Quote: I have been reading the posts on this board for some time and I am trying to figure out if a HD spouse can really love a ND Spouse - particularly a ND spouse that firmly believes that it is perfectly acceptable to be ND.
I've been reading through this fascinating thread.
I think that a lot of words in this thread can mean many different things. Particularly the words "love" and "acceptable". And I'd like to say something about defensiveness...
Clearly it's possible to really love someone that you are not having sex with. I really love my three daughters, and my relationship with them has never been sexual. I also love my father, my mother, and various close friends with whom I have never been sexually intimate. So if you are asking if it is possible to have a loving, caring, sharing relationship with someone you aren't having sex with, I think the answer is straightforward.
But I'm not married to my daughters. I *am* married to my wife. And there's a kind of intimacy that comes with marriage and sex. So I'm chronically frustrated because I so desperately want that kind of intimacy with my wife.
If my wife were physically impaired, e.g. if she were amputated from the belly button on down and her jaw were wired shut, then I think the questions would again be clearer. It would be easy to see that I have to accept her the way she is, that I can't change her, and this all falls under the clause "in sickness and in health".
But there is no obvious physical impairment, we are married, and I have no idea how much of this is psychological and how much is physical. Neither does she. And we both have a lot of fears and questions. I love my wife, and the only wife I can really love is the one I have, as she is. But I don't have to like everything about the way she is, and there's no law saying we can't be frustrated by the ones we love.
But it's scary and confusing. I mean, if my love for my wife makes me want sexual intimacy, and she doesn't want sexual intimacy, does that mean she doesn't love me the way I love her? Is there some deep psychological syndrome that damns us to eternal celibacy? Over time, I've come to think it's not worth worrying about those things so much, it's more important to go for walks, hold hands, and find ways to communicate my love.
Enough for love. Now let's talk about "accept" - I think this word is related to the following question.
Quote: Why should I feel like I'm broken and need to be fixed?
In our society, anybody who is not having sex with their spouse probably feels blamed by everything they see in the media, including films and women's magazines, and if they share this with anybody, they probably find that people just don't know how to deal with it. Especially the LD spouse is likely to feel broken, and to feel like everyone wants to fix them.
For my wife, it's been really important to know that I would love her even if we don't get this fixed. Until we talked that out, she was not willing to have the courage to try. After all, what if we try to work things out and determine that we simply aren't going to fix this problem - does that mean we can't be married anymore? I think that has been a big fear with her.
I do think we HDs need to work hard to share our needs in a non-blaming way, and to communicate our love even when things aren't working on the sexual front.
Also, I'd stay away from framing this as "the way she is". Not having sex is not about "the way she is", it's about "what the two of you aren't doing but you really wish you were." You love her the way she is, and you love her in a way that makes you want to be sexually intimate with her. You would love to have sex with her "the way she is". This doesn't seem to be working. How can the two of you make progress here?
Not having sex is a difficulty the two of you are having, not your wife's fundamental identity.
