Thanks for all the comments! I appreciate the feedback. As expected I am getting some of both sides of the coin, which currently matched my mental state. I still am not sure if I should hold off and scale back or proceed forward as planned.
A few comments... A few have suggested I just hold back, not do anything on the sexual side of things, and that maybe by not bringing it up, it will make my wife actually want it more. Although that is a fantastic thought, I know it not to be true in my situation. My wife has established on a regualr basis that she will under no circumstance initiate any kind of sexual activity. She considers that to be my job as a husband. If I want something, then I need to ask for it, otherwise... it's not going to happen. So I can guarantee that if I don't do something, then I wont get anything in return. In 8 years of marriage, she has yet to initiate once. That is why I am working on a way to initiate, but a little more subtly and with the kids up and around, so she knows what I am thinking, but it's not like an "I WANT IT NOW!" kind of thing. Plus, what's the worst thing she can say? NO. Then I am no better off than if I do nothing.
Plus, one of her big arguments with me is that she feels I am not honest with her about my day to day needs. I have needs and urges, but I make an assumption that she will not fulfill them as well as fearing rejection, so I don't ever ask for things, until I am at the "crucial state" where horomones are so wound up I don't sleep well. She feels like I am not even giving her the opportunity to take care of me. Instead I assume that she wont want to do anything, so I don't bother asking. Granted, when I do ask, I typically get turned down, but if I don't ask, then I am being dishonest with her. So I am trying to work on this, and if I don't do anything on Valentines Day of all days, than she could get suspicious and go back to the "I'm not communicating" argument.
Chances are, that this will all solve itself naturally. Very typically, if she can sense that I am getting in the mood for romance, her body will automatically go into shutdown, sick mode. It seems to be the way she responds to this type of thing. She knows that I never want to be a jerk and that I try to be considerate of her feelings. She has learned that if she comes home sick, I will immediately leave her totally alone in the intimacy department. I can't hit on a person with the stomach flu.. how messed up is that! She has learned this well, and IMO takes advantage of this VERY well. I can guaranty that on days like Christmas Eve, New Years Eve, etc. She will be down sick the entire day. As I have mentioned in other threads, there are some things way down deep inside of her that she does not want coming out. That is why she refuses under any condition to see a counselor, for fear that some of this stuff may come out. Other posters have equated this to an 800 pound gorilla sitting in the room that she is choosing to ignore and work around, rather than face and get rid of it. I think the decreasing health issues are her body also wrestling with it, tryng to make it go away and it just wont. I have never met a person that is as sick as much as my wife is. Every day it is massive migraine headdaches, throwing out her back, or the stomach flu, throwing up constantly, diareaha, etc. But all her doctors can find nothing wrong. They do tests and tests and she is normal, medically speaking. So to me, it is all part of the mental agaony of trying to make the gorilla go away. Until she can confront this thing, she will continue to stay sick.
Typically, if something ever does happen in the bedroom, it is when I can manage to pull off somekind of surprise, and there is no time for her body to react. But if she knows it is coming, I can guaranty she'll come home from work tonight with the biggest migraine, or throwing up like mad. Becasue then, instead of thinking she may have to have sex, she knows I will immediately switch gears, let her go to bed early, offer to stay up with the kids, bring her drinks as needed and give her the night to herself.
I tend to have a lot of these holiday setups canceled for sickness, I am used to that. But I have to still try, just for my own sanity. I'd feel like a terrible husband if I didn't do anything cool.
So, I'll be curious as to what will happen tonight...
HappyGiant Sounds like both of you are guilty of making a lot of assumptions. The communication needs a lot of work and should probably be top priority right now. To be brutally honest, sounds like your W has some serious mental health issues at play. Getting physically ill on all major holidays, when sex is on the horizon, etc is her defense mechanism. And to make matters worse, you have conditioned her to respond in such a way because it works! So there are things you can do to stop this cycle. Stop rewarding her "illnesses" by "switching gears" as you stated and caretaking her so much. You will not be a terrible H for doing so. However, you will be making a big mistake if you carry on in this fashion because I can already sense the resentment in your words. That is only going to grow bigger if you don't break the pattern. Hope that doesn't come off to harsh because I do not mean it to. Good luck tonight in whatever you decide to do.
