Whore/Madonna

[Heywyre]

COG - my dear friend

No need for apologies. I wish I didn't know what it was or have to deal with it either, but I do and I plan to be in there 110%, all the way.

Yes, it is my H's complex, but there are lots of ways we can work together on this. That is one of the first things the C told me "you can't put all this on his shoulders and expect that he is the only one that has to deal with this" - and I don't. We are in this marriage together and we will get through this together.

It is like when there's an alcoholic in the family. Yes, they are the one that has to stop drinking but it isn't only about them, the whole family has to work together to make it happen.

I plan on him being in my life a very long time, and we both want our M to be stronger. We can do this, I know we can.

[OG_Lou]

I remember the first time my H actually did cuddle me in the morning and I felt the "poke" - I was like a child on Christmas morning I was so excited.
I know of the feeling when newly M, a "poke" is accepted with joy, then after 12+ years, when a poke meets with rejection.

I am not saying I know how anyone else feels but saying my heart is sad when the "poke" leads to feelings of personal rejection.

I just bought a book “Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk About Sex After sixty” by Joan Price. Aside from the “Over Sixty” part, I was wondering if your H would read something like that. My thoughts were if he saw what women wrote about liking sex at an age when supposedly they don’t want sex, he might see for himself, what you might be feeling. He might see sex is important to the women in the book and think “well my W might be like that too. He might not like sex that much but wouldn’t mind making you happier.

I haven’t read the whole book, so can’t comment on it right now. I don’t know why I am reading it to be totally honest. My W/BB doesn’t read books about people, just dog books. I was hoping to learn a few medical reason for the decline in sexual drive and hoped there is some advise to overcome the medical problems.

Lou

[OG_Lou]

I remember the first time my H actually did cuddle me in the morning and I felt the "poke" - I was like a child on Christmas morning I was so excited.
I know of the feeling when newly M, a "poke" is accepted with joy, then after 12+ years, when a poke meets with rejection.

I am not saying I know how anyone else feels but saying my heart is sad when the "poke" leads to feelings of personal rejection.

I just bought a book “Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk About Sex After sixty” by Joan Price. Aside from the “Over Sixty” part, I was wondering if your H would read something like that. My thoughts were if he saw what women wrote about liking sex at an age when supposedly they don’t want sex, he might see for himself, what you might be feeling. He might see sex is important to the women in the book and think “well my W might be like that too. He might not like sex that much but wouldn’t mind making you happier.

I haven’t read the whole book, so can’t comment on it right now. I don’t know why I am reading it to be totally honest. My W/BB doesn’t read books about people, just dog books. I was hoping to learn a few medical reason for the decline in sexual drive and hoped there is some advise to overcome the medical problems.

In your case, I still think some guys have heard too many "girl's don't like" and "good guys don't ask or do....." along with lots of what Lil called "ick factor" thinking.

Lou

[OG_Lou]

I remember the first time my H actually did cuddle me in the morning and I felt the "poke" - I was like a child on Christmas morning I was so excited.
I know of the feeling when newly M, a "poke" is accepted with joy, then after 12+ years, when a poke meets with rejection.

I am not saying I know how anyone else feels but saying my heart is sad when the "poke" leads to feelings of personal rejection.

I just bought a book “Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk About Sex After sixty” by Joan Price. Aside from the “Over Sixty” part, I was wondering if your H would read something like that. My thoughts were if he saw what women wrote about liking sex at an age when supposedly they don’t want sex, he might see for himself, what you might be feeling. He might see sex is important to the women in the book and think “well my W might be like that too. He might not like sex that much but wouldn’t mind making you happier.

I haven’t read the whole book, so can’t comment on it right now. I don’t know why I am reading it to be totally honest. My W/BB doesn’t read books about people, just dog books. I was hoping to learn a few medical reason for the decline in sexual drive and hoped there is some advise to overcome the medical problems.

In your case, I still think some guys have heard too many "girl's don't like" and "good guys don't ask or do....." along with lots of what Lil called "ick factor" thinking, some guys have.

Lou

[OG_Lou]

It took a long time for the above post to show up and when I went to delete the two top posts, time was up.

[Heywyre]

He might not like sex that much but wouldn’t mind making you happier

Lou - it's not that he doesn't like sex, he does. And it isn't that he doesn't want to make me happy - he does. He's even said how sorry he is and how hard it must be for me to go through this.

But having sex with ME is the issue - that distresses him beyond belief. He definitely knows WHAT to do, he just doesn't want to do it with me.

[COG]

Heywyre,

it's not that he doesn't like sex, he does. And it isn't that he doesn't want to make me happy - he does. He's even said how sorry he is and how hard it must be for me to go through this.

But having sex with ME is the issue - that distresses him beyond belief. He definitely knows WHAT to do, he just doesn't want to do it with me.

That describes my W to a tee. So what's it called again, and where do I get more info on this?

COG

[Greeneyedlass]

COG,

See...this is what I'm referring to as insensitive

"But I just want to remind you gal's that it's still real important for you both to contemplate what YOU both can do to improve your sitch's, and not just put all the blame and responsibility on your H's."

I'm sure you haven't gone back and read through my posts as there are waaaaaaay too many of them....BUT by making this statement you are assuming that both Heywyre and I don't contemplate what we can do to improve our sitch's and you are assuming that we put all the blame and responsibility on our H's.

