I guess you could call me a LD spouse, or at least LOWER D.
I've replied to some other threads on this forum but no one seemed too interested. I find it frustrating to hear that the LD partner MUST feel equal desire. Willingness is not enough! I especially hear this from CeMar. It makes me angry. When I had sex with my X, I did it out of love for him. To hear it dismissed as inferior is infuriating.
Some background: I thought when my X announced he was leaving his family for a woman that he had known for 10 days that he was having a midlife crisis. And thought that for 3 years until I read on this board. I finally understood what our problem was. You see, he had not articulated it as clearly as you have to your H. I knew he had dissatisfactions with our marriage but I had NO IDEA that the sexual part was the deal breaker. Not even in MC that we went to in the months before we separated did he voice this to me. So it was like a light bulb going on to read here.
I wish he could have told me instead of you folks!
We had sex on a regular basis, a couple of times a week. He wanted me to initiate. I usually didn't. He wanted CONSTANT touching and affection from me during the day. It felt onerous and smothering to me. His way of touching me was sometimes irritating. I *would* spontaneously hug him, tell him things I loved about him, but his feeling was often, "You're just saying that." I felt that nothing I did was EVER enough. He felt like a bottomless pit of need.
In short, it was like in the Woody Allen movie with the therapist asks each how often they had sex. Woody said, almost never, two or three times a week, and Annie said, all the time, two or three times a week.
So my X left. I was devastated. I really did love him dearly and have trained myself not to after years of separation. It is all too sad.
