I have been reading your threads but not replied as yet. You and H are pretty stuck huh? I loved your comment about cleaning the toilet, a friend of mine says everytime her H gets the hoover out it's like foreplay! In a way it is, you see the guy doing something helpful round the house, carrying a little of your load and you feel warmer towards him.
What herbs are you taking? Vitex is good (aka Agnus Castus) for rebalancing hormones. Also you are right about exercise, especially weight bearing exercise as this will increase your T levels (T is necessary for women as well as men for SD). Don't know if you are into homeopathy at all, but it sounds to me like you could do with a dose of Sepia - very good for washed out hormonal women - LOL
What Corri has been posting is good, your mind is getting in the way, you are not feeling his touch just feeling the FACT that he is touching you and getting irritated by it. One of the things that I think is very little understood by men (especially men like Cemar) is that when our hormones are out of whack sexual touch can be just plain irritating, like having sand-paper rubbed over you or hearing someone scrape a knife across a plate. They interpret the reaction as a rejection of them and become more needy because of it, ramping up the irritation of the woman even further. It does take quite a lot to get past this.
When I had to fight my own mental battles to get back to being my usual HD self I really had to think in terms of selflessness (in the truest sense of the word - loss of self) so that those boundaries we put up - as you say teach our kids that their bodies are there own - are taken down. You say you have just gritted your teeth and let him get on with it, and it has calmed things down but you feel like you are not being true to yourself. You have to get past the teeth gritting. You have to stop gritting them and let go, drift away, stop thinking. Realise you are doing it for him because you love him, not because you want him to stop being a bear but because you love him and you want to do something for him in a loving way. Yes your body is your own and you can choose to let your body do this for him (and for both of you). If someone very dear to you was on their deathbed and you had to drive 300 miles through the pouring rain to go and see them, you would do it. You would do it because you loved them, you would not worry about the pouring rain and the long drive and how much you hate driving at night, you would just do it. If you can somehow think yourself into this mindset next time your H starts making his moves I think you might be surprised at how you feel. I found when I did it that a calmness came over me and a sense of delight in what I was able to do simply because it gave HIM pleasure and when that feeling began to take over strangely enough I did feel connected to him and more able to enjoy it. I didn't fully get into the sexual side of the pleasure the first time but I did feel peaceful and happy and close to him, which after all is at least half of what LM is about.
It sounds like he is thinking about you guys a bit now and would like to do his bit to bring the R back on track.
take care
Fran
if we can be sufficient to ourselves, we need fear no entangling webs Erica Jong
