Angry no more

[MJontheMend]

I disagree. I think your crying before may have been from a sense of self pity, low self esteem, etc., in a way asking him to rescue you, which was beyond his ability or capacity. It actually heightened his sense of guilt and inadequacy and was an attempt to throw your stress and anxiety onto him, like the hot potato no one wants to handle

I can see how this was true but here is the thing that confuses me. If I feel like I am in love with a man, I have the tendency to have a variety of romantic/sexual feelings towards him. For instance, I might want to wear a sweater that smells of him or I might get a feeling of closeness by touching his hair as I cut it for him. Part of the reason why I used to cry when I was sexually rejected was due to the fact that my H was clearly signaling that he didn't share these kinds of feelings. I am less likely to cry now when I am rejected in part because I have lost or suppressed these types of feelings and I don't know if this is good or bad. I mean one part of me thinks "It is really lame of you to feel like that about a man who doesn't share those feelings." and wonders about the extent to which those types of romantic/sexual feelings are a reflection of low self-esteem or a desire to be rescued or something. Another part of me thinks that those kinds of feelings are good and the fact that I no longer allow myself to feel them is a sign that I am getting hard or tough rather than strong that there was something brave about my tendency to put my heart on the line in that manner in the face of rejection.

I don’t think you should cry, but just tell him how you feel.

If I honestly feel like I am hurt by his rejection because I have made myself emotionally vulnerable then I will cry but maybe it won't be because I feel unlovable but simply because I feel unloved. If I don't allow myself to be emotionally vulnerable then I won't cry but I won't be able to honestly say that my feelings are hurt either. My reaction will be more along the lines of "It sure is a drag to be married to someone as LD as you.".

[Cobra]

Mojo,

I understand your dilemma and it is one I am trying to understand. It think your answer covers to broad of a set of conditions. In other words, in a close intimate relationship, then crying and being vulnerable makes sense. In a more stressed relationship like we have, pulling back a certain amount makes sense. How much you pull back is a guess. Not enough and you get hurt too much. Too much and you could send the marriage backwards.

In the end, this may not matter so much, since at the critical moment, we will be constrained by the situation at hand and by the emotional state of yourselves and our spouse. At that moment we must act as best we can and hope that later we do not regret our actions. So like and athlete in competition, you train as best you can, then when its time for the tournament, you just have to let go and let your body do what it knows best to do.

I’ll be gone on vacation for two weeks. I’ll try to keep up with the threads when I get a chance. Hang in there!

[Lillieperl]

If I feel like I am in love with a man, I have the tendency to have a variety of romantic/sexual feelings towards him. For instance, I might want to wear a sweater that smells of him or I might get a feeling of closeness by touching his hair as I cut it for him. Part of the reason why I used to cry when I was sexually rejected was due to the fact that my H was clearly signaling that he didn't share these kinds of feelings. I am less likely to cry now when I am rejected in part because I have lost or suppressed these types of feelings and I don't know if this is good or bad.

I totally dig this and feel exactly the same way, except in my case, I have also suppressed my sexual feelings. I feel quite at peace and there is fun, affection, and virtually no conflict in my life with my bf these days. And no sex.

[MJontheMend]

Of course, that is because your H keeps moving the cheese to try to find the perfect spot/perfect standard and it isn't the cheese's location that is the problem!

I think that there are people who need a lot of attention rather than intimacy or affection in order to feel cared for. They think along the lines of "If she loved me, she would remember that I don't like that shade of lipstick on her.". Having this sort of perfectionist love language makes them view many benign actions as passive-aggressive. For instance, my H takes offense because his mother frequently serves a fruit salad that he is allergic to at gatherings. From my POV it is a perfectly benign thing to do when you are serving many dishes and feeding many people.

I think you were on to something a while back in your thread(s) when you determined that some things were legitimate beefs with a logical answer but they didn't have much to do with sex. For example, "Your butt looks big in those pants is a legitimate reason to say - "Hey sweetie, I don't care for the look of those pants how about we go shopping on Saturday for a new pair?" or after dinner to say, "How about we go for a nice family walk?" but not to refuse sex. Remember what I'm getting at?

