Sex-Starved Husband. Will Work For Sex.

[Bagheera]

[quote=SillyOldBear]

When it comes to men dominating women or vice versa, the lines and limits won't hold still long enough for me to learn the rules. I enjoy ravishing my wife as much as the next guy, but I'm terrified that I'm going to cross a line and make things worse. And it's obvious that she's trying to lead me to her fantasy, but she just keeps asking about mine. I want to say, "Look, I told you about my fantasies. If you want to act out your fantasy, tell me what it is. I won't say no." She just puts it back on me.

Here again is a similarity in our situations, but do keep in mind that I don't really know you, your wife, or the details of your relationship. So please take my comments here as just that: my $0.02 only, which may not be really applicable to you.

If your wife is a typical sexual submissive -- dominant school teacher by day, but wanting YOU to take the reins by night -- then she will be very, very reluctant to talk about what she wants sexually. She may not be able to because doing so, in essence, ruins it for her, and generates the guilt that she's trying to unconsciously avoid.

There are multiple reasons why this may be the case (go read Michael J. Bader's book on Arrousal for the full story), but *one* of the more common scenarios is the fact that our western culture is very good at linking guilt and shame with sex, especially for women. They get hammered with the message that Nice Girls don't desire sex, Nice Girls don't enjoy sex, Nice Girls guard their 'virtue' and if they don't they're a slut/whore. Sure, the caveat is always added "until you're married," but by then, the guilt/shame is ingrained. One way of unconsciously getting around that guilt is the common fantasy of being 'taken' or 'ravished' by a more dominant male. The situation then becomes: Nice Girls don't, "but he made me do it" or "I couldn't resist him". Note that this is NOT a conscious decision --> most people don't know why their sexual fantasies work for them, they just know that "this is what turns me on."

So what's a guy to do? Be patient and loving and earn her trust, to begin with. At some point, she'll need to clue you in somehow as to what direction she wants you to go in, even if she can't tell you directly. You already know a LOT about what she's wanting: my wife spent years keeping things to herself in that regard, until I put forth the effort to rebuild our marriage and gain her trust again. If your wife wants you to be more dominant and 'rough,' as you've already indicated, then you need to have a serious talk about setting up some guidelines for maintaining BOTH her safety and yours. Establish a safe word, some short word completely unrelated to anything in the bedroom, that she can use to stop the action if needed. Establish a firm bond of trust between you: she is trusting YOU to stay in total control at all times, monitor her physical safety, and *halt* if the safe word is ever uttered; you are trusting HER to monitor herself and her own enjoyment level, and if any limits or personal boundaries are even approached, she should let you know immediately. Establish some clear guidelines with regard to what is OFF LIMITS -- she may not be willing to say what she wants you to do, but she ought to be able to say what she absolutely *does not* want done. Finally, be patient, go slowly, be willing to forgive yourselves if things go wrong, be willing to laugh at yourselves when things get goofy (and the will...), be loving and communicate often. ALL of the above requires a special bond of trust between husband and wife that is hard for me to put into words.

Based on your posts, I don't think that this is the 'magic bullet' to solving your sex-starved marriage. As you've already indicated there are plenty of other contributing factors: the house, the bedroom, work exhaustion, body image, etc. I also don't think that your wife truly understands the vital connection between physical intimacy and emotional intimacy for a man (the Marriage Catch-22 mentioned in the SSM book). For her, sex is probably still just 'icing on the cake:' something nice, in addition to having an emotional connection with you, but optional. So a big part of her 'education' will be learning how extremely important maintaining a physical connection is to YOU.

Hopefully, the above will perhaps give you one more piece you can fit into the puzzle, however.

