Quote: I didn't mean to discount you or speak for you. I'm not nearly as "nasty" as you think. I just get desperate when I feel someone is discounting and not listening to me.
I don't think *you* are nasty. I think it a thought process that is nasty. "You only X because of Y."
It negates the person speaking to you and it negates their input.
It can leave the "discounter" intellectually lazy, because they think have addressed an issue, proved a point, and all they did was undermine/attack the messenger.
It is exemplified by a LD person telling their spouse, "you only do/say/feel that because you are horny."
End of discussion. End of understanding.
And the HD person is left there, knowing that they have been discounted, that their needs have been dismissed, that once again their heart has not been heard.
Because "they only X because of Y."
It is a pi$$-poor lonely place to be and any individual who is seeking understanding should guard against projecting it onto another person.
Quote:
I apologize for and heavy-handed way I may have expressed my passionate feelings about this subject.
Thank you for clarifying that every little thing does not have to fall into the love language to make it your love language. I do see what you are saying and it makes me feel not so alienated or freakish to the fact that I can not find one that I feel really fills my tank up very far.
Maybe I am over analizing and trying to be to logical in my throught process when I am reviewing the languages.
Lil,
You asked me a question and I am going to answer it first with your own.
Let's turn that the other way. What if your boyfriend seldom spent time with you. What if there was no garden work, no choir, no trips, no weekend visits, no church, no dinners, little or no interaction on a daily basis. What if he just showed up at 9pm each night, wanted sex and then left? Lil your answer
No question about it-- I would cease to feel special or loved if ALL he wanted was sex.
Okay so I have the sitch Mrs Nop asked about. I have no real relationship. No activies or interreations that I hold in a fond place with my H on a daily basis or weekly basis. But he still wants sex all the time. So you throw out the he leaves afterward and you pretty much have my life in a nut shell. Though you yourself do not think this would leave you feeling special or loved think about it long term forever and always. Truely think about how it would make you feel if every contact you had with your BF was in the realm of sexual contact how it would make you feel I would wager a guess what you now seek as a positive from your BF would become a negative. It would not build your self esteem but take away from it. To feel you can only be loved when your pants are down I don't see where that can be a self esteem builder.
Lil you are a smart educated lady and I am sure your boyfriend sees you as such. But what if none of that mattered what if nothing you have accomplished in your life mattered to him what if he never encouraged you to grow or speak or even take a bath as long as you were ready eager and willing when ever he was hard. I guess you would feel self esteem up the gazoo right? I think you might actually start feeling like it would not matter if you were a illiterate backwoods creature as long as you had been taught to [censored].
My H is not a monster and I am no puritan I am overly stating actions but not feelings. When sex is a focal point in a marriage to the HD it feels as if you have to chase I understand that you feel deprieved But as a LD that chase can become overwhelming and make your mind go to places that I just described and you start running as if it were for your life.
Chrissy, you said earlier that your self esteem derives in no way from your H's sexual desire for you. But you have an H who pursues you for sex a lot, so how do you know your self esteem is in no way connected to that? You say that if he stopped pursuing you sexually it would not harm your self esteem at all... but I question that. I think you might very well have the reaction that Jen is describing
Simply put I see no way of deriving self worth or self esteem from someone I lack respect for.
My marriage is a hollow shell and I am a invisable being within it. The only thing that my R contains is my H's sexual desire, no friendship, no dreams,no common goals.
And I am nothing more then His wife. No person. In my R Chrissy is a imaginary entity that only lives within my mind. Sorta of like the imaginary lumberjack guy people pass around the board.
So where you say *You say that if he stopped pursuing you sexually it would not harm your self esteem at all... but I question that*. I say go ahead and question it but I am pretty sure I know how I feel about the subject.
And as to the same reaction that Jen had well yes I may think someone else is in the picture after awhile knowing my H the way I do. But since I do not derive a sense of being attractive from my H I do not think he can take from what he does not give so I will pass on that one. And upset no like I said before I feel it would be a chance to build a real relationship not just a sexual one.
