I certainly do not doubt your intentions Corri. I have read many of your posts and you really sound like you know what you are talking about.
I think where most LDrs "miss the boat" is that they cannot understand how important sex/physical intimacy is. It is simply a piece of themselves that is, for whatever reason, missing. And there is very little interest in replacing the missing piece since doing so can instill fear, uncertainty, or a sense of personal accountability that the LDr has indeed been the source of years of marital strife.
It is irrelevant whether the "decision" to withhold sex is a conscious one. I am a firm believer in breaking things down to their simplest form, and in most cases the simplest form is this:
1. Couple is having a fulfilling sex life. 2. One partner choses to let something get in the way. 3. Couple no longer has fulfilling sex life. 4. One partner is miserable because of it.
Almost everything in adult life is a decision. In cases of rape or childhood abuse, something was done to someone and there is no decision. It just happened. Adults decide how to deal with things that just happen to them. LDrs have choices about their sex life and their choices DRASTICALLY AND UNAVOIDABLY affect their partner.
LDr's choices are:
1. Choose to determine the cause of the loss of sexual appetite and take steps to fix it. 2. Choose to live in fear and/or ignorance and MAKE their partner miserable. 3. Choose indifference.
I emphasize MAKE because most LDrs seem to want to take the stance that their actions have no real impact on their partners and that, if their partners are miserable, it must be something that their partner needs to deal with within his/her self and not a direct result of the actions of the LD spouse. Nothing could be further from the truth here. They seem want to make any reasonable expectation of them seem like an inordinate amount of "pressure" placed on them to relieve their feelings of guilt for allowing such a major problem to manifest itself the marriage. It is extremely difficult to deal with this since the LDr is acting out of fear, which is, many times, mistakenly perceived as mortal danger.
Just like you make the decision to stay faithful and love your spouse every day, whether you feel like it or not. The LD spouse must make the decision to make sex/physical intimacy an important part of their life EVERY day, whether they feel like it or not. I am not saying have sex everyday, I am saying to make it important every day. It is already important every day to the HDr. In most cases, it was important to the LDr too when they got married.
LDrs cannot expect their spouses to change just because they have. They also cannot expect their spouses to be happy with, or even tolerate for long, the LDr's lost sex drive. LDrs should never be surprised when their HD spouse has an affair or leaves them...but they always are. That fact, in itself, demonstrates how little the LDr understands the predicament THEY PLACED their spouses in by choosing to forsake their HD spouses.
I agree with 90% of what you have said. However, I don't think that an LDr's lack of sex drive is some malady that is SOLELY their problem to fix.
I believe a large disconnect comes because, in many instances but certainly not all, the LD spouse has NO CLUE why or where their drive went, the LD spouse cannot fathom what sex/intimacy really means to their spouse, and because you can't really miss something that isn't there, they misinterpret their spouse's dismay over the lack as that 'itch that needs to be scratched.'
I think you are correct in saying that as a couple, the LD AND HD spouses together need to explore how to become more sexual and intimate.
My H and I aren't having any more sex now than we were when he was ranting and raving at me. What has changed significantly is the way we communicate and interact with one another, how we listen to and respect one another, and how we trust one another.
That makes all the difference in the world for both of us.
I completely agree with you that it is not the LDr's problem to fix on their own. Sorry if I implied that. I know that it would be very easy to fix if the LDr knew why it went but that does not change the fact that it is gone and that there is a problem.
That is something else that I have noticed about a lot of LDrs. They seem to frequently default to the "something is wrong with me" mode. As I have told my wife many times, I don't think about this in terms of there being something wrong with her personally. I try to make it about the situation rather than about the individual. I think it is difficult for LDrs to see that because, most of the time, in the backs of their heads they are thinking that there IS something WRONG with them, and so there is a kind of "hair-trigger" effect going on. It is not about right or wrong but about coming back together in a sexual/physical way.
It IS all about trust. Trusting one's self and trusting one's spouse completely.