Yes, actually I think I took that line of thinking to its logical conclusion when I said something to my H along the lines of "Well, that's a good reason to go find a skinny woman to have sex with but it's not a good reason to not have sex with me in a monogamous relationship.".

It is ok to respect some of his preferences but it is equally important to comply with yours. What kind of look do you genuinely like? What foods do you genuinely enjoy cooking and eating? Just reminding you not to lose you.

I really am sort of fashion impaired so it is kind of hard for me to figure out what look I like. Left to my own devices I have the tendency to dress myself like a giant sexy toddler. For instance, I would think that a stretchy white t-shirt, baby blue overalls and flip-flops would be an attractive comfortable outfit on me. However, according to my research, given my age and body type I should probably choose something like an emerald green princess line sundress and sling back sandals with a kitten heel appropriately accessorized with a chunky necklace that falls down my chest a distance equal to the length of my face.

As far as cooking goes, my kids are as much of a problem as my H, my preference is for seafood, Thai, Korean, Indian etc. cooking and my gang prefers bland food like macaroni and cheese, burgers, pancakes etc. So, since I'm watching my weight, I'll usually have some fish and salad or spicier food for my big meal at lunch and at dinner time I cook bland food for my family and just eat a tiny bit of it myself. I just invented a recipe for homemade protein bars because I am too cheap to buy the ones at the store and I like to have them for breakfast. I call them Hi-Pro No Mores because they taste like S'mores but they're so loaded with protein you can only eat one.

[MJontheMend]

In other words, in a close intimate relationship, then crying and being vulnerable makes sense. In a more stressed relationship like we have, pulling back a certain amount makes sense. How much you pull back is a guess. Not enough and you get hurt too much. Too much and you could send the marriage backwards.

I came across this quote in a novel I was reading recently and I thought it was somewhat relevant to this discussion.



"Friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals: love, an abject intercourse between tyrants and slaves"- Oliver Goldsmith

I think somebody on the BB once used the analogy that you need to pull back to a more distant orbit but not so far that you fly off into space. If you don't maintain equilibrium, if you try for a more intimate orbit than your spouse prefers then you will put yourself into the miserable role of the cold little planet orbiting the tyrant sun.

During one of my semi-recent, semi-drunken fights with my H, I said "You prefer a relationship at the level of Seinfeld and Elaine.". His reply was along the lines of "Face it. That is the type of relationship we have.". Now, if I weren't so darn differentiated I would have found a statement like that quite disheartening but the fact of the matter is my relationship with my H is currently at least a quantum level more intimate then Jerry and Elaine's and definitely better than it was a few years ago when I used to say to my H "You love me the way Mr. Brady loves Alice." and I really should have been saying "You love me the way a very unpleasant and cranky version of Mr. Brady would love Alice.".

A while back I read a novelette by Balzac about a young married couple who had managed to maintain intimacy and passion in their marriage. Balzac was trying to make the point of how rare this was. He described an interaction between a more typical couple of his time, I am paraphrasing "The husband turns to his wife in bed and asks 'Why don't you wear pretty caps to bed as you used to?' and the wife says 'Why do you not give me enough money to purchase such pretty caps?' and they both turn over and go to sleep.". I guess this came to mind when I think about your situation, Cobra, because of your wife's demand for money. It's interesting to consider how marriage used to be much more of a blatantly financial contract than it is these days. Girls had dowrys and concerns about virginity at marriage were very real concerns about inheritance rights based on paternity. I know I'm just rambling a bit off topic here but one thing that occurred to me during the sort of Alpha Male-effect of feminism on the modern marriage discussion we had recently on the BB was that when we talk about the real effects of feminism we can only rationally talk about economics. If you try to equate modern feminism with strong female personality traits then it's as though we are forgetting that Shakespeare wrote about Lady Macbeth and Kate the Shrew hundreds of years ago or that Atalanta would only marry the man who could beat her in a race more than a thousand years before that. Maybe your wife is like Atalanta and you just need some golden apples to distract her with so that you can win the race.

