Looking forward to the new year

[Painter]

This is a tremendously interesting discussion and I'm so glad Julie is happy hosting us!

BT, you definitely contribute! There's so many posts with different viewpoints here that it's hard to relate to everyone and answer everything I want to reply to, but I read your post with great interest.

Julie, you said: So when the desire is not there, it's basically a question of why and how to create that desire again.

That's what I try when I ask H for flowers... They make me feel like I am cherished, not just as a body, but as a person. It's not a trade, it's asking him to help me get in a romantic mood when my home is my workplace and we've been married for 15 years and are well into middle-age. My hormones just aren't what they used to be, and we're no longer in the first glow of our courtship.

We had an interesting convo tonight - about what happened after we had a great 'reconnecting' weekend before Christmas. We were giving each other what we wanted - but it very quickly stopped. He said I stopped. I feel he stopped. I don't know what happened, I know it felt like many times before, when he got what he wanted and quickly turned to focus on other things.

I asked him, you waited until the very last day of the weekend to buy me flowers, until we were out grocery shopping together, instead of getting them any of the previous days when you were out by yourself. Why was that? He smiled a little as if I had hit home, and said, "I really don't like to be told what to do." (He has not bought me flowers since.)
I felt like saying, 'You can be stubborn and proud, or you can be happy.'

Zues, it sounds like you are also saying what my H would say. 'I can do this but then there will just be other reasons.' 'There shouldn't be conditions.'

I think the reason you don't hear from women whose husbands overcame the 'conditions', is that they gave their wives what they needed in the first place, so their wives didn't even notice anything missing.

I feel like your comparison to feeding a child has some problems - it likens a grown man to a screaming child... someone who doesn't have the ability to realize that relationships are a two-way street.

Something I wonder: If you - as a man - go out to a bar, do you expect that some random woman should want to make love to you? Do you get upset if that doesn't happen? Or do you realize that you probably need to be nice to her, charm her, buy her dinner and a glass of wine (yes, maybe she wants to pay for it herself, but at least you offer), and maybe invest weeks and months, depending on her standards. Basically, jump through some hoops.

I don't expect H and I to have a good conversation or interaction unless I'm nice to him. If I want him to do something that's important to me, but that he might not particularly want to do on his own, I make an effort to be nice, charming, appealing and enticing. To me, that's actually divorce-busting. If I'm not the best I can be, why would he want to spend time with me? So that brings me to (and I'm sorry if I'm rambling, but this is ongoing thinking induced by an ice cream-high) - isn't expecting sex from your spouse without having to 'jump through hoops' the opposite of what DB'ing is about? At least when the hoops are held in the same place all the time? How can you realistically expect your spouse to want the same thing you want at the same time you want it?
(I should perhaps mention somewhere in here that the longest time H and I have gone without ML is 2 weeks. I don't know if that even qualifies as a SLM, he has been unhappy so I guess it's all about what your expectations are.)

I'm feeling overwhelmed and disorganized today so I may not be making much sense. I saw our MC and afterwards realized that I would probably like to separate. I talked to H about it briefly tonight.

The reason is that we just don't seem able to get past our issues. He says the reason he took up contact with OW again earlier this year is because he and I were having a difficult time. I honestly don't see where it was so bad. He had bailed from MC and wouldn't have any R talks.

I can't put all my heart and soul into a relationship with someone who only wants to be committed when things are good, and thinks that a difficult time lasting more than a week or two is an acceptable reason to reconnect in secret with last year's AP. I just don't think I can risk it again.