My wife definitely sees sex as an occasional treat, when everything’s perfect and she feels like it. We are both very busy and often tired at the end of the day. When I’ve had a hard day and I’m tired I NEED sex to relax me; when she’s had a hard day (every day, of course) she doesn’t want to have any more “pressures” like sex. For her, sex is a chore that she refuses to do 99% of the time. For me, sex and love are intertwined, one isn’t complete without the other, I’m not talking about love for my son or how I love cappuccinos, I’m talking about the intimate spiritual exchange love that one experiences with your partner only.
I have contemplated the “playing hard to get” concept of getting her attention but I simply have not been able to pull it off. Whenever I try to act like I don’t care about it either way she either sees right through my smokescreen or thinks I’m giving her the cold shoulder because I don’t love her anymore or I’m cheating. I agree with you that she might want to do the pursuing instead of being pursued, however, whenever I give her the time to do it nothing happens. I am convinced that if I never initiated sex again, we would never have sex again. I feel trapped in this loop.
I simply am not important enough for her to be willing to put any extra effort into rebuilding our romance. That hurts like hell.
I think if I lived in another house or only saw her every few weeks or so she would find her feelings for me again, as long as we maintained that distance so she wouldn’t get bored with me. Obviously, this is not a reasonable solution, given that we have a son that would be distressed by this “separation”.
Regarding my son adopting his mother’s perspective on sex,I can tell from the fact that when ever I look at her with “that sparkle”, try to touch her, hug her or kiss her he rolls his eyes and says “obsessed pervert!!“ It is totally clear that he is jealous of my attraction to her. He tries to physically separate us when we do hug, which gets all of us into a nasty mood and usually leads to arguments. He is never that way when I spend time alone with him, in that case he is a sweet little boy again.
Almost by definition (at least by traditional standards) one of the key elements to marriage is sexual intimacy, therefore when one spouse withholds this from the other it is a violation of the marriage itself. When this happens you become housemates, not spouses.
You’re right that she doesn’t seem to know where the “sparkle” went. She assumes that simply getting married killed the passion, that romance in marriage is not realistic after a certain point.
Dinner was fine, I guess, didn’t go anywhere productive, in terms of discussing relationship stuff but the food was good.
I have such a hard time listening or talking about mundane daily stuff when I’m thinking inside “we’re in a crisis, how can we possibly chat about politics, the weather and a friend’s problems when our issues are so overwhelming?” I hate to pressure her so I keep my despair to myself and try to keep the conversation floating.
I have asked her many times what she is missing from me or what are the areas of problem from her viewpoint. She doesn’t come up with much other than the sexual hounding that pressures her. She says she really can’t imagine being with another man as kind and wonderful as me, yet she is totally selfish in sharing her body with me. I just can’t fathom this.
I am still fairly confident that her loss of desire for me is mainly physical, that is her hormones are not functioning in a healthy manner. Until she decides to seek help for our situation, I am stuck in no man’s land, waiting, hoping, wondering.
I’m not a very good actor so putting on this “hard to get, not-that-interested-anyway” show is difficult; I always break down after a month or so.
