Sandi's in Piecing and it's getting better

[MrBond]

Hi Sandi,

As always, you're spot on in your observations. My W is a nurse and her former boss is a doctor with a major God complex. Always flirted with the young girls, short tempered and fiery, etc. Now she handles the scheduling for her dept. so sees him often but doesn't work directly under him.

I do see a certain amount of depression on her part that has gotten better, but flares up every now and then. I'm sure it's a combo of her doubts about our M, her feelings of feeling stuck in the M, the stress of wanting to do the right thing (stay in M) and the loss of the OM.

To her credit though, she's pleasant at home and the sitch has gotten better. Although yes, a sincere apology would be great and her not working with the OM would terrific. Even though she can move to another dept. I know she has looked before around Feb. but has since stopped.

What I've been doing is interacting with her through the idea of "tipping points". I don't remember if I first read about it here, but the theory is that we all have tipping points are what lead us to continue to do positive things or negative ones. An example of a tipping point is like when someone says (the straw that broke the camel's back). The idea is to do a positive action to see if you get a positive reaction. If that happens, you continue the positive action as long as you keep getting a positive reaction. Then you increase the positive action with another that's a step up from the first action. even more positive.

So for me, I started out with lying with her in the same bed. She was reluctant at first, but relaxed after a couple of weeks even though she specifically would say "stay on your half of the bed". After she got comfortable, I would move closer to her a little each week. Now we can share the same blanket and she doesn't mind me putting my arm around her.

In terms of going out, I started by talking to her casually for at least 15 minutes every night about her day. I never told her I would do that, but I just did it. As things got comfortable, I next asked her her out to lunch last week. It was awkward, but manageable. Then this week, I asked her if she wanted to stay up without the kids to watch some tv. She agreed and it was also nice.

So my next step would be to ask her to a movie (daytime) and lunch. All this before our evening out to see Mama Mia. And although it would be nice to ML that night, I'm not expecting it.

It's almost like dating someone new.

All of these baby steps can get frustrating and I have to admit, I do miss the sex. In fact, my W hadn't initiated sex in over 6 years unless she was drunk. I don't know if she lost a little of her libido after our first D, but that would be the ultimate. If she could be the one asking for sex.

I even asked her recently how many times she felt in the mood when we were separated for the 6 months. She told me only a couple of times and even then, she would just think about, get tired and go to sleep. She wouldn't even satisfy herself.

I wonder if there's such a thing as an "average" in terms of sexual urges for women. My W had no problems at all before we had our first D.