Last week was another good week on the relationship front. Hugs and kisses are becoming a little more lingering. We have even had a little sex oriented teasing and banter. The reaction from my wife on the teasing and her participation was different than it has been in a lot of years. There was no trace of disgust or bad negativity. All nice signs and good baby steps.
But.... I know this will sound weird coming from a guy but the thought of us sharing physical intimacy scares me.
In the past physical intimacy has triggered some very bad emotional reactions in my wife. Distancing, emotional shut down etc...
I enjoy my wife very much as we are. But lack of physical intimacy does leave me feeling like there is an empty space inside me and us. But I would rather live with this emptiness than hurt my wife or jeopardize what we have.
I saw a link to a website the other provided by the author that wrote His Needs / Her needs. One of the topics was on what called Sexual Aversion Link to Topic of Sexual Aversion
Reading this gave me a lot of good information and I may at some point try to implement the healing technique as outlined in the article. It also helped raise my awareness and I have been looking for other information on the topic.
For now I am making an active decision to not pursue Physical intimacy with my wife until such time that I am certain it will be an emotionally beneficial to my wife and to our relationship.
I read a book last November called the Five Love Languages. I learned a lot form this book. One of the things that the book did for me was to help me understand my wife and myself a little better.
My Wife's Primary Love Languages:
Acts of Service Quality Time.
My Love languages: Physical Touch (Pat's on the back, Hugs, holding hands, etc and sex. Words of Affirmation Quality Time
Our love languages our very different. Once I understood her love languages I got very busy, Cleaning the House, Painting, Running errands, fixing things... It was as is my way of saying I love you and still is.
But yet there is an imbalance she expresses her love for me by doing things for me. I take her acts of service and in my head I translate them into her saying I love you.
She has never understood my need for physical touch and words of affirmation and I never understood why she was so upset over not cleaning or painting.
So anyway to make a long story short I gave her a copy of the book a long time ago and she did not read it. She finds reading very difficult. Yesterday I went looking and found a copy of the Five Love Languages on audio tape. I plan on giving it to her in the next week or so.
I am hoping it will help her see some of the problems we have had in the past in a new light and maybe we can work together to speak each others love languages in better ways.
Well this got rather long and I had better get back to work
