Sex-Starved Husband. Will Work For Sex.

[Bagheera]

But I made the mistake, tonight, of asking her whether she still feels pressured.

Yep, you did, and here it is:

On the one hand, I don't believe her.

On the other, it would madden me to be constantly second-guessed and treated like I might not be telling the truth.

Women tend to be very, VERY sensitive to how men respond to their expressions of feeling and emotion. They've had a lifetime of men inferring, or outright telling them, that they are emotional, irrational creatures who aren't worth listening to or taking seriously. The best thing that you can do when your wife expresses her feelings in some way, is to LISTEN to her, TRUST her to be honest with you, and ACCEPT what she is saying at face value. If you don't understand, then ask for more input, but NEVER belittle her or disbelieve her.

But to me it feels like she's had four days of no talk about sex at all, and any pressure should be off

You set a nice trap for both her and yourself, Bear. Note that ANY response she gave other than a validation of YOUR feelings that 'the pressure was off' was going to make you feel defensive and exasperated -- and it did.

Her initial response of "Well . . . not really," was an HONEST expression of how she was feeling. On the one hand, you had a good time last Thursday, and had a good weekend following that. On the other hand, she KNOWS that the clock is ticking and that you're slowly becoming sexually pent up. She knows you as well as you know her. So while you have been deliberately avoiding any overt pressure, it's still there, hanging between the two of you. It's almost impossible to avoid at this stage in your SSM recovery.

--but without SOME pressure from me, sex is going to be off the table permanently. She's just not interested.

You both have a lot of TRUST to rebuild with regard to your sexual relationship. She has to learn to trust that your physical desires are an expression of your love for her, specifically, and not just a 'rutting' urge. You have to trust that your wife is, indeed, still a sexy and sexually interested woman, and not just an austere schoolmarm. Give it time -- you're both making good progress.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around the basic conflict in the advice I've gotten. At one point, people say to back off and avoid any pressure. At the other extreme, everyone says to man up and assert control of the relationship. At any given moment, it seems, one or the other does work--but the catch is that she won't tell me which works when; if I'm a "real man" I should just magically know the answer, apparently. The answer is either to ignore her sexually or to take her roughly in the barn--choose wisely!

In this context, "Pressure" means that you have placed the burden for your own sexual happiness on her shoulders. It is anything that you do to place control of the sexual relationship into her hands, and then you sit there like a dog waiting expectantly (or frustratingly) for a handout. First, this puppy-dog-mode is a very unattractive mode for you to be in, and is a turn-off for her. Second, if she is indeed a sexual submission, she will HATE having that control placed into her hands, which is another turn-off.

Instead, your taking control of and leading the sexual relationship will first mean patience on your part -- just accept that, for now, the sexual frequency won't be what you want it to be. You can't go from 10% to 100% in one step. But when you do feel that the time is right, it will also mean taking a risk and romancing/seducing your wife, rather than just giving her "the look" at 11 PM. In other words, you have to take responsibility, you have to take the risk, and you have to remove the burden for making yourself happy from her shoulders and place it on your own.

Your wife isn't off the hook entirely here: she has to learn to take Michele's advice and Just Do It! when you take the risk and attempt to seduce her -- especially in the beginning when such overtures feel rather awkward to the both of you. You BOTH need a string of successes in order to gain confidence and build a new pattern of interaction.

You could argue that this is still a form of pressure: pressure to respond positively to your seduction. But that kind of pressure is far less severe than the kind where you've placed all responsibility and control of the situation into her hands. In other words, we are encouraging you BOTH to share the risk and share in the pressure. You take the risk and seduce her, and she takes the risk and responds positively.

So we really haven't given you conflicting advice. We just haven't explained it well enough.

-- B.