Well, J, I will post some of it here since you asked...
Also I currently do not have a thread and I am being a superstitious freak and thinking that if I do not start one, I will not need one. Sortof the opposite of the Field of Dreams effect, lol.
I really made an effort this weekend to notice H's show of desire. Normally, I see them and discount them because they are SO subtle and SO tentative that it ends up making me feel angry instead of turned on! It's like he can't bring himself to really express his desire so he does these tiny things and hopes that I will instinctively know what he's up to. Which of course I do, but I really want him to be the one who lays it on the line, while I sit back and enjoy the feeling of being WANTED.
Then I realized that I might be pushing for something that may not materialize, kwim? So I mentally journaled when he did something that was clearly not affection but clearly not desire, and put a mark in the desire category anyway. To give you an example, he would come up to me and kiss me on the lips in a sort of open-mouthed peck. It was not a passionate kiss (with tongue, which I loooove) but it was not a granny peck either. And he would do it, say, three times in a row. I know this is his way of being passionate and so I am really trying to receive it graciously. To be honest, it doesn't do a whole lot for me sexually but I also have to realize that perhaps my style doesn't always sit well with him either.
All in all, the weekend was filled with lots of EC. We made love on Sat and Sun nite which surprised me, since we had our 18 mo old niece spending the entire weekend with us. In the past, this was more than enough to throw him off--he would not have been able to ML with someone else in the house and all the stress of attending to another child would have really increased the tiredness factor, etc.
But he really rose above this and we were close all weekend! In body and spirit. Truly I think the deciding factor was that I was pleasant all week long and happy and cheerful towards him. Really I am a cheerful person most of the time, but I DO get overwhelmed with little kids (one of whom is TWO, have I mentioned that, lol!!) and you can imagine what I feel like on some days. So I don't want to be some June Cleaver type who suppresses all my worries of the day and greets him with a smile, but nonetheless that IS what he responds to. I should mention that this is the type of person that he is. He has a high stress job and yet he never talks about his job and shows up every evening just as pleasant as can be.
So I think this is what works for himself, and he responds when I do it too. The ironic thing is that I feel much better when I am pleasant to him...the whole change your behavior and your feelings will follow. So the experiment continues...
So back to performance anxiety..you know this could be his real problem. Maybe he just feels like he isn't "enough" for you. Can you talk to him about it, in the moment? I think the hardest part for me is trying to GUESS what is going on in his head. I feel much better if I just ask what is going on; 99% of the time my interpretation was MUCH worse than the reality inside his head.
Did you ask him at the time that he was rubbing you if he would like to join in? If he said no, did he offer a reason? Did you ask afterwards why he didn't want to?
