Of course I want to solve the problem. I thought it was on its way to being solved. Certain steps were taken, and things were said in the course of therapy, that have not been followed through on. I am going to wait a couple months to decide what to do, and give her that much more time to show she's serious. If she's the same at that point, I can ask her why she hasn't done everything she promised, or just say "adios". Knowing myself, I'm sure I'll do the former.
My first marriage had better sex. We split up for very different reasons, but get along very well anyhow. I had said in therapy, and still feel this way, that it's quantity AND quality when it comes to sex. If sex is boring, yet happens daily, it's still not very gratifying. I know exactly what I want, and how I can see us being together, but my wife won't do the same exercise of painting the picture as she sees it. That's what she promised she's do, but has not done.
I understand that there is no magic bullet for this stuff. Sometimes I need to be reminded, and I appreciate that from you, I really do. This is beyond frustrating for me. I am still on the fence, but am leaning towards leaving. I feel like every *i" has been dotted, and every "t" crossed on this issue, yet we're still in the same place. Nevertheless, I'll hang in there for the next couple months before taking any drastic action. I can't say that I'm willing to let her be herself w/o judgment. I don't think that's realistic. Adults judge each other on their actions, and I need her to take action. However, it may be possible that she thinks everything is fine, and that her actions to this point are fine. I kinda doubt it, but am willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Before our last therapy session, I asked her if there was anything I could be doing differently to make her life happy and easier. She replied that I was doing great. She didn't even ask me the same question; instead she said that she KNEW she was not doing the same for me. I asked her what she meant, and she didn't say, but I can only think she meant the sex. She knew it, and even restated it in the last therapy session. So, since things haven't changed in this area, she must still realize that she's not doing her best.
Thanks for all the support thus far. Very, very appreciated.
I don't really know what is going on in your wife's head...can I ask you what caused the near year bedroom seperation? Could that still be lurking?
When my H and I hit our very lowest point, I knew what he was asking from me was well within logical. I understood it. I even understood that my not being able to meet his needs wasn't fair. Affairs were out of the question for both of us, yet he still had needs. Logically, I understood this very well. But still, I could not see my way through. I could not splice together his needs vs. my, uhm, un-needs, for lack of a better word.
When I read Michelle's book, I understood that I was absolutely 'normal.' There wasn't anything wrong with me whatsoever. I just happened to be one of those people who do not experience desire the way TV and books portray desire...don't feel it the way my H does.
I cannot begin to tell you the enormous/profound/incredibly deep amount of relief I felt when I read that. I had been battling that sense of inferiority and beating myself up over that misunderstanding for all of my adult life. And before I read the book, when my H would verbally lay into me for telling him no yet again, calling me a lesbian, telling me how whacked I was, how screwed up, messed up, and twisted 8 ways to Sunday I was...well, all I can tell you is...it didn't help my own sense of self-loathing.
I'm not saying you do this to your wife, by the way.
But, I am curious to know. When you do have sex, does she orgasm? Is it good for both of you? If things cook when they do cook, maybe she does not yet realize that she is okay exactly the way she is. Maybe this is truly a self-esteem issue for her....and knowing that she is continually fustrating and hurting you is not helping her lack of confidence in that department, you know?
Quote: I know exactly what I want, and how I can see us being together, but my wife won't do the same exercise of painting the picture as she sees it. That's what she promised she's do, but has not done.
Thought I'd give this exercise a try for myself. I'm having a hard time with it. My M hasn't been sex-starved for over a year now and I still can't do this. Maybe this is one of those LD/HD differences...having a real clear, specific picture of how you want your sex life to be. Any chance your W is having a really hard time with the exercise? Maybe she needs an assist or a different kind of exercise.
You used the idea of painting a picture as she sees it. What if the medium changed from a picture to one of physical sensation? It goes like this: She closes her eyes. Starting with physical sensations which are pleasant, not necessarily sexual, she imagines the touch and how it would feel. Then she works her way on to more sexually oriented physical sensations. It may be an exercise she needs to do over a period of time to get a good idea.
Maybe help her with scheduling the time so that she can get one or the other exercise done.
