My anniversary weekend went way better than I thought it would thanks in part to T_L and I being able to talk to you all on here and get different perspectives on our relationship. It has given us a platform from which to start our discussions. We had a 6 hour drive home yesterday and I turned down the radio and asked if we could talk. He revealed something to me that has me perplexed to say the least.
He said that HE doesnt feel like he is a good lover so this is part of his LD/ED problems.... I kind of looked at him and got a little angry. My response to this was " Why in the H*** would I have dealt with the last 5 years of BS if it was for crappy sex!!!!! I mean really ...why would I waste all the time and energy of fighting for our sexual relationship for a lousy lover? He had no response..other than it was just HIS opinion of himself!???? I dont get it ..How can I convince him that when he is ML to me it is the most incredible thing!!! The closeness and intimacy I feel with him at that moment in time is the BEST. What kind of things or words can I do or say to help him understand?
You can't convince him of anything anyway, so why try.
All you can do is tell him that you love ML to him and think he is a fantastic lover but if he doesn't feel that way, then he will have to work through it.
He knows this is the truth anyway.
There was a brief period in which I decided that H didn't want to ML to me because I was fat, ugly, you name it. He would try to reassure me this was not the case but I was a bottomless pit of neediness and wanted even MORE reassurance.
He eventually stuck with one saying: "I do desire you but I'm not going to argue with you about it. Either you believe me or you don't, but there it is." That ended the game for me.
Now I don't always FEEL desirable around him but I no longer let his opinion of me decide what I am all about.
In short, tell him you think he's a great lover but that you can't convince him of squat.
Thank you..... I am just worried that if HE thinks he is a bad lover and this is what some of his LD problem is then I must not be showing him rather than telling him that I think is is great.
He bases whether he is good or not on whether I have an O or not. I told him that there are times when I dont necessarily want to have an "O" during sex...I would rather have the spontaneous sweep me off my feet unprepared sex where it is all about him first and then take care of me .
He used the example that his feeling that He is not good is the same as my feeling that I am overweight etc. In that I dont "believe" him when he says that I am perfect the way I am. His analogy was poor in my opinion and I explained why.
I said that I dont let how I feel about what I see in my mirror everyday affect our marriage. I do not hide my body from him...I sleep naked, I wear sexy clothes and I enjoy ML to him with lights on or off.
He is letting how he feels affect us by withholding sex from me..because HE doesn't think he is good enough at it??? Hope you understood all that I know I was kind of all over the place SOrry
I simply say that I am sorry he feels that way; that I wish it were different and that he believed my words instead of his own fears.
But I also let him know that me being sympathetic to his fears does NOT mean that I will be accepting that line as an excuse. It just means that I wish he felt differently. Nothing less, nothing more.
I think my H was most surprised when I started saying to him, "I don't accept that as an answer." He was so used to me giving in to his excuses that when I started saying I would no longer accept that as an excuse he would stammer at me, 'Wwwhat? What do you mean?' I would reply, "I'm sorry you feel that way but it is not an excuse to not do anything and I am still expecting that things go differently next time." All of this was said in a compassionate tone and I really WAS sympathetic to his problems and hangups. But I just stopped accepting certain excuses from him and he stopped giving them.
Just because you're sympathetic does not mean that you have to become paralyzed with inaction and wait for him to overcome his problems. Kwim?
I do feel "paralyzed" when it comes to our sexual relationship. I see alot of what he says are just that "excuses". He has a long list of them and I just dont know which ones are real anymore and which ones are truly excuses. He uses the same ones but just at different times and I just get more and more angry.