I echo much of what LFL has said to you. Your W is having what I'd call a "Pavlovian" response to sex, and because you enable her to do this....she continues to do it because it works for her. If nothing else I think she may have a great deal of anxiety attached to "sex" in her mind....and therefore her body takes on it's own type of anxiety attack and she gets herself worked up to where she becomes ill. That my friend....is a BIG problem. Not one that can't be dealt with though, but you do have to find out what the root cause of her anxiety really is.
She doesn't have an opportunity to have this pavlovian response when you surprise her and don't do the build-up like you are talking about with V-Day. By doing this build-up you are giving her (or her mind/body) plenty of time to prepare a defense against you.....is that helpful? Nope. Is that productive for fixing your R? Nope. Are you enabling the behavior? Yep.
I know you enjoy doing these romantic things and using your creativity to do these things and that's wonderful. But wouldn't it be even better to be able to use these talents on a woman who will appreciate it like she used to? In order to turn things around in your R, you are going to have to begin changing your behavior....stop enabling her behavior. Stop letting that work for her.
Now, does that mean you ravage her when she really doesn't feel well, of course not. But I'm thinking there's some serious communication that needs to start happening between you two, and you are going to have to be the one to start it. It needs to be honest, blunt, and heart-felt. You might even want to consider counseling in order to help you both through this.
Quote: Plus, one of her big arguments with me is that she feels I am not honest with her about my day to day needs. I have needs and urges, but I make an assumption that she will not fulfill them as well as fearing rejection, so I don't ever ask for things, until I am at the "crucial state" where horomones are so wound up I don't sleep well. She feels like I am not even giving her the opportunity to take care of me. Instead I assume that she wont want to do anything, so I don't bother asking. Granted, when I do ask, I typically get turned down, but if I don't ask, then I am being dishonest with her. So I am trying to work on this . . .
HappyGiant,
I know you asked only the LD women, but I had to respond to this. Why in the world would YOU have to "work at this," when this is clearly a bizarre behavior in HER??
Also wanted to say that I used to do all these same sorts of things on Valentine's Days (and anniversaries, too), with similar results, and just finally stopped doing them. My wife has made Valentine's Day totally about the children, and not about romance, much less sex, so I've just learned to accept that. Today, she just called me to tell me she'd been "running around all day," and making hand-dipped strawberries for the kids, buying them each a very thoughtful (but smallish) gift, and she's making chicken parmesan for them tonite even though she and I are going out to dinner.
I will no doubt get a card from her, although many years she'll say "oh -- and I have a card for you somewhere; I've been so busy, I didn't get a chance to sign it", and perhaps a small gift like a mixed 6-pack of my favorite micro-brews and a box of chocolate. I have sent her a dozen yellow roses, sans romantic note (just a simple "Happy Valentine's Day"), bought her a bottle of nice Syrah with a few little chocolates, and will take her to dinner. The card will be nice, but not overly romantic, and I've added a funny one this year that I couldn't resist.
The the days of me making her a CD (including lyrics and liner notes) of all of "our" songs, inviting her to a romantic cruise on the sailboat where we first met, leaving little notes on her windshield and filling her car with balloons while she's at class, etc., etc., are over.
She just never appreciated them.
If you don't mind doing this things, and you just enjoy doing it because that's who you are, I guess you should keep doing it. I could not.
Chocolateeyes, who thinks he's got a GREAT "Valentine's Day" name
HappyGiant, It is not my intention to bum you out on this most romantic day of the year but I have to tell you that it seems to me that your R is not very equal or balanced. You put a lot into it and get little back.
