SD Diary, Saturday morning Marriage is a leap of faith. I did not live with my wife before we married and our restricted premarital loving contact was passionate and intense. Being young I assumed the dream would last forever but marriage brings new pressures to bear. Two strong minded people suddenly thrown together in their new home each with their own hopes, desires, standards and habits. With no relationship skills or training, is it any wonder that the dream evaporates and in its place grows a long destructive power struggle. One competitor retains a high desire but their blindness to the subtle needs of the other causes that competitor to lose their desire. These things become impossible to talk about and solve so the stalemate continues with frustration, irritation and resentment growing as the years pass by. Eventually one or both must change but can the change be engineered by studying books, shedding bad habits and manipulating love languages? I’m not sure, I have a feeling that at some point in time it will just happen. Those of you who are familiar with my situation know that I have a “Just do it” arrangement with my wife and that love day is Friday. Well, last night we went to bed and I cuddled up to her and caressed her a bit but I realised that I was feeling no desire whatsoever. I moved her hand so it rested on my arm hoping that if she stroked me a little, desire would flood in. Nothing happened. After a while I knew I would not be able to take it any further and told her I didn’t feel like it. She was not bothered either, so we had a brief talk about everyday things and went to sleep. In the morning I woke up and lay there a while. Under normal circumstances I would feel waves of love and desire sweeping through my body, as that is the way I am. However this morning I felt none of it. I felt ND. I’m not saying it was a bad feeling because the waves of desire also carry frustration and disappointment with them. It was more like a state of relaxation – I couldn’t care less that I was ND. When my wife woke up I said that I seemed to have lost my desire last night and I don’t seem to have got it back this morning. She said, “Just because you have no desire it doesn’t mean that you have no love”. Maybe, but it’s a poor quality love compared to what I’m used to. Sadly, I think the resolution to most SSMs is that the HD goes ND and not the other way round. SD
SD, don't be too quick to think of your current way-of-feeling as permanent, or even long-term. No doubt you could chose to make it so, but I doubt you will. You're just in a funk at the moment - it happens to all of us. When you read the post I'm about to make, you may think I'm being hypocritical, tho... (new thread about to start)
There is only so much cr#p that HD men can take from their LD wives. I find my desire for my wife fading, but I do not find the desire for sex fading at all. Think of it this way, Why would you desire a women that has little to no desire for you? Honestly, why would a HD man want to actually spend time with a women that has no physical desire for him? Marriage to a LD women can seem so POINTLESS. And yet here I stay in that kind of marriage hoping somehow for a breakthrough. But I tell you, it is so easy for my eyes and brain to start wandering.
SD Diary Monday afternoon. Feeling despondent today after a dull weekend and still feeling no desire whatsoever and no flashes of sex drive at all. My leaning is to give the project a rest for a while. I keep thinking back to last Friday night where I made my move driven purely by the need to keep the project moving forward. My move was not rejected but was received with total indifference. For the first time in my life I was caressing my W yet feeling nothing. Through this ND state I was able to view the situation objectively and realised that sex where only one partner participates is not making love. If making love is two partners participating, sharing and enjoying love together then we have never had that. At no time in our entire relationship has she ever laid a hand on my body or given anything of herself for my pleasure other than lying back and thinking of England. I do not believe that she is capable of experiencing even a fleeting flash of desire for me. Yes she is my best friend and the mother of my children so must I just accept the hand I have been dealt? SD
Quote: I do not believe that she is capable of experiencing even a fleeting flash of desire for me. Yes she is my best friend and the mother of my children so must I just accept the hand I have been dealt?
SD - NO!!! Do NOT accept... do NOT give up. Get PM and READ it. Then READ it again. Seriously... this is NOT pop psychobabble - this is REAL!
Tim, You've become a great friend and I hear your enthusiasm but I daren't get myself worked up and excited about yet another panacea book. I have kind of taken a fall lately. SuperDave doesn’t feel too super at the moment so he's just "SD". He thought he was making progress but it was an illusion fuelled by the over eager consumption of psychobabble. One partner gains a head full of ideas but the other partner remains at the same low level of activity. The enthusiasm of the one causes barriers and resistance in the other. Actually that is not entirely fair. I suggested she try your quiz and sent her an email of all of my answers and my score (19). She told me she scored 26. Initially I was pleased that she had done the quiz but now I am consumed by the fact that she scored higher than me meaning I please her even less than she pleases me… I tried to get her to go through the answers with me so I could learn where I am going wrong but she was not prepared to do that. This morning in bed I felt compelled to give her a cuddle and although I am trying to resist these urges so as not to overcrowd her I did cuddle her and gently massage her and told her how much I love her. It was nice and I felt she thought it nice too. I said something about wanting to do better at making her happy and she got cross saying that I always spoil things. I want to do the right thing but I’m at a loss to know how at the moment. If I had someone who cuddled me and told me she loves me would I feel pressured and irritable too? SD
SD, just because you're in a slump and feeling down, don't expect me to follow you. Sorry, but you won't dampen my enthusiasm, because it doesn't come from the place you apparently think it does. Sorry to hear about your current downturn, but please do read PM before you pass judgement on it. If you can read it from front to back and still call it psychobabble, then I'll respect your opinion even if I don't share it.
As for that test, I'm no longer really certain what it shows, exactly. It appears to show that you and your W are much closer together than me and my W, yet I'm the one here filled with optimism. Does that tell you something?
Well you've sold it to me Tim. I've just ordered it from Amazon. One reason for my melancholy is that for the last few days I have been reading the best selling novel The Star of the Sea by Joseph O'Connor. It's a story based on the Irish potato famine and emigration of the 1840s so is by no means a feel good book but a "must read" for everyone of Irish descent though. I will bounce back in a day or two no doubt. SD
I'm sorry you are feeling crappy. But once again, I can't help but concur with tim and tell you to read PM. I promise we are not associated with the publisher or author. I knocked out 65 more pages last night and today I'm a different person than I was yesterday. It's the weirdest thing and it feels "right on". Actually it feels like a dark cloud has lifted. It's completely different from all the other books and it really will turn everything you've read and "thought you knew" upside down. It completely invalidates almost everything you've already read and learned on this site. If you look at the anger and frustration in my original posts and look at where I am now, you will see the difference. I was Cemar's clone a couple months ago and wanted to be a WWH. It was very close (a couple of those trips to DC were voluntary because I wanted to get away). Now I'm not only feeling like we are going to not get a D, but I feel like we have a great opportunity to get more out of life than raising our D5.
It's probably good that you read all the other stuff first because PM will unravel it all. He refers to other types of therapy and how wrong they are (and these are the ideas that are sitting in most of our frontal lobes right now). I can't even attempt to explain it because I couldn't do it the justice it deserves in 1 post.
Here, I'l get really geeky for you...... Did you see Matrix Revolutions? Doesn't life feel a bit like the scene where the sentinels breeched the gates of Zion in a mad swarm of metal with all of this anxiety and uncertainty? PM is essentially an EMP....it will literally "stop" all this craziness we have been feeling and give you a chance and instruction to develop a new strategy.
Anywhere is walking distance if you have the time
-Steven Wright