Take care,

Bagheera

[CharlieBrown]

Silly,

I feel your pain on a lot of fronts. First, my wife really was too tired on our wedding night and I see now that this set a bad tone for our relationship right away. Looking back, I see a bunch of times in our dating and early days of marriage where I should have drawn a line in the sand, but instead was too much a of nice guy. Speaking of nice guy, make sure you add "No More Mr. Nice Guy" to your reading list. I found it was spot on for me and I spot a lot of me in you, as you describe yourself.

A few other thoughts, in no particular order:
1. Glad you are staying in your bed. I understand the other opinion, but agree with yours.
2. Spend your next two weeks of your sexual sabbatical to hone in on and get working on a plan for yourself. I like what you are doing and planning on doing with your bedroom. Get it done pronto, even though she may resist because she may see the piles of clothes and clutter as comforting to her current state of being.
3. If you could lose 100 pounds once, you could do it again and should. Do it for you, but as a side benefit, your wife likely wants to lose weight as well and you will lead by example (and I have found, the meals cooked, food in the fridge, etc. tends to be more healthy if one person is trying to lose weight). Don't make a big thing of it, just use your time off to start exercising some and watch what you eat. In the end, will she suddenly find you ravishing and jump your bones nonstop? Probably not, but you will feel better and if she loses weight on her own, so will she. Also, in the event she is not as attracted to the heavier version of you as you are to the heavier version of her, you will be more attractive to her.
4. My last suggestion is a tough one. I found your postings to be touching and beutifully reflective of the frustration a HDH feels. I don't think it would be possible to say them in a discussion (particularly when your wife is crying or as is the case for me, being angrily defensive and in denial) any better. I would recommend you sit down to talk to her and tell her you came here for help and this is what you are feeling, and show her your thread. It might be a shock to her to read it as I would guess that you have never said things in as unvarnished a way as you did here, but I suspect it would be a healthy shock. I think this type of a jolt is what others were suggesting with moving to a different bed.

Anyway, I wish you the best and as I said, feel your pain.

CB

[SillyOldBear]

Tonight will be interesting. I've been cleaning out the bedroom, so it's in some disarray, but much less cluttered. Today is our wedding anniversary, and my wife usually feels some pressure to have what I think of as "special occasion sex." I try not to make it seem like I expect sex at these times, and sometimes it doesn't happen, but she has so many ideas of the way sex "should be" that I wouldn't be surprised if she decided we had to have sex tonight simply because it's our anniversary. I'm not going to initiate; we'll see what happens. "Special occasion sex" irritates me, which is irrational. It IS a special day, and I DO want to have sex with my wife, so it doesn't make any sense to sulk. But it feels like I'm lucking into it without actually being attractive enough for her to want to do it. If we'd gotten married on a different day, I'd be out of luck tonight. It's not a ringing endorsement.

Charlie, I think I've said most of this to her at one time or another, actually. I've been pretty open about what I think for the last couple of years. Certainly never all at once like this, though. I'll show her this, but she says she's going to read SSM, so I want to wait until she does that. If, at some point, I decide she's never going to read the book, then I might show her this thread. What could it hurt?

I know I should lose the weight, but it's hard to make it happen. And part of me says, hey, I don't demand that from her, why can she demand it from me? But I know that's not right. We're not the same person. Last time, I really did lose the weight for me. But back then, I was able to spend a lot of time on my bike, in jiu-jitsu class, and in the weightroom. That was before the baby. I've begun eating better, but I don't get the exercise I should and I know it. She said the other day that she wanted to walk in the early mornings, and I told her I would go with her. She wanted to know who would stay with the baby, and I told her I would get him dressed and we could put him in the stroller.
Silence ensued. I don't know; maybe she wanted to walk alone and I intruded.

Based on your posts, I don't think that this is the 'magic bullet' to solving your sex-starved marriage. As you've already indicated there are plenty of other contributing factors: the house, the bedroom, work exhaustion, body image, etc. I also don't think that your wife truly understands the vital connection between physical intimacy and emotional intimacy for a man (the Marriage Catch-22 mentioned in the SSM book).

