Hey LFL and Karen (or whoever) ....

[Kettricken]

... I've been meaning for awhile to flesh out some of my experiences with my husband, who reminds me in some ways of both of yours (as described).

I don't know if any of it will be helpful, but you never know....

Some characteristics:

1. He is a very "nice guy", not in the covert contract sense but just a genuinely nice guy, gentle, generous, etc but with a cordial loathing for football, hockey, and other cultural manifestations of male aggression. OTOH, a man with a lot of anger from FOO issues who is terrified of his own temper. He has always tended to have as many female as male friends (if not more). He has trouble separating violent/harmful aggression from positive assertiveness, esp (or at least, most troubling to me) in the sexual arena. In the sense that he held back from any aggressiveness because he wanted no part of anything vaguely reminiscent of rape.

2. He had *massive* FOO/religious issues surrounding sex and touch, ie, no sex before marriage, masturbation is roughly the moral equivalent of killing puppies, etc. (Also, his mom was batsh*t crazy (still is) and he was not allowed to touch her in any way.) As a result of the demonisation of lust, his normal stratospheric teenage libido led him to masturbate (big surprise) but then he would feel so bad about it that he would destroy the magazine he had or whatever he sexually fixated on. This dichotomy was so painful to him that he had suicidal thoughts (lovely thing to associate with one's sexuality .... sigh).

3. A sexual kink which I'm not going into detail about, but that is pretty common. This didn't help with the whole desire v. guilt thing, as above.

That's some background. All this came out bit by bit, much of it over the past year or so when we hit some *major* conflict about sexuality and touch in our marriage. He was holding back, either by rejecting me outright or emotionally during foreplay, the act, afterwards ... I could feel it and it was breaking me. I could go into all that, but I just want to talk about what actually helped. A lot of things helped some .... me being able to articulate exactly what sensual touch meant to me in terms of feeling loved was a biggie. Also, interestingly, he got on this site at some point and read a lot of the "sex starved wife" messages up top, which really gave him insight into my POV without any drama and touched his heart. So we were able to talk *a lot*, about specifics, up to and including him realizing that I was a prime candidate for having an affair if things continued on. It was all small steps, for the most part .... small improvements kept things even keel enough to keep talking like loving adults as opposed to rabid hyenas and keep moving forward.

One big breakthough was when he told me the story about destroying his magazines after masturbating .... I was literally blown away and moved to tears and said something about how it all made so much sense .... how could he truly dive into our sexual relationship when this program of destroying whatever gave him sexual pleasure was still running somewhere in his brain? His passion was in conflict with his care and love for me. He had never thought about it that way ... but it really rung true with him .... and just the act of recognizing and naming that program seems to have gone a long way toward pulling its teeth.

The one HUGE thing that made a difference *immediately* was this. I knew about his fetish (although not until years into the marriage), and it didn't totally disgust me (well, in honesty, it *really* put me off at first, but I'd gotten past that). But it certainly wasn't a *turn on* for me, and I made no secret of that. Then one day I was talking with a friend, and he made some passing reference to having a curiousity in the same general area as my husband's fetish. And I thought, "ok, whatever, dude, if that's what turns you on, that's just your unique sexuality." Then I had to do some really hard thinking: if I could be that accepting of my friend's sexuality, why was I having trouble embracing my husband's on the same terms? In other words, what the hell was wrong with me??? How dare I make him feel somehow substandard sexually just because I was somewhat uncomfortable with (as opposed to morally repulsed by) his uniqueness in this area? Why couldn't I just appreciate him for who he was instead of trying to get him to run my script?

So ... I went home and told him exactly that. And we spent the whole next weekend exploring his fetish with my full cooperation and enthusiasm. And he was all over me physically; it was awesome. Just feeling *fully* embraced and accepted for what he was made a huge difference. Somehow, it seems to have freed him to express his sexuality more confidently in ways totally unrelated to his fetish. To the point where he has actually gotten comfortable enough to explore some of *my* interests in being dominated physically/mild pain play, which I *never* thought would happen. (It helped that I was finally able to articulate why I liked it so he could see that it had nothing to do with wanting to be mistreated). And he's actually learned to enjoy it, as I have learned to appreciate his preferences .... mostly because we can see how much each other relishes and is energized by being able to display our sexual uniqueness to each other.

We're in sort of a rough patch at the moment, because he's looking for a new job and the focus has just shut down his libido which always happens when he's especially stressed. I'm not crazy about it, but that's life, and it will pass, because we've both absolutely committed to keeping our sexual relationship from going dormant, regardless of the circumstances.

It was interesting that we made the most progress when I (as the supposed "high libido" partner) was willing to really push *my* sexual limits too.....

I don't know if any of that helps anyone at all. It took a LOT of talking and tears to get to where we are now, and if your partner refuses to talk about sexual issues, then progress becomes unlikely. Even so .... I just throw it all out there in case anything sounds familiar ... maybe you'll see a new button to try pushing.