Why are you okay with this?
I'm sure you will answer that you are not, so my next question is: Why would you keep pouring, and I mean pouring, your energy and time and heart into projects for someone who doesn't appreciate it?
A big step in fixing my R, for me, was to work on my own self respect. I was willing to tolerate a lot of stuff in order to get a smallish gesture that was sorta supposed to meet my needs. One day I woke up and thought, What the heck's the matter with me? Don't I respect myself enough that I would say that this is simply NOT working for me...?
In other words, I overemphasized my abilities to "work wonders" on my spouse.
I hope this wasn't a downer. Actually my intentions are to pump you up a bit and help you realize that the one-sidedness of your R is utterly unfair to you and that you have the ability to negotiate for more, for yourself.
As far as her getting sick all the time, well, she could be a sickly person or she could be extremely susceptible to stress. If it's stress, I'd take that as a good sign. She's aware, on a very big level, that she's not meeting your needs and it stresses her out so much that she gets sick. At least she's AWARE of what she's doing. I think it's much harder to convince a person (say, an obtuse husband, lol) that the R needs work when they're perfectly happy with the status quo. You have proof that the status quo is not working for her, either, in that she gets physically ill, so maybe she will be willing to work on the R for her own health benefits.
Hi, Happy Giant, I haven't posted for a while, but I wanted to respond to your post. I, like you, felt that I was busting my butt doing everything for W and why didn't she respond with the nookie that she knew I wanted? It got so bad that at the end of last year, I wrote her letter which, while not stating the word "divorce" clearly implied that that was where I thought we were headed.
Since then, things have gotten better. Not that the frequency is great (twice this year), but there is a lot more spontaneous laughter and silliness now than there was in the past. We stay up late and talk about our dreams (the ones we have while sleeping) and spirituality and past and future lives. We spent all day Sunday happily organizing our files, a task that normally leads to angry confrontations by about 1:30 PM. I'm not saying it has been easy. Once, while I was making my "moves" on W in the bed, she said, "After 15 years you still don't know what I like. That's part of the reason you don't get much sex." Now, could you have gone on after that? Well we did, with her pushing my hands and other parts around as if I were a manequin in a store window. She hated to do it, but I'll never forget.
My point? I don't have one, but I would say this: my W will not as a rule tell me what I should do to please her; and when I do please her, she is not going to jump into my arms and start humping me. No, but she may smile and she may talk a little more often and a little more pleasantly. Second, and others have already said this, it is not a good idea to do something with the express intent of leading to sex, but if you do, don't be disappointed with her if it does not in fact lead to sex. I enjoy sleeping with my W, but she enjoys sleeping with our kids (5 and 7). If I do sleep with her, I do not feel let down (much any way) if we don't have sex. Because I really like sleeping with her and that is pleasure enough by itself. I have in the past argued that we should go to MC, but she took it to mean that I wanted someone to tell her that she should have sex with me. I still think that we should go to MC, but I will have to convince her that my motives, if not exactly pure, are at least more subtle and complex than she thinks.
Anyway, I know that what my W wants from me more than anything else on Valentine's Day is for me to be home for dinner. So it's home I'm headed.
Ok, So I figure I had better post an update as there may be some curious folks out there....
I went ahead with the plan...mostly as planned. I did modify some parts of it, to tone some areas back, but it all went as I had figured it would. I got home early to prepare the house and put the treasure hunt in place, fix dinner etc. By the time my wife got home, she was exhausted and "not feeling well", as I suspected would be the case. She and the kids did the treasue hunt, kids had a ball and were totally oblivious as to the fact that there were things in the packages that were just for mom. She casually ignored the black nightie and boxers, just left them where they were and continued on to the next clue with the kids. She enjoyed dinner and seemed to really love her gifts. Then she said she wasn't feeling well and went to bed. By the time I got the kids down and asleep she was out cold. I have learned from experience to under no circumstance wake her up for anything, so I just let it go.