I agree. I've actually said almost the words from the SSM book to her on more than one occasion, but I don't think it has sunk in. And I also agree that there's more than one problem here. It's a tangled mess.
Anyway, I have said to her, more or less verbatim, "I feel like I'm stuck in an impossible situation. When we got married, I swore that I'd never have sex with any other woman, and I still don't want to, but now I can't have sex with you either. So the only options for me are 3 billion women I swore I'd never touch, or one woman who won't let me touch her."
I don't think it made a dent.

Now a question for Low-Desire people--women or men--when your HD spouse told you about the Catch-22 for the first time, did it basically sound like s/he thought you engaged in some grand conspiracy to deny them sex? It feels like I'm being a whiny, self-centered punk here. But it's amazing to find a group of people who seem to think it's OK that I'm complaining about the pain in my marriage . . . even listening. And giving feedback. I just never get to do this.
Thank you all.

[Bagheera]

Actually Bear,

I was referring to the Intimacy Dilemma discussed on pages 55-62 of The Sex-Starved Marriage, which Michele labels "The Catch 22" further down the page. THIS section describes one of the single most important ideas that your wife needs to understand about you, her husband: it is the key necessary for her to understand what you have been feeling and going through, and if she loves you, it will give her the additional motivation needed to help fix the problem between you. Here is my (well worn) take on it:

The Marriage Catch-22: Women, in general, require an emotional connection before they feel the desire for a physical connection. That is, for a woman, emotional intimacy is the pathway to physical intimacy. On the other hand, Men, in general, require a physical connection before they feel the desire for an emotional connection. That is, for a man, physical intimacy is the pathway to emotional intimacy.

This highly reciprocal relationship between husband and wife is wonderful when it works, but is also extremely delicate. Because intimacy (in either form) is often the first thing to go when there is trouble in a marriage, it is all too easy to break this cycle, such that neither partner gets what they need to feel intimate and close to each other.

To husbands, it often seems like their wives spell intimacy T-A-L-K, and completely miss the importance of meeting this vital need if they want their wives to connect with them physically. Men need to understand that their wives will be there for them physically if they follow the correct pathway. Emotional closeness and intimacy are the primary means by which your wife expresses her love for you and feels loved herself: meet that need and she will give you the physical closeness that you desire.

To wives, it often seems like their husbands spell intimacy S-E-X, and completely miss the importance of meeting this vital need if they want their husbands to connect with them emotionally. Women need to understand that their husbands will be there for them emotionally if they follow the correct pathway. Physical closeness and intimacy are the primary means by which your husband expresses his love for you and feels loved himself: meet that need and he will give you the emotional closeness that you desire.

It is particularly easy for Women to assume that Men are just being shallow and animalistic in this need, and there are certainly plenty of young men out there, who haven't yet realized their own emotional depth, to support this misconception. However, for the mature man, the man who is in love with his wife, the connection between physical and emotional intimacy is the key to his ability to feel his love for you and your love for him. This male 'reverse-wiring' may seem alien to Women, since they generally need to feel their love first, with physical intimacy as a nice 'icing on the cake' to follow, but the wife who truly understands her husband's pathway will be able to go a long way toward ensuring that they both get the love and intimacy that they desire.

This is the point that you want to get across to her, more than anything else in that book -- in my opinion. It certainly made a HUGE impact on my own recovering marriage: Kudos to Michele again.

Best regards,

Bagheera

[SillyOldBear]

I see. I don't know. I would have said that outside of sex, we were very emotionally intimate. We do talk, we do laugh, we do tell each other "I love you."

After reading the book, I realize a LD spouse can really believe that they have pretty good sexual intimacy, even while their HD spouse is thinking and actually telling them over and over that they're in a sex-starved marriage. So it's hard to trust my perception of emotional intimacy. I'll be sure and emphasize that section; maybe we can read it together. I don't have a lot of faith that it will mean anything to her. I've said that to her so many times . . . . so many ways . . . . orally, in writing, it doesn't seem to matter. She doesn't believe me.