I don't really remember eexactly why I started sleeping in a separate room, Corri. I think we just had another fight, I slept in the spare bedroom, and decided to stay there. I could stay up late, do some writing, listen to music, whatever. She finally asked me when or if I was ever going to return to her bed, and by then we were already in therapy. I felt it was reasonable to say that I would gladly return when she could put her past issues with me in the past. Until that happened, she could always retrieve some past injustice to use against me when she didn't want to make love.
As for her pleasure, she always has an orgasm. I see to it that she does, whether it's intercourse, or oral sex, or manual sex. I have no problem pleasing my wife, and it pleases me as much to do that for her. I make an effort, and have never turned down her rare advances. Conversely, she's more than willing to have herself pleased, but leave me stranded, having to please myself.
If she is frustrated, I wish she would articulate it for me. I have recently, since therapy, been giving her a free and safe environment to talk with me about anything. She shouldn't feel afraid to raise the issue about her confidence. It is possible that she is confused. Don't really know.
MPT, I take your point about the approach to working thru the book. She hasn't got to the point in the book to even know what the exercise is, so I doubt that she has trouble with it. Again, this is where she could come to me. Unfortunately, all dialogue has stopped. With her, she probably thinks that if we're not talking about it, everything must be okay. Like whistling in the dark.
Sometimes a person's just got to do some rambling...(although I thought you were writing quite logically and coherently.)
Okay, I don't really know everything that you have tried to get her to move on reading the book, etc. But if you are totally out of ideas, are you averse to simple bribery? This works best for me when I keep it playful and fun and my H knows he's being bribed. Maybe start out by saying up front, "I know this issue is more important to me than it is to you. But I can't have sex with anyone else but you so I will do 'fill in something really special you know she'd like' if you will 'fill in something very specific, like read 10 pages of Chapter whatever.'
If you can pull this off with a sense of humor, it can be very effective. It has the added benefits of introducing laughter and friendliness into a tense situation. It's hard for anger and resentment to build when you're laughing. Finding the humor and laughing about something doesn't mean it has diminished in importance. If your approach makes her laugh too, she'll be feeling good and feeling good usually leads to a greater willingness to give.
I know it can be very tough to do this when you're feeling angry and resentful. Believe me, I've been there! But it is worth a try to do what you can to get the laughter going.
You aren't rambling...it's okay to kind of wander, streamline your thoughts. It helps sometimes.
It is very good to know that your wife functions like she supposed to, and that it physically doesn't hurt her, she responds normally, etc. That's very good. She's normal. She may not experience desire the way you do, but she's normal. You might want to very gently tell her that, or show her the part in the book that mentions that....and tell her you understand that. And if you tell me you already have...then damn it, tell her again. And do it even more compassionately this time.
Your wife is afraid of something or is avoiding something. Now what and why is something else, and those are HER questions. Your questions in regard to her are what those things are, and how do you deal with and respond to them.
A large part of the problem here is that she may not KNOW what the problem is. You didn't paint a rosey picture of her childhood, so I'm sure there are some loose ends hanging around there.
Are you comfortable telling me what her past issues with you have been?
Regardless of what small or larger demons are lurking in her proverbial closet, she sounds like an intelligent woman. You sound like a man who clearly knows what he wants, goes after it, and 9 times out of 10, will get what he wants, if through nothing else than sheer force of will. Any chance at all that she might be intimidated by you? Could it possibly be that she feels your expectations of her are so high she couldn't get there if she tried? (Not if you think she can get there, but does she think she can get there).
Right now, the two of you are very advisarial, and it is going to take an enormous amount of effort for the two of you to get over that. Not because you can't, but because it is a pattern the two of you have created with each other, and if nothing else, you know the boundaries and how the game is played.
I remember asking my shrink not long after my H and I got over our hump, "how do I keep from screwing this up? I mean, hell, I know how to navigate the ship in tidal storms... I have no idea how to sail in smooth water."
He laughed at me. Damn thing of it was, I was serious.
And the thing of it is, which you probably aren't going to like to hear, you have got to find a way of getting rid of your anger and resentment. You can't do anything constructive when the fuse can go off any minute. It's almost like you have to say, ah, screw it, fall backwards in the water and float with the current.
