Question for the LD spouses: Do you want your HD spouse to lose all desire for you? Do you want your HD spouse to get to the point where they can claim that YOU do absolutely nothing for them, that YOU in no way arouse them or make them horny. Do you want them to become just like you?
Gee Cemar, I'm sure your W would love it if you just stayed the pouty, whiney, entitled, spoiled, insulting person that you are so that on the rare occasions she can bring herself to have sex with you it feels like she is getting fcuked by a person who genuinely dislikes her. Way to keep up the passion and attraction in your M.
Bear
The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
--Marcel Proust
I don't mind the sun sometime
The images it shows
I can taste you on my lips
And smell you in my clothes
Cinnamon and Sugar
And softly spoken lies
You never know just how you look
Through someone elses eyes
BHS-"Pepper"
Only said what many of us were thinking when we read the SAME freaking thing from CeMar again. I almost posted something similar but figured why bother? He doesn't listen anyway.
I thought it was a somewhat interesting question. It was phrased in a way that made me think he expected LD spouses to respond that they *don't* want their HD spouses to lose their drive and desire. Most posts I've seen from LD spouses, though, lead me to believe that's exactly what they want...for their spouses to lower their drives and leave them alone most of the time.
Stop WaitingFeel EverythingLove AchinglyGive ImpeccablyLet Go
All I can respond to in that sense...is from my own history when I was LD. I didn't want my H to become LD at all....I did however want him to change his approach with me. I did want him not to pester me until I gave in. Just from my own experience I can tell you that my XH would have been much more successful with me when it came to sex if he didn't appear so needy, gropy, insistent. If he would have left me alone when I said "not right now", instead of keeping at me until I gave in to shut him up. That was my perspective back then. Today I would look at it differently...but today I'm not LD either.
Seriously...if my H would have listened to me and altered his approach towards me, it would have made a big difference.
I think the desire that CeMar really should want, is a desire from his wife to work with him to fix things. I am in firm agreement with GEL and MrsNOPs that lack of sexual desire is just a symptom of a larger issue. His W won't desire him in the way that he wants sexually until after she desires to fix things, and they have been working on it for awhile.
It is curious though, and I have commented on it, that one major difference I see between the LD (or formerly LD) people on this board and many of the non-speaking LD spouses is that the LD women on this board seem to have an innate desire to want to work with their spouses while many of the non-board LD's don't seem to have that. I think that makes all the difference. I'm willing to bet that most of the guys here would be more than willing to be patient and understanding with their LD spouses if they saw a true desire to want to work toward compromise. Where the real frustration comes in is when there appears to be no desire to work together. Perhaps this lack of desire is due to poor communication, deep resentment, stubborness, or childishness, who knows.
Now maybe you GEL and MrsNOPs weren't always the agreeable, lets-work-it-out types (I know MrsNOPs has frequently mentioned a 1-2 year period of rather heated arguments and spectacular failures). Perhaps something useful would be to share what flipped the switch. If you were unwilling to compromise, work-together at one point, and now you have changed, what did it for you? You've may have answered this in one way or another at earlier times, but I think it is useful to be stated again.
Chrome
"Recollect me darlin, raise me to your lips, two undernourished egos, four rotating hips"
Chrome, The claws don't come out too often but sometimes you just have to be blunt...or in CeMar's case perhaps a blunt object upside the head would be more effective.
