It really is creepy how much you write like me. I didn't understand how striking the commonalities are back when PuppyDogTails and Bagheera and others were telling me the same thing I'm telling you now.
I have to run to the gym, but just a quick note: I am not telling you to give up sex, even as a 180. I'm just saying that you need at least one 180 and not more than three. One or two is best. Not initiating sex is one good 180 you could do in your situation. There are others. Let me think about what I did.
1. No sex. 2. No apologies unless I could articulate to myself what specific wrong I had actually done. 3. Returning to hobbies I enjoy, like shooting and writing. 4. Regular exercise. 5. No more asking my wife where she wants to go. If she wants to go somewhere or do something, she brings it up. If the date/outing/trip or whatever was my idea, I take her where I want to go.
As you can see, some are major and some are minor. Some only seem minor. We used to have the standard pattern of deciding where to eat: I asked where she wanted to go, she told me to decide, I suggested a place in a questioning tone, she refused to go there. Do that two or three more times, and we ended up settling on the place she had decided she wanted to go anyway. Now I simply say, "Let's go to that Mexican place tonight." If she objects, she can name an alternative or we go there. The thing is that she rarely objects to my first choice anymore. It was never a problem with the restaurants--I was suggesting places I knew we both liked--but a problem with the servile way I made suggestions and asked questions instead of simply taking my wife out to dinner.
In one of my old threads, I described having a kind of sickening epiphany while reading a book of women's erotica (yeah, that's as much fun as it sounds, but I'm a compulsive reader) that I'd gotten for my wife years ago to see if it would start anything for her. It didn't, by the way, and if I'd known then what I know now it would have been obvious that buying her a book of other women's fantasies wasn't going to make any difference, but at least I got something out of it. This is from about two years and a month ago:
Quote:
Now that I've talked to all of you for awhile, things I never really noticed are blaring out at me. It's often an odd sensation. Years ago I bought my wife a book of "women's erotica" written "for women, by women" and edited by a Ph.d. I know; who could have guessed that this would not be a good way to awaken passion in my wife? A dirty book edited by a Ph.d should be a surefire thing. Anyway, a few days ago I found it as I was clearing the bedroom and took a look through it. There was a story about a slightly older woman working with a college student described as "stereotypically handsome." She's excited by him but worried that he thinks she's too old. He tells her he's going to take her to a local beach because she can't leave without seeing it. She demurs, but he answers every excuse firmly and continues to driver her to the beach. Eventually, of course, they have hot sex on a blanket. But that's not what really stopped me cold. What got me (this would be a day or two after S&A's long post) was this line: Quote: "She had been dating an appropriate man, a lawyer her own age. He never took her anywhere; he was forever asking her where she would like to go."
There was no other description of this loser; clearly the author was confident that mentioning this one aspect of their relationship would be enough for (female) readers to get the message that it was awful. This could not be good. This guy was obviously written in as the unnamed throwaway boring guy the heroine is going to dump as soon as she gets home. And the description of him sounds like a description of me. Never "take her to" the movies, dinner, a park . . . . always ask her where she wants to go. I was so sure that was the right thing to do, I thought I was being such a good husband. But here this author can sum up the archetype of a terrible relationship by casually mentioning the way I treat my wife. Not good at all.
I'm not going to tell you that my marriage is perfect now, but I had maybe the best sex of my life last night. Top two for certain . . . deeply, totally connected to my wife and exhausted us both. It felt like I was in total control of my body and hers, as if I could make the two of us feel anything together. But that's the result of a couple of years of sloughing off that old anger like snakeskin, hitting a few plateaus along the way, and then rededicating myself to making changes. And it's also the result you get when your wife joins you and commits to making the marriage right. I can't guarantee that your wife will do that, but I can tell you that I was far from sure that mine would. Today, if she tells me all the things she told me back then about her eternal love, I believe her because her actions speak for her.
"...If your not screwing your own wife, someone else likely is..."