She needs to do it, too. Until then, you and she will continue to dance your same dance, ride the same roller coaster until one of you decides to jump. SOMEONE has to have the courage to break the pattern. You sound to me like you have ample amounts of that in your storeroom.
I know, I know, you've made the first move, you've searched, you've changed, you've done it first dozens of times before. Man, I know. I could have cracked 10 tons of cement over my H's head trying to get him to listen, to try, to change, to talk...jesus the list goes on and on.
I don't know really how to describe it to you, but until you let this obsession with 'getting her to try and change' go for awhile so you can just be and breathe, it's going to eat you alive. And you are obsessing...we've all been there done that...it's the one thing in your life you can't control or fix and it's driving you bananas. Am I close?
No, your wife shouldn't be afraid to open up to you. But she is. So now what? Think on that for a few minutes. "My wife is afraid to open up to me." Do the emphasis exercise... you know, the one where you put emphasis on a different word in the sentence each time you say it until you've done all the words in he sentence?
Doesn't that just take the "f"ing wind right out of every sail you have?
So now what?
(Just so you know, I did this exercise too when I finally had that 'rip your guts right out of your body' realization of how I had been hurting my H through lack of sex. One of the worst moments of my life. Came right on the heels of that profound moment when I understood I was sexually normal. It really sucked.)
Now. Maybe this isn't you. I could be dead wrong. But one thing I know I'm not wrong about is anger and resentment is an intimacy and marriage killer. And again, you have every RIGHT to be angry and resentful.
But now I'm really going to piss you off and ask you again, do you want to be RIGHT or do you want to solve the problem?
Okay. I'm ducking now and hanging on to my head. Ler her rip.
Corri, you hit on a very important subject when you brought up the self-esteem issues being low drive can cause. Your husband wasn't delicate in communicating his feelings to you. I'm sorry you experienced that. I read books on communication, said all the right words and did all that I was supposed to do to not put him on the defensive. Little did I know that when you are discussing such a subject that there really is no way to say it delicately. Feelings are going to be hurt. My ex said to me once that he had "never understood what the big deal was about sex." He had lived his entire life experiencing sex differently than most of us do. When I began to learn a little more about what he might be feeling and took some of the focus off of what I was feeling and having to do without I realized his statement to me probably meant that he had lived his life feeling different and not in a positive way.
My talks with my ex, although they were tempered with kindness and compassion were always about what I was having to do without. I thought since I loved him was attracted to him and wanted him a certain number of times a week that he should feel the same. I tried to push my beliefs regarding what was the appropriate amount of times a couple should have sex off onto him. I did nothing but reinforce his belief that he was different in a negative way. cloudnine I hope you are reading this. I expected my husband to have the same feelings that I did and the same desires. I expected him to see it from my perspective because, as we all know, you aren't "normal" if you don't want sex regularly. I never once tried to see it from his perspective or put any effort into helping him feel there was nothing wrong with him. We make huge mistakes when we fail to validate what the other person is feeling.
cloudnine, you say you wish she would articulate her frustration to you. Maybe is is unable to. You and I and everyone who has responded to you are skilled at using words to express our feelings. We can tell you in a heartbeat what we are feeling and what we need to change those feelings. Not everyone is that gifted. My ex couldn't put words to his feelings to save his life. I have an 18 year old who is the same way. I see my 18 year old constantly avoid unpleasant feelings and subjects because he doesn't know what words to use to get his point across or express his feelings. It's possible that what she fears most is not something she is able to put into words. She may need some help from you when it comes to defining what she feels. How did you respond to her when she said she knew she wasn't giving you what you needed? Statements like that from her are an opportunity for you to learn more about what she is feeling and to help her feel safe and skilled at expressing it. One of the most outstanding books I have ever read was Crucial Conversations, Tools for Talking When Stakes are High. If you want to learn how you can get her to communicate to you the frustration she may be feeling you might want to use some of their techniques. There is a website, www.crucialconversations.com, it's worth checking out. Cathy~
Quote: Poster: Cloudnine Subject: Re: Surviving as the summer burns on...
