Been a long time between my posts to you but I have to agree with the idea that you just need to go for it, whatever it may be. It took me a LONG time to get to that point and recently I did, and it worked like I'd been told it would. She responded VERY strongly to my assertion and it took my just saying "f--k it" and TRULY not caring if I was rejected. I let her know I wanted her, and HOW I wanted her and the rest is recent history. We went from nothing for the better part of a year to just about every other day in the past two+ weeks.
Even in our best of times, it was about once a week, maybe once every two weeks.
All I can say is that my W CLEARLY was waiting for me to just DO something without asking, without seeking her permission and a LARGE part of that had to do with verbally communicating exactly what I wanted to do and why. She LOVED me telling her what I was thinking about and that first time, I just started doing it around dinner time. I was not sophomoric or crude, just open and honest about what she did to me in "that way". I did not come off as desperate, but rather very sure of myself and sure of what I wanted.
I never in a million years would have believed this would result in anything other than the 1,000th "shut down" in the last year but dammit if it did. I thought I had done all this before but even as I was doing it, it felt different, and must have actually BEEN different to her because when bedtime came around, she could hardly wait.
I don't know your W, nor am I 100% familiar with your sitch but one thing I realized after this experience is that I don't know MY wife as much as I thought either so my advice is that no matter what you think your W may or may like, or what she did or didn't like in the past, just DO something. Make a move.
You are absolutely right in that we men are conditioned by all the rejection but I can so clearly see I was rejected in the past because I wasn't even trying. I was just throwing it out there, kinda like "Hey W, wanna have sex" as I was watching TV, or getting ready for bed. I did almost NOTHING to entice her, to show her my passion for her, to, as BJ said, paint a fantasy picture for her, which I come to find out is VERY important to my W, and maybe many women, maybe your W too.
These days I have learned how to talk to my W in such a way that she can't help but at least get a little turned on. Since my W has always told me I talk too much, you can imagine my surprise in finding out that all this time she just wanted me to talk to her, tell her how I felt looking at her, what I wanted to do to/with her, what I wanted HER to do to me, etc. She LOVES all that, and more than that, she has things in her mind I WOULD HAVE NEVER, EVER guessed and damn if it's not great. I always thought we men were the dirty minded ones, the dirty mouthed ones...wow was I wrong!
The key to it all was me verbally letting her know I was passionate, NOT just horny. I had to take a risk and express my "sexual" soul and once I did that I think she felt ok with opening up herself, no pun intended...or maybe it was.
X, I think you can do this but you have to overcome some of what I think you and I share, and that is a learned gentlemanly quality that makes us feel like we need permission before going down certain paths. We don't. They'll tell us if we get out of line or they aren't interested but it's up to us to risk that rejection. I think they find that sexy as hell.
I almost feel bad speaking from the position of recently getting over the same hump you are struggling with. I don't know it all, but I do know that it took almost everything I had to do what you are being told to do, and that's to just do it, go for it and take the risk.
We all think she wants you to but you know what, it doesn't matter if she does or not, YOU want to and you need to let her know in ways you never did before.
