2.5 Months After D-day...and I wait

[25yearsmlc]

Haha. Well, I've been engaged to two women. The first one we were engaged twice.

And as for my parents...they didn't kiss, hug, adore, or fawn for as long as I've known them. They are more affectionate now as retirees, but growing up they either screamed at each other or didn't talk to each other. I grew up in an abusive, alcoholic home. My behavior as an adult is classic Adult Child of an Alcoholic stuff.

Just to comment on this^^^ and mention that YES you can break the cycle. Every single comment in this^^ paragraph about non affectionate parents and their "conflict resolution skills" (= who yells louder and throws the best 'zingers") are things you can Unlearn.

I'm an ACOA too, and went to a few meetings in my late 20s. Saw some folks there who'd been going for a DECADE and seemed to revel in their victimhood since they'd found a "label" for it. but to me they were just using the ACOA meetings as their crutch.

OTOH, I could sense my own insecurity coming out too, b/c why should I judge them if it helps them, you know?

( I had gone back to an ACOA meeting once over the Christmas holidays about 4 years later...and heard a man I knew, get up and tell THE SAME story he had told years earlier, to a new group. He simply did not change himself the whole time I knew him, in any way...)

In the end, for me, going to EE and having had a good T in the first place, I unlearned most of the crap I grew up with, and then with some good positives (role models and or tools) I replaced the bad habits I'd learned, with some good new ways of coping.

It CAN be done and it is done and you can do it too. Also I have some wonderful siblings. Do you?


And I see a very good therapist to talk all this stuff out. I'm not entirely comfortable getting "group psycho-analyzed" here unless people are sharing their own experiences and not just analyzing mine...if you know what I mean.

Disclosure builds intimacy. When only one person shares, it gets uncomfortable. I get it.

But I also know you have other places to go for it and this site MAY not be where you feel comfortable sharing.

This is where you originally came for help gaining the tools/skills you want so you can either rebuild the R you had with your ex fiancee OR to build a healthy R with another woman, someday, down the road.

I do believe you want the tools you need for a healthy relationship, with any woman.

But YOU Decide where that is best to get. You don't have to share HERE

and or if it's all about sex, there are other forums here and elsewhere.

I would say ONE thing on the topic of sex that I saw elsewhere - that applies to marriages pretty much everywhere.

That's when one spouse insists or pressures the other spouse to do things they are not comfortable with. Not "Mild" things like trying a different position or hearing new or loud music, the ambiance things, etc... I MEAN actions or behaviors that are not desirable by one party.

Over time, it eats away at the feeling of being sexually attractive and desirable. And the fears.....Like "if I don't do X or Y, my lover will leave me" ----I think that ends up making the person (usually the woman) eventually leave the R. Either literally, or sexually withdrawing totally.


No, DB I don't think that's what YOU are referring to with your situation, DB. I don't know for sure, but that's not the vibe I'm getting.

However, I did see that elsewhere here, and thought some men might need to know that and yet they may not actually.

IOW, if you "make" your woman do things she feels dirty about, OR is NOT interested in doing, AND OR are not fun for HER, sexually, it will eventually harm your overall relationship to the point where you'll lose her.

I don't mean something you do "now and then" (& FTR, for WOMEN, "now and then" means twice a year, NOT twice a week.)

Twice a week is way TOO often - for something you don't enjoy at all or that is a negative experience for you.

Just tossing it out. AND so I understand more fully,

DB, are you addicted to a substance of any kind?