Monday 09:10 am. A most extraordinary thing happened this morning. About 5 am I awoke to find waves of euphoria washing up and down my body. I just lay there floating on a cloud. W made a sighing sound and shifted her position slightly and suddenly it felt as if an ocean of love for her flooded from my head all the way down to my toes! I have never felt anything like it before. After that I lay there trying to identify what the feelings were and found them to be a mixture of incredibly strong love for her and love and pride for our children and an overwhelming gratefulness that I had not thrown it all away two years ago. Does anyone else have any experience of this sort of thing?
SD:
I know the feeling. I think of it as "cup runneth over" feeling.
I also wanted to let you know that I usually don't read the forum on the weekend, so don't get too concerned when I don't reply to your posts. Geeze, you're so NEEDY sometimes.
I too am 45. I may come across as being some unbelieveable high sex crazed lunatic, but I am not. I would actually say that my sex drive is AVERAGE compared to other men I know. And actually, when I talk about sex on these boards, I am really talking about Affection AND Sex. It just comes across always as sex. I am a bit unusual in that I include affection in my top 5 needs, which the average man does not. My top 3 needs are #1 Sexual Fullfillment, #2 Affection, and #3 Recreational Companionship. My wife does not meet ANY of these needs.
Now you mention that your looking for more affection. So am I. But I like many other guys that are married to ND women, the affection has died as well as the sex. They can go hand-in-hand. My wife NEVER touches me. I touch her. My wife has not kissed me in many months. She ACTS like an OLD WOMAN. Physical touch is obviously NOT her love language. I actually want the touching more then anything else. Again, it all comes back to desire, she has none. I have seen MANY marriage like my own. Heck, my mother and father in-law have not slept together in 45+ years. My wife is the kind that thinks that being lovers is for YOUNG people. I currently am lucky if I get sex once a month, and always initiated by me. Had no sex in February. And my wife is OK with this, she openly admits that she would be happy to never have sex again, and yet she completely enjoys it when it does happen. She sees nothing really wrong with her, since most of her female friends also have very little desire for sex (all from fairly busy family lives).
So , please, do not think I am about sex only. I want affection as much as the sex, but problems with one likely spill over into the other.
The only reason I am hard on CeMar is because I really do love this guy (he's helped me more than he'll ever know with all of that excellent research of his), but at SOME point, one must stop reading, and start DOING. He came this close --> || to DOING something about his situation when he told all of us he was going to enroll in dance classes... we were all THRILLED that he took some initiative. But then, nothing. That makes me very, very sad, but it also makes me less tolerant of his venting because he refuses to try anything to change his situation.
Now it could be that he is trying things, but we typically do not hear about that from him. All we hear about is how things SHOULD be, and how hard it is for him.
I KNOW how hard it is for him. I pray for him daily that he finds his courage to take the bull by the horns. The kind of anger he displays can only come from a well of very deep, deep hurt. But the only way he is going to get out of that well is to start climbing. I guess I come down on him hard because I so want for him to find a solution, and if I could do it for him, I would.
Having said all that, however, I realize you are an adult and you can take care of yourself. It is not my place to run interference for you. I apologize to you and to CeMar.
Corri
The person who risks nothing,
does nothing,
has nothing,
is nothing
and becomes nothing.
He may avoid suffering and sorrow,
but he simply cannot learn and feel
and change and grow
and love and live.
He's forfeited his freedom.
Only the person who risks is truly free.
Corri, You should become an SSM counsellor. Michelle, Have you spotted Corri yet?
CeMar, I totally empathise with you. I know what you are thinking because it is the same as me. I go for #1 Affection #2 Sex #3 Companionship though. I get plenty of companionship - we are definitely best friends so I guess I am lucky there. SD
SuperDave diary 10:00pm Monday. The trouble with this process is that we HDs are working really hard researching, asking questions of ourselves and trying to change our behaviours but our NDs are just goinq along as usual, deep in denial avoiding anything to do with the subject. The frustration is killing me.
Tuesday 11:00am. High one day then incredibly low the next. Last night I thought she had started to read the book. She came downstairs with a shell-shocked look and snapped at me when I asked if she was OK. Later I asked her if she had read the book and she said no (she had actually been wathing a TV series about a couple splitting up). We had a long unconstructive though not particularly heated discussion. One valuable thing came out of it though. I told her that I score the love I feel for her at 8/10 and she told me she scores her love for me at 7/10 which I found quite encouraging. I told her that I felt that her love for me was 1/10 and she said that was the same for her. Now, I tell her I love her most days, I kiss and hug her often and I'd like to ML with her at least once a week. If I was receiving that amount of quite obvious visual, aural and physical love I would rate that at least 9/10 but she rates it as 1/10. We appear to be living in a completely different universe.
Tuesday 11:30am. I have been agonising over what to do. It is obvious that we are going to make no progress until we have a common set of ideas to work with. I believe that the book will provide some common ground to work with but she refuses to read it. I have to up the stakes to force her to confront her fears and read the book. I have packed my bag and am leaving her today.
Geeze, SuperDave. I know you've been dealing with this for 20 years, but you've only been here for about a week. Seems kind of rash to me that you're leaving her right now. Can't you at least give her an ultimatum first? Or suggest counseling (I don't particularly like counseling, for many reasons, but it works for some people).
I just hate the thought of you wandering the streets, getting hassled by a bobby, run over by a lorry, and all that rot.
I would say you are like MOST other relationships, your love languae is Physical Touch (Normal for a HD male) and her love language is probably something else, like Quality Time(normal for LD female). Have you read 5 Love Languages yet? This book helps to understand that people have different ways of wanting love. I would say that many women have very different love langauges from their husbands. The trick is to learn how the other spouses wants love given to them. If you give love to your spouse in a love language they do not speak, they basically will be getting no love from you. The only problem I have with this is that I think that "Physical Touch" EASILY has to be the hardest language to learn if you don't already speak it. The book alos has some sugggestions on how to fix a problem relationship. Give it a try!
