is my marriage already sexless?

[CharlieBrown]

Cozy,

Not that I have figured this all out (I have posted a thread with some facts in common with yours), but one thing I have figured out is that, for the most part, the "if I do this, then she will want to bang me (or at least not say no)" mindset is a total failure. I actually said to my wife something along the lines of "you are smart and understand the basics of psychology so when you don't reward when I do nice things for you with a meaningful reward (ie. affection) and punish me by withholding rewards without regard for me doing nice things, does it make me more like to want to do nice things for you or less?" While I think she got it and it might have made her think about it, it had no effect on behavior.

Unfortunately, I have found that stopping the overly nice guy stuff is effective. Actually, what is even more effective is to GAL and mix in some of the nice guy stuff, not because you want a payback, but because you want to do something nice. It is like in the military where they first beat you down, then build you back up.

I will say, that even this hasn't made a huge difference in the amount of times we ml, but at least I do some things I want to do and feel occasionally like I even have my old "pair" back. This, in turn, gets rid of some of the anger and resentment I have.

You will catch some flack from your wife when you start to do this, but keep doing it. Trust me, the first time I told my wife I was going golfing after work and wouldn't be home until late, I caught the usual b*tching and pouting, at which point I would normally back down, but this time didn't. Eventually, it starts to have an effect.

PF