First, I would like to thank steve85 for letting us hijack your thread. Let us know if we should take this discussion back to BL42 thread.
Also I would like to thank Sage for sharing the female perspective.
Originally Posted by Sage4
This is a fascinating conversation and I wanted to add some thoughts from a female perspective.....I didn’t feel like the hot young thing he was initially attracted to and to relive our hot and heavy days, I needed to be lured back to that mental landscape. He was too easy and available. 3. Sex felt like a chore ....The remedy was to inject a little bit of the pursuer/distancer dynamic into the R. It wasn’t enough that he stopped asking it of me, I needed to feel that I was going to lose him. His confidence spiraled and that made it even more unattractive to me. I wanted someone to dominate me, be the strong, manly, knight in shining armor, sweeping me away from the mundane. He leaned on me to be the caretaker of him not only physically, but emotionally, which was a turnoff. Women approach sexuality from their minds, not their nethers. We require a certain headspace to get into that sexual place.
Originally Posted by BL42
My question is what do you think caused the drop off in sex initially? Why do you think your sex life was "off the charts" while dating to "Almost immediately she started to lose her interest in sex"? .... And how to I improve myself and/or see the red flags for next time?
BL42, Others have given you good insight. Take a look at what I put in bold from Sage4. Use that as the foundation for your new understanding. Turning a woman on is easy. It is about how she FEELS in your presence. It is about SURPRISE and EXCITEMENT. There is a balance between attraction and seduction.
Read as much as you can about every area that you would like to improve. Decide what beliefs and behaviors are no longer working for you and which new ones you would like to have. Completely reinvent yourself if you want.
R2C, obviously the dynamics involved in a SSM are very complex. So much so that entire books are written about the subject!
But I think the fundamentals are found in a quote that I have learned to be so true:
"Women marry a man hoping he'll change. Men marry a woman hoping she won't."
There in lies the rub. Women tolerate a lot from men, even during dating. Thinking, "once we are married he won't spend so much time hunting, going out with the guys, being a momma's boy, etc." Men think their GF is perfect the way she is, so when after the wedding suddenly the 3-5 times a week having sex turns into 1 or 2 times (or less), and that she is now insisting he not spend so much time hunting, going out with the guys, and being a momma's boy, he feels suckered.
She went into the marriage expecting that there would changes after marriage, he goes in thinking everything will be exactly like it was before. That gets the ball rolling on the resentment, frustration, and malaise. She sits at home wishing he were different. He goes out to escape wishing things hadn't changed. And the ball just rolls further down hill from there.
I've watched this dynamic play out many times. Sometimes it takes years. Sometimes it takes mere months or weeks. The fact is that each went into the marriage expecting different things. And then the couple thinks, individually, "once we have kids then things will smooth out!" FAMOUS LAST WORDS.......................
Last edited by Steve85; 11/18/2002:12 PM.
M(53), W(54),D(19) M-23, T-25 Bomb Drop - Dec.23, 2017 Ring and Piecing since March 2018