I do know I'm irritable and easily angered nowadays. I've been working on it, but it still shows sometimes. Maybe my wife would say it's worse than that. One more thing to try to fix.

Another thing I want to journal about a little here: Friends and family. Specifically, I don't share these problems with my friends or family. I'm embarassed, and being rejected all the time is humiliating enough without having my friends or my family know about it. My wife does discuss things with one of her best friends, and like so much of this, with completely counter-intuitive results. Her friend works with her at the school and is a little younger than my parents--old enough to be my wife's mother, certainly. But they get along great, and I like her and her husband, though I don't see him much. My wife told her friend about our problems. Her friend's advice was to try to find a way to enjoy sex, because as she gets older, her sex drive will increase and mine will fade away. Hope that's not the case! It turns out that she's dealing with a SSM herself, only she's the HD one and her husband is LD. Since that time, she's always advised my wife to do something about this problem, but whether she's overwhelmed, apathetic, or depressed, she doesn't seem interested in solving anything.
(PS--Remember the flowers from the roadside? Same friends.)

[Strong&Alive]

SillyOldBear,

The title of your thread says it all - you have an impoverished way of thinking about sex and ultimately yourself.

I know exactly where you're coming from, having myself done and felt many of the things you've described.

But you have to change your way of thinking about life itself, not just sex. I'm going to give you a few quick pointers.

"But for me, this is like a kid on Christmas morning with all the presents opened; it was great, but I know it's going to be a long time before it happens again, and I'm going to be rejected many times between now and then."

This is not just a metaphor, is it? You really need to stop thinking of yourself as kid and sex as a reward for being "good" - that almost inevitably affects your vibes and your actions. You are not a kid and your wife is not your mother. Its not an attractive sexual dynamic. Think about it.

"I feel hurt by her rejection, and I know I'm angry and irritable."

Been there, done that. It doesn't work. You need to cultivate an inner masculine strength, sense of purpose, and calm. That's what women find desirable, not being "pestered".

"My (irrational?) fear is that she'll decide she likes the new asexual eunuch/husband version of me and I'll be an even bigger disappointment to her if I decide not to be this sexless guy anymore."

A combination of fear and a desperate need for her approval. Not masculine, not attractive and not sexy.

"We've both gained a LOT of weight since we met. Stressful jobs, kids--all the excuses. I find her irresistible."

Why? I mean no disrespect to your wife, but why? Have a good think about that one.

"She finds me resistible. I lost over 100 pounds two years ago, but it made no lasting difference in our sex life and I gained it back."

So you only do things - even very important and positive things that you should be doing for yourself anyway - because you think you'll be rewarded with sex from her - is that the kind of man you wanted to be? If it isn't, then you need to start thinking about the kind of man you want to be - entirely distinct from your wife's perceived approval, desire for you or indeed anyone else's opinion of you. Cut yourself free from the tangle of constantly thinking about what she thinks of you - sexually, it gets you nowhere (as you must already realise), it holds you down from fulfilling your life's potential, and it also crowds out the psychic space between you and your wife, the spiritual garden as it were, in which a healthy kind of sexual attraction would grow.

"Our house is a wreck. We bought a 100-year-old money pit thinking we'd take our time and restore it--and then we took on the twins, and we were just trying to survive."

Your (and her) choice. Be responsible for your choices (or the fact that you let her choose). There is no golden rule written anywhere that says your life has to be (i) easy, (ii) full of sex, or even (iii) at least fair. You do however have complete freedom of choice in how you emotionally and physically respond to life - but you have clearly relinquished that power.