You two are in a grocery store full of food, you are satiated, even stuffed, and you cannot imagine what it is to starve... to long to look at your partner and hope so badly see that twinkle in his eye, whether or not he reaches for you physically
Okay Lil I will conceed from a HD viewpoint it looks like I am living in a grocery store and I should be satisfied.
But from where I stand this grocery store offers food of no substance and while it is all around me I am starving to death. The food I crave is not sexual desire so what is offered to me is nothing better then rot. And though I do not long to see a twinkle in my H eye based on sexual desire. I do long to see when one based on love humanity compassion or interest.
Lil word of caution here. and you cannot imagine what it is to starve these words stated as such are you telling me what I can or cannot know. These are words that leave you open to be slammed as in you presuming to know how another feels.
I do know how it feels to starve Lil, I just starve for different things then you do. I am interested in knowing what you starve for. I am interested in your opionions and questions. I do not discount your statements I just do not always agree in whole with them. Nor do you mine. I don't ever want you to feel I am attacking you it is not my purpose. Nor do I believe it is Mrs Nop's but when you ask for a LD perspective you need to be open to the answer you recieve. It will not always validate what you think that is why we are different. But it does not mean we cannot learn from each other. Believe me I have learned alot in my short time here.
Chrissy, if all my bf wanted from me was sex, I would feel devalued, no question about it. That does seem to be the sitch you are in. That is NOT the sitch I am in. Clearly by bf does value me, and we have a very good life with more shared interests and values than I have ever had with anyone. I can't figure out why there is no sex.
As for my saying that you can't imagine starving... I think you misunderstood me: I'm NOT saying you should be satisfied. Did you hear that? If all your H wants from you is sex, there is NO WAY I would expect you to be satisfied. The sitch you describe is not a healthy, nuturing, growth-supporting sitch. I don't know where you got the idea that I said you should be satisfied with a husband who wants only sex and with whom you share not much else that matters to you. What I meant is that when someone DOES want sex from you all the time, to the extent that it becomes a nuisance to you, and only reminds you of all the other aspects of your R that are lacking, it might be hard to imagine how you would feel about yourself if they stopped wanting even that from you.
You say you have no respect for your H. In that case, were he to stop desiring you, it might very well have no effect at all on you.
But I wanted to go back to something Mrs. NOP said that has really gotten me thinking. I don't have her post up on the screen in front of me so I'll do my best to paraphrase it-- she said that there are things that the LD person wants as much as the HD person wants sex and the lack of these things hurts the LD person as much as the lack of sex hurts the HD person.
This is making me wonder what my bf wants from me that I am not "delivering." Not that I expect that if I started "delivering" whatever it is, he would suddenly want sex... and "delivering" is a bad word, because it is so product-oriented... but I wonder how he is hurting because of something I'm doing or not doing in the same way I'm hurting because of his not reaching out to me sexually?
As I've said before (ad nauseam), I'm pretty satisfied with the R in general. We share stuff and are connected in values and lifestyle things in a way that I haven't been with anyone else. I'm assuming he feels the same way, and that he's not "withholding sex" as a way of punishing me or leveraging some other behavior that he wants to see from me. He seems really happy-- happier than he's ever been.
And then-- in that way I have -- I start speculating... what is it that Mrs. GGB wants, and Mrs. Hairdog, and Mr. GEL, and Mr Karen, and Mr. Honeypot, and Mrs. Lou, and Mrs. IHJ-- in what way are these LD spouses hurting and wishing that their spouse would "come through for them"? (Well, we know that Mrs. Lou just wants Lou to sell all the stuff in the garage on eBay. )
I wonder how I'm hurting him and letting him down all the while I'm focusing on my own hurt?
This was a very interesting exchange and has a lot in it for us all to learn from.
