Quote: If you have been able to turn things around with your W before what helped then? Is it something you can try now.
Well that is just it. Yes - "I" have been able to turn things around - by getting us talking about it - and fixing things temporarily. When things are good...they are good for a while. I'm definitely in far better shape than some of the people on these boards who have had nothing but suffering for years on end. But deep down I get the feeling that as far as sex she can "take it or leave it" and it just doesn't mean to her what it does to me...and that...well I guess some guys would be happy and not worry about it as long as they were still "getting some"...but the lack of importance she places on it just HURTS. I'm the type that would take the time and trouble to read and try to apply a "book." She wouldn't. She might miss the "peripherals" that come with a good love live - like hugging and affection which I am in less of a mood to provide during those periods when things aren't going so well in that department...but deep down if my penis fell off and sex became impossible I don't think she'd mind a bit as long as I kept all the other elements of romance coming.
Some of my posts come through as angry and resentful - I got compared to Cemar in one post earlier. But there are honestly so many things I love about my wife aside from the sexual issues...I find it hard to direct my anger at her. What I DO find myself resenting and being very angry at is a world of marriage books that always place the blame on the husband. And I've seen many of them. I know all the things a "good husband" is supposed to do and I honestly work very hard at doing them. BUT WHERE ARE THE BOOKS THAT GIVE EQUAL TIME TO WHAT A GOOD WIFE IS SUPPOSED TO DO? WHERE'S THE BOOK THAT SAYS, "LADIES, IF YOU WANT YOUR HUSBAND TO FEEL GOOD ABOUT BEING ROMANTIC AND SPENDING HIS MONEY ON YOU, YOU'VE GOT TO EXPECT TO HAVE TO PUT OUT - FREQUENTLY!?" Not that she'd ever read such a book. Even if she did, I honestly think she could never really grasp how important not just having sex, but being sexually WANTED is to me. OK...now it's coming out. Maybe this is like lying on a therapist's couch (something I've never done in real life) - but - eureka - this thought just popped into my head as I started typing that last sentence: IT WOULD BE GREAT IF I could just withhold sex for a short period and see her get uncontrollably horny and have to have me. Not that I'd want to hurt her by doing this - just that it would thrill me to have her "miss me" SEXUALLY the way I "miss her" in the same way after only an equally short period. I have a fantasy of us somehow being able to put ourselves in each others' bodies for a week just so she could see what it's like to live behind a penis. "That would teach her!!!"
Well this is just one of those things that a woman like her and a man like me presumably will never perfectly understand about each other. She'll never understand what an HD male sex drive is like to live with, any more than I'll understand why after a hard day at the office she feels compelled to sit down as soon as she gets home - and GO ON talking about the office for hours on end. Geez...a guy gets home from work and wants to FORGET about work...not go on talking about it all night. Especially when he'd rather be spending that time pursuing more pleasurable...er...pursuits....
Well now I have given you a brief glimpse into another aspect of the issue. Our love life's in the balance and it's more important for her to waste precious time yacking about every intricacy of the interpersonal relationships of the women at the office. And this is somehow therapeutic for her and has to be done. (And the marriage books will back that up). Unfortuantely the marriage book authors don't have any sympathy for the feelings of the husband impaled in one of those endless one way conversations about nothing. Remember the old All In The Family Show where Edith would be going on and on and Archie would pantomime pulling out a rope, fashining it into a noose, and hanging himself? Unfortunately in the real world the husband has to do a convincing acting job in order to appear interested in these tales from the office...even while fantasizing being able to sneak away out of those conversations long enough to get into bed even if it's just to MASTURBATE before he's so worn out from the details of that convo that he wouldn't be able to get an erection for 10 years if he tried.
Oh, I see I've gotten carried away again. But the bottom line is this: I've put up with this sort of thing and made the effort to recognize her needs for these sorts of things and suffer through them. I'd be the one to read the books and follow the instructions. But she never would. It's just not as important a priority as it should be for her. And after a decade of this, I'm at a point where...right now...I'm burned out. If anyone is going to make the effort, it's going to have to be me, because she sure isn't. And ultimately I'm going to make the effort because it IS important enough for me. But right now, I'm just burned out. Give me a few days or weeks and I'll unburn eventually. Then things will be better for awhile.
I just wish I wasn't the one who had to do most of the work most of the time. I've been very patient with her with many other issues of her own for a long time...and I'm at a point where my patience has run out. I'm counting on that just being temporary. If she had HALF the interest in trying to better understand things from my point of view as I do of trying to understand hers, it would be a BIG help...
