Why Schnarch may not work for us

[NotATLDave]

Paul92,

From the Book of Corri 7:15....just kidding (I've been wanting to say that all day).

Where do I begin....

It's not your business to figure out why your wife is unenthusiastic about LM with you?

Nope..because it's not my problem to solve. What purpose does it serve? It only relieves anxiety and a differentiated person is inspired to not to seek anxiety relief from the R, but rather from himself. BUT, I always try to make myself available if she wants the help. I always end these convos with "...and if there is anything you need from me to feel better, etc, please let me know...otherwise, I will keep on keepin' on".

All you need from her is to "appear enthusiastic" (as opposed to actually having enthusiasm)? Now that you've told her this, won't you wonder if her enthusiasm is real or fake? Does it matter?

When I finally realized that her "love for me" is my perception, I stopped worrying about that...it only served the "other-validated" demon in me. For all I know, she hates me, but lately, she has convinced me that she really loves me though she might actually hate me or just like me or passionately love me...I will never know. I really don't care to know unless she decides to leave me. Once I understood that my "love for her" is based upon her personality, character, and behavior, I then realized that *I* needed her to be a certain way before I could love her...hence the 2x /week of enthusiastic sex. Worrying about whether they are faking or not is non-issue for me (now) because I (now) validate myself and don't need to know what she is feeling unless it's related to a sexual technique, but that's another story.

You imply that you don't care if she is having a good time or even wants to be there. Is that correct? Is that a legitimate PM message? Can you really feel connected with just the "appearance" of enthusiasm and eroticism? What do you mean by connected?

Sure I want her to be enjoying herself and I make sure that I'm being a conscientious lover. I have to be careful when I speak like this to not sound like I'm treating her like an object...I'm not. I'm being very loving and kind with my behavior. The psychology of this gets really complicated, hence PM's 400+ pages but I'll try to explain this....When I ask her to "be enthusiastic 2x / week" and she agrees, she will be sitting thinking "I crap, what have I just agreed to? How am I going to do that? Why shouldn't I be able to do that? I can do that!!". Granted, this thought process might take months but this is what they call a "crucible". You put a series of your needs and desires in front of your spouse. Then they are faced with 2 undesirable choices..."do it", or lose the love of their partner (or D etc). Their commitment to an undesirable option forces them to confront "why is this undesirable and how can I make it desirable?..after all, it's not unreasonable and my partner is a good person and deserves to be happy etc." This is the essence of constructing a crucible for your spouse. It's been easy in my sitch because my W has a hard time saying "no". I'll recap this at a further date. It's interesting stuff.

I'm just trying to figure this PM thing out. I'm still slogging through the book, sporadically. I hope I'm misreading what you're saying. My wife has no interest in sex with me, and I'd love to know why. Foolish?

That's the hardest thing to "rid" yourself of because it comes from an emotional-siamese-twin fusion thing...to want to know the inner workings of your spouse. A lot of us here are "fixers" and we think that knowing the problem will give us power to fix it. When I stopped wanting to open her up and see her problems (which I wouldn't be able to fix anyways...it would just piss her off), and simply raised the bar on what I expected from her, I lost all my anxiety about our problems and life became easy. Now she has committed to meet my desires and it's up to her to figure out how to do it.

...it wouldn't be enough unless I thought the show was real.

That's the whole point of demanding (at least) the "show". It's called "fake it till you make it". I promise that this works.

Gotta go. here she comes.