"Likely" is a little hard to quantify. You don't seem to be leaving much, if any room in your analysis for low-desire married women. Again, it would be bad to be blind to evidence, but it's just as bad to make assumptions without evidence. I have a hard time believing that affairs are so easy to hide that they could happen often with the only clue being a lack of sex in a marriage.
my wife is not cheating. she is just "being." she is just living for today, worried about the kids, her career, the finances, her woman issues (her periods are coming quicker and staying longer).
i have just been "being" too. i have been just completely platonic with her: no massages, no touching, no words of desire and love, no discussion about our horrible night of sex; just plain old small talk while doing our everyday chores. she doesn't seem to mind. she hasn't said anything about anything. we go to bed on our separate parts of our king size bed separated by her pillows,i say goodnight and go to sleep.
that's that. the test really comes this friday night: we have a wedding to go to. it's a young girl from her job. all of her friends from work are going to be there, and this is when she is not only going to look really good and sexy, but when she is going to act all sexy and lovey-dovey in front of everybody, dancing the night away only to go home to sleep, because she's too tired and no longer "in the mood" for anything.
this is her way. she will be hanging all over me, calling me "honey" this, and "honey" that in front of everybody, holding me and touching me, and dancing close and maybe even grinding me, only to go home and go to sleep.
meanwhile, i will be aroused from the moment i see her in her dress and heels, becoming more frustrated than ever knowing that i shouldn't fall prey to her "seduction" because it's only going to lead to a "devatastating" let down when we get into the car and get home.
Man, I've been there. One of our bitterest moments early on (before we got married! How stupid can you be?) was a dance where she wanted to grind and dance like that all night, and I just couldn't deal with it, knowing that we were going to go home and I was going to get rejected. Again.
The problem is your options:
1. Don't go to the wedding. This is an option, but explaining why is going to be hell, and the truth is that it will amount to telling her she was going to reject you before she actually says no to sex--and before she even thinks about sex that night. This will not go well.
2. Go to the wedding. Play along, smile, do all the sexy dancing with her, and think of sex as a nice bonus that may or may not happen that night--something you can take or leave. Deal with the rejection if and when it happens. If this sounds farfetched to you, it's because it is. During an SSM, the HD partner wouldn't be nearly so miserable if he could just do this. The reason SSMs are still so common and so painful is precisely because it's next to impossible.
3. Go to the wedding but tell your wife honestly that you aren't going to do anything that betrays your integrity. So if she wants to act like you have a happy, playful, sexy marriage, that's her choice, but you won't play along. This doesn't mean you have to be a jerk or make an issue of your marriage problems in public, just don't participate in anything that strikes you as dishonest. Might lead to staying home. Might do no good at all. But it might be one more straw laid on the camel's back. It takes a lot of straws before the camel's back breaks and a LD spouse understands how much you hurt.
People may say this is childish and wrong. Maybe it is. Certainly it could be if you let yourself be that one relative nobody wants to be alone with at the wedding because they'll have to listen to his litany against his wife. But if you have the self-control to limit yourself to telling the truth and not helping her cover up truths she doesn't like, that's no different in my mind than what people say here about exposing affairs: "I have decided that I'm no longer willing to lie to cover for you."
i'm going to the wedding, and i will take advice #2. i'm going to have as good of a time as possible, knowing that i'm coming home to an "empty" bed, knowing that all of her energy will be wasted during the night, and by the time we get home it will be late, and she'll be too tired(#1 and #2 excuses for the past dozen years).
lately,i have being everything but a romantic, sexual, passionate husband, and there have been no questions asked, no arguing, no discussions. we go about our lives as if we are in our eighties ("what's for dinner?" "mail come?" "i'm tired; let's go up," etc.).
and she doesn't seem to be phased or bothered by being platonic.
now she's having some women's issues, and that is helping me to only be platonic, but i started this before these issues developed.
