Trying Again

[Young at Heart]

Congratulations on your candor, approach and persistence. Your husband is a lucky guy (even if he doesn't think so at times.)

I will share my thoughts. I am a real fan of the book the 5 languages of love. My primary languages of love are touch and then words of affirmation. You need to learn what your and your husbands languages of love are.

Let me explain. When I want to tell my wife that I care for her and love her, I will tell her how wonderful she is and try to touch her. For a long time she interpreted this as buttering her up and then pawing her. When she rejected these attempt to reach out to her, it felt as bad as when she sexually rejected me and caused me to pull back further from her.

I now know that when I want my wife to feel loved, I need to perform acts of devoltion for her (usually special chores or things that make her feel special - filling her car with gas each week, washing her car, getting her coffee in the morning so she can stay in bed a few extra minutes prior to getting up, doing most of the laundry, etc. -) or making sure she gets lots of quality time with me and my paying full attension to her.

Now as to you. Let's pretend that your husband is a touch person as his primary language of love. Sometimes if he wants to feel loved he really needs to be touched and the only time he gets the touching he needs maybe after or during sex with you. That might make you think that he is higher HD than he really is. I know that was the way things were for me.

You might try running your hands through the hair on his head, his chest hair or massaging his shoulders. If he takes it as a sign a foreplay tell him that you will take care of his sexual needs either later that night or the next day, but now you want to enjoy feeling him and touching him. If his primary language of love is touch, he will probably understand.

I have found that after no longer being desparate for sex and touch, that I am much more likely to be able to cope with some rejection.

On another note, as someone who also needs words of affirmation or praise to feel loved, I found that when I didn't get that from my wife, I went looking for praise at the office. I became a real type A worker and that is where I felt "loved" by my customers and co-workers. That caused me to withdraw even more from my wife and her to push me away.

My wife finding ways to provide honest praise for good things that I do, has really helped draw me closer to her.

I try to do mulitiple things each day to make my wife feel loved in her languages of love. She tries to do something to make me feel loved at least every other day with sex two to three times a week. The change has been incredible the way I feel toward her and our love has really come back.

John Gottman's book the Seven Principals for Making a Marriage Work is pretty good with ideas on doing things that bring couples closer together. They have the 5.5 magic hours a week suggestion of things/cerimonies that couples can do to bring them closer each day and each week. You might look into that as well.

Good luck to you and your husband.