Another sad story

[LRT Land]

For me, and for many women, it has to be a conscious choice. Hormones wreak havoc with age and just the time spent in a R can make things dull. So it really is a choice. Both people are hurt, resentful, angry. Neither wants to be the one to make the first move. Someone has to. My H has lower self esteem than I do. Since he was the one that intiated the lawyer, I decided I needed to do some 180s that would hit hard and fast. One of those was to bridge the intimacy gap. I started by asking him questions about himself, his day. I complimented him. When the atmosphere became less tense and I felt that we could tolerate being in the same room together, I started making efforts to touch his shoulder when I spoke or his arm. One night, things escalated to sx. It still took almost a week after that before he came back to my bed.

It is a hard line to walk - to think about what you would like the goal to be and take baby steps to get there while gracefully detaching and accepting that this M may not work out.

But to answer your question - one person has to take subtle, baby steps to bring the other along while simultaneously allowing them their freedom and validating that yeah, maybe things won't work out.