Hi lowrob,
I don't know specifically what you can do in your situation. I've found trying to deal with someone else's situation where you really don't know the history and you don't hear the other person's viewpoint, that it's hard to give very useful advice. Ask Sooner, how little help I was to him . I can tell you about what happened with me and my H. You take from it what you can.

I think in many ways our r and the way we handled things, particularly the way my h handled things, was different from the typical SSM marriage. He handled things in a way that helped me stay motivated to figure out how to solve the problem. I was angry with him about a bunch of other stuff, but nevertheless, he did a great job of dealing with the SS period of our marriage.

First, he believed me when I said I loved him even though I didn't want to have sex. He kept the pressure off me of having to prove my love for him through sex. He simply took me at my word. If your w tells you she loves you, even if she doesn't want to have sex...believe her. Don't tear yourself up inside over the idea that your w doesn't care about you and love you because of her low sexual desire. It may not make sense to you, but just believe.

Second, he gave me space. I knew what he wanted, but he didn't press the issue. We didn't get into arguments about it.

Third, he didn't ask me for reasons for why I didn't want sex. I couldn't have told him what the reasons were anyway. I was pretty baffled myself. In fact, I turned myself into an amazing knot trying to figure it out for myself.

If he had been pressing me for reasons, I would probably have gotten angry with him about it. We probably would have had big arguments. The anger would have been mostly due to my own frustration over my own lack of understanding of what was going on and then being pressed for answers I couldn't give. Take my level of frustration, sense of failure and worthlessness, add his pressing me for answers, and I probably would have exploded at the nearest target...him. Then that would have probably set up the fruitless cycle of argument, anger, and getting further and further apart because neither wants to be the first to give in.

The reality was there wasn't anything he could do that was going to magically bring my desire back. It wasn't about him. He realized that long before I did. I can remember the moment when I said to him, "I wish I knew what happened to my sex drive." The sense of relief I felt just saying that out loud to him was amazing. I'd say that was one of the important moments for us, where solutions reallyt started coming. If we had been having fights and lots of hurt feelings over the issue, I'm not sure I would have found it very easy to say that to him.

Fourth, since we've been having more discussions about sex, he has come to appreciate how difficult it can be to get started having sex when you really don't want to. He doesn't have personal experience with it for himself, but we've had some discussions about what it feels like for me when I'm not in the mood, particularly at the beginning. He realizes that it isn't a small bump in the road, but requires effort on my part, sometimes quite significant effort. He doesn't hold it against me that it isn't always easy and effortless for me. It's just the way my body sometimes works and it isn't about my love for him.

Finally, I've realized something that may be most fundamental to why we were able to work things out. He and I agree on the role of sex in marriage. We both believe in monogamy and fidelity. We don't believe sex is the central defining aspect of marriage though. The state of our sex life is not going to make or break our marriage for either of us. He likes sex A WHOLE LOT! And my desire level is back up to what I was used to before it disappeared...most of the time anyway. But sex doesn't hold as important a place in our marriage relative to so many other things

I do believe now that my H is different from the HD spouses who post on this board in that he doesn't equate sex with love. He equates sex with FUN ! Somehow that just makes it different. Less pressure. Infectious enjoyment, in fact. When I started looking at it like that, instead of racking my brain about the relationship between love and sex, I felt my desire increase. Sex is something we do together for the fun of it.


Best wishes, MPT