Quote: I think the most heart-breaking thing I've ever experienced was to finally realize how my actions had affected my H, for truly, I had NO IDEA. Awareness can be a very painful thing... and it could be why so many LDs can not or will not see it. It's a pretty darn horrifying moment,
Imagine that they DO come to that realization, that FULL realization of all of the pain that they have caused you . . . and then voluntarily return to their old ways?
Women generally ML. Men gennerally have sex. Having sex seems to be a bodily function that a gal has no comparable item for. Men get all tired after. Women are energized.
Women make love with their emotions and pour their beings into the experience. Some guys, my H for example, never thought of the gal, or how to find the ways to please them. He just thought that you "hammer long enough" and that will work.
Many men on here claim to enjoy the total woman. Teasing, snuggling, coaxing, laughing and then masterfully making love to her, tenderly or animalistically or anywhere inbetween. I wonder however how many really just want to get it on/off in a "bathroom like matter" without the togetherness of the couple?
Pity me that the heart is slow to learn
What the swift mind beholds at every turn.
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Hairdog: "Provoke" may bed a poor word choice. I'm trying to do something, ANYTHING, to get her to come to the "realization" Corri mentioned. I can't get her all the way there perhaps, but surely I can point her in the right direction? You're trying to do this with your wife too, no? Maybe it's impossible, but you gotta try. That's why I asked about Corri's experience.
For that matter, I don't fit into the "women like this..." description either. I am much less about emotion and making love. The physical animalistic side of sex is fine with me. The emotion, for me, comes afterwards.
In fact, the oxytocin that floods my body inevitably causes me to start intensely missing my kids. I could not count how many times I say "I miss my girls" immediately following sex. It has become a joke. Then that hormonal rush starts to fade and I'm left with (finally) the warm fuzzies for H.
Paul, Why don't you forward some of the threads from this bb? The men on here write so eloquently about what it feels like that I can't imagine she wouldn't be moved in some way.
Quote: I'm sure you've written about it before, but could you remind me what triggered that awareness for you? Did it come over time, or was there a single "oh my God!" moment?
I keep thinking I can do something to provoke that realization in my wife, but it just ain't happening....
Hmmm... if I remember correctly... it was March or April of 2003, which would have put me at about the slightly over 10 years of on and off marriage counseling... I had reached the very friggin' end of my rope... I happened to be in a book store and I swear I saw the title of Michele's book from darn near across the room.
The title so amused me (because that described my M to a T) that I went over and picked it up. I sat down and really started reading it almost immediately.
Those conversations that Michele wrote about could have been mine that I'd been having with my H VER BATIM over the years. And when I heard those men saying the same things my H had been telling me, but with way more detail about the grief, anguish and pain they'd been experiencing... I don't know... call it divine intervention... I don't know... I just 'got it.'
And then when I got to the part where she was describing that some women experience arousal before desire... and that I fit into a 'mold' of normalcy, too... well.
Combine this with all the work I had done on my own and in counseling... let's just say the bricks came tumbling down onto my head, and none too gently.
In having told you all this, however, I think now is the time to also tell you all that I am in the middle of a divorce. Just so I don't misrepresent myself as a marital guru. That, I am not.
