No, it is definitely NOT time to force her hand--at least not the way you intend to do it.
Look, I understand your ups and downs, I really do. But if you leave now, you are NOT giving her much room to work. What you are proposing is the ultimate power play. In essence, you are taking your ball and going home. It is very likely to backfire in your face.
My suggestion to you is to visit your doc and get yourself on some low level anti-depressants to even you out. They take about two weeks to kick in; you must, MUST understand that this situation is not going to fix itself overnight.
In the meantime, you both have a serious work to do on your assumptions regarding each other. This is where my H and I were at our very worst; I knew I loved him, he knew he loved me; but my perception of his level of love for me, and his perception of my level of love for him were very, very low. Let me tell you something, that one erroneous perception on both your parts will do more damage to your relationship than any other. And I swear, if you will believe me, I really think this is directly related to the amount of respect we hold for our spouses. If we don't respect our spouse, it is impossible for us to believe they could actually love us at level 10 of the 1-10 scale. Do you see?
Another thing you and your wife must learn, and you CAN do this together, is to have constructive arguments. I think what you must do with your wife, before you get her to read the book, is get her to agree with you that you both have work to do in order to improve the relationship. Start finding the small things to agree upon; i.e., we need to improve our relationship; we both have work to do; we need to improve communication; we need to trust one another more; we need to respect one another more -- do you see? At least have a conversation that you can agree upon these things, then END the conversation. You just need to decide on WHAT right now, not HOW.
You don't need to win the war right now; you need to get a few battles under your belt first, see?
Dave, I will say this for CeMar, he comes up with the most amazing references of anybody, bar none, on this site. Before giving your wife the SSM, I'd really take his advice and have your wife read the Five Love Languages. I think it would be much easier for her to digest, at least at this point.
It would be a minor victory, see? Get her to read a book, ANY book that will help her start moving toward improving the relationship. Just ask her if she'll read it. Go to Amazaon.com and print off a synopsis of the book (after the two of you agree that you need to work on your relationship), and ask her if she thinks this would be a book the two of you could read together.
Just try it. Yes, she could say no. And then you will have to TRY AGAIN, just like the rest of us. That is what life is about.
Tuesday 4:00pm. Thanks for all your concern everyone. I guess you are all wondering what is going on here. Well I wrote what I thought was a sensitive letter to her explaining how much I love her and want to be with her but that we needed to work together to resolve the imbalance we have. I asked her to read some of the book this afternoon then call me at work and I will come home and we can talk about how we go forward. If she did not have the time or inclination then I will stay at my parents until she has read some of it and is ready to talk. I threw some clothes etc. in a bag, put the letter in the kitchen where she is sure to see it and went to work. When I got to work I realised that my plan had one whopping great hole in it. I have promised to take my son to see a movie at 6pm tonight so I could not stay away and would have to go cap-in-hand, tail-between-my-legs back to a humiliating situation. I quickly raced back home, tore the letter up and in it's place, I cut out a paper heart and wrote on it something like "We can be happy if we work together" put it under a coffee cup and came back to work mighty relieved. CeMar, I have ordered the 5 Love Languages so that's yet more psychobabble to freak her out with SD
Tearing up the message was a good thing, your second message was better. THINK TEAM EFFORT. You want to work with the wife, not tell her what she needs to do. So goal #1 is to find out if she is interested in making a Great Marriage. Do not discuss ANY issues. Do not have any agenda, and make sure that ALL issues are fair game for fixing. The objective is a GREAT MARRIAGE, nothing else at this point. And remember, this is a TEAM effort.
Wednesday 11:00am. As it happens I got home before her yesterday and my paper heart with it's message was still under the coffee cup. It had been moved though so D16 must have looked at it. Good job the message wasn't a bit "fruity"! This morning I did a great big pile of ironing before going to work and left the paper heart on it. I hope she likes it. I suggested to her last night, that we try to "make an appointment" to talk every Friday night about us and I think she was OK with that. Fridays seem to be the only evenings that are free-ish. I have decided to leave the sex subject off the agenda for now and instead concentrate on building a GREAT MARRIAGE as CeMar suggests. I have a feeling that my hands off approach is paying off. It is really hard to do though. This morning she was sitting at the breakfast bar and she looked so gorgeous in her pink fluffy jumper that it took all my will power not to squeeze her around the waist. I didn't though and when she left for work she leant towards me for a kiss rather than just offer me her cheek. It doesn't sound like much but it gave me a very welcome "instance of delight". A more cheerful SD.
SD: Man, I hear you. It is really hard to keep my hands off of my wife at times. I tell myself, "be cool, Hairdog. She doesn't dig the hands-on approach right now, because she's reading the mail." And then, like your wife did, she'll walk by and stop...turn around, and hug me. It's the little things.
hairdog, Reading a book like SSM throws all your emotions into the air all of a sudden. You go from being fairly miserable and trying to accept that life is never going to turn out the way you dreamed into hugely optimistic that there is a chance. The book says do 180s and try the opposite. OK our wives are ND but hang on they might not be. Just say we have an HD score of 10/10 and they score only 1/10. We don't give them a chance to show us that 1 because there is never a time when we are not reaching for them. Simplifying it a lot, say for every 10 times we initiate some kind of contact they initiate only 1. We don't notice their efforts because they are so tiny in comparison and they probably feel that their own efforts are unnoticed. What if you stop giving your 10? That 1 then becomes much more obvious and because you see it you feel better and that reflects back. In my case this morning I felt that she showed me love because she moved to kiss me goodbye. The kiss was still only on the cheek but it was closer to lips than ears. I have felt great all day because of it. What if I had put my arms around her at breakfast and probably massaged her shoulders too. She would have had enough contact for one day and would have rushed out of the house with barely a peck. I am going to keep going with this strategy. Who knows, the weekend could be very interesting! SD
Thursday 4:30am. Had another discussion with W last night which started off OK, got heated then ended OK-ish. She really doesn't want to talk about this. She said she'd prefer to talk downstairs rather than in bed but it's difficult to talk about this stuff while teenagers are around and the TV is on. She did say (through gritted teeth) that she will read the book though. I suggested that we try to ML every Friday (ie, Just Do It) for 2 months as a trial. She tried to haggle me to once per month but we've tried that and it's not regular enough to become habit forming. I'm hoping that after a few weeks it won't be such a big deal and that she will just accept that Fridays are ML days without lengthy negotiations every time. SD
I have learned this the hardway. It is not a good time to talk about touchy subjects in bed with a tired women. This is the worst time to have serious discussions because both spouses will be GRUMPY. You need to do it earlier , like over dinner at a nice resturant. You want to keep it cival!!!
Also, about the frequency. The effect of lack of sexual frequency has the opposite effect among HD men and LD females. As the frequency for sex declines, the HD mans' desire for sex will INCREASE. For a LD female, as frequency declines, so will her DESIRE for sex. So literally, not having sex will cause the LD women to want it even LESS!!! If she wiches to increase whatever desire she has, she needs to practice sex a lot. Literally, she needs PRACTICE to find what is the BEST way to have sex with the LEAST amount of effort. Think about things that you are not very good at, if you do them often, you build up more confidence in what you are doing and then you won't avoid doing it the next time.
Now, how to convince a ND woman that lots of sex will actually prime her desire pump, and she may actually start wanting sex!