[MJontheMend]

I totally dig this and feel exactly the same way, except in my case, I have also suppressed my sexual feelings. I feel quite at peace and there is fun, affection, and virtually no conflict in my life with my bf these days. And no sex.

Well, I guess I am just too HD at some root level to suppress my sexual feelings in any sort of healthy way. I hope you won't take offense at this but I've been having a thought about your situation. I remember that you once wrote about your concerns about finding another man at your age if you were to leave your boyfriend. To me this seems like an irrational concern unless your real concern is that you won't be able to find another man who is as sexually attractive to you as your Tom Selleck look-a-like boyfriend. So maybe you are stuck in a rut between your own sexual preferences and your boyfriend's low sex drive. Of course, this theory of mine doesn't take into account anything like your obvious affection for your boyfriend and therefore is quite limited.

[cally]

MJ When you said this to your husband.....

Yes, actually I think I took that line of thinking to its logical conclusion when I said something to my H along the lines of "Well, that's a good reason to go find a skinny woman to have sex with but it's not a good reason to not have sex with me in a monogamous relationship."

To me that is saying to him you have to think the way he is thinking now. But it says well you can go find a skinny woman to have sex with because I am not like that so have sex with me in this monogamous relationship the way I am it doesn't matyter what your preference is.

See I have been in this exact same boat before. I remember feeling hurt and angry and lashing out with comments like go find a skinny girl then. Or go find someone you think is attractive. I was hurt that he didn't love me for who I was no matter what age and time brought. But thinking back comments like that only made me look even more insecure and in need for his validation that I was a sexy woman. Also now that I have lost weight and am better place to be able to look back and analyze this better. The fact is I would have much rather had the honesty then him pretending to be attracted. I am okay now that he has preferences and prefers a thin woman who looks nice. In fact in talking to quite a few men since then it isn't a rare thing that men feel this way. A lot of men fear that women will get big after marriage. It's kind of like even us as women have preferences or things that really get our motor burning. Like maybe it could be a guy with a beard and dark hair. Then our guy goes and shaves off his beard and dyes his hair blonde.

There is one thing that does bother me about my husband since that happened years ago. See he doesn't hold himself up to that same standard. He has put on like 30-40 pounds. In fact I said something to him a couple months back that it bothered me that he held me up to a standard that he didn't hold for his own self. I think this hit home to him because he has started to try and work out and eat better.

So I guess what I am confused about here is some people have posted they think your husband is mean and I guess being verbally abusive. But what would be worse having no desire because of his preferences and never saying a word? Or stating them and getting it out in the open for communication so that it can be worked on?

They say communication is key to any marriage. So how do you think he should handle this?

[MJontheMend]

I know what you're saying Cally. When I first joined this BB I lost 30 lbs. in order to meet my H's preferences even though I was feeling hurt and angry. Though my H did make some positive comments about the change in my appearance, in terms of his response to my sexual requests all that changed was that I heard "You need to lose weight" less often and things like "That t-shirt isn't sexy" or "You are too arrogant about your sexiness." instead. I wish that I really good believe that losing another 10 lbs. or getting my hair done in a different style or dressing a bit differently would make the difference in our relationship but I frequently feel like I'm trying to attain an ever changing goal. In fact, I would say that what my H is looking for is the effort rather than the results which would be fine if it weren't for the fact that no effort seems to be enough to make the critical difference.

I'm really a lot more differentiated than I used to be. When I told my H to go get a skinny girl, I didn't say it in a spiteful way, I said it from a place of wanting to feel good about being the reasonably attractive woman that I am. More like I was trying to convey "I'm sorry but if that is what you need in order to feel sexual then I am afraid I am unable to offer it.". My body image really isn't as terrible as I probably make it sound in my posts where I'm reacting to my H's comments though I am sort of down on myself about my fashion sense. For instance, if I were to find myself single I might kind of freak out about what I would wear on a date but if I were to find myself getting naked later I would be comfortable with that. So in a sense what I was trying to convey to my H with my "find a skinny chick" comment was along the lines of "If you want vanilla, you're going to have to go out shopping for vanilla because I'm rainbow swirl.".