If you're trying to do #2, it's important that you don't "know" those things. That's the kind of mind-reading that keeps the SSM going. If you can get past it, be open to sex but not desperate, and concentrate on having fun--enjoying yourself and enjoying your wife--you give yourself the chance to be attractive to her. That's no guarantee that there will be sex, but worrying about it ahead of time and assuming you know what's going to happen (and what's not) is a trap. It makes you look desperate and immature to her.
If you can handle all this, you're WAY ahead of most people in your position. Way ahead of where I was in your shoes, that's for sure. Good luck!
i'm going to the wedding, and i will take advice #2. i'm going to have as good of a time as possible, knowing that i'm coming home to an "empty" bed, knowing that all of her energy will be wasted during the night, and by the time we get home it will be late, and she'll be too tired(#1 and #2 excuses for the past dozen years).
lately,i have being everything but a romantic, sexual, passionate husband, and there have been no questions asked, no arguing, no discussions. we go about our lives as if we are in our eighties ("what's for dinner?" "mail come?" "i'm tired; let's go up," etc.).
and she doesn't seem to be phased or bothered by being platonic.
now she's having some women's issues, and that is helping me to only be platonic, but i started this before these issues developed.
If she gets all lovey dovey sexy while dancing you could whisper in her ear to meet you in the coat room for a quickie
Now, back to being serious.... what women issues? can you go into a bit more explanation? Not all women issues affect sex...or need to lead to a plutonic relationship.
"...If your not screwing your own wife, someone else likely is..."
"Likely" is a little hard to quantify. You don't seem to be leaving much, if any room in your analysis for low-desire married women.
I have to second that! To the poster of the original comment, surely you'd want to amend that statement after a little thought! Otherwise, you are stating that all married women are likely always having sex on a regular basis. What planet are you from? Please tell me, because I want to move to that planet!
Unfortunately, there are way too many women who are "done with that". Or as I heard one woman quoted on an advice show, "[Sigh] my husband started taking Viagra and so now I have to deal with that sex stuff again."
In fact, I'll bet that in about half of marriages where the man starts taking Viagra, the wife is not thrilled.
And likewise, I'll bet there are many marriages where the man has ED, doesn't want to deal with doctors and embarrassement, and the wife is just as happy to have it that way. It's just that you don't see any of them posting here because none of them are on a crusade to fix anything.
Yup. And if you think about it for a moment, why should those women be so thrilled about Viagra? If you've got a marriage where you both want sex and it's something good for both of you, but a medical condition causes ED, then Viagra/Levitra/Cialis must seem like a Godsend.
But if you've got a marriage where one or both of you don't want sex, because of old resentments, or because of a lack of effort, or because of insecurity or a dozen other reasons we know all about from experience here, and it includes ED on the husband's part, it's likely that using Viagra to force his penis erect isn't fixing anything that really needed to be fixed. Even worse, it gives him a chance to grasp at straws and declare "Thank goodness all our problems are over!" No wonder the wife rolls her eyes.
Of course, she COULD honestly TELL him that she wants to work on more than medicating him for ED . . . . but how likely is that?
Hi Cozyp828, I am a LDW who would like to join in your discussion, I hope that is ok. I can see that I am much like your wife in many situations you have described, the upcoming wedding for instance. The thing is that I do love my husband and I would like to have a healthy sex life again, but do not know how to do it because his way doesn't work for me and my way doesn't work for him. YoungatHeart and SillyOldBear have both described situations where partners felt resentment and built up walls that prevent them from opening up to their spouse - this is true for me.
In a situation such as attending a social function, I too tend to be more touchy and affectionate than when in private and it is because it is safe - safe for me to try to explore my own feelings without the pressure to "go all the way". Basically it is my opportunity to try out a baby step, but, as it does with you, it leaves my H feeling frustrated. There is much more to my situation, but I don't know that this is the place to describe it.
I agree with others that it is not just about giving up sex, but more importantly about having some compassion for and working with your wife.
