Spellfire # 3 - Need a campfire here

[Bagheera]

Greetings, Spellfire;

I've been following your thread here, and wanted to chime in on a couple of issues for you to consider. The first one:

The Intimacy Dilemma (discussed on pgs. 55-62 of the SSM)

In my own case, my Sex-Starved Marriage was, in part, a reflection of a basic gender difference:

Most women need to feel a strong, loving, emotional connection before they feel the desire for a physical connection (i.e. an emotional connection is the pathway to sex). Take away that emotional connection for some reason, and the desire for physical intimacy is the first thing to go. She may even continue to masturbate when you aren't around to satisfy herself, but without that emotional connection, and especially if your relationship is strained, your touch may even repulse her. At one point, my emotional connection to my wife had deteriorated to the point that she claimed she could go the rest of her life without sex. As a man, however, your intternal wiring is (in general) completely the opposite.

Most men need to have an intimate physical connection before they feel the desire for a strong emotional connection (i.e. sex is the pathway to an emotional connection). In my own case, for example, I don't really feel loved, nor can I fully express my love for my wife, without this physical connection. Even when we men are feeling angry and distant from our wives (avoiding an emotional connection), men can feel the desire for sex, sometimes to an even higher degree than previously, because we are yearning to repair that connection to our wives and reestablish our loving feelings. At the same time, our wives are completely befuddled by this physical desire of ours, because they are reacting in quite the opposite fashion to the strained marital relationship: no emotional connection, no desire for sex. So the lack of sex gets added to the list of grievances, and things spiral even further downhill.

The problem that you have is, how do you convince your wife that your physical desire for her is based upon a yearning on your part for an emotional connection, and is not just you seeking a physical release. You wrote the following:

I have also encouraged the idea that I need the physical release in order to leave her alone, since in the past that is the only thing that would convince her to ML. I should have known this would only cause a bigger barrier...

You got that right -- you simply added fuel to her misconceptions.

Men and women are 'wired' so differently when it comes to emotional and physical intimacy that we have an extremely hard time understanding what it's like for our spouse. It is particularly easy for women, especially mothers with children hanging on their skirts, to convince themselves that their husbands are simply after a physical release and that they (the wife) are just an object to satisfy some animalistic urge. The reality is: for most men, physical intimacy is the husband's PRIMARY means of expressing his love for his wife, and feeling her love for him.

The analogy that I used with my wife is this: men are 'tide pool' creatures, where the level of water in the tide pool is analogous to the level of love that we feel in the relationship (love for our spouse, love that we feel returned to us). During a period without physical intimacy, the sun (daily life) beats down on that pool, and the level of water slowly drops, and eventually leaves us gasping in a puddle on the bottom --> unable to feel the love and living 'like brother and sister.' However, all it takes is one nice episode of physical intimacy, and the tide comes rushing back in to refill that pool completely: the love that we feel for our spouse and the love that they feel for us returns in force, and the husband reestablishes emotional intimacy with his wife. What I personally experience is very much like a wave of deep emotions, leaving me in a wonderfully euphoric 'afterglow' state. Strangers on the street the next day can probably look at me and say "You made love last night, didn't you!"

Women, on the other hand, are more like 'pond dwellers,' who require a constant, steady stream of emotional intimacy to keep the level of love that they feel in the relationship near the 'high water mark.' If the husband works to keep that water level high, then his wife can experience a desire for physical intimacy with him. 'Can' is the operative word here -- physical intimacy is generally optional for women, and is not required in order to feel emotional intimacy. This is why it's so very difficult for women to understand men's 'reverse wiring' in this regard: it's completely alien to them, but it's still very real.

Now, I'm speaking pretty generically here, and to my own case in particular, but I've witnessed that a woman's desire for sex can undergo a dramatic upswing IF the other aspects of the marriage relationship begin to get fixed. Trust has to be rebuilt, old grievances addressed, and a strong emotional connection reestablished, BUT it can be done -- my wife and are in the process of doing it. Each partner must recognize and accept the valid love / `connection' needs of the other. For the man, this means recognizing the importance of (for example) sharing housework and other responsibilities, spending quality time together as a family and couple, and continuing to romantically court your mate no matter how long you've been together; that is, actively pursuing an emotional connection with your wife. For the woman this means recognizing the importance of (for example) a caress, a kiss, and close sexual intimacy; that is, actively pursuing a physical connection with their husband. It's not about doing the stuff on the honey-do list in order to get your wife to turn-on to you. It's not about turning-on to your husband in order to get him to do the stuff on the honey-do list. [i.e. no covert contracts] It's about understanding and meeting the valid love needs of the other, and having your own love needs met in return.

The second topic I'd like to go into, and which also strongly affected my own SSM and had to be addressed in order to repair it, is in regard to being The Man in the relationship: being masculine and as such, being sexually attractive to your wife, and at the same time, perimitting her to be feminine and sexually attractive to you. You've already latched on to the NMMNG book (and others like it), so for now I'll leave off on this long post and encourage you to continue applying the principles therein. I'll write more later, if you like.

Take care,

Bagheera