Speaking for myself, thanks...but I don't need that reminder. I am constantly looking for ways that "I" can improve the situation by looking at myself and my own behaviors, and things that I do have control over "such as my own actions in the marriage....because of this situation I feel I have grown and developed a great deal with has improved our relationship. Also, even now...knowing my H has W/M...there is no "blame" to place on him and the responsibility isn't his alone, it's ours. We now have an idea of what we are dealing with, as a result I am more aware of what behaviors I need to avoid in order to hellp aid my H change behaviors of his that he wants to change.

FWIW COG, I don't think you intend to come across as insensitive...and I'm probably just too sensitive to this issue myself, because I do know everything I've worked on, tried, persevered through, talked about, researched and as a result have been dealing with my entire relationship with my H.

[Heywyre]

COG - here's a little bit of information about the complex and I don't believe your W has it. There is a possibility there is some female form of this but M/W complex refers to men

*******************

The term Madonna-whore complex refers to a psychological complex in Freudian psycho-analysis that develops in the human male. The term is also used popularly, often with subtly different meanings.
According to Freudian psychology, this complex often develops when the sufferer is raised by a cold and distant mother. Such a man will often court women with qualities of his mother, hoping to fulfill a need for intimacy unmet in childhood. Often, the wife begins to be seen as mother to the husband — a Madonna figure — and thus not a possible object of sexual attraction. For this reason, in the mind of the sufferer love and sex cannot be mixed, and the man is reluctant to have sexual relations with his wife, for that, he thinks unconsciously, would be as incest. He will reserve sexuality for "bad" or "dirty" women, and will not develop "normal" feelings of love in these sexual relationships.
When one considers the Madonna/Whore Complex from a viewpoint of primal theory, it becomes more reasonable to view the wife, now a mother, triggering in her husband unconscious memories of unmet needs for love from his mother. Rather than having a too close relationship with his mother as an infant he, in fact, was alienated from her. His search for a wife was based on attributes of his mother and having found her, he plays out his early infantile dynamics hoping for the love he had not received as an infant.

Fear of intimacy may develop as a defence against allowing those early hurts to become conscious. In such cases the search for his beloved mother continues through their spousal relationship and is the cause of unrealistic expectations on the part of the husband as he continually but unconsciously searches for his mother in his relationship with his wife.

The act out may continue for a lifetime with resultant mutual recriminations, adultery, divorce and unhappiness to both partners of the marriage. The marriage becomes a battleground as both the husband and the wife unaware transfer much of their earlier repressed feelings of hurt, anger and hostility originally directed to their parents, to their spouse.

Thus, both non-sexual and sexual intimacy of the marriage can trigger unconscious memories of that first intimacy, the mother/infant relationship. In order to avoid triggers of such memories, the husband may begin to avoid sex with his spouse. The early infantile trauma may be particularly reactivated when his wife becomes a mother, since it brings into the forefront the repressed memories of his own mother/infant relationship.

It is not that the sexual drive became fixated on the first intimate relationship of his life and that he cannot relinquish the erotic attachment from his mother to his wife, but rather that originally the husband's earlier need for love and security as an infant were not met and the dynamics of that early frustrated relationship seeps into all subsequent relationships, but sometimes especially with his intimate spousal relationship.

Intimacy in the present triggers the repressed memory of the hurt and deprivation of the past. Sexual addiction can be used as an act out -- a way for avoiding anxieties of the repressed feelings, especially since such addictions are characterized by a fear of intimacy -- a hallmark of the sexual addict.

A fear of intimacy can even be traced back to one's birth. If our birth was traumatic and involved feelings of dying in the birth canal, in some cases, we may have an unconscious association of the holding of our lover with the early memories of the painful "touch" of birth. The deeper the feeling of intimacy and attraction the more likely these feelings of wanting to leave may be triggered in those whose early uterine development was painful. Our first nine months of life was a close and intimate contact with our mother.

If that first maternal "touch" during our intrauterine development was painful it can become compounded by memories of fetal death-like memories of suffocation, pressure and nearly dying during actual birth. The holding and touch between lovers can trigger these unconscious needs to get away from the pain being triggered by intimate emotional and physical relationships.

The problem is not the result of the incest barrier, but rather the seeping into consciousness of early frustrated needs, or birth traumas, which renders the husband uninterested and perhaps even impotent. Such men cannot view their wives as sex objects because if they do it would bring up buried feelings of their birth and infantile relationships with their mother. So, in a sense, there is a fixation on the mother by those who are stuck in the dynamics of the madonna/whore complex, but not in the way interpreted in psycho-analytic psychology.
Birth trauma compounds the neediness of the new-born and thus becomes an important factor in these dynamics. Pre- and peri-natal trauma reinforces, directs, and intensifies this drama

[COG]

GEL,

A thousand apologies my sweet Green Eyed Lass. I admit I can be an insensitive bastard sometimes. May your H have a thousand times ten erections, and may one poke you in the back not to mention certain other places now and then.

I am constantly looking for ways that "I" can improve the situation by looking at myself and my own behaviors, and things that I do have control over "such as my own actions in the marriage....

That's all I wanted to hear, now I feel much better, and I will stop harping on you and being so insensitive, thanks.

Love,

COG