Most victims of molestation experience sexual pleasure while being molested. This becomes increasingly difficult to live with as one grows up and gets a better grip of what was going on. If this is the case with your W, then being sexually stimulated and experiencing sexual pleasure could be repulsive because they are retraumatizing.
That helps me understand it a little better, but doesn't bring me any closer to a solution. It validates her excuses, but that's not a solution. It isn't my understanding that's the problem. It's getting her to overcome it. And I'm not sure that understanding this on her part, or even a lot of therapy about it, is guraanteed to make her interestedin sex. Apparently, she's already been through therapy about all this. But what if that therapy didn't "make you want sex" after many years? Then what??
What bothers me about all the advice I've been given about sexual sexual abuse is the dubious "assumption" or "script" that after therapy, she will be all new and shiny and want sex. And that is apparently not the case for her. And so then I get the advice all over again that she needs therapy for the abuse. If I say she's been through that, all I get in reply is, I must be wrong, or we haven't tried hard enough. Yeah, thanks, as if I couldn't think of that myself.
I know that people like to be optimistic, but I think in cases like this, the caveat needs to be "some people will never want sex after therapy for abuse, and the reason might be that it's too much for them to overcome, or it could be another reason we will never understand". That realistic assessment from the get-go might have resulted in more realistic expectations.
The problem with overly optimistic advice for spouses of LD people is that failure to make the LD person want sex logically reflects as a failure of effort on the part of the HD spouse. A more honest assessment would add the caveat that the ND or LD person may not become more sexual, no matter how much positive effort is applied by both people.
