I think I had the pressure cooker on so long that I didn't realize that I was preventing the very thing I was seeking--his demonstrable desire. I had to let up in order for him to be able to give it a try. BUT, I had to wait for the right time. If I had done that from the beginning he would have promptly done nothing and that would have been that.
Like you said, it was minor on my end...then a minor change on his end...etc. So imperceptible, in fact, that I hardly noticed it happening and can only see it in retrospect.
We continue to change and negotiate our relationship, but the atmosphere is much better. More like a diplomatic summit somewhere over in Europe rather than a hillbilly WWF match.
JJ posted this to me on Corri's thread, but I'm moving it here:
Quote: My H and I have felt that passionate soul baring feeling from time to time as we've gone through this process. I think it's necessary, but you can't stay there forever or continuously. You have to use the knowledge or intimacy you gain from revealing yourself to your spouse to build something that will last through minor financial crises, weeks of boring commutes, cranky teenagers or gloomy days. This is the level on which my H and I have failed.
I believe this is the absolute crux of the matter.
This is what the NOPs and IHJ write about. They have managed to make the intimaty/emotional connection and as Mrs. NOP put it so well somewhere (sorry, can't keep threads straight sometimes), the HD/LD difference has become less apparent.
JJ, you say this is where you and your husband have failed. My question is: why? You said that y'all "have felt that passionate soul baring feeling from time to time," and of course we all know that you can't feel it constantly and every minute of the day, but the Schanrch-y approach AND the WWME approach is to create a structure in which that feeling can predictably appear on a regular basis. Not every day necessarily, but not randomly either. When the NOPs get into bed every night, they confront each other and prepare to meet... even if the connectivity doesn't happen every single time, they have enough confidence and experience by now to know that it is there and will be there and will be felt often enough to see them through the other times.
I think it's too superficial to reduce your marital crisis to "I'm HD and he's LD and for our marriage to work one or both of us will have to compromise in a way that damages our integrity."
There are couples who have great sex but little intimacy or emotional connection. Sometimes they split, and you hear, "The sex was great, but we just didn't have anything in common outside the bedroom, and the sex wasn't enough to keep us together." Frankly, that lover that I had for years was great, but we weren't in love, and I never would have married him. There were times when we really connected physically and I wanted to cry out,"I love you," but I knew I couldn't, because it was just a feeling rooted (as it were) in the moment. I wanted to be in love AND have great sex. <sigh>
I would like it if some of the HD men on the board could imagine what it would be like if they woke up tomorrow morning and found themselves married to a 300 lb. woman who looked like Rush Limbaugh. How high would their drive be then? It doesn't matter whether it is the chicken or the egg. The fact is that either I am too unattractive by virtue of my physical appearance or personality to "turn on" my H or he is too LD to be turned on by my reasonable attractive appearance or personality. Because he is a finicky LD man to him I am unattractive much of the time. It doesn't matter if I try to be a nice wife and do nice things for him for the same reason that it wouldn't matter if the 300 lb. Rush wife did nice things for the HD guys. It's hard to feel sexual attraction for someone simply based on their niceness. It doesn't matter that I know that I am reasonably attractive. I don't look reasonably attractive to my finicky husband. Except that after a few weeks have gone by and his testosterone has reached a higher level than his finickyness and then I start to look attractive to him.
His current POV is that I am unwilling to do my part to address the problem in our marriage because I won't accept the fact that he is finicky/LD and do whatever is necessary to make myself attractive to the point that I would appeal enough to even someone as finicky as him that he would want to have sex with me 2x a week. He told me this morning that if I am not willing to do that then I either really don't care that much about sex or I don't care that much about our relationship. He says he's done all he can do to fix the problem by taking his herbal sex supplements.
BTW- He also told me that I am exacerbating the problem by belonging to this BB because talking about our sex problem probably makes me more HD.
AAAAAARGH!!!!
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
Also, when I told him that he was finally succeeding in making me angry enough to feel LD, he said "Oh baby don't kid yourself. I could get you going in less than 5 minutes and you know it.". I think I may have to choose to kill him rather than divorce him.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
Jenny, the point I have been trying to make is that it isn't about your appearance!!! It's about the fact that you have not discovered a way to make and sustain an intimate connection. For you two, it's not about turning him on or frequency or level of passion. Those things BRING people together, but to SUSTAIN the R, there needs to be a real intimate, soul-to-soul connection. No, not every minute of every day, but running in the background and tapped into with some regularity.
JJ, I see enough passion here to possibly save this marriage IF the two of you have the guts and willingness to crawl into the curcible NOT over the issue of HD/LD but over the issue of why you have to keep making it about HD/LD.
He is clearly angry at you for trying to make him into something he is not. You are angry because he seems to be withholding something so easy to give that would make you happy. That anger is something to work with. Anger is right next door to passionate love.
If you can both put down the weapons and take off the masks, you might fall deeply and nakedly in love-- and then I think the mechanical details of who initiated more and whose O's went off the chart would become completely irrelevant.
Quote: If you can both put down the weapons and take off the masks, you might fall deeply and nakedly in love-- and then I think the mechanical details of who initiated more and whose O's went off the chart would become completely irrelevant
I think you're both right and wrong. I think what you are talking about is possible but it doesn't last. We would be right back to annoying the cr*p out of each other and hurting each others feelings with our finicky LD vs. carefree HD ways in about 3 days and then we would both get depressed. This is our pattern because we are f*cking INCOMPATIBLE! Our sexual incompatibility is just the tip of the iceberg. We are like Felix Unger and Oscar Madison. Our whole lifestyles are incompatible. Just about the only thing we have in common is our kids. We NEVER would have gotten married if he didn't knock me up.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
justjenny, in fear of being confrontational, and incuring your wrath, I had to post here with a few observations. When you complain about your husband, many here jump on the opportunity to bash him, calling him dickhead etc. This is the kind of facilitating Michele warns about, when there is trouble in marriage, and one persons friend advizes him/her on what they think he/she wants to hear, or just to make them feel more comfortable. If you two are disagreeing, oh yes, he is a jerk. if you two are getting along, well he is adorable. Well, you two do have children, so again, as Michele wrote, and I quote: When kids are involved, Divorce isn't an option to an unhappy marriage: fixing it is.. sorry, but my children are rapidly becoming unfortunate pawns in my Separation, I am not using them this way, but they are. Can you find additives to help your HSD, like toys? seems my W favoured these to me, during the last months before the Separation. Again, sorry if I stepped on any toes, but I dislike the mob mentality. People calling your Husband dickhead isn't fair, they don't know him, and after all, you did have sex with him, and got married. when casting mud at someone, you get a little on yourself as well.