Seriously though, as far as flipping the switch, I think part of the issue can be coming to terms with the fact that sex can be just sex. Women grow up hearing about ML versus having sex. ML is good and wonderful. Sex makes you cheap. When you date, it's about trusting someone enough before you give this great "gift". It's all very important and you are taught that your body is to be respected and guys just want one thing so BEWARE. So along comes a guy who sweeps you off your feet and you "give yourself to him". If you do this too soon, it's bad. You'll get a bad reputation. If you are too good at it, it's bad. Your lover may wonder how and why you have aquired these skills. Often, it becomes a performance. Not to be deceitful, but rather to try to live up to the images women see everywhere of what men want. It is a false self (Corri has talked about this on her thread). Again, I have to stress, it is not to be deceitful but rather to try to be everything you think your man wants you to be. Eventually, there is hurt/resentment that A) you have to play a part and B) he can't tell or doesn't care that you are not really able to be your true self in the relationship. As the relationship progresses, many men become more complacent and are no longer "wooing" but still expect the same or a higher frequency of sex/ML. The woman feels cheated out of the romance. They no longer feel special. Thier "gift" no longer is revered. And now this man who you loved enough to open your emotions, mind and body to now just wants to fcuk. It's cheapened. It's turned into the bad thing that you are not supposed to do because it means you are not being respected. Some women go along to get along. Some women try to express that they need the romance (but this may feel very stilted and fake).
What flipped the switch for me was that I saw very little hope for the future of our relationship and I was willing to try anything. I made a decision to go for quantity rather than quality (to be honest the quality was never really there anyway. He refused to listen to my needs and thought he knew better what would work for me. That can certainly lead to becoming LD). Anyway, I figured that maybe if HE was satisfied, then he would be more willing to work on what I needed. It felt really horrible at first. Negotiating sex just feels wrong, but I worked on why I felt that way. He was my H after all so what was it that made it feel so wrong? I finally realized that he was not someone I respected. He had lied many times, he was selfish and irresponsible. He was flawed in some major ways that I just couldn't live with (ie, since then he has left the country so he won't have to pay child support and is about 100K behind. I still maintain a relationship with him for our daughters sake and have even brought her to visit him on several occasions, but he is willing to cheat his daughter out of having a father). Ultimately, we split up but I did learn a lot about myself and my particular filters and perceptions. In my next relationship, the first time we ML, I told him it was the first time I had "O"'d with someone else in the room. The sex was great but eventually it all fell apart because he was abusive. As that became more extreme, it became more and more difficult to seperate the physical affection from the fear and anger I felt. I could no longer give myself freely and eventually became unwilling to open myself up to him in that way. I would have been called LD but it wasn't the desire to make love that was missing, it was that it was drowning in pain and resentment and fear. This is perhaps an extreme example of what may be going through a LD's head, but I think it's the same basic premise a lot of the time. Can't get past the anger, resentment, hurt to freely express the desire.
I'm now in a relationship where I am the HD one. I crave basic physical affection and it's just not there. He is just not comfortable with most types of affection it seems and I, every day, am wondering if I can live with this. It's still pretty new so I'm willing to give it some time to see if it's just an issue of him needing to feel more comfortable, but it certainly looks different from this side of the fence. I don't think most LD's have even an inkling of what thier HD SO's are feeling. And I know when I was in that position, anything he said felt like he was disregarding my feelings and putting too much emphasis on sex rather than love.
Specifically, Chrome, the switch flipped when I wanted to thank H for rubbing my back for me and I wanted to do something for him that HE would like. Many times people do for others what they really want done for themselves. I know I was guilty of this. So, I figured out he'd rather have me rub his front. And I was right!
Anyway, most of the time I feel kind of sorry for CeMar because he just won't see the reality of his situation. As long as he is waiting for his W to be "fixed" the R will never work. It takes two. He just seems to need to blame someone else for his miserable-ness so I suspect he is actually pretty comfortable in his misery by getting to play the victim.
Bear
The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.
--Marcel Proust
The sex was great but eventually it all fell apart because he was abusive. As that became more extreme, it became more and more difficult to seperate the physical affection from the fear and anger I felt. I could no longer give myself freely and eventually became unwilling to open myself up to him in that way. I would have been called LD but it wasn't the desire to make love that was missing, it was that it was drowning in pain and resentment and fear. This is perhaps an extreme example of what may be going through a LD's head, but I think it's the same basic premise a lot of the time. Can't get past the anger, resentment, hurt to freely express the desire.