I agree with this mystery. Can you identify anything in your marriage now that is different from when you were dating or first got married?
My theory is that something in the R dynamic causes the LD person to submerge their sexuality and a new R works differently thereby removing that roadblock (temporarily or permanently).
I agree with this.
I was LD in my former M. Of course, my version of LD equated to about once/week and only really interested every couple of weeks. However, my total effort level in the sexual arena was low. I felt very emotionally threatened in the R, unsupported, on shaky ground and therefore, sex didn't make the priority list. I also had lost huge amounts of respect for ex-H which didn't exactly make him appear delectable.
Why was this? One possibility is that you had some issues which popped up to spoil the mix between you two. He probably had the same, but since you don’t know what was going on in his mind, all you know is that he wasn’t giving you what you wanted – he stopped soothing you.
I think this concept is not given enough discussion on this board. Why is it that a woman married to a known criminal, killer, or some other horrible type of person can fall in love with him? Sure that woman may be sick herself and is desperately looking for love, but that horrible man she loves is giving her the soothing and compassion that allows her to look past all his evil traits. In fact, she may not even see why he is vilified. Is it that love is blind (by this I mean is there a FOO type denial in the love struck person that refuses to let them “see”) or is it that certain specific soothing from someone else can create such powerful euphoria that “seeing” is not even considered by the love struck?
I have attempted to analyze whether I produce any similar dynamic in my R. I have even gone so far as to ask H questions along those lines. He totally denies negative feelings toward me on any of those topics.
The problem I have with this in theory is that the other person may not have a clue whether s/he has negative emotions. In fact, define a negative emotion. Negative to you may not be negative to me. So his denial may be true for him, but not for you.
To me, this is one of those unanswerable questions because the answer lies somewhere in H's psyche. I doubt he sees himself as LD - he just has lots of reasons why sex isn't convenient, or doesn't make sense or whaever he thinks of.
The eternal mystery is not why is my spouse LD but why is my spouse LD with me?
To me, this is the same as Lil’s sitch, though her bf seems further off the scale. Both he and your H seem to have shut down emotionally, not unlike my wife. All three of these people have experienced severe trauma as kids, so this reaction makes sense. Too much intimate emotion gets really uncomfortable, in the same way that Corri and Honeypot were saying they have a hard time receiving compliments. Corri and HP have each shut down in their past and I doubt they could handle really close intimacy at those times.
This is a possible symptom of trauma, is it not? Since you are a therapist, have you looked into how you can desensitize you H to his discomfort in feeling intimate emotions? In other words, is there some specific type of soothing he needs, that you are not giving, that would turn him on if only you knew about it, the type of special soothing that comes with a new affair that might prompt him to swing from the chandelier? Or is it easier for you to just stop wanting?
Take GEL for example. What I saw in her actions was to circumvent her H’s fantasy barriers and give him exactly what he wanted but was afraid to ask for. A passive, timid person may have never felt confident or powerful enough to go for what s/he wanted, or accept it when s/he got it. But they still dream about it. That inner desire still burns, but the reality is so different, they detach. GEL gambled correctly in giving her H what he secretly desired but was too scared to go for or accept. So he got anxious (and still does I’m sure), but she desensitized him to his nervousness in feeling good about what he was now getting. Luckily, her real wants were in line with his real wants. In fact, I think most couples have the same real wants or they never would have come together. But along the way, defenses push those wants way down and each person compromises for less – the tyranny of the lowest common denominator, remember?
The desire for more never goes away but the resignation and acceptance that this is all you are worthy of just grows and grows. The increasing gap between the two creates resentment. What GEL did, IMO, was to jump the gap and bring reality and fantasy together. Her task is getting both her and her H desensitized to the higher emotions that come from living this new intimate “fantasy” life.
