"I will not continue to live in a sexless relationship."
This is a boundary. You control the enforcement. The consequence is, you will kick your H out of the house in X amount of time if he continues to treat you in such a manner. The consequence defines the boundary. When X amount of time passes, and he has not changed, you kick his butt out.
Nowhere are you defining how he must act, nor how quickly. Everything that is defined here is about YOU.
So, what is the difference between a boundary (good) and an ultimatum (bad)? What if I were to say "I will not continue to live in a marriage in which I don't have sex at least twice a week unless there is a true emergency. If I find myself to still be in a marriage in which this is not happening on March 21st, I will ask you to start looking for your own apartment".
Of course, I would have to add "I will not have sex with anyone who treats me with disrespect, so disrespectful attempts to have sex with me will fail and therefore will not count towards the twice weekly sex I require."
Do I get a gold star or the dunce cap in Boundaries 101?
Quote: FYI, when I said the other day that it would be more loving of me to leave my spouse because I'm afraid he'll never be happy in a sexual relationship with me... that was complete and utter garbage, and I was in the midst of a full-blow pity party because I felt so overwhelmed. Please disregard.
Yeah, I know. That's why I pointed out to you that my H was thinking that way. You are a brave, brave soul to stay on this BB where you must have to keep telling yourself "Not all LD's are the same. Not all LD's are the same." when confronted with the tales of my H or Ms.HD.
BTW- I was thinking about your posts about having sex when you're in the mood vs. not in the mood. Believe it or not, I am sometimes not in the mood and sometimes my H approaches me when I'm not in the mood. So, I was trying to figure out what I did to get myself in the mood on those occasions and I realized I usually just sort of automatically make myself think about one aspect of sex that I particularly enjoy. Usually for me this would be breast stimulation or my latest fantasy activity. The analogy for this would be if I wasn't particularly hungry or thinking about food and my H approached me and asked if I wanted to go out to eat. I would sort of automatically scan the menus of local restaurants in my mind until I came up with something that seemed tasty even though I wasn't particularly hungry. So on a high sex drive day I would say "Yeah. I'm starving. I don't care where we eat. Slurpees and hotdogs from the 7-11 sounds great.". On a low sex drive day I would say "Okay, but would it be alright if we went to Cafe X because they have that salad I really like.". I guess I'm giving you this info because I feel like this is something I am in the mental habit of doing that doesn't have anything to do with hormone levels kind of the equivalent of how a runner psychs herself up for a race.
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?" - Mary Oliver
