IHJ, I see tons of positives in your interaction with your H! I think it's great!
Quote: J: I am not okay with that. After you reject me, I really feel awful and I feel the caring thing to do is for you to make it up to me the next day.
Nothing was finalized, and we went to sleep. The next day, he calls me and says, " Let's find the time tonight to have some fun..I think you know what I mean."
So we did, in fact, ML last nite...it was very intimate, and I said to him that I feel close to him. He says back, "You don't have to have sex to feel close to me." I let that comment go, and we did experience a certain closeness, and afterwards he said that it really did feel so nice.
He heard you. He responded.
Quote: He doesn't equate ML with closeness. He doesn't view sex as just a way to relax from the stresses of life.
Don't focus so much on whether he sees sex the same way you do. It IS controlling to try to insist someone experience something the same way you do. Focus on the fact that he heard what you said about your feelings and he came through for you. I'm afraid that if you ignore or diminish the significance of this, you're going hurt your goals in the long run.
Finally, he's also telling you something that he may like to see from you.
Quote: He says back, "You don't have to have sex to feel close to me." I let that comment go, and we did experience a certain closeness
Perhaps he needs you to expand your own ways of feeling close to him. Sex is and may always be your favorite and the easiest for you. That's fine. If it seems like it is the only way and saying no to you is going to send you into a state, then he's going to experience pressure.
The way an "LD" spouse can move most quickly to addressing their spouse's needs is to be willing to acknowledge that sex for some people generates feelings of closeness rather than sex resulting from a sense of closeness. For the "HD" person, they can work on expanding their repetoire (sp?) for feeling close, start consciously looking for other times and ways that lead to connection and not diminishing their significance because they aren't SEX.
