When we meet someone safe we don't feel love. When we meet someone we feel anxious won't stay with us then we interpret that as love. Once we have hooked up with that person we retreat into self-soothing habits such as mb, alcoholism, shopaholism, controlling behaviour, avoidant behaviour (not wanting to want) in order to maintain the distance which maintains the anxiety.
This is so true.
Holy cr@p, Fran, you are really on a roll!!!
On another BB, there was a lady who had dated an on-and-off heroin addict/musician for years and finally broke up with him. She met another guy who was very nice, and it took her a long time to learn to be comfortable in a stable, regular, crisis-free life. Now she absolutely adores this man. He adored her from the very beginning. (On their second date, he brought flowers for her beloved dachshund, and that really got her attention!)
You have to be very experimental I think with relationships. You're in a good position right now Mojo to try out what it's like to relate to different types of men. It would almost be worthwhile to deliberately date men you are not attracted to (physically is OK, but not emotionally attracted to) in order to explore what it's like to hang out with someone that different from your usual type. It seems to me from what you have said about the guys you've been dating that you are enjoying flirting with danger. You are getting a buzz out of hanging with slightly dangerous seeming men. Safety is a turn off. Love is not safe. That is something pretty much all of us here learned in early childhood. It was not safe to love. Therefore when we are with someone safe it doesn't feel like love.
Actually, I've been consciously trying to mediate/mitigate my tendencies towards being attracted to "bad boys". I am trying to date men who signal a balance of St.Bernard/Wolf or safety/danger. For one instance, I think it's good for me to focus on my object orientation attraction to male musculature because I'm better off in a relationship who has a pleasant personality but a wolf-like body than the reverse. Another example would be that I look for men whose wolf-vibe was culturally acquired. A guy can be safe but seem wolf if he is street-smart or grew up in a pro-sexual environment. My BIL is like that. Some friends of mine, a couple who are both psychologist/social workers, kind of tried to set me up with a friend of theirs. The guy had no edge whatsoever but if he hadn't been too skinny too I might have taken the chance that he had some hidden wolf that would come out in private interaction with my monkey.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
Fran "Fear of Intimacy" - Sounds like a good book Fran.
Does anyone know of a web site that posts condensed versions of books?
Mojo Be strong monkey and bunny and get all the "affectionate man-handling" you want in a straight-forward strong/vulnerable manner.
"Affectionate man-handling", you say? I am for that. Next step is find a way to manhandle the Mrs. so she doesn't bite/cry/etc, the man that does the handling. :puzzled look:
We have to feel what we want and stop accusing ourselves of being babyish selfish when we want things.
Lil the big red roadblock: "YOU'RE BEING SELFISH!" I hear you Lil. Same problem I here.
We've been so conditioned to think that the greatest sin is "selfishness," when so often what looks selfish (whatever that really is) is just a simple desire for happiness.
On this BB you'll read posts where people are reaching for something, feeling their way, but they are stopped dead in their tracks by the big red roadblock: "YOU'RE BEING SELFISH!" End of journey, end of conversation.
Yep. I just got bit (again) by that splendid piece of faulty thinking. I took the family out for a bite to eat, a good time was had by all, and I was looking forward to getting home and spending some quality time with the computer. Of course instead of admitting that, I was back in the mindset that my desire for time alone to read whatever took my fancy within the giant electronic smörgåsbord of reading material we all know and love instead of being joined at the hip with my lovely wife and kids was Selfish and Wrong. So I just started heading on home, and when Mrs. Eddie nicely asked for another quick stop, I snapped at her.
Self-awareness returned a couple of minutes later and I explained where I went wrong and offered to make the stop anyway. Since Mrs. Eddie hates having the author of a misdeed do anything to make it up to her, she wasn't having any of that, and had to cool off in her own good time, which turned out to be thirty minutes or so.
a fine and enviable madness, this delusion that all questions have answers, and nothing is beyond the reach of a strong left arm.
You ask a great -- and difficult -- question. My own take on it has long been that the techniques and concepts espoused here, from SSM to Schnarch and some of the others, will ONLY work if BOTH spouses are fully committed to trying to save the relationship. And even then, it's going to take a HELLUVA lotta work, and the improvements may be only gradual, and -- worse -- will probably be short-lived.
If both partners are NOT willing to work at it, then I think these concepts will help one become a better, more confident, and less enmeshed person, but I don't think it will save your marriage, nor will it improve your sex life.
The sex won't be better, but you'll become better able to DEAL with it.
That's just my opinion, based on reading and posting here for a few years myself.
Choc."
Baltoman,
I agree for the most part with Choc's conclusion. For me, lurking and posting has helped me learn that I am not alone and that, in and of itself, has provided some comfort on those (many) lonely nights. Has this help solved my lack of sex? Not much, but maybe it has helped me to relax a bit in my response to rejection and alter my approach. I can tell you this, if I had found this site when problems first cropped up, I would have handled things completely differently and we either wouldn't have gotten married, or our relationship would have had a different paradigm.
One issue I find myself having to deal with when I spend much time on here is that I start to see bits of everyone's sitch's in my own, even when they are not there to see. My sitch is my own and has its own aspects, but it is easy to project others into it when you read about them hour after hour. For example, I found myself wondering (based on the life of LFL), "If I had an affair, or my W thought I would really do it, would it make her realize how stupid she is being and start giving me all the sex I could handle?" The answer in real life is, to quote former Senator Dick Armey, my wife would be asking "How do I reload this thing?" as I lay on the floor. Not to single you out LFL, I am just using your sitch as one example from the dozens I could pick.
PF
Me; 42, W; 43 M; 16 yrs S12, D9
3/13 - "I want to move to XYZ City (four hours away) and it might be without you, not sure" 5/13 - "Not sure I meant that"
I don't often come to this site I lurk occasionally and have asked some questions and occasionally responded on someones thread.
I can honestly say reading and learning from both men and women here has changed my life and M for the better.
I tend to agree that if the W or H isn't interested in improving their SL it may not mean success....it may improve the relationship and should there ever be a D mean a better understanding of how NOT to do things.
What I would like to tell the men that have LD wives in particular is that their struggles opened MY eyes to how my own H probably felt for a lot of our M. I did want more and better sex too....just didn't have the confidence to ask. Crazy...that we both wanted the same thing yet neither of us ever really spoke about it or how to go about getting there.
Without reading or understanding that there is that emotional connection for their wife through sex I would have remained clueless.
I know it sounds impossible that a woman may not understand this...but when you have been brought up being told men only want one thing...men will have sex with anyone...and lets be honest men can and do have sex without ANY emotional commitment or love for another woman. Otherwise prostitutes would go out of business.
So for ME to then not understand that sex within the M IS SO important isn't actually that hard to understand.
As for my own desire or lack of it....hmmm thats another thing entirely and where the woman allowing herself to actually BE sexy and not have to be a "good girl" is something else I really only just understand now.
Before coming here and lurking and reading I think there would be zero sex life in my M...I doubt if we would have D but with all your stories and advice to one another I have hope of enjoying a good SL for many years.
