Had an interesting experience tonight. We went out with some people and I got to talking with one of the women in the group... we knew each other slightly before, but tonight we just started talking and really opening up. We talked about some very deep things... I guess you ladies know how sometimes you meet another woman that you instantly feel close to.... it's such a great experience. I don't know if this happens to guys.
Her new H (of less than a year) and my bf are friends through music. She was previously married to a very LD man. She said that before they married they had lots of sex, but it stopped the day they got married. They were married for 18 years and have two children.
I told her that my bf sometimes says when I want that "connected" feeling that he doesn't know what I'm talking about. She said her first H was like that. They went to counseling and he told the C that beyond "happy" and "sad," he just didn't have a lot of different feelings. He was a nice guy in lots of other ways, but she just never felt connected and truly nourished by this R. Eventually she left him and they divorced. It wasn't particularly traumatic for either one... the R was really over. It was time to move on. They are still good friends.
About four months later she met the man who became her second H. He is 45 and had never been married before! Their friendship developed slowly, and they really only got married because of her two kids. She would have been content to stay unmarried. She said she was really afraid to get married again, because of the way the sex had stopped after her first wedding. But, she said, her second H is just the opposite of the first guy. He'd be happy to do it every day. So she feels like she's making up for lost time.
But here's the really interesting part: she says that if they go for more than a couple of days without ML, she starts to get kind of cranky. She finally figured out that she just misses him, misses the connection. I've heard karen say something like this, too, and I guess honey as well. It's like a channel that needs to be open and needs to be communicated across. If they go for several days without ML, it starts to hurt, and she starts to pull back and put up a wall to keep away the hurt. In her first marriage, she just learned to live with that dull hurt until she got numb to it. I had that need to feel physically connected to my bf for the first couple of years, even in spite of his drinking, but since the sex has really stopped, I've gotten numb to the hurt, too. It was so interesting to talk in person with someone about this. Very validating for both of us.
Her H is a recovering alcoholic, and it turns out that she often attended the same alanon meetings that I went to-- this was before we knew each other. Anyway, I thought that was an interesting story of someone's move from a conflicted LD/HD sitch to a normally-functioning AWARE HD/HD sitch.
