The "vibe" I get from your posts is one of mentally "leaning" on your wife to "guarantee" that whenever you initiate (and no matter how), she will say yes. You want the "security" of a wife that will agree to sex once you intiate, and you counter-balance that with a Nice Guy subtext: "I will only initiate when I think you are in the mood".
You probably feel justified in this mindset, because there is a history of rejection and crappy excuses by her, which have probably hurt your ego. On the face of it that's a understandable and reasonable.
But such an approach IMO (and experience):
(1) Undersells your own desire and ability as a man to get the sex you want. (2) Makes for piss-poor initations and crappy sex.
I think I can understand that mindset and the bad sex it leads to, because it creeps back into my head quite often too. But I now see it for the "intruder" it is.
CB, you quite simply have to "rip up" the past (that includes the recent 8 week dry spell) and your associated resentment and insecurity and thus need for "guarantees" from your wife. All any of that does is hold you back and inhibit your passion in "the moment".
You have to get into the "here and now". What is your body and your desire telling you? If you want to go home early and ravish your wife senseless, then own those feelings and just "go for it". Text her and get on with it. Stop overthinking and pussyfooting. Start letting your male passion really show in this marriage. You need to start consistently letting your wife know she's living with a man that "wants" to have sex with her.
Not "needs" her, but "wants" her. That's the important distinction. Need is weak and unattractive. Want is strong and attractive, can handle rejection, but will ultimately leave if met with consistent disinterest.
That "I want you" dynamic is what you must consistently cultivate. And for it to work - it must be authentic - you must really mean it. That's where ripping up your past resentments is important. If you're still harbouring them at "the moment" of intiating sex, you're basically sabotaging yourself - setting yourself up to fail. And that's your problem not hers.
This is what I have had to do in my own marriage - really summon up passion/ courage "in the moment" and just totally go for it in a big way. It doesn't always work, but when it does the ML is so much better.
You are in touch with your feminine side, right? Try this exercise - thinking of yourself as a woman - what kind of qualities in/ initiation by a man would you find most attractive?
S&A
"A man can be destroyed but not defeated" - from The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway.
Which I take to mean that every man has within him a spirit of relentlessness and optimism. Its already there; he just has to cultivate it.