"Recently I completed a nursery for the baby and two new bathrooms are coming, but our bedroom is a disaster and constantly cluttered. I know that's not romantic, but I don't know what she wants me to do about it when she has four other rooms plus the outdoors she wants me to handle first. When I finished the nursery, framed, wired, insulated, glazed, drywalled, paneled, doored, floored, trimmed and painted by myself, her comment was "I didn't think you'd be able to do it."

You could take an Executive Decision to at least tidy the bedroom next. That would spell out to her that (i) certain things are important to you, and that (ii) you act accordingly. There's no need to do this in a chauvinist way - just "Honey, I think you and I need some calm and private space amidst all that we have going on here." A separate point is that you have a wife that appears to fundamentally disrespect you and is profoundly ungrateful - and that's ignoring the lack of sex altogether.

"She's struggled with depression. She won't see a therapist, but whenever sex comes up, depression comes out. She has medication from her general practitioner, which I find wacky. I wish she'd see a doctor who specializes in the brain if she thinks there's a problem in the brain."

This may or may not be the case. It may be a deliberate excuse, or it may be the best way she can rationalise what is "wrong" with her. Guess what - its not your job to fix her or "make" her happy. That's her job. So stop trying to fix her and focus on rebuilding yourself mentally and physically.

"The best example I can think of is the year she gave me one of those silly "I Owe You" sex coupon books you get in gag stores for Christmas. I guess she thought it was a funny joke to give her sex-starved husband a book of promises about sex, but I took her seriously. At that time we hadn't had sex for about six months. I brought it to her, and the first thing she did was go through the book--which she hadn't read before giving it to me--and tell me which pages she wasn't going to do . . . sex in the backyard, a couple of others.
Well, OK, not much in the spirit, but fair enough, especially since our backyard fence is chain link. Over the next two years, I brought that book to her dozens of times. I tried to use the coupons for sex, for a shower together, for a backrub . . . . eventually, out of sheer desperation, I tried every one.

In the end I burned the damn thing. I don't really know why she gave it to me. She couldn't bring herself to honor one single coupon out of that stupid gag gift. I don't know whether she intended to honor it when she gave it to me, but I can't fathom why she would:

1. Give me such a gift, knowing how depressed I already was by her constant rejection, if she was going to treat it as a joke, or
2. Give me such a gift, intending to let me use it to spark sex between us, and then be so disgusted by me that she couldn't even bring herself to give me a backrub."

Apart from pointing out that "sheer desperation" is pointless (and on a spiritual level quite unnecessary) I don't really know what to think of this at this stage. It raises some interesting possibilities as to what your wife wants or expects with regard to sex.

"I have never cheated and will never cheat. I don't want a divorce. I don't want another woman. I want to make love to my wife. I love her and I promised her my whole life, and I will give it to her.
That said, it kills me that she's set this Catch-22 trap for me. I can't have sex with any other woman because I loved her so much that I was eager to stand up and forswear all other women forever."

Start taking control of your own thoughts and your power. Show me any man that mentally has resigned himself to his marriage for ever and ever and ever...no matter what his wife says or does, and I will show you a man that thinks and acts as if he doesn't deserve a good marriage and a good sex-life, and that is constantly trying to "please" his wife while simmering inwardly with resentment and anger. Oh, and I will also show you his wife, who senses he is weak, will put up with just about anything, and treats him as a doormat. Forget the fairy-tales - this is real life. I am not advocating divorce, but what I am saying is that this whole self-denying "I will never divorce you" vibe is fearful, weak and therefore unattractive. The day my own life started its long process of turning around was the day I started seriously contemplating life after divorce - the kind of man that I would need and want to be. Well...that day I started attempting to be that man, and despite fallbacks and pits, kept at it (and continue doing so) and my marriage has definitely improved as a result. You must change your mindset. You are no-one's prisoner. This marriage is your choice, not your prison. You can leave if you choose, if your wife continues to disrespect and ignore your feelings, and you will at some point have to make that clear.

