OK well...I hope you are getting good feedback on your private board. I hope its working out well for you, but you know, I wish I could help at all...
Silly girl. Believe me, if there are issues occurring that I think you can even remotely help me to address I'll bring them up here. My wife is still far away from the type of sensuality and sexuality that you and LG are able to tap into, and it will be a long while before she gets there.
However, I think she has the *spark* of desire to reach for that, although she generally keeps that spark well hidden. My primary role at the moment is to provide the secure environment wherein she can explore that spark....which means keeping my own issues at bay and under control enough not to derail her. It's a delicate balance, between backing off too much, thus giving her the opportunity to stall, and pushing too hard, thus causing her to slam up the "shields" and protect herself.
YOUR FIANCE, luckily, already possessed the intimacy 'gardening skills' necessary to tend you and allow you to develop and flourish sexually. I have to learn those skills as I go, and neither neglect (whilst retreating in a huff to the man-cave) nor over-water and drown her.
YOU had to be at a point in your life where you were healed enough and ready to flourish, open up, and bloom under his care and tending. My wife has at least emerged (tentatively) from the seed, but is still a very fragile 'sprout'....not ready to flourish and bloom just yet.
[time to stop this analogy -- I'm starting to get Alice in Wonderland images in my head.]
You get the idea. For example, you've referred to how sexually energizing and enjoyable your daily "mini-ravishing" sessions are, and encouraged me to adopt that strategy. My wife, on the other hand simply isn't ready for that yet, and has complained tto the therapist about my attempts to push a little in that direction. At most, I can get away with a bit of brutish man-handling and sexual playfulness about once or perhaps twice a week -- all other touching (during the day) has to be safely non-sexual and loving. In other words, like many women, she is simply not comfortable (yet) with the notion that she can actually *enjoy* being treated as a sex-object from time to time, IN ADDITION TO being treated as a love-object by me...that the two 'modes' are NOT, in fact, mutually exclusive.
She's -slowly- coming around, and I'm slowly improving my gardening skills.
-- B.
Me 50, W 45, M for 26 yrs S25, D23, S13, S10 20+ year SSM; recovery began Oct 2007
