That is your right. You wish to control your body, as I suspect my wife also wants to. But the key to marriage is making ourselves vulnerable to each other, and that means vulnerable in ALL ways. By making it clear that certain physical actions require permission, means that you are going to STIFLE any real connection in the future. In effect, more egg shells are being produced by this kind of interaction between spouses. In the SSM book, the husband in chapter one makes it so clear, everything that was FUN about his wife, she has sucked right out of their marriage, all because she did not want any physical actions that MIGHT lead to sex. If I wanted to grab my wifes a## on the way by, I likely could lose a hand. Not exactly the way to build points with your husband.
Quote: Feeling constantly under pressure to have sex only makes it worse.
What is the constant pressure to have sex? Is that once a week, twice a week, everyday, twice a day? What is the solution, what will take away the pressure to have sex? Should you just expect your husband to stop wanting sex with you? Men are built specifially TO have sex, in most HD men, it is a constant need, and the longer they go without, the stronger that reminder will become (the opposite of LD woman). MB is NOT going to provide significant relief. So how should the constant pressure for sex be alleiviated?
The SSM is like taking a starving man into a French resturant and then giving them bread and water, and then expecting them to be happy with what they got.
Cemar might be taking an apprach that excludes his wifes perspective but he does have some valid points.
I have always struggled with the 'not giving pressure' aspect. Define pressuring and when to draw the line...isn't there always going to be pressure? As the HD man in a SSM we crave the wife to actually want sex and not feel pressure from us but to want to have sex on thier own accord...so the whole pressure thing confuses us.
Pressuring for me (back when I was LD) was that I felt like there was a constant expectation of sex from me. Like every touch my H sent my way was an expectation of something further. Why? Because that was the vibe he sent me. You know, constantly grabbing my butt/crotch/breasts. No matter what anyone says...touching like that IS sexual in nature, it's not something you do with just anyone. Back then I honestly did feel like EVERY night he expected me to have sex, because not an evening went by without me feeling pawed....and well, his attitude towards me certainly didn't foster a mood in me to want to be sexual with him. It was a vicious cycle.
He resented me for not wanting to have sex with him, I resented him for constantly touching me (I felt like I was constantly being felt-up and pawed by him)....he made me feel like the only thing he wanted from me was a way to get off. Thus the vicious cycle. Now, of course today....I know there was more he was looking for, but he never communicated that to me at all....and at that time, I didn't have the history I do now to understand.
Now that I'm the HD person in my M I know how very important it is to communicate all the other things I'm looking for with my H...that come with that sexual intimacy. I'm not just looking at him as a piece of meat...I'm looking for many things to help foster an emotional connection.
The problem with people allowing themselves to be vulnerable to their partner in an R is that....they need to feel safe enough with that person to be vulnerable with them. Often if one person feels pressured by the other for something (such as sex), they don't feel like the other person views them as "good enough as they are", they aren't acceptable as they are....and they aren't going to feel safe enough to be vulnerable with them.
Hello everyone! Haven't been around for a while but life still goes on and certain things tend to resurface and come back to hit you on a head like a boomerang. H and I are back in counseling - seems like one problem gets resolved but new ones surface. It also seems that I'm the one with the problems - still and even though H admits to having "issues" so far he hasn't volunteered to reveal them and address them. THE LD vs HD problem still hunts me it seems. The physical problems (lubrication, frequent UTI's, at times painful intercourse) as well as the emotional ones (not being as much of the initiator as the H would like, getting over the H's A - still seeing the occasional flashbacks in front of my eyes, not being accustomed to expressing the desire/lust/love in the same fashion) still drag me down and I must say - I AM TIRED!!!!!!!!!!! I'm tired of my H viewing the problems I admit that I have as excuses. I must add that aside from MC I'm also attending private C sessions to work on my shortcomings and the C (same one for both occasions) is seeing great results and progress but my H keeps going back and forth between "I see it" and "I don't see it" depending on his level of satisfaction.
Ok...sort of rambling here but the reason behind me being on this forum is simple - I'm still working on my M and I am planning to use all resources available to make it work. And still - I'm doing it as much for myself as I am for my H.
One more time. It's accepting her as she is, just as you want to be accepted as you are. You obviously resist the thought of having to become LD now don't you? Because IMPO that's what you think your W would like....it's not really any different than what you are expecting of your W. You want her to change....and to her that feels like "I'm not good enough" and that you are demanding. People will naturally resist change you if someone continually points out their flaws.
Once again you are asking for something that is going to give you a guarantee that if you do x then y will happen. I can feel it in your question. You still aren't DOING anything. I suggest you just try it. I can almost guarantee you though that until you start accepting her the way she is and start speaking her love languages (not yours)....she will resist changing.