[Lillieperl]

I know you will probably find this impossible to understand, but it's not my bf's good looks that is my primary reason for wanting to stay with him. It's the fact that he is just about the perfect partner in EVERY way. By that I mean he is affectionate, upbeat (not moody), willing to work on himself, spiritually inclined (just enough, which is to say a bit less than me, but not too much. He goes with me to Temple on my husband's yahrzeit, and introduced me to Indian meditation classes conducted by a friend of his who spent a month in India with a guru), adores my animals and doesn't have any qualms about taking care of them, cleaning up after them, etc., holds up 100%+ of ALL household maintenance/cleaning related things at his house and more than a fair share at my house, is devoted to his daughters in a pretty spectacular way, will watch ANY movie that I bring into the house without complaint, in fact: he just about NEVER complains about anything, works tirelessly in my yard/garden every weekend for the sheer joy of it, can fix or build ANYTHING, is generous with his limited finances (i.e. picks up the tab at dinner, buys me jewelry off the internet to surprise me, etc.), never comments or complains about any mess I make at his house (cosmetics, clothes, computer stuff, books, food, etc.), doesn't control the tv remote, shares music with me (sings in college choir with me), if I bring in music I want him to hear, he will stop everything and listen to it and give intelligent comments, will read long things I forward to him on the internet, and make intelligent comments on those, checks the oil in my car on his own, never nags me ever about anything, doesn't make a face at me if he comes home at 2:00 in the afternoon and I'm still sitting in front of the computer in my nightgown, doesn't pout if I decide to go to my house for the night, in fact is not moody or pouty AT ALL ever (THAT'S a newie for me-- never met a guy who NEVER pouts), doesn't get between me and his daughters but lets us have our own relationship, faithfully goes to see his therapist every week and is growing emotionally by leaps and bounds, he never has angry outbursts anymore, he's been sober for over two years, he's a fantastic cook who will cheerfully cook anything I or anyone else want for dinner, he calls from the store and says, "do you want me to pick up anything while I'm here," he loves any kind of shopping for clothes, groceries, and will happily go to the mall or Wal-Mart or a feed store (usually I'm ready to go long before he is), he's a easygoing cheerful traveler, he thinks the best of people and gives them the benefit of the doubt (I'm less forgiving and more cynical), he has meticulous hygiene, lights scented candles in the living room all the time, can talk baby talk without it sounding stupid, agrees with me on diet and dietary practices so we never disagree over menus or ingredients (i.e., we both prefer butter, grass-fed beef, whole foods), always has a pie on hand, makes coffee first thing every day and if when I get there it's already all gone will say, "Can I make you a pot?" cheerfully and graciously... in short, he is a lovely, gracious, hardworking person.

On top of all of that he is drop-dead gorgeous and has a great body and is very ornamental to take out in public, friendly, talks to people, engages them in conversation.... you never have to worry about him getting bored or boring people when you take him to a party.

And yeah, he has ED. But we still sleep in spooned nakedness every night... go figure.


I know I could find someone else, even at "my age," but I'm not sure I could find that whole package. And that whole package makes him very easy to live with these days. The man who was my best and favorite lover was not someone I could have lived with.

I have some more thoughts on this... I may start a thread to analyze them a bit.

[MJontheMend]

Wow! I wonder if I would be more or less horny if I was with a guy like your boyfriend? Obviously, all the great traits would compensate in many ways but OTOH all the great traits would make me want to get in his jeans even more. I guess it would be the same effect that exercising has on me. When I'm less fit I want more validation sex but when I'm more fit I want more healthy body sex. Net change to my sex drive = 0.