Strangely enough, Mrs. Nop, my family does the monkey thing too. H doesn't find my "picking at him" to be an endearing quality so I have had to curb those behaviors.
I have also had to curb my sexual impulses. Curbing my natural impulses with someone I love does make me feel like roomates sometimes. A roomate is someone with whom you have various "lines" drawn around the relationship.
However, I really disagreed with this statement of yours: ___________________________________________________________
Why would we want to equate the marital relationship that Chrissy or I might want as "just roommates"? Sex for me is an extension of the relationship. It isn't the leading component. It isn't the defining component. ___________________________________________________________
The part that I struggle with in this description is assuming that HD people do not see sex as an extention of the R. I certainly do. I have been both LD and HD within two different relationships. I was LD because of the lack of respect AND the lack of intimacy in other areas. As the HD spouse I see sex as the natural extension of the intimacy that we share in other areas. Sex alone absolutely doesn't "do it" for me. Sex with H whom I love, respect, share a life and various intimacies with does it for me.
Sex isn't a leading nor a defining component but having a natural give and take of sexual and non-sexual components of the relationship makes it much richer and more satisfying for me.
As far as what Mr.Gel wants from me....from what I, Mr.Gel, and our C think....really he is satisfied. We, I believe, are dealing with something just a tad different than a few of you on here....much of what Mr.Gel and I are dealing with is his past, it's conditioning, it's a lack of confidence sexually on his part, and it's a lack of trust on his part. When I say a lack of trust, I don't mean he doesn't trust ME per-say...I mean he doesn't trust that if he suddenly begins to fulfill my needs that there's not a moving scale on those needs. Part of him (at least this is what our C and I think) believes he doesn't trust that if he starts fulfilling my needs sexually that I won't suddenly turn the tables on him and begin withholding sex from him, out of the lbue....like he's used to other women from his past doing; those women either berated him or completely withheld sex. Now, logically he knows that's not who I am, that's not how I operate...but reprogramming himself the way he reacts to me is really our issue for the most part. Sure, we've had plenty of communication issues too, but we're dealing with those....and have pretty much come to the last thing that we need to deal with....and that is figuring out whe he withholds, emotionally & physically.
Our C believes that he truly is happy in our R and that's where part of our problems lay....he's happy, so he has no real motivation for addressing some of the problems. No motivation that is until I set a very firm boundary of either this is addressed and improved....or I will eventually be gone. Now, he seems to be listening....now, he seems to be making some real efforts....finally. But it did take me getting it through to him that he truly did have something, quite a bit actually, to lose.
I have asked my H exactly that question. H is there something that you are unhappy with in this R? Is there something I could do or stop doing that would make this a safer, happier, better M for you? Mind you this is not a conversation in which I brought up the sex issue at all.
H's reply? No. Honey, you are wonderful and I appreciate everything you do and I trust that you are doing the best that you can and believe that I am doing so also. But..... we have all of these things (laundry list of life things - kids, money, chores, work) that make me exhausted, drained and emotionally frustrated. I feel like I am failing in some of these areas and it is really hard for me. Sometimes he has also said that he feels "alone" - I asked why. It is because he feels that as the husband he should tackle all of this stuff on his own.
I sometimes think my H isn't so much LD as he is anxious about both sex and other stuff and it just keeps him from acting on sexual feelings or maybe even noticing sexual feelings sometimes. I think that his anxieties take away from his enjoyment of this relationship and from life in general.
Ms. Hdog's list of wants (remember, we had to both do this for the counselor) had items like "stay within budget" "give me my space" "don't make sexual demands of me" "continue on a spiritual journey with me". In our last meeting, she admitted that I was basically fulfilling all of her requests.
Is she happy? As happy as she can be, probably. The deal is, it just doesn't matter. She will continue to use excuses to get out of sex: too stressed, too hot, too tired.
