Quote: Personally, I would rather hear an honest "I am giving up because I want to" out of him than his blaming you or his sex drive for a bad choice.
I am a stickler for facing one's own responsibility. He is avoiding his.
To give him some credit, I think he's been saying this too. He told me he doesn't want to commit to having sex with me 2 or 3 times a week because then he would be anxious about sex all the time and the sex would become mechanical and unappealing. So he is making a choice, he would rather leave than experience anxious and unpleasant feelings about not wanting sex.
I feel like I've probably made some bad moves along the way. Perhaps I should have tried to be less offended by his unenthusiastic scheduled sex attempts. I can't explain but these encounters made me feel like he wasn't treating me with respect. Lack of desire in the sexual setting is one thing, but lack of respect in the sexual setting is something I'll never be HD enough to tolerate. Okay I guess I answered my own question.
The other wrong move I might have made was talking about how I've always been HD. Why should he try to be less LD if I claim that I can't be less HD? I sort of handed him the "born that way and can't change" argument on a silver platter.
I wish someone would temporarily relieve me of personal responsibility and promise me that someday soon I will be happy and sexual.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
I hate to see you hurting, although there's probably nothing that can stop the hurting right now. Even if your H made another "turn-around commitment", how could you trust that it was real?
I understand why you're saying everything that you are, but I'd like to present something for you to consider. There is absolutely no way that you should be feeling like or calling yourself a failure in this! Feeling LD right now is understandable, but you being HD is NOT what has caused this sitch, IMO. You are the same person that you've always been. You're just more aware of who you are now, and a better person for it.
Here are the choices that your H has given you: 1. Aim at an ever changing target to get him to act differently to meet your needs. (IOW, make yourself crazy while getting no results.) 2. Be satisfied that he will never meet (nor show interest in meeting) your needs. (Go LD and like it.) 3. Realize that your other choices are cheeseless tunnels and remove yourself from his control.
I'm the last person alive to favor D, but there are cases where there's nothing else you can do. I think your H has created that situation for you.
You didn't create this, Jen. And it doesn't work well (for long) to deny who you are.
Last week, your H decided what you both were going to do (D). You were able to change that because it pertained to you. This week, though, he's declared what HE will not do. You can't change that. It's his choice, and pertains only to him.
I know this isn't much consolation right now, and you may not even want to think about it. But I do hope you'll store it away for future consideration.
We all admire you for doing the work on yourself that you've done. Please guard yourself from feeling like you've failed. YOU haven't failed. Your H has. Unfortunately, it hurts your whole family.
He shut me down immediately saying that there was nothing that was going to change the way he is and he has no interest in sharing "his business" with anyone.
So he's officially defined himself with that statement and put the ball back in your court.
jj: "So, you are absolutely certain that this is YOU?" H: "yes" JJ: "are you certain?" H: "yes" jj: "it really hurts me to learn this about you and I'm sorry if my response hurts you, but I don't think I can love someone who feels that way...this is a big problem. If you were willing to meet me half way on this, I'd be thrilled but it sounds like you don't want to do any work. So, in light of that, I might lose the weight and get a makeover, but there's not going to be a guarantee that it will be for you. Sleep on that for a bit...I'm going to go make a sandwich".
Seriously Jen,
I'm sorry for all this crap he's putting you through.
-dave
Anywhere is walking distance if you have the time
-Steven Wright
There's at least a faint possibility that once you're not married any more (assuming things go that far) that he will become a lot more HD. Marriage does strange things to people's minds.
When we first went to the C, she told us that one of the principles of the "crucible" approach is that you're stuck in there with no escape, so you HAVE to work things out. For me personally, the prospect of No Escape is NOT motivating. I've been married twice and been in one other live-in R (in that one we did blend our finances and households), and I feel a LOT more motivated in this R, knowing that every day I make a conscious choice to stay and work on it. If we were married... I think I'd feel trapped.
So it's possible that not being married may make him feel like he has the option of choosing to be HD (which, Corri's comments notwithstanding), I believe he can choose to be. When you're married and you're telling him "this is how it has to be" it doesn't always have the desired motivating effect. Just my 2c. This isn't over yet... I was going to say "the fat lady hasn't sung yet," but thought better of it.
BTW regarding attractiveness and its effect on your partner's desire, my BF made the astonishing statement that before the twins were born (they're 16 now), his wife's breasts were beautiful, and after the twins, they became ugly, and it affected their sex life. <sigh>
I posted some thoughts on Corri's thread and by summarizing them here I am taking my own personal responsibility for the fact that my marriage may be ending. Basically, my H and I are giving each other the following messages.
JJ: Please do me a favor and have sex with me more often than you naturally want to but do not act like you are doing me a favor.
H: If you want me to not be doing you a favor by having sex more often with you, you are going to have to be more seductive, but don't make it obvious that you are trying to be more seductive because that makes it less seductive.
We have even discussed the fact that we are asking these impossible things of each other in a mature way and still haven't been able to resolve the issue. For instance, my H said to me "I know it must suck to feel like you're making me do something I don't want to do.".
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
I feel like the only way I can accommodate the fact that I have a LDH is by either adjusting my sex drive lower or by adjusting my sexual/gender identity to more aggressive/masculine/seductive. I am having great difficulty making either of these accommodations. This is my problem not my H's.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
I have the same sexual "orientation" as you: a higher sex drive than my H and the desire to feel feminine by being aggressively pursued.
I have had to sort out what is "other validation" from H for my sexiness vs. focusing on making intimate connections with the man that I love. I wasn't able to really enjoy laying down with H to enjoy the intimacy of our bodies until I got a hanlde on the other validation.I admit that I do need some of the other validation stuff, as manifested by compliments from H, an aggressive initiation, his being hard, etc. These things turn me on; the amount my H provides of this will always be less than the amount I want. Intellectually, I have had to come up with a reasonable frequency where this need would be met. Part of the reason I have this need is because of past rejection by H, so there is part of me that holds him "responsible." It creats a never-ending cycle...the rejection fuels the need for other-validation.
Right now your H is tearing down your self worth and while he continues to do this all bets are off. You will never get to a place of receiving a decent amt of validation because he wipes it away. The lack of respect has to be addressed first.
Perhaps a separation is what he needs to truly see his destructive patterns. We all need a minimal core of other validation.
However, I can live with being assertively pursued. Even assertively pursued on every other day. Ok, are you getting the point that I am willing to compromise?! But I just can't seem to find any amount of sexual desire for a namby pamby man who sorta wants sex but not enough to do anything about it. In other words, I can't ditch the cultural notions that make me who I am--a female. Part of what I have learned about being a female is that men desire women. I can't UNLEARN this. In the interest of staying in a happy marriage, I have tried.
Now that I have backed off considerably, he is getting much more aggressive. I wish I had done this sooner, but I don't know that I would recommend it as a strategy to everyone--I can see that it wouldn't work with all LDH's. I am enjoying the positive change, though, and find myself 'ready' much more quickly.
Quote: But I just can't seem to find any amount of sexual desire for a namby pamby man who sorta wants sex but not enough to do anything about it.
I have had to explain to my H that the namby-pamby thing doesn't work ( no, I did not use those words, lol). He's told me that his "style" is different than what I need...he likes to ease his way into feeling sexual rather than going for it, which is all well and fine, but I realized that I had the "right" to want to feel turned on. The fact that he has been able to make some adjustments really has meant a lot to me...he is not just self-absorbed in what makes it work for him and my needs are now in the picture. This has had the effect of letting me back off which makes him feel less pressure. I have become content with what he is giving ( well ,more or less).
These are all such minor things, minor adjustments, yet it has taken us so long to get here.
