Great post, Corri. I'm a charter member of the "I don't really have a preference" club. I'm working on that one.

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Atlanta Dave and the NOPs can chime in when I say this, but I think you will find that an SSM is not so much about HD/LD as it is about a slew of other things. It just appears that way on the surface. However, the 'just do it' approach is a good method for jump-starting the recovery phase.




I couldn't support this assertion more. I am finding that I *do* have sex drive. To the point of some distraction during the day. More so than in my youth. Who knew?

I see a danger in thinking that there is a single solution. Or attempting to understand it by assigning possible trauma:
childhood abuse, rape, emotional illness, physiological abnormalities, bad parenting. I think these do exist, but they may be more the exception than the rule. I know that NOP kept thinking that there must be some traumatic something from my past that would explain it. And ultimately all it was, was our broken relationship. The broken intimacy. The barriers we had erected to protect ourselves from each other. The inability to communicate and to hear what the other was saying. Bad interaction habits and poor behaviors that had become encrusted and solidified.

The "just do it" forces intimacy and the resultant confrontation when partners aren't willing to be. When a marriage has been sexually stilted long enough, ignoring it and hoping that it will get better isn't going to get good results. It takes loving confrontation on an ongoing basis. There is no one conversational breakthrough from which the problem is solved. There is no one incredible (or not so incredible) lovemaking session that will then issue in a new era of sexual satisfaction.

I cannot stress enough that it is a process. And Cemar, I am discovering that a LD wife can become higher drive. But someone must speak up. When NOP started addressing the problem, the underlying theme was "I cannot go on this way." That's what I heard. And as we progressed some I then said "I cannot go on this way". So, we both made some unforeseen and unexpected adjustments.

If I had been asked 5 years ago why I was LD, I don't think I would have been able to give a true answer. I would have blamed it on being physically disfunctional in some way. I would have recognized that my *unwillingness* was a function of my unhappiness in our relationship, but I blamed myself for being lacking in some way for not having desire.

But you don't have to know *before* you start the process. Starting the process will force you and your spouse to eventually confront and deal with the issues.

MrsNOP -