[WildChild]

At some point in time we come to need to know that this person can love and accept who we are, rather than who we seem to be, whether that is our facade or their projection

[WildChild]

When all contact and efforts at closeness are or seem to be, focused solely on physical/sexual interaction, we can come to feel that it's only our body that is valued (or simply used) and that WE don't count and aren't acceptable. We can feel unknown and that our SO is in many ways unknown to us. Our true selves aren't being shared. That can cause alienation between people who want to love each other. I think this is often either unarticulated or so poorly expressed but felt as an emptiness or something missing, that is undermines intimacy and destroys sexual desire. We may crave sex as a physical need but we also need intimacy and often mistake sex for that. Ideally the two come together as a wonderful and fulfilling experience but I think few people actually achieve this

[BigDaddy]

OK. So assuming that in some part my attentions towards her have created a situation where she is at least in part withdrawing and feeling pressured.

How the do I regain any closeness when something as simple as rolling over in the morning to place my arms around her to give her a hug before I get up is rejected as a sexual advance. I've got to the stage of every few days if I "think" she may be interest night or day, I will simply ask, be rejected and continue on about my day.

I can't win, if I ignore her I'm ignoring her need for intimacy, if I'm close I'm too pushy and pressuring for sex.

There is no answer.........

[WildChild]

Yes there is but I don't have time to go into now- got to get ready for a pot luck. I'll visit this later.

[BigDaddy]

No problemo. I aint got no where to go tonight, I'll pop in later.........

[kira]

I've been on the other side of this situation more than once. The one who never thought about sex and got annoyed every time my boyfriend did anything because it seemed like he just wanted sex. It can happen even to people with a normally high sex drive if they end up in a stressful situation or unhappy relationship. Unfortunately once you get in that mind set you are kinda stuck. It's also unfortunate that while I can understand it I can't tell what will work since that's probably unique to each individual and I probably can't even explain it well. Even if the other person backs off sex just does not come to mind. It has to somehow be triggered in a way that doesn't put pressure on having sex. Once you find that trigger everything can just fall back in to place instantly.

For example due to some health issues recently my sex drive took a back seat and despite being happily married any situation that could lead to sex annoyed me. Months went by even after I'd found a new medication that worked and I failed to even realize we hadn't had sex. I don't even remember what happened to change the situation but we eventually did have sex and suddenly I wanted it every day for awhile. I had to actually back off cause my husband was unable to have sex that often. In the past these situations usually happened because I was unhappy in relationships or even ready to break it off. Sometimes sex scenes in movies or books have triggered my sex drive to return to the front of my thoughts or some minor stress that my partner helped with made me appreciate them again. Occasionally just a conversation online can change my thought process enough. It really is random and not entirely explainable.... Lots of women just seem to fall in to this certain pattern of thinking that makes sex undesireable, eliminates all thought about it, and makes anything that could lead to it annoying. The situations that trigger or fix it are different for everyone.

[BigDaddy]

I tell you I definitely can't win.........

Quick text to Ms Big.

"Won't be late home & not working tomorrow, bringing wine and we can hit the couch. Do you want me to grab something for dinner?"

Baby in daycare today and I was supposed to work tomorrow helping out a friend. Canned work in order to try and spend some time with Ms Big without pushing any issues.

Reply:

"Don't need wine there's chicken in the freezer"


Hmph.......... :-)

[CHANDLERS WISH]

Ouch....

See she saw that as wine, dinner, sex.

And responded.

Maybe try, "dinner" and don't mention wine... you did the right thing, you said, hit the couch..

Don't feel hurt, because then she was right, next time something like that? Text back, "Good, then you'll need the wine to relax and canned food is ghaaa, I'm bringing home some dinner and then sending you to bed early"...

It's about the shock factor...

CW

