Let's make this very clear--I am not your therapist.
And you don't have to be my macho advisor either. After the reaction of several people here to my "whining", I'm not inclined to discuss my feelings of insecurity further on this forum. Those are weaknesses, and I know that. So to have someone just step on that and say the obvious, "You are weak man, and it disgusts me." doesn't really do much for me. But if it makes you feel better by comparison, fine, at least I've made someone else feel better.
I'm going by this:
Quote:
Walking makes an important point. Even the idea of "fixing" the marriage to your satisfaction was scary to me. I mean, say she makes all the changes and now she really wants to show her love and make love and all the rest . . . what if I don't measure up? What if it was my inadequacy that *really* drove her to frigidity in the first place? What if *I* can't live up to *her* newfound dedication to the marriage?
In my case, and perhaps because my SSM has gone on longer than the usual SSM, I've further divorced myself from any worries about living up to my wife's expectations. If she wants me, that would geniuinely be great. If she doesn't, I would have a huge thrill dating all kinds of women. If things improved with my wife, I'm not sure I'd be "concerned" about her expectations of me, and maybe that's not all good. I've built up such a defense in that area because she used her "failed expectations" of me as an excuse to avoid sex so many times (I'd say easily over one thousand times). I didn't do this, or I said this or that, or did this or that, or didn't do this or that, etc. If not some character problem with me, something I said three days ago, or failed to say three days ago. It was ridiculous. So in a sense, I no longer have any respect for her "female judgement" of me as a man, because she's used that so often to avoid sex. I forgive her for that because I can now see a lot of it was in desparation to avoid her own issues. She's a very kind person in so many other ways, as in spending lots of time getting thoughtful birthday presents for everyone, including me. Kind to animals, serious amounts of charity work, etc.
So, interesting to think about, because it's probably so different from other marriages, perhaps even other SSM marriages where the HD partner is feeling rejected. If I were to approach my wife right now and try to get amorous, the whole thing is sadly nothing but a comedy routine to me, as in, "OK, I wonder what excuse she's going to come up with now!" In the past, I'd sometimes just chime in and state her excuse in unison with her, with the exact correct wording! Now if that doesn't tell you something! Stuff like, "I'm tired", "I just got home and want to relax", "I just got up and I have a lot to do". I could go on for dozens of pages.
