Trying Again

[Young at Heart]

I can really identify with what you are talking about. I think that on one level you also have a very good understanding of what is happening in your marriage.

However, let me offer a slightly different perspective.

In addition to really needing sex, I really need to be touched and to be praised by my wife. In the Chapman 5 Lanaguages of Love Book, my primary language of love is touching, and my secondary language of love is words of affirmation.

Touch is a fairly high need for a lot of men. Sometimes in the past I know that I and other men have wanted to be touched by our wives and yet didn't know how to ask or get that and so tried to initiate sex as a way of also getting the touch we need. I am not sure if your husband is the same way or not, but you might explore that. Touch and sex are different.

Those weeks that my wife is traveling on work, or too busy for me, I find that getting a professional theraputic massage once a week helps me cope and feel a lot better and less out of sorts with her. In the book the Passionate Marriage, Schnarch talks about self soothing. I have even taken up some self massage for calf muscles and shoulders to try to self sooth and get a feeling of touch. Again, the point is that your husband's moods you define as his need for sex, could in fact also be related to a lack of "touching." Sue Johnson has a good book out on how important touch is to some people, it is called Hold Me Tight. Reading her book really helped me understand some of my basic needs.

Another thing that you might try is for you to massage your husband on the neck/back/foot, or to try to hold hands with him, if you are not too angry and can handle it. For a while, my wife, when she read in bed and would not talk to me, but at least put her toes against my legs or feet as a sign of affection. That was something I could use in my head to say that she was showing me that she desired and cared for me. It was a limited way of feeling touched by her, which made me feel loved.

At one of the low parts of my marriage, when my wife would not have sex nor would she praise me, I withdrew from her and focused more of my time at work, where by spending more time there; clients and coworkers would praise me for the things I accomplished. It was how I tried to emotionally survive. Oh course it made my wife feel like I was emotionally abandoning her, and made her more likely to reject any sexual initiation I tried.

The point is that in trying to deal with my feelings I fell into a partern of behavior that reinforced a negative spiral. My wife didn't provide the touch I needed or the words of affirmation and so I went elsewhere for that, which mean I spent less quality time with her (one of her primary languages of love.) Because she didn't feel loved by me, she withdrew even further from me and became even angrier at me.
It was a bad spiral.

We finally were able to break that spiral, by my working hard every day to make her feel loved in her languages of love, and by working with a sex therapist to point out to my wife that i was changes and my wife could either change with me or realize that I would divorce her within a year. Ultimately, my wife was able to change with me and together we have been fighting old habits and rebuilding our relationship.

Until she started to change, I felt like a massocist and kept asking myself why bother. Ultimately, I said it was worth the trying just to make sure I could say I tried everything before I divorced her. I wanted to try to make the marriage work and if it couldn't not look back with any regrets. I sense you too are asking yourself if you should try to "please" your husband or give up trying since he doesn't understand/meet your needs.

MWD talks about how at times just one partner can change things. I really believe that one partner can change themselves, but that it really takes both partners to establish new behavior paterns.

Again, as you state below, I think you have things pretty well figured out. Now I would suggest taht you need to push your comfort level and start making changes in your life in the hope that your husband can see the changes, can feel loved and is moved to change with you and meet your needs. Professional sex therapist counseling will help achieve these goals as well.

Good luck!

...I continue to struggle with the conundrum that he wants me to feel desire and be involved in sexual activity, yet he doesn't have the understanding or patience for what it will take for me to get there, so he wants a courtesty act in the meantime - and then complains that I am not involved.

I try to explain that this is counter productive for me, but he doesn't seem to understand how that is possible.

Unfortunately, we have been doing this for so long that I have now totally lost patience with the courtesy acts even...