we should have 1 hour of non-sexual intimacy a week. The C believes (and I somewhat agree with her) that my wife avoids affection because she is afraid it will lead to sex, so we are just supposed to be affectionate to one another with the understanding that it will not lead to sex. Understand this, the C basically told my wife she only has to touch me for 1 hour a week! That sucks but I was willing to go along with it as a baby step. Well in the 5 weeks since our C session, this 1-hour of intimacy has happened once! I brought it up on Friday, suggested that since we had some extra time that night (new baby was sleeping well) we should give it a go, and I was rejected. As you can imagine, I didn't take that well. That combined with the already agitated state I was in (read my posts from Friday) and you can see trouble was brewing.

(2) About 30 minutes later, my pot was boiling. I decided to confront her with some of the issues that I have been discussing here. I was all ready for the crying and was just going to let her do it. Well, she sat there listening to my litany of items making no comment. When I paused to ask her what her thoughts were, she made some comments basically being very defensive and making it clear that she was really misinterpreting what I was saying to her. I backed up a bit, told her I would try again and let her know that I wasn't trying to attack her, just let her know my point of view. We discussed a bit more and got nowhere. Finally, I said "I just want you to know that I love you, that is why I am bringing all this stuff up, I want our relationship to be better." No response from her. I said, "You do know that I love you don't you?" She said, "Do you love me or do you love the idealized woman that you want me to be?" I was devastated, she basically implied that she didn't believe I loved her. I got a bit angry at that point and started to ask her who this idealized woman she was talking about was, and what qualities she had. I was thinking that she was ascribing good sex, affection, etc. to an idealized woman, which is backwards in my opinion. I got about 4 or 5 words out of my mouth and she said "I don't want to talk about it anymore." End of conversation.

(3) Later that evening, I wanted to show her that despite our argument and her protests, I still loved her. So I went up to give her affection and was pushed away. I felt humiliated.

So you can see, I am back to square one. Since then, she has not pushed me away, but has not once initiated affection at all or even brought up the idea of the 1-hour session. And to top it off our counselor told me that she was all booked up and couldn't fit us in for 3 weeks. 3 more weeks of this!

Let me just say Lil that I'm sure I probably did say some things that came across as attacking her or being unrealistic. I don't want anyone here to think that I thought I was being Mr Goody Two-Shoes and my wife was the wicked witch. But it wasn't her response to those statements that bothered me, it was the response to the "you know I love you" statement.