I hope that I don't say anything inappopriate here. I appolgize if I do. Just searching for a solution. My husband doesn't have near the sex drive that I do. He says that I put a lot of pressure on him because I want it so often and he doesn't. A lot of the time I feel I am just not attractive to him and that is the reason. Right now I want to try the approach of just letting him be and allowing him to have his low sex drive and try not to hold resentments because It might not be me even though I feel that way. What I want to know is by doing this I thought that I would just take care of my own sexual needs and not look to him for that. Where I struggle is I am always afraid to do so because what if I do then he wants to and I have already met my needs myself. Also I feel like he takes care of himself instead of coming to me. But because of his lower sex drive than mine when he does want to I want to be ready and not discourage him.. How do I take care of my needs without bothering him but be ready when he wants to. Then again sometimes I feel like I have worked so hard to do what ever I can to help our sex life and he knows I am so readily available that it makes it easier for him to wait until he's ready. Should I quit putting in so much effort and take care of myself and when he wants to tell him I am not up for it. I guess what I am saying is there is no chase with me because I am almost always ready I am reaching my peek and feel the desire much more often. Sorry if I don't make sense I just don't know how to ask what I am trying to ask I guess.. I am new here so any advice would be greatly appreciated..
Hello Smiles, My whole marriage life my situation has been the opposite. W could care less if we ever ML. I can not speak to the this directly because you are a F and I a M. But, I know from my own situation there is no way I could cut out the ML and not feel resentment. It is something I have tried to do repeadidly and it ALWAYS ends in a fight and anger. When you receive posts from others, I will be interested in seeing how others feel about this.
Take care of yourself. If he comes to you (too) soon afterwards tell him "not today. How about tomorrow?" Believe me. He won't be the first husband who's been turned down.
Moving into theory and speculation here, I believe that a woman's sex drive tends to go in cycles often driven by her monthly cycle so there are fluctuations in your desire. I have found that after sex, as a man, that desire steadily increases for a few days. If no more sex happens the desire does not go down.
This is to say that if you turned down your H he'll likely be just as interested the next day.
Smiles, Can you give us more info? How much of a discrepancy is there in your drives? That is, do you want it every day and he wants it 1x per month? If that is the case, then waiting around for him to make a move might not be the best option. If you want it 2x per week and he wants it once, then I can see where your dilemma lies.
I think that honest communication is really the ONLY way to resolve a sexual problem. I know there is a tendency among the HD partner to not say anything for fear of rocking the boat and turning them even further away. And from the LD perspective I see a tendency to not say anything in the erroneous belief that if you don't bring it up, it will go away.
You might want to sit him down and have a frank talk about it. Tell him that 3 times a week is your preferred frequency (or whatever it is) and that lately you have been wanting to take care of your own needs, so as not to pressure him. BUT if this is the route you take, then he must understand that there will be nights when you are unavailable to him. And ask if that is an acceptable agreement to him.
Personally I see this arrangement taking you two farther away from each other and potentially setting up a situation where you each MB because it is less fraught with tension and aggravation. But it might work!
And it might help the situation to have him know FULL WELL that you are mbating because he is not living up to his end of bargain. I think that sometimes the LD partner needs to see and understand clearly the consequences of their decision to not be available on a frequent basis to their partner. You see a lot of times that the LD person has an awakening if their spouse moves out, or has an affair, or even if they pull away emotionally.
I would have to guess that as long as all of his needs are being met in the marriage, that he will not be motivated to work on this with you. Maybe if he understood that you not initiating does NOT mean that you are not sexually active, he would be motivated to join in with you.
Tom, In an HD guy I suspect you'd be right. An LD guy would have a much harder time recovering from rejection.
You might find it helpful to think of your LD wife when thinking about the LD husbands here. For instance, if your wife came to you and initiated and you had just mbated so you had to turn her down, how would she react? Leaving aside hormones and all that, she would most likely be devastated and hurt and resentful.
Now, before you say it, yes I KNOW that this scenario would never happen b/c you would probably be either dead from shock or you would recover just fine and give her the ride of her life, but it is an analogy!!
If I reject him he will not approach me the next night. It seems to kinda kill whatever desire he had going for me. (which I am guessing would be the case for your LD wife..whatever desire she may have been acting on would have been eradicated by a single rejection)
Oh and one more thing: My h's desire increases for a few days, culminating in a horny period after about a week of no sex, then after that it goes drastically down and to the point where it might be a month or longer before he even thinks of it.
