can some LD people please comment on this so I can understand...
I am a logical person. I make a lot of decisions based on what is logical.
FACTS - I want sex more than my wife - my wife turns me down 70% of the time I initiate - my wife initiates 50% of the time - I have NEVER turned down my wife
It would make sense to me that my wife should do the initiating. Then I can relax and not worry about "is she in the mood or not" - she knows that anytime/anywhere she is in the mood she can have it. I think that is part of our problem - I'm too easy...
Instead, she insists that I initiate 50% of the time and face the rejection.
Here's a funny story... At one time in our marriage I thought it would be helpful to make a peg board for our bedroom... my parents had this clock looking thing that I never understood until late in life... it had two hands (one pink, one blue) that could be pointed at different parts of the clock face "tonight" - "I'm in the mood" "I'm sleepy" and so on...
I thought it was a great idea and it would help us communicate non-verbally. So, I made this cryptic peg board that the kids would not understand, but we would...
It had phrases like - "hot stuff" - "I'm yours" - "need a little push" - "sleepy" - "just wanna watch TV" - "hands off" - "danger"
and so on...
Well, it didn't work...
My peg was always in the top hole (ready anytime) and her peg would bounce up and down the board. Basically, anytime she moved her peg high enough up the board we would ML.
As such, she was 100% percent responsible for when we ML. She got pretty sick of that in a few months and the board was taken down.
Geek, I ws under the impression your wife never intiated, but here you say she initiates 50% of the time. That ain't bad, some of us have a hard time getting our wives to initiate at all, in fact 50% sounds pretty fair to me. So I don't think the issue percentages, but more of one where she controls the amount of sex because she has the lower drive of the two of you. So maybe you need to be less of a sure thing, or perhaps be more assertive in a loving way when you are in the mood. Could be just as simple as you are losing on style points, KWIM? How about if you try different things, you know do a 180 in the bedroom. If you are the one in the mood, then it is incumbent upon you to do the intiating if you want to scratch that itch. Same goes for her. You two need to learn to talk to each other (sheesh, listen to me...like I listen to my own advice or something!).
I'm not a real expert on these things, but I think the problem is that even LD people want to feel desired and chased after from time to time. So just saying I am ready whenever you are doesn't come across as particularly romantic. Of course, I don't think most LD people really appreciate how much rejection hurts.
Just my two cents. Best wishes to you. I have been lurking here trying to get my bearings. I'll post my story soon.
"Recollect me darlin, raise me to your lips, two undernourished egos, four rotating hips"
Quote: I ws under the impression your wife never intiated, but here you say she initiates 50% of the time.
No, that is not the case. She told me two days ago that as much as she knows she should not - she keeps a tally. If she was the last one to initiate, then she feels it is MY TURN. It doesn't matter if she gets horny or not. She will go to sleep horny rather than initiate two times in a row. This goes also for throwing any "signs" my way... if she were to come out of the bathroom in her silk pajamas (a sign) then that is the same as her initiating.
As such, since we average once every 20-30 days... she initiates once every 40-60 days.
Maybe the solution is for me to initiate two days after we ML. Then, even when she says "no" - it's technically HER TURN now... so, I can mentally sit back and let her fret about it...
Omg you gave me a good laugh. Sorry but when I read the peg board thing Tony Orlando and Dawns "Knock three times" Started playing in my mind. I must be drinking to much Nyqul this days.
Well at least she moved her peg. She put a effort into it. Which lets you know she was thinking about it. Since I seem to be a arousal then desire person that peg would have never moved.
Do you keep track of how many times you attempt to get the fires burning to just be left out in the cold. Maybe if you did for a month when your wife stated you do not just go with the flow you could show her I tried on xxxx days and you said no. My H use to always say we never had sex but once a month maybe. He would say we had not had sex in weeks even if it was just three days ago. I started keeping track and after a few months one day while he was on a pity me trip I threw down the calander and said really. At first he tried to say it was not right but since I now keep it out in the plan open he knows it is. Have not heard we never have sex in over six months. Some times a little visual is all they need to make them say hmmm well maybe you have a point.
Geek, I am an HD woman and still don't like initiating. I want a man who comes after me, plain and simple. It enhances the experience a TON, in a way that me initiating just doesn't.
Your wife is giving you some valuable info--that you initiating turns her on and she prefers it that way. I realize you have an initiation aversion but you may have to find ways to work around that, rather than finding ways to justify why she should do 100% of the initiating.
A strong, confident, horny man turns women on. It's really that simple.
She doesn't want (and I imagine most women don't) a wimpy, half assed initiation, rife with timidity and hesitancy.
I know it's hard for you but could you try something different for two weeks and guage the results? Try initiating forcefully--think in your mind "I'm not taking no for an answer"--and see how it goes. I'm not suggesting you rape her, just that thinking forceful thoughts will help you get in the correct frame of mind. Then when your natural fears temper it a bit, it will be the perfect blend of gentlemanly horny assertiveness that the romance novel fellas pull off w/o a hitch.
My wife and I have had MANY conversations where she says that she wants to make love to a MAN not a TEENAGER. She wants me to initiate like a MAN.
The only problem with this is that she is practically bi-polar when it comes to what she WANTS and what she SAYS she wants.
I have been "confident" in the past and met with a 50/50 result. Half the time she loves it / the other half I get an a$$ chewing for being such a manipulative - pushy - jerk.
I think I have a lot of resentment over the fact that she "trained" me to NOT initiate and now she's upset that I don't initiate manly enough...
So, let's see 15+ years of someone getting pissed at you everytime you bothered them... so that it got to the point where you're whimpering..."excuse me... could I bother you for a tiny bit of nookie...no, oh...I'm sorry...please go back to reading your book...I won't bother you again..."
Then: BAMM - they ask you "why, don't you initiate like a real MAN...?" and get mad at you when you don't do it "just right"
I'm just waiting to see what happens when I develop ED 10 years from now and can't even get it up... I'll be saying "hey, you had your chance and you blew it..."
All you can do is to do what she asks and if she doesn't respond favorably, then it is HER problem. You can address it at that point, with her. Right now, she's holding all the cards because you keep giving them to her.
I read this passage this weekend in the book I'm reading for book club. It's called 'Disgrace" by J.M. Coetzee. I thought of this board but didn't expect the perfect segue for quoting it. The guy is talking about a male dog.
Quote: 'It was a male. Whenever there was a bitch in the vicinity, it would get excited and unmanageable, and with Pavlovian regularity, the owners would beat it. This went on until the poor dog didn't know what to do. At the smell of a bitch it would chase around the garden with its ears flat and its tail between its legs, whining, trying to hide.'
He pauses.
'I don't see the point," says Lucy. And indeed, what is the point?
He continued. 'There was something so ignoble in the spectacle that I despaired. One can punish a dog, it seems to me, for an offence [sic] like chewing a slipper. A dog will accept the justice of that: a beating for a chewing. But desire is another story. No animal will accept the justice of being punished for following its instincts.'
'So males must be allowed to follow their instincts unchecked? Is that the moral?" [Lil's comment: sounds like an LDW response]
'No, that is not the moral. What was ignoble about the Kenilworth spectacle was that the poor dog had begun to hate its own nature. It no longer needed to be beaten. it was ready to punish itself. At that point it would have been better to shoot it.'
'Or have it fixed.'
'Perhaps. But at the deepest level I think it might have preferred being shot. It might have preferred that to the options it was offered: on the one hand, to deny its nature, on the other, to spend the rest of its days padding about the living room, sighing and sniffing the cat and getting portly.'
