New to the SSM forum......

[Bagheera]

For some reason he gets frustrated when I am weak.Or sick....
last time I had Anemia he was also sex starved and so he didnt ubderstand it or have the desire too. I felt so hurt by that. So this time around I will talk to him about it and I need him to be supportive...... I need to feel that he has my back ...

Ali,

You brought back the memory of one of the more shameful aspects of being an hurt, resentful, sex-starved husband. I too had the hardest time taking care of my wife when she was feeling sick or overly tired. I resented it, and she knew that I did. If she got sick, I would get angry about it -- irrational as that is -- as if she had done it on purpose just to have another handy excuse to avoid being physically intimate with me. And then I would feel guilty about feeling angry about something she couldn't have prevented: I KNEW that it was selfish and childish of me to react that way.

To make things worse, when -> I <- got sick, my wife was extremely loving and caring with me, always. I felt like a real bone-headed, self-centered jerk then, remembering how I was when it happened to her. She should have given me a taste of my own medicine, but care-giver that she is, she couldn't do that.

I am SO glad that those days are behind us. The hurt, anger, and resentment have faded, and my self confidence as a man and a lover are very much on the mend. I now enjoy taking responsibility for the family again, supporting and cherishing my wife, and caring for her when she doesn't feel well.

Every now and then Murphey's Law will stack things up against us in the area of physical intimacy: let's say I've been away on a conference trip (and trip reunions can be nice), come home to a wife who's period started that same day (and period-sex puts her in even more discomfort), and then her and kids get some bug that they've brought home from school. About that point, I'm ready to go find a knot-hole in a tree somewhere, and am perhaps not at my best bedside manner. The difference nowadays is that we would BOTH be feeling pretty frustrated about the situation, and I know that -- it isn't just me any longer.

Which makes all the difference in the world.

Take care,

-- B.