Piecing.......

[may22]

Hi Steve,

I thought I'd bring this convo over to your thread:

May, very profound and well said. Though I do tend to disagree a bit here. SSM are rarely all one spouses fault. Maybe yours is in the rare category. But usually SSMs follow a similar path. The LD spouse starts avoiding, turning down, making excuses for not having sex. The HD spouse then gets bitter, angry, resentful and this causes them to behave in ways that further perpetuate the SSM. After all, the LD spouse is already struggling wanting sex, so when the HD becomes mean, short-tempered, stops helping with the kids and around the house, withdrawn, etc, the LD spouse now wants to have sex even less than they did before!

I didn't mean to say that it was 100% my fault-- I actually think we are equally to blame and we followed the exact path you lay out above. (Scary, really.) And PT is his primary LL, and it got to a point where anytime he touched me it felt like code for let's have sex, so I would flinch away. He's said, half- seriously, when we bought two couches for the TV room that was a major negative influence on our R, since we stopped cuddling on one couch to watch TV and instead each had our own.

Anyway, while I do think he bears responsibility (and we haven't really dug into this in therapy yet), I also totally own my part in it too. I didn't realize how important it was to him. I didn't realize what I was communicating to him with my actions. And I feel pretty badly when I put myself in his shoes. (Of course, none of this in any way excuses his behavior, and we also had other issues around communication, etc that need work.)

As the HD partner, I am always going to want sex more than my W. But what a difference the last 3 years since R have been. I dropped all the passive-aggressive, resentful behaviors over when she doesn't want to have sex. I remain the same upbeat, helpful, partner whether we had sex last night or whether we did not! And what a difference it makes. We now have sex quite regularly, but there are the odd time when she just isn't feeling up to it. But I do not let it change me being the best spouse that I can be! Our dynamic is 100% better because I don't act like a jerk about the occasional rejection.

Steve, this is so great! It's so funny. Before all this happened, my H would roll in after work, not really help with dinner or the kids (he'd do some but mostly in response to my requests, not taking the initiative to handle things himself). He'd lay around and watch TV or go into his office and do work and I felt like I handled the lion's share of all the household work (I worked full time too). Then when we went to bed he'd start rubbing my back for 30 seconds and be surprised when I wasn't leaping into his arms. I had fifty million things on my mind with the kids and work and he was basically behaving like a third child for me to manage-- that is NOT sexy. Now, sometimes I'll come home from work and he's already gotten the kids from school, is making dinner, doesn't let me help, says to put my feet up and brings me a cocktail. Now THAT is sexy. (As I reread this, it sounds like he is a 50s housewife... it isn't like that every day for sure. We're pretty equal partners generally and other days I do most of this same stuff. But he also knows that my job is higher stress than his and is willing to go above and beyond to give me a break when I need it, which is nice.)

Question for you-- did you guys have explicit conversations about the SSM and your desire to have more frequent sex? Or was this more like you just changed your response and she responded positively? Has it been pretty consistent since you've been piecing or have there been harder times?