There is no secret code. There is no magical cure. There is nothing but the crushing reality that this is the way things will be.
Somewhat pessimistic view, but a lot closer to reality than any other view I've had.
I appreciate the y'all's (yes that IS a real word ) comments, now that Mrs NOP and I are sitting on stools in the corner with wet towels over our faces. I agree that this has been an extremely enlightening and helpful exchange.
GEL wrote
Quote: much of what Mr.Gel and I are dealing with is his past, it's conditioning, it's a lack of confidence sexually on his part, and it's a lack of trust on his part. When I say a lack of trust, I don't mean he doesn't trust ME per-say...I mean he doesn't trust that if he suddenly begins to fulfill my needs that there's not a moving scale on those needs.
This "moving target" thing echoes what some of the HD men on this board have quoted their Ws as saying. But the result of these Ws trying to hit the moving target is (as their Hs have described it) that "he will never be satisfied," which is a slightly different twist on your prediction of your Hs reluctance to take a shot at the moving target, namely, that you will leave the game once he cocks <ahem> and aims his weapon (as it were ).
Just an observation-- you know me, always looking for patterns.
Quote: But I wanted to go back to something Mrs. NOP said that has really gotten me thinking. I don't have her post up on the screen in front of me so I'll do my best to paraphrase it-- she said that there are things that the LD person wants as much as the HD person wants sex and the lack of these things hurts the LD person as much as the lack of sex hurts the HD person.
This is making me wonder what my bf wants from me that I am not "delivering." Not that I expect that if I started "delivering" whatever it is, he would suddenly want sex... and "delivering" is a bad word, because it is so product-oriented... but I wonder how he is hurting because of something I'm doing or not doing in the same way I'm hurting because of his not reaching out to me sexually?
I don't think that this would fit everyone's situation.
There really are people who are self-centered enough that they can't see the needs of their HD spouse. There are folks that have had sexual abuse in their past. There are folks with illnesses - mental, emotional, physical. There are folks who go by the "if I don't feel it, I don't have to do anything about it". There are folks who don't handle stress well, and feel that they are doing all they can do to keep afloat - and sexual urges are dropped as non-essentials. There are folks who are just outright cruel. There are folks who were the prince or princess as children and can't imagine past their own expectations/limitations.
Your boyfriend may not be lacking anything but a sex drive. He may be crushed, hurt, angry or indifferent to his ED. His only issue with the relationship may be that you don't accept him as he is - no drive (or too sensitive to the ED issue that he prefers to ignore it).
It doesn't hurt to consider that your spouse may be having issues with you and the relationship. In the cases where that applies, I think that most people, given enough thought could pinpoint their spouse's issues (for the spouse's who have been able to express anger and/or disagreement) - it will be those issues that were recurring or which were expressed with the most emotional output.
I hear what you are saying...but what my H is doing with me is projecting his past on to me, which is a hard habit for him to break, it took years for him to learn to behave this way.
See in the past my H was the HD partner in the R...his xw would be what CeMar might call ND...so no matter how LD my H is in our R, he was the HD in that R. What he is doing in our is projecting an expected behavior, the behavior he experienced in the past from his xw, on to me. And he doesn't trust that I won't do what the x did.....so conciously or subconciously he's not letting me do that by simply not giving in and withholding what it is I'm asking for.
Does that make sense? Everytime I try to explain it it sounds so jumbled.
-- I start speculating... what is it that Mrs. GGB wants, and Mrs. Hairdog, and Mr. GEL, and Mr Karen, and Mr. Honeypot, and Mrs. Lou, and Mrs. IHJ-- in what way are these LD spouses hurting and wishing that their spouse would "come through for them"? (Well, we know that Mrs. Lou just wants Lou to sell all the stuff in the garage on eBay. 
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) comments, now that Mrs NOP and I are sitting on stools in the corner with wet towels over our faces. I agree that this has been an extremely enlightening and helpful exchange. 
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