"I get to be the good father to our kids, and I get to be the good handyman who restores her dream house for her, and I get to drive the junk car so she can drive the car she wants. These are all things I WANT to do, but I can't help but notice that it seems like it only matters that I want to do them because she wants me to do them too. I never wanted to be her roommate."

If you don't mind me saying so, that was quite a rant. You must be honest with yourself. Do things because (i) you objectively should, (ii) you truly want to irrespective of reward, with (iii) a polite but firm "No" to the rest. Reading between the lines, there is much more to your marriage than a lack of sex: you have become enmeshed in a constant year-after-year succession of doing things and sacrificing things all to please her, in a vain struggle for her "approval" i.e. sex. Read no more mr nice guy by dr robert glover and then the way of the superior man by david deida. If you want to make any real and lasting progress at all, you will have to "reset" your whole perspective on life, women and sex. You do not, as you have so far programmed yourself, "need" sex to function as a man. Nor is there any entitlement to sex as such, but there are essential differences between men and women - how they interact verbally, emotionally, physically, what they perceive as attractive in each other - that can be learned and tapped into.

I suggest you also read my lengthy posts to Tyguy, Tired Of Pain, and Near The End and put together your own plan of what you want to do. I would be happy to help further when I have time.

If you've had the initiative to come here, you already have within you what it takes to sort all this out.

Be grateful for the opportunity of exciting changes that you've been given by this situation.

All the best,

SA

[Strong&Alive]

SillyOldBear,

I've just noticed this in your thread as well:

"I think I'm a pretty good husband overall. I don't smoke, I don't drink, I don't gamble. I don't stay out late. I have a forge in the toolshed that hasn't seen a fire for three years now because I don't have time to do any metalwork anymore. I have fishing poles, but I don't go fishing. At most I take the family and bait hooks for the kids. I love to go shooting, and I haven't given up my gun club membership, but I haven't been shooting since November. I loved jiu-jitsu, but the classes were held an hour away on weekday evenings, and I just couldn't justify the time away from the family."

Two further points occur to me:

(i) At the risk of using a metaphor myself, you are letting your fire of inner masculinity die right down and this has definitely affected your marriage. You need to start doing at least one of these things for yourself again...now. Pick one and reshuffle things to make time to do it. Stop making excuses - the alternative is that you and your marriage will continue to spiral downwards, and everyone will eventually suffer. Read what david deida has to say about the importance of a man's purpose to his own self and to the sexual dynamic, and then have another look back at what you've written.

(ii) As someone who used to do combat sports, you should have a head start in cultivating a new way of thinking about yourself and your "needs". I may be generalising vastly here, but when it comes to sex, women tend to prefer steeliness and assertiveness (so long as it flows from genuine love, rather than disrespect, weakness or neediness) rather than cuddliness. I can see that Bagheera has said some very enlightening things about this.

S&A

[Puppy Dog Tails]

S&A,

Great, wise stuff. Bless you for taking time to reach out to these folks. I don't know about Bear, but that helped ME! Thanks!

Puppy

[SillyOldBear]

SA, I read all that. I'll probably wait and read it again before I make a longer reply. All I can say now is that I always wanted a good marriage and a happy family. I wanted to make my wife happy. I still do. I really thought I was just doing what it took to make that happen for us. I thought of it as strength, not weakness--the strength to give up what I wanted for the good of the family.

I still don't want to think about divorce. But you're right; if I'm here no matter what, no matter how miserable we both get, then the marriage doesn't mean much.

I have to get up and go in a few minutes, but maybe I'll have more to say this afternoon. Thank you for giving me so much to think about.

[Strong&Alive]

PDT,

I'm glad to hear it helps. The ideas I write here are now a major part of my life philosophy, and I try to live them day by day, no matter what. I'm not perfect, and its not always easy, but they do work in the sense that I and my marriage definitely did improve.

I will never go back to who I was a couple of years back, and I am only too happy to pass on what I have learned.

All the best to you,

S&A