With that being said, I've asked her to talk to her therapists about how we or I can generate more sparks like it used to be (been five plus years since we have had any real intimacy). Her responses have been that she has and that I might not like the answers.
Not sure I want to go through the rest of my life in a non-intimate and sexless relationship... But I love my W very much.
.... I am trying to stay faithful, but it seems that W being content with the ways things are is causing complacency as well. I don't want to be taken for granted...
First, you are either staying faithful or you are not, there is no "try" (to paraphrase Yoda).
But the thing that caught my eye was the first portion of the quote.
So, it suggests that she knows that the answer(s) she can give you are already as "bad" or worse than something that you have already expressed. Think about that for a moment and what you have expressed as a fear or as unacceptable.
It could be that her answer is something that she would find unacceptable if she were in your position.
Either way, she is in a "defensive" position because she won't share whatever the answer happens to be.
The Captain
Last sex: 04/06/1997 Last attempt: 11/11/1997 W Issues "No Means No" Declaration: 11/11/1997 W chooses to terminate sex 05/1998 I gained 60, then lost 85 pounds. Start running again (marathons)
I help out with doing the dishes and laundry and house cleaning around the house, take her out to dinner. To the movies. Running out of ideas to try to get generate that spark.
I try to keep myself in decent shape, clean up after myself and listen when she talks...
I have run out of answers of how to bring the subject up without coming across needy...
Suggestion and in-sights welcome...
Yes, you are following the advice for men repeated in almost every checkout counter magazine on "how to get the sexy back in your marriage". But in some cases you can turn yourself into a domestic slave to your wife, and still nothing will change. Of course, this goes to some often-discussed issues about appearing to be less manly, more of a wimp, less of someone she can respect, the "nice guy", etc.
Observe also that some women, as you describe your wife here, won't do anything until they discover to their shock that their husband actually went out and found another women, or are shocked when their husband suddenly asks for a divorce. Then, and only then do some of these women "wake up" and want to do all kinds of things to solve the problem.
So I propose a safer middle ground. Cultivate the friendship of a few women who your wife might see as being ones that you might find attractive. But don't take those new friendships any further. Don't be secretive about it at all. In some cases, women like your wife will pick up on the fact that you are not just "waiting" for her to come around to you on her own time, but she will see you as a real man who has real potential to form relationships with new women. That is, to some degree, put your wife back in the situation she was in before you got married, where she felt she might have to compete for you.
I think the problem in some cases is that married couples just take each other's "faithfulness" for granted. I mean, it was part of the vows so we don't need to worry about that anymore, right? And so we can just slack off. Not so! You can restore that competitive dynamic without having an affair.
Some marriage rules and philosophies are very strict about limiting opposite-sex friendships outside the marriage. But in some cases, I don't think that works well when someone is ignoring their partner, leaving them in a sort of "prison" -- putting them in a position where they're not allowed to "connect" in any way with anyone of the opposite sex (including their partner).
