More of the same and frankly my libido is toast at this point too. I have no desire to pursue someone who lets absolutely everything get in the way of pursuing me. I'm not mad. I'm not resentful. I just kinda don't care again.
Some nice man in the convenience store said, "Oh, here you go honey and poured a cup of coffee for me when he saw the baby on the hip of my nice business suit and heels." I could tell that he thought I was a nice looking lady. I'm not gonna have an affair or anything but I guess that is where my sexual compliments are going to come from more often than not - other men. I guess I just ask too much of my H. He isn't other men and he's not me. He isn't the kind of guy that gives a lot of physical compliments. He isn't the guy who wants sex all the time. He isn't as emotional a person as I am nor as overtly sexual. Well, I married him not a male me and not another man. Guess I'll be getting used to things being this way.
Awesome. Now focus on the positive, and remember what you like. Hve fun when its fun, forgive when its not perfect. Let go. Its not the giddyness of being in love--its real LOVE. This attitude will cause things to improve. He will feel the lack of expectation and things will get better. There is a long flat spot and then a slow rise.
At least its what happened to me when I feel out of love, and got it it back. It just got deeper and deeper. Journeys journal is kicking azz today.
I wish I felt positive as you seem to. I just feel a little numb. In my H's world getting a peanut butter sandwich rates above me on most days. Smearing the pb on my body and having some fun is not ever in the picture.
Is it real love? I love him. What he seems to feel for me is kind of like the person with excellent dietary control who allows themselves a chocolate bar once/month. They keep it in their drawer until their treat day rolls around. Then they get get the candy bar out, savor it a little but not too long since they've been waiting for a month and eat it knowing that they arent' willing to have another candy bar for another month. If they had the candy more frequently they might need to change other things - watch calories, exercise harder etc... Instead they just have that one a month. I am an occasional indulgence to my H. My sexual needs seem to be incidental and sometimes an outright annoyance. I know actual couples who experience real love, with all its ups and downs and have regular sex too.
Here's what baffles me about H. He has always maintained that he feels desire for me.
I said, H that's like saying I really AM hungry but never stopping to eat. Another person would look at you and say, You're not THAT hungry or you'd go get something to eat.
His desire is a flicker..a small thing that he feels..that is easily ignored.
I am trying to come to terms with that and accept it, but it is NOT like coming to terms with the fact that your mate leaves the toothpaste cap off.
Smearing the pb on my body and having some fun is not ever in the picture. I am shocked and offended by this graphic discription. What kind of board is this? J/K.
Have you told him this analogy? Has he been married before? some guys get hurt and go overboard in there protecting themselves from getting hurt again by trying to prevent activities where they will fall too in-love hence not-in-control. It works just the opposite OF COURSE, and I could be wayyyyyy off but when I get a flash I spit it out there and see what it shakes up.
We're nothing if not specific on this board. Glad it entertained you.
I have told H some similar things but like HP says my H's desire is but a flicker, easily ignored. Last weekend when he liked the way I looked in a tank top and shorts he was able to make a sexy comment but no sex followed and still hasn't. If I had been him I would have gone for a quickie in the laundry room since I was on my way out the door.
My H has never been married and never lived with a woman prior to us getting married 2 years ago. He was a virgin until he was 30 and had only 2 sexual partners prior to me. He isn't a guy who has been hurt by prior girlfriends or sexual relationships but he has been hurt emotionally by one woman. His Mom.
I do think he tries to control how "in love" he feels. I think it scares him to want me too much.
Mrs GGB seems to be the female counterpart to K's and HP's H's. Her response to the pb on the body (or anything else edible) is that it is gross, and there is no way its gonna happen. Karen, I know exactly the place you are in right now, as I am smack dab in the middle of it too. If you figure a way out of it, please do tell. I can't imagine going through the rest of my life accepting mediocrity, but at the same time, I can't imagine my life without MrsGGB. At the moment, I am just trying to feel something.
I'm taking the classic cure right now. I'm throwing myself into other things - work, house, childrearing etc... Whatever means that I don't have to keep the R on the forefront of my brain. It sucks and I don't like it but there it is. H is gearing up for some heavy training on Saturday. He will be sore and tired and sex will be out of the question. What do you wanna bet that we won't be getting any tonight? Or that I could if I wanted to do the whole seduction scene, bring all the desire and get around the always sexy, "I'm so tired."
I don’t know if maybe something is going around right now or what, but I’m in much the same place the two of you are. I’m not as bad off as HP, but I feel myself sliding that direction.
I don’t want to rehash my entire history yet again, but hitting the highlights seems important to my current state of mind. If you remember, I had twenty eight and a half years of SSM. We had little or no sex during that entire time. We had “the talk” many times and W promised to try harder, but it never happened. We spent more time and money than I care to think about on MC, which netted some, but not much improvement. Then somewhere around fifteen months ago, out of the blue, we went from having IC once or twice a year, to just about every week. We talked. I told W how important it was to me. I told her how much better I felt about her, about the M, and about myself. I still would have preferred two or three times a week, but in all honesty, I was so thrilled with once a week that I didn’t feel any desire to push for more.
Then two or three months ago, just as suddenly as things changed for the better, they changed back. I’ve tried initiating every way I know how. I’ve asked. And although I didn’t bring up JJ’s biker bar (which wouldn’t work for me anyway), I have said in a very unambiguous way that I wanted to ML. It’s all fallen on deaf ears.