Hi Cathy,
Me again. Had a breather at work, so I thought I'd drop a note as promised. I still love my spouse, and find her incredibly attractive, and fun to be with. She'll have no trouble finding someone else, if we do in fact split. Thing is, I feel I have tried every form of communication to get thru to her my feelings about this. I've done it the right way (with a therapist present), and the wrong way, by pressuring her and making her feel inadequate. This is over the course of years. As I've said on my other post on SSM, I think I've dotted every *i*, and crossed every *t*. I don't know how else I can communicate to her what I want.
Funnt thing happened over the weekend. My bro-in-law (W's brother) called at 1am Sunday to ask if he could sleep in our guest bedroom. His live-in girlfriend, who has two kids, got jealous of some stupid thing and clocked him upside his head. We let him spend the night, and on Sunday, W and I were discussing it. She said that her brother should leave her, but he won't because the sex with this girl is too good. She said that her brother is sex-crazed! I told W that jst because someone likes sex, doesn't necessarily make them sex-crazed. My point is: not only are men and women different sometimes, the lingo between LD and HD partners is also different. Corri, over on my SSM thread, accused me of looking for marital *bliss*. I told her that is not the case at all. But, I think the difference highlights the way we use coded language to get our attitudes across.
Hope you're having a good day. I should be able to email again later.
Brian
Glad you have noticed that the lingo is different. It might help you see what I'm talking about as far as learning the right lingo to express what she is feeling. Think about it this way, you think she is off her rocker for not liking sex and she thinks you are off your rocker for liking it so much. I wonder though if that is what either one of you guys really think. Maybe you are both afraid. You are afraid of not getting what you feel you need and she is afraid of admitting she might need to make some changes. Could it be that you 2 are so busy judging each other for your supposed differences that you are unable to find a common ground. You both seem to spend time defending how you feel instead of trying to understand how the other one is feeling.
Yes, in my mind her brother is not sex crazed. Maybe a little co-dependent but not sex crazed. Maybe your wife labels people like her brother with a negaitve label like that to keep from having to admit to herself that she is the one who has a problem and not her brother. It is so much easier to call the kettle black than to take a look at ourselves. I think you both might be doing a little of that and getting nowhere fast. But then again what do I know. I went from having sex every 3 months to never having sex I did learn some lessons along my journey though. Major lesson learned, don't go down thinking you have done all that can be done, go down knowing you have done all that can be done. Cathy~
We just went to Mexico for a week, just her and I, without our two daughters. We had some sex, but it was unimpressive, and she got more pleasure from it than I did. Nevertheless, she did try.
Sounds like your Ws desire is not all gone.
As for the trip, we had fun. I looked forward to the trip, and we managed to have a great time. But, also wouldn't you think this is a great time to renew that intimacy in our lives, and maybe come back home with some momentum? I thought so, but was mistaken.
Why didn't you tell her your disappointment?
However, it may be possible that she thinks everything is fine, and that her actions to this point are fine. I kinda doubt it, but am willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Conversely, she's more than willing to have herself pleased, but leave me stranded, having to please myself.
Again, have you communicated this to her?
Unfortunately, all dialogue has stopped. With her, she probably thinks that if we're not talking about it, everything must be okay. Like whistling in the dark.
Sounds to me like you have to get the dialogue started again or nothing is going to change, at least not the changes that you desire. IMHO your W probably thinks everything is fine. You go on a nice holiday together, you even had sex and she derived more pleasure from it than you did. Does she know what you're thinking? Have you at all made it known to her your continued unhappiness over this issue? She may be in denial if you continue to not to want to talk about it thinking that "Hey, she already stated in therapy that she will do this and that and she knows she is not making the changes she promised. The ball is in her court. Why should I continue to have to speak about it?" I don't think you have anything to lose by restarting dialogue on this, after all you are already leaning towards the other side of the fence. You probably don't have to do it in a safe environment like in a therapy as well, just work on your communication skills. These things are delicate and need to be communicated with skillful tact or it will blow up very easily.
Have you asked yourself why she may not be trying as you think she ought? Does she think she is trying? Your interpretation of it and her interpretation of it might be very different. I totally agree with Corri's point on this. LH
Damn thing of it was, I was serious.
I did learn some lessons along my journey though. Major lesson learned, don't go down thinking you have done all that can be done, go down knowing you have done all that can be done.