Never knew I was LD until I got married

[NotATLDave]

Hey CN, welcome aboard but sorry you are having trouble in your R!

It's really great to have you here because there has been very few LD folks on this board lately. Just by coming here, you are displaying an incredible act of "giving" to your relationship and your H should feel very lucky.

Anyway, from the sound of your sitch, I would have sworn you were my W. It sounds frightenly familiar to many of us HD folks.

As far as advice goes, it would really help to know more about your situation. How long have you been married? Did you ever have a higher desire/drive? Have you ruled out physical / hormonal issues? It might help to read recent posts from Corri, Aquarian, and eyesopened. Corri seemed to make some progress to the point where she stopped journaling, Aquarian is still working through things and occasionally visits, and eyesopened has become excessively proactive in her M with oodles of remorse and a "just do it" anytime approach.

There are books which discuss ways to boost the libido up. Most of them say the same thing..."more sex, more MB, more fantasizing, taking ownership of your own sexuality, getting in touch with your womanhood etc." It all depends on who you want to listen to and what you think your problem is. Most of these approaches assume that the LD spouse is mildly out of sync with the sex and tremendously out of sync with "connectedness". It seems to be the other way around where the "connectedness" is good (in the mind of the LD) but the sex is dramatically out of sync. Again, more info will clarify this and give us the insight required to give you some things to explore.

As an HD, I can ramble on all day about the "lack of connection" I feel towards my W and the fear I have when I really want to be physically close but am too scared to make myself vulnerable to rejection. Then, when she does agree to ML, there is so much pressure on me because I go into the experience resentful that it has been so long since the last LM session. I also want to prolong it and have it be great. It has absolutely nothing to with horniness because I take care of that myself. It's about wanting to warm my heart up with love for her. It's about seeing her as a "woman" instead of mom. Its about having a couple hours a week where I don't feel like a dad, provider, protector, landlord, parent, etc...I feel like a "lover". It's about wanting to start "fresh" every few days by dissolving the stress of disagreements through closeness. It's about celebrating marriage though the one thing that is uniquely special to being married. It's about seeing a retired couple, holding hands on the beach and being optimistic instead of thinking "where will I find someone to grow old with".

It's about getting my "love" and "appreciation" back to a level where I'm not questioning my commitment to her. This is was what brought me here...I had a "golden" opportunity to have a sexual experience outside the marriage. Over the years I used to imagine this exact scenario and then question how I would handle it. Over 10 years of our SSM, it gradually went from "why even think about that...never ever would I do that" to "yes...if I wouldn't get caught". I even started putting myself into situations where this could occur because feeling "desired" was such a buzz (for wrong reasons that I'm addressing now). Finally, when faced with this opportunity, I wussed out because I 1) realized that I "should be" desirable to my W and 2) realized that I hadn't done any work to improve her desire for me and it wouldn't be fair of me to cheat now without first giving her the chance to meet my needs.

For our 5 yr. anniversary, my W had a message inscribed inside my wedding ring that basically says "grow old with me...the best is yet to be". I'm having a very hard time believing it, even with the progress we are making. I pray that one day, I will look at her and think "she was right, these are great times and I'm the luckiest guy in the world".

I hope my sharing this info helped some. I'm not sure if I'm anything like your H but I bet he shares at least a couple feelings. As you post, we will try to help you sort out what feelings are valid in terms of a healthy relationship. There are a few of us who have done some pretty intense studying of Dr. David Schnarch's books and feel like he's got a good idea about the inner-workings of relationships and how to handle them.

Good luck.