I really do know and understand how upset you both are about the lack of sex.
But I have to point out a common mistake you are both making.
Because I visit other "relationship" type message boards, I have come across this specific issue among many people, not just sex starved. That issue goes something like this:
You have the thought that "if she loved me enough, she would do x".
Usually it is women who make this mistake, because women tend to expect men to read their minds. "If he loved me, he would know that I needed him to be more attentive". That type of thing. And the normal advice to these (usually) women is, that this is problematic thinking. It is going to do nothing but create problems. You can't project that "if he or she loved me" they would do a certain thing. It just doesn't work like that.
You are both making that mistake now. You are confusing your wives' lack of sexual attention to you as that "she must not love me or should would know how this is affecting me".
The truth is that she does NOT know and does NOT understand how it is affecting you, and therefore, it is not deliberate.
If I remember correctly, neither of your wives have read or finished reading the SSM book?
Please try to get this - - a LD spouse does NOT know what they are doing to the HD spouse. They just don't. If they really read and comprehend the SSM book they will begin to understand. Without that or something just as powerful, they will likely never get it.
I used to be a LD spouse and I had no clue what it was doing to my ex-h. I can try to explain this to you if you want to ask specific questions...but please just take my word for it that I had no clue.
I didn't think about "oh I guess we haven't had sex for a while, therefore he must be getting pretty antcy about it, I better go get us some lovin's so he will feel loved and then our relationship will improve". Instead I thought more things like this..."I'm very depressed, I don't know why. I wish I had more emotional support. I wish he understood me better. I wish I wanted to make love to him more but he has no clue what turns me on or why, he just seems to need sex but not true intimacy. I can't seem to explain the difference to him nor what I truly need. No matter how many times we talk about it, I cannot seem to express myself, he just gets upset and won't listen. Sigh...I hope things will be alright".
And yes, I realize that my thinking I described above does seem to indicate that I realized there was a problem with the lack of sex, but please read between the lines and realize that I really did and had tried to get him to understand what I needed....which was way more than sex.
Also remember that in retrospect now, I realized that nothing short of full on MC and intensive study about our marital issues would have helped or saved us.
So both Cinco and NTE...I will say it again. I think you both need to drag (if necessary) your wives in to MC. I think you both need to firmly but lovingly remind your wives that you will not live like this forever, but that you are willing to do whatever hard work it takes.
If we had some MC, I could have explained those thoughts I was trying to explain to my ex-h, and a counselor could have helped me/us get it out on the table in a meaningful way.
Your wives really DO have their own issues that have to do with YOU and your relationship. They did not build the sexless marriage on their own, simply by being LD. That is what the book is all about. It is so much more than that, but you can't focus on anything except the lack of sex right now.
Please don't think that I don't see you have both made HUGE efforts to fix this.... I do see that. But the last step you need to make, which is to basically deliver an ultimatum and make your wife stick to it ("I will not live in a sexless marriage forever, regardless of my love for you, we need to go to MC or else I need to separate from you"), until you have the cajones to take that last step, you will never really know if you can fix your SSM's or not.
Don't be like me. My ex-h and I assumed we could somehow fix it ourselves or that it would just go away somehow. Here we are divorced, and NOW we realize that full on MC plus extensive study was our only option.....THE ONE OPTION WE NEVER TOOK. He never had the cajones to give me that ultimatum, and I never had the courage to admit I needed more than he could give me. The cowards inside us won, they are divorced now.
The braver parts of ourselves know better now, but its too late.
