I can't really tell you specifically how I overcame the intimacy issues in my marriage but I know it had a LOT to do with OT and her advice to just DO IT.
I am a talker by nature. I talk EVERYTHING to death. My W hates this so I had to learn how to take action and risk not knowing what the results may be. I guess you could say I had to learn to take risks where my W and our intimacy was concerned.
The book Passionate Marriage also gave me a HUGE boost in terms of my understanding of just how flawed my thinking had always been about sex and related matters.
I always sought approval and "permission" from my W when it came to expressing my sexuality. I always thought that was being respectful, and to a certain extent, it is but the way I did it, I was totally deferring to her and basically making our intimacy, or lack thereof, 100% her responsibility.
I had to learn how to just express what I wanted, clearly and without expectation. It wasn't like saying "Honey, I want to ML tonight..." and then sitting there like a puppy waiting for her to respond, crushed and in a mood if she avoided me or said no.
It was more like walking up behind her and whispering in her ear, with the kids 5 feet away, something specific I wanted to do with her that night and letting her know I was game if she was.
I wasn't demanding anything from her. I wasn't reaching for a breast and if she let me touch it, TOUCHDOWN, I was being direct, open and SPECIFIC. The first part, the directness was a HUGE thing for me, a life-long passive/aggressive person, to master but as OT always pointed out to me, painfully necessary. Women seem to HATE when men play games. Games may seem "passionate" to us guys, but not to our women, or at least my woman. She wanted to feel something from me. She wanted to KNOW it was HER I wanted and the way to do that was...to be Specific. My W seems to be driven crazy when I talk to her about our intimacy. Call it talking dirty or whatever, but it works almost 100% of the time now. She LOVES it, and she says it's because it's about her. It's not just me being horny, it's about me being turned on by her, and thinking about HER, not just getting some.
The openness part comes in by me sucking it in hard and getting over my shyness when it comes to all this. I have always been painfully shy when confronted by intimacy issues. I HATED that I always had to initiate. I never realized that I DIDN'T have to always physically initiate but a few words here and there were enough. Now I don't feel nearly as pressured to initiate because I also got rid of my fear of rejection.
Fear of rejection to me is all about having expectations and that is one of the huge keys to all this; abandoning expectations when it comes to the actions of others.
Look, if you are like me, you WANT to express yourself to your W, you just feel like the time is not right, or she doesn't want to hear it. I suppose I was like that too and that's where each sitch is different. You have to decide when the time is most right (and I say MOST right because it will NEVER be right) and just go for it.
Here is the kinda chronology to my getting past all this stuff.
1) Started working out after I lost a bunch of weight. I wanted to get in shape so I felt confident. 2) Detached from my W's moods. 3) Read Passionate Marriage. 4) Realized that I had the passion inside me but NEVER expressed that to my W. 5) Started doing little things to let my W know how I felt. Mind you, the affair was over and we were supposedly reconciling at this point. 6) One night, for no real reason, I just went for it, telling her just want I wanted to do and that night, we did it...and the next night...and a couple nights later.
Ian, I would say that the key to ALL this, even more than the other "keys" is to be direct. Teasing is fine, but beating around the bush is not sexy.
I hope this in some way addresses some of what you want to talk about. If not, well, then it was more journaling for me and I will await your question.
