....In the other side of the scale: put yourself at home with your lovely wife and your beautiful family with very limited sex. It sounds better. I chose this one. As a matter of fact, I guess things can be turned around only if she is happy with you and you meet her emotional needs.
I feel better concentrating all my energies experimenting and trying different approaches to make her feel more sexual than expending (wasting) time in the internet, going to places like bars, coursing with anything that moves around with nice legs, nice tits, great bodies.
I this moment I'm trying romantic moments (she and me alone), candles, flowers, deserted beaches with white sand, vacation time in a cruise ship. All of the above, nothing seems to work as a magical switch. But instead I'm giving myself time (2 years at the best)to see results. I'm writing in my calendar the progress and it is worthy.
Boy do I identify with you. I also applaud your choices!
For me the critical books that helped me understand myself, understand my wife and allowed me to make significant advances in my relationship with my wife were:
MWD--SSM Sue Johnson's Hold Me Tight Chapman, the Five Languages of Love No More Mr. Nice Guy Foot Reflexology Gottman, Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work
SSM is something that both my wife and I read and it really helped me figure out a lot.
Chapman's the Five Languages of Love allowed me to understand that my wife had been telling me she loved me for the past 30 years in a way that just didn't feel like love to me. It also allowed me to understand I have been expressing my love to my wife in ways that didn't feel like "love" to her. After I read it and reread it, I started to treat my wife in ways that made her feel loved. That made a huge difference in our relationship. After joint counseling with a sex therapist she finally started to understand from having read this book and Hold Me Tight that she had been expressing love to me in ways that just didn't feel like "love" to me and that I have had years of being starved for love.
SSM, Hold Me Tight, and Seven Principles helped me understand how to bettter communicate and NEGOTIATE with my wife. Actually, watching our sex therapist negotiate with my wife, was the best mentoring in interpersonal boundary setting and focusing on results I have every experienced.
I am not sure that romantic gestures like flowers would have worked for me. My wife is a quality of time and acts of service person.
For me the real break through came with foot reflexology, doing certain new high profile domestic chores around the house, and making a point of each day connecting with her twice a day emotionally.
I think that there is a scene in Pulp Fiction where one of the characters says something to the effect that he really likes giving foot rubs to women, "...because after all, its only a foot rub, but in reality, it is always much more than just a foot rub." My wife could accept a foot rub/massage as a non-sexual advance, but it did arouse her to the point that she wanted sex. It is something that even a woman with body self image issues can seem to enjoy and become arroused. Based on the feed back I have gotten from my wife and our joint sex therapist, I have a feeling that foot rubs are something that most women enjoy on multiple levels.
There are some rituals in the Gottman Seven Principles of a Successfull Marriage in the chapter on the 5 (or 5.5) Magic Hours per week. I really think that those rituals can do a lot to draw a couple together into a stronger more intimate marriage. I like the hugging on waking, separating, and coming home. If you can combine that with the MWD SSM Nike or "just do it" recommendation on sex, then you can probably find happiness.
I have gone from a moderately SSM, and 5-6 months of no sex to having sex between 2 to 3 times a week plus other times of affection, touching and make-out sessions with my wife. Stay positive, make her feel loved, visualize yourself becoming happy and getting what you need, get outside help, read all kinds of relationship books.
Good luck to you, it sounds like you have a family and marriage worth fighting for. Ultimately, she will probably come to that conclusion as well.
>43 years of marriage--My wife and I are now closer than we have been in decades. I believe that my SSM is over.