There are a lot of complicated issues in there. You're going to fit right in.
First of all, it's not your fault that your desire levels are different. The first thing is that assuming that your H isn't gay or isn't intentionally using sex (or lack of it) to punish you, you need to accept is that you simply have different desire levels. It's not that you're unattractive. It's not that you're undesireable. You're sex drives are just at different levels. You did't say how bad the problem really is, just that you're HD and he's LD - both relative terms. I'm assuming from other things you've said that you do ML at least once in a while.
The next issue is taking care of your own needs, and you've raised multiple issues there. If you believe that he feels pressured and that the pressure is contributing to his not wanting sex, then backing off and taking care of your own needs may be a viable stopgap. What catches my attention though is your statement that you're afraid you'll do that, then he'll be interested, and you won't. Simple question: would you be unable to respond?
You say that you feel like he takes care of himself instead of coming to you. Do you know that? We have an entirely different issue here if the LD partner is not only LD, but also directing that lower desire somewhere else other than to you. In a case like that there's more going on than a simple difference in levels of desire.
I won't wade into the issue of turning him down when HE wants it. That one's way too sticky for me.
Quote: Now, before you say it, yes I KNOW that this scenario would never happen b/c you would probably be either dead from shock or you would recover just fine and give her the ride of her life, but it is an analogy!!
You got that one dead to rights! And it has happened.
If it is so important to Smiles then she could "just do it."
She mentioned something about not feeling attractive. It is oh so true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. For example, my SIL is an attractive woman - but I cringe whenever I see her. When my W was 9 months pregnant I wanted her more than ever.
But I hear you about not feeling attractive. My W most definiately doesn't want me. It kinda eats at your self-esteem.
Well I am not Smiles, but I will take a stab here. She is nervous that if she mbates and then her H approaches her and they have sex, that she will not be able to come. Doesn't sound like that big of a deal but if it were to happen even a handful of times, her H might drop his desire level even WAY further.
Just substitute your LDW in place of the LDH in the above scenario and I'm sure you can see how it would play out in your house, too. Many LD spouses have an attitude of "I'm doing this for you" so if you don't respond and have an orgasm they would be disinclined to try again.
And yes the self esteem goes in the toilet. I don't think I have ever felt so bad about myself as I did after I found out that H had been intentionally avoiding me for 4 years. In my mind, I had built it up to be a "he doesn't realize how long it's been" or something like that. To find out that he DID know and was doing it on purpose was crushing. I guess I had always thought that I was irresistable to him and it turns out, I wasn't.
It took many years of regular sex (and lots of contrition from him! lol) in order for me to be able to see myself as a sexual person again and one who is attractive and appealing.
Thanks everyone here for the great advice. And yes honeypot I see a lot of similarities with our situations. Please bear with me I am new and it will take a bit to get to know everyone although I appreciate greatly that you all have taken time to post and share with me because I am at a loss and don't know what to do.. Let's see well when we do ML I only have the big "O" 1 out of 5 times with him. He is quick and doesn't use much FP so I think that is partially why I have a higher drive. I also think it might be subconcious. This is my second marriage and we have only been married less than a year, together for 3. I was with my first H 8 years and he never lost that desire actually the tables were turned because he wanted it so much I lost some intrest also it was an absive realtionship and so when he treated me badly and later wanted to ML I didn't want to because of the emotional part. Now in my current marriage there hasn't been a lot of expression of his desrie for me and he prefers that I intiate and I get tired I want him to come to me and let me know he wants me too and he isn't doing it out of mercy. I have trouble because I am still trying to accept the fact that most men mbate and he is going to at times I take this as a sign of rejection especailly because he doesn't want to as often with me. He would probably be happy with once a week and me about 3-4 times a week. Now if I felt attractive to him I might not want it as much if that makes sense. And yes I do worry if I take care of myself and he does want to do something and I turn him down he will be discouraged to want to later or anytime soon and I feel like I better take it while I can get it.. ;-) I could still be with him even if I did mbate and have but I tend to be dry and worry he will know and then again be discouraged. I don't know this seems like such a touchy area in our marriage I feel like if I had no SD then we would be fine otherwise. And I have talked to him about how I feel about being rejected and worrying about him pleasing himself but not about me pleasing myself I guess I should I just worry about discouraging and making things worse. All input is greatly appreciated.. Have I left any questions unanswered?