I spent the rest of the evening working very hard to remember that I spent all the time for the enjoyment of it, not just for sex, but in all honesty I was disappointed. I really thought I had come up with the perfect plan that would light her fire in a way that I had been unable to in the past, but... her 10 hours of sleep came first.
This isn't easy for me.. but I know I need to figure out how to deal with it. My wife always asks me to not take it personally, as it is not meant to be a personal slam. She says the problems are within her, that she loves me and appreciated what I do for her, she just can't SHOW that in any kind of physical way right now.
My MC is also working with me on these issues (I just go on my own). I had a meeting yesterday where he told me I need to come to grips with the fact that I may never have sex again with my wife, and figure out how to deal with that fact, be ok with that, and find fulfillment in life through other ways. I am trying to work on it.. I just know it is not easy when I have a natural physical attraction to my wife and am a very HD person. But as the MC quotes from the Bible..
"But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you, Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you."
I know that is easier said than done... but I am trying to comet grips with all of this.
I am the LDS....however, I think that there are NDS..that might be a better term. AND>>...LDS to me means a Lower Drive than your spouse. In some relationships that LDS may actually be a HDS!! Are you now thoroughly confused?
Your wife has some real issues! Intimacy issues? Sexually molested? Have you had an affair? Relationship issues? Does she need to lose weight..feel bad about her physical appearance?
Taking that much time and effort is very romantic. For some LDS, at least for me, that would turn me on. Unless there are a lot of unresolved issues between you in your relationship....if a woman has any sex drive at all...the amount of love shown to her....would make her passionate to be pursured to that degree. Most women, maybe not HDS...I don't know, respond to romance, affection, phone calls, candles lit!!!...a puzzle giving 100 ways of why you love her! Most women would be happy to hear 5 reasons of why they were loved...that were heartfelt!
Maybe you are trying too hard! You are falling all over her, and not just sexually, and she is taking you for granted. I'm not suggesting playing a game...
Endeavoring not to put pressure on her sexually and at the same time wanting to do something fun and nice for her....well, if somone has any sex drive at all..it would turn them on!
Come on baby let's f*(&&^! That is a turnoff to LDS. Doesn't sound like you did that.
How wonderful (or maybe not so wonderful) that you are still attracted to her physically when she turns you down for sex.
Your MC is right. YOu may have to come to grips with no sex. That's why I say...she is not a LDS...she is a NDS...and that isn't normal...not in a loving relationship.
Good for you for not being bitter with her. It won't lead you into anything productive.
She says the problems are within her. Does she or do you know what they are? Have you or could you suggest she go to a MC on her own to deal with the problems within her. The fact she admits she has problems is 50% of the battle!!!!
Don't give up. It sounds like you two have things to work with. If she is willing to deal with her problems....I don't think you could do anything outwardly to change it.
She has to know and be willing to change. From what it sounds like your beliefs are...the scripture that you quoted...I think that within both of you is the seed to get it right. IF BOTH of you will.
Long time lurker here. HappyGiant.. Your herculean attempts to get laid made me respond. I have a bit of an observation.
I did all the things you did for my cold cold luscious Hot looking wife.
All the rebuffs, polite declines, prebed manufactured fights, the wife running upstairs and the immediately falling asleep( my favorite), etc Beat me up year after year and then.. clarity
I surprised her with a romantic 3 day Valentines cruise to which she responded..(very sincerely and honestly) Thats Great!! Can my mom come too? She would love it!
I never went crazy doing all the pathetic things again. She does not want sex and its wrong to force her through fake romance. Its not right for you either but I am sure she is good with kids, works or something. Count your blessings and get away from her later in life.
Let her try the no-sex lifestyle out on a boyfriend.. when she's in her 50's.
My wife and I have no sex, which she is happy about and when the kids are gone to college she will have no husband. Six years left and counting.