CeMar, I don't know you personally, all I know is the limited persona you've let us know on this BB...with VERY little information about you....and about how you truly interact with your W. So I'm left with my impression of how I think you probably do interact with her, that impression tells me that you do not communicate honestly with your W. You've never denied that either BTW. Just on this annonymous BB you avoid answering direct questions. You ask questions....and then when it truly does appear you don't get the answer you want, you stop responding. I suspect this is how you behave at home too. I have no other reason to believe differently. That type of behavior will get you nowhere fast in a R.
So...until you do at minimum the following things....
Communicate your pain to your W Communicate that it's not just SEX you are looking for with her. & Look to yourself for how you can change your behaviors.
I'm just going to keep repeating myself to you. It's time for you to start doing something and stop looking to us for guarantees.
Oh....and if you've paid attention to my posts in the past. I AM AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT YOU ARE ASKING ABOUT.
Semi agree with that - I wish my H would put himself in my position for a while and realize that it's not easy changing something that you've been for your whole life. It's an act of love - I know I love my husband, I know I find him attractive but sex is not the way I always express it. I do feel that I'm the one that is doing the work when he is being inpatient waiting for that total turn around and not really happy that it takes time and increments of getting there. Now here is a little bit of the warning : I DO NOT WANT my H to become LD by any means. I still want him to initiate the intimacy - I need it to find my own confidence. But I also need that balance between me and him, I need him to acknowledge my baby steps and not constant reminder that he needs MORE. Does that help/make sense?
One more time. It's accepting her as she is, just as you want to be accepted as you are. You obviously resist the thought of having to become LD now don't you? Because IMPO that's what you think your W would like....it's not really any different than what you are expecting of your W. You want her to change....and to her that feels like "I'm not good enough" and that you are demanding. People will naturally resist change you if someone continually points out their flaws.
I'm in the middle of this struggle right now. My W says "I'm trying to change". As Cemar has pointed out, there is a catch 22 here. I don't want her to force herself to be something she isn't. That isn't real. I want authentic desire from her, not some act intended to placate me. So, if it simply isn't in her natural make-up, I either need to learn to accept that or move ahead without her.
Gone the carvings and those who left their mark. Gone the kings and queens, now only the rats hold sway.
My wife has told me that she felt "pressured", even when I hadn't initiated, asked for sex, or even complained for MONTHS at a time. I asked her "How have I ONCE even pressured you -- can you give me an example?"
She said, "Well, even when you don't ask, I just KNOW that you want it, so that's pressure, too."
Sigh . . .
I've heard others express the exact same thing on this board. The sense of "feeling pressured" (I'm talking about in the absence of "pawing" and "grabbing", etc.) is entirely in the head of the LD partner, and something that is THEIR issue that needs to be dealt with. There is nothing that the higher-desire partner can do to relieve that "pressure," much in the same way that even when you do everything on the spousal "to-do" checklist, other items will be added.
This exact situation is addressed in Schnarch and I referred to it in a post to Chrome (see here). That post is copied below:
Quote:
Schnarch on p.303 gave me some insight. The woman in the example, Audrey, was complaining about feeling pressured for sex from her husband and she was not going to have sex under those conditions and would only do so when she was ready. She needed the emotional connection first, which meant more time (rather than ask how many men here this applies to, it may be easier to ask who it doesn’t apply to). “Audrey was “using” the system within monogamous sex the same way her mother had used the dependency system in a parent-child relationship. Audrey seemed as heedless to Peter’s plight as Mom had been to hers.” (Audrey’s mother had ignored her as a child and shut her down emotionally.)
Schnarch tells Audrey she backs herself into a corner everytime she refuses to initiate, which makes her frustrated and angry. She is refusing to make a choice in either confronting her own intimacy issues or leaving the marriage. So rather than make such a painful choice, she traps her husband Peter in a corner instead. He will not relent on his desire to have sex. So he must make a decision on whether to wait for her to confront her issues, or whether HE should leave the marriage. He is frustrated and held captive by HER inaction. She has transferred her dilemma onto him.
Audrey gets mad because she feels constantly the focus of the problem, that Peter is always blaming her for their problems. But Audrey’s indecision is in fact a control method to avoid her choice (what Schnarch calls the two-choice dilemma), and therefore draws the focus back to her. Her inability to make a choice traps herself in this blame game. Forcing her to make this choice is “rattling the cage.”
My wife raised this same issue in counseling once, so I threw out Schnarch’s rebuttal. The counselor also agreed with my comment too, so W had to think about it. Now that I think about it, I haven’t heard her say anything about feeling pressured, though things have been better between us.
