You mentioned that it wasn't until you read the SSM that you realized the hurt of your rejections . . . . . Could you tell me was there anything in the book in particular that you read and said "AH HA! NOW I GET IT!" Im interested to know what it was that finally made it click that the rejection was the same for your husband as it was for you.
Aside from all the very useful information and tips in the book, there were three most important parts for me.
1) Part I, 'The Sex'Starved Marriage'. The first chapter let me hear a take on that sex is important to a marriage, and that's that, no matter how different you are, if you want it to last, you have to work it out. I had not had that kind of wake-up call. It was like, 'work harder or you'll get fired'.
2) In Part II: 'The Lowdown on Low Sexual Desire'. Pages 21-37 were incredibly comforting to me, because for the first time I realized there are other people out there who feel exactly like me, and that I am not a horrible person.
3) Believe it or not, Pages 109-131, 'The HDS's Guide for Boosting the Marriage Libido'. It is designed to give that same feeling of comfort to the HD spouse that I felt with the LD chapter - and that got me thinking, omygoddess, if he can identify with this as well as I can identify with 'my half' of the book, he's got to be in just as much pain as I am. For the first time, I heard a take on what sex really means to an HD, that it's not just 'scratching an itch' (even thgouh I still am slightly to sometimes utterly confused about my HD husband's sex drive, but I guess that's an eternal struggle). So I asked my husband about it, and he confirmed what I'd read. Like many men, he has a harder time putting things into words, so the book pretty much spoke for him.
The key for me was, I felt understood, so I could open up to understanding him. There was an outside, professional source who told me both our points and feelings are valid. Reading the book made me feel like we were 'equals' again, not completely incompatible or freaks.
I have been doing a lot of reading to try an understand my own relationship and women in general, and I am amazed out how different the two sexes are and how little they know about each other. So you need to realize that your preceptions of marriage will NOT be similar to your spouse, this is NORMAL. The trick is to try and understand your spouse better and find solutions (this is the hard part). This link 10 Emotional Needs in Marriage is from the author of "His Needs/Her Needs". He has a website that has tons of good information about fixing and creating great marriages. He has identified 10 basic emotional needs in marriage and then surveyed his clients to find out how men and women rank them in importance. What he found was that the 5 most important needs for one sex was the LEAST important needs for the other sex. That means that men and women are VERY different in what the want from their marriages. Here is the top 5 needs for the average man: 1) Complete Sexual Fulfillment 2) Recreational Companionship 3) Pysically Attractive Spouse 4) Domestic Support 5) Admiration
Now this is the average man. I personally have sex #1 and affection as #2. Now you can see that Sexual Fulfillment is the #1 EMOTIONAL need (yes emotional, not physical need) for the average man. Read up on the sexual fulfillment part on his website. Sexual fulfillment means haveing great sex with someone that DESIRES sex almost as much as the guy. It's all about your DESIRE for sex, not the actual act itself. Your man DESIRES you sexually, and he wants you to DESIRE him sexually just as much. It can be a tough concept for women to fully understand, mainly because you don't have tons of testosterone in your body. Women separate love from sexual desire, so women can love a person and yet not want to have sex with them. HD men can not distinguish between sexual desire and love. So your lack of sexual desire for him is seen as no love for him. It is complete rejection of him. Yea, it makes us guys seem shallow, but this is the way it works. We desire our women sexually, therefore we love them. Just remember this simple formula for HD men: LOVE = DESIRE = SEXUAL FULFILLMENT. They are all the same for HD men. When your husband is making love to you, it is NOT a physical act, it is the most intense EMOTIONAL CONNECTION that he is ever going to have with you. Women love communication, well sex is HIS most important way of communicating with you.
