Ya, you both misunderstood me correctly. I take resposibility for meeting the needs my W wants me to meet and I do it with a smile .
However, I no longer take resposibility for determining what that is. For instance. Since you brought up the sex thing. My marriage vows said that we would be faithfull to one another. I do not assume that to mean W will give me sex whenever I want it. Her Libido does not match mine. If W wants to boogie, I am happy to oblige. I used to pursue her all the time until it became an obvious problem. Now I let her be the pursuer (usually). When I was still trying to figure this issue out, I wondered if I pursued so much sex because it was what I wanted or if it was because it was what I perceived she wanted. W was the one who set the minimum quota when we married.
The difference now is that I don't worry about it any more. If W has a sexual itch that needs to be scratched, she needs to take responsibility for initiating and visa versa.
I no longer try to anticipate what she thinks or means. I literally drove myself nuts on this. I have the shrink invoices to prove it.
If W has a need to reinvent herself, again, it is her problem to initiate it and to keep me informed.
What I am trying to say friends is that my guessing days are over. Don't get me wrong, I would hunt down Bin Laden for her. But she needs to ask.
This brings me back to the point when I know W and I began the rebuilding phase. It is when she said the words "I want to try". I knew what these words meant and it was very clear what I needed to do once W said them. That does'nt make the process easy. But, at least I knew she wanted to try. Not many on this BB are in that position. Not many have heard those words and I'm not even sure how many here have spouses that know what "trying" means.
Me2, I am certain we can teach our spouse what trying means. We just need to move like we are walking on ricepaper and they need to want to try.
W and I talk OR periodically now. They are usually breif and too the point. Kinda like a checkup. Again, I learned the hard way not to preannounce these discussions and keep them very short. I stick to that policy even if W initiates OR. Sometimes I even say "lets talk about it some other time". Oh how sweet it is!
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