Quote: I have said in another post that LD women and LD men are two very very different critters...pardon the expression... women want different things in a relationship than men do..IMO. And again in my opinion women withhold sex as a tool to get their husbands to do what they want, when they want it. There are men on this message board who appear to be the exemplary husbands and they still can't get that physical connection with their wives.....
Both men and women have basic needs and lets face it one of them is sex...the degree is different but it is still there..... whether or not those needs are met shouldnt be based on whether you did the dishes or not.
What *some* women want and do doesn't help you (rhetorical you) and your specific relationship.
Men and women of good will in a relationship want similar things (warning, random incomplete list): honest communication (this does not mean "your ass looks huge or that shirt almost hides your gut" type comments) , a confident partner, a sense of being a team, enjoyment of each other's company, mutual respect, supportive of each other's interests & endeavors, being a priority to each other, loyalty -
Where it can start getting hairy, is *how* those things are expressed in a relationship and then enters miscommunication and all its attendant demons. <g>
Speaking for myself, I didn't have a list of household duties for NOP to perform. What I did have was the desire to be important to him. As time passed and I felt that I came somewhere down the list after career & hobbies, I emotionally withdrew and placed him low on my list of important things.
So now we each went up our own tree and only came down for the occasional frolic in the meadow and clashing of swords. By this time there was no "list of things" to do, because what had been broken was our connection, our relationship. It was that connection that had to be made again, and washing the dishes wasn't going to accomplish that.
What's my point? I guess my point is that women who are insisting that their husbands do XYZ household chore in exchange for sex have a screwed up *relationship* which *both* have damaged or they are manipulative hardazzes married to almost perfect, long-suffering spouses.
I'm guessing that the truth often lies somewhere in between those positions.
When anyone first arrives on boards such as these, we present our best foot forward. We tell things from our viewpoint. And we even leave things out of which we are well aware.
That little infidelity, those angry outbursts that verbally ripped the spouse to shreds, the 5 prior marriages, the 6-month separation, the repeated threats of divorce, those little indiscretions -
It's natural to not spill your guts or give expression to the things you did poorly. But one of the major difficulties in problematic relationships is that we already aren't seeing things from the "other side of the relationship". And how can we post that which we cannot see?