THere is another book that you might want to read called Secrets About Men Every Woman Should Know that you might want to read. This is the best guide to HD guys like myself that I have seen. The FEMALE author of this book trys to explain male sexuality to women, as it is so different from what women experience. Basically, a man's life and his sexuality are FULLY integrated. There is very little about a man that does not involve his own sexuality. Reject a man sexually, and you reject him personally. Everytime you do, it will eat away another little pieceof his soul. Her book is great for explaining to women exactly how HD men work. I like to think of it as the Owners Manual for HD Guys. If you can follow her suggestions, you will have one VERY happy man.
As Dr. Laura says "Feed Him, Sex Him, Admire him, and he will work till his heart explodes to make you happy". She is right on the money.
I've read this book, "Men are from Mars", and "His Needs Her Needs" and I think that I have a pretty good understanding that the rejections have nothing really to do with how much she loves me. It doesn't ease the pains of rejections though. For me though, I still find myself completey confused at times as to why it is so difficult to just "throw me a bone" so to speak when she knows how important this issue is to me. Then that spirals downward into the "she just must not care/doesn't really love me/Im not what she wants" doledrums.
In reality, she has tried to improve some other areas that I have expressed disappointment in such as displays of affection that are non-sexual. And I've given her credit for that. Its just that the most important thing to me is that ML closeness, and I still am very unhappy with that issue.
It struck me last night lying in bed just WHY I think this is such a hard issue for a HD. Check me on this and see what you think:
In different orders, the needs of everyone revolve around Companionship, Comfort, Security, Admiration, Affection, and Sexual Fulfillment. And it struck me that in one way or another, all of these needs can be met to one degree or another by someone other than our spouses . . . . except for one. If we have to get all of these met by someone other than the spouse then of course we may not necessarily be happy with the spouse, but in general we can still be happy individuals. However, when we enter into marriage and make the commitment that sexual fullfillment will be limited to that one person we can no longer have that need met if the spouse refuses to meet it. In that case, I thought, for a person who is HD with a spouse that is LD, the HD cannot be a truly happy person because their number 1 need can no longer be met. At the same time, the LD can still have these needs met by their spouse or others if necessary.
It just seems to be one of life's inequities to me.
I have been assuming they were certain needs. But maybe I should ask her to identify them for me, as maybe I assumed wrong. I will also see if I can get her to read the 5 Love Langauges and Identify her love language, I sure as heck know it's not physical touch.
peekablue: CeMar's description of the emotional state of the HD male is a word-for-word perfect description of how I feel and I expect you will find it is the same for the other HD guys on this forum. We are not sex-mad, it is just our way of expressing our deepest love for our wives. SD
About Newlywed's theory about happiness: you've definitely got a point. However I would like to point out that in a truly loving relationship, the unhappiness of one makes the other unhappy too.
I am well aware by now of the impact my LD has on my husband, and it tears me up inside. I am the one who cries periodically, because it breaks my heart so much that right now, I can not make him as happy as I want to make him. His unhappiness caused me to do everything in my power to fix my problems, and I'm working on it, because I love him and I want our marriage to be the best possible. For me, as for many people I'm sure, it is out of the question to let my husband suffer any more than unavoidable for something that is not his fault, that is in my head. It scares me to death to think that because of my problems, I might lose him. I think if I read any more about just how easily that could happen if I don't hurry up and change my whole life around asap, I'll hide in a closet and never come out again.
I might sound a little defensive here, I'm sorry... I'm just trying to say that if an LD loves his or her HD spouse, they are under a lot of stress too. It sometimes feels like the responsibility for the relationship rests solely on my shoulders.
I do think that you are the exception though. From reading most of the post on this board, us guys would be delighted and boardering on delirious if our wives were as serious about this issue as you seem to be. Part of our problem I think is that they just don't see it as something that is quite as important as you understand that it is.
And by the way . . . . although I don't know you from Adam, I have every confidence that you don't have to worry about losing your husband over this. If he is a fellow worth his salt, he can't be anything but relieved over the extent to which you seem to be working to find a solution. =)