There are a number of things bothering me about all of this, and surprisingly enough, lackanookie is the least of them. The biggest thing is that I simply don’t understand. It started just like switching on a light switch, and after ruminating on it on this board, I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. It still bothered me that there was no explanation forthcoming as to why we went from once every five or six months to once a week, but as long as it kept up, I wasn’t going to complain. Well now, it’s stopped just like someone shut off that same light switch. And although it wasn’t intentional when I started with the light switch metaphor, it was obviously appropriate, because my number one complaint right now is that I’m in the dark – again. I’ve also had an entire thread discussing W’s unwillingness to respond to me in discussions about anything of importance, so this isn’t a new problem either. Everything’s changed again, and W won’t talk about it again.
Dogs (and cats) are another issue. I like animals. I really do. But animals (primarily dogs) and animal rescue have completely taken over W’s life. It’s all she does and all she thinks about. Her day starts out with her waking up and springing out of bed to take the dogs out. It stays devoted to the dogs until she finally can’t keep her eyes open and has to tear herself away from the rescue group website and email, take the dogs out, and crawl into bed. Her days are spent dropping some dog, cat, or multiples or mixes thereof off at the low-cost vaccination/spay/neuter clinic (where she also volunteers), picking up same, visiting one or more pounds, delivering donated food to various animal shelters, looking for foster homes for animals she takes from the pound(s), taking foster animals to visit potential families, chatting with her compatriots in the rescue group, and so on, and so on, and so on.
None of those activities are a problem in and of themselves, but the way they have taken over her life is a problem. Everyone else in the family is increasingly resenting the animals. We know it’s not their fault, but we can’t help ourselves. Just a couple of weeks ago, D17 told me that she had always liked dogs, “But Momma’s got me to where, when I get out of here, I don’t ever want another dog.” Last week, I heard D14 telling one of her friends that she hates the dogs. D17 had the tread separate on one of her tires Friday afternoon. There was a strip of tire tread hanging loose and slapping the underside of the car as she came limping into the driveway at barely over walking speed. I took the car and got new tires yesterday. And guess what? W got mad at me for “running around and messing with the car” when I knew that there were more dogs coming today and the new kennels aren’t finished yet. I’m telling you: it’s out of control.
But the problem for me is the old thing about not feeling that I’m important to her. I come well after the animals, and since she never seems to get caught up on what she needs to do for them, she never gets to me. And every time it starts to look like she might get caught up on the animal stuff, she takes on more. We had placed enough animals that two weeks ago, we were down to only six dogs and three cats. Four hurricane cats, two pound cats, two hurricane dogs, and another dog from the rescue group, and a placement dog that was returned, and now we’re back up to nine cats and ten dogs. And if I ever get the new kennels finished, there are more on the way.
So I know this is a rant, and I apologize for that. I just want to say that I’m feeling pretty down and detached myself. The sex has stopped. W won’t talk about it. And W has occupied herself with some other obsession that has alienated the entire family. The truth is, I’m just tired. I don’t want to work on the M any more. After having the year-of-good-sex rug yanked out from under me, after having my attempts to talk about it ignored, and after having yet another confirmation that I’m not a priority for W, I’m just tired of making the effort.
And the sad thing is that I really don’t care. Like HP, I’ve kind of gone LD myself. W, in spite of her disinterest in sex, has always been affectionate. She likes hugging and snuggling. She’s always holding hands and things like that. Lately, I’ve been feeling something close to revulsion when she tries to do any of that. It’s not revulsion really, but more like complete disinterest. I just think, “Why?” It seems so pointless. I guess what I’m talking around is that I just feel apathetic. Apathetic toward W and apathetic about the R.
ZB- I don't have too many words of wisdom to offer but here are some hugs... (((((((((Z))))))))
I had a girlfriend many years ago who ran an animal rescue group. She was very hard to be friends with, because she made no pretense that the animals always came and would always come first in her life. She's been married four times. Husband #3 was a very sweet guy, 10 years younger, who was easy going and adored her. He helped her at the animal shelter that housed wild abandoned and injured animals. They also had lots of dogs and cats as pets.
One time he and I got to talking privately after they had been married for a couple of years (he was 30-ish, she was 40-ish), and he said the animals overrunning the house-- as much as he loved them-- were driving him crazy. He went into some detail, but I'm sure you can fill in the blanks.
Later, she and I were out somewhere and she was talking about how he had been kind of grumpy and distant, and without revealing that he had confided in me, I sort of moved the convo around to "well, maybe she needed to make him more of a priority, like maybe picking one area of the house that was for humans only and off limits to animals, like maybe at least the bedroom." She resisted that idea reiterated that for her the animals would always come first, and that anyone who was married to her had to understand that. He eventually left her.
And in fact, she and I eventually broke up, too. It was just too hard to be friends with someone who was so rigid. Even her family members have a hard time with her. Her sister told me that recently when she and her sons and a couple of nieces were going on a trip, they begged her, "Please don't let Aunt Xxxxxx come along." She's no fun to be around. Every fiber of her being is focused on animal welfare and there's no room for anything else. It has gotten worse as she's gotten older.
Having said that, out of the other side of my mouth, I admire your W and the efforts of others who are working with the Katrina animals. This part of the tragedy really hits me hard and I have tremendous respect for people who put themselves out to rescue animals who depend on us for survival. But I don't have to live with any of them.
If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain.
What kind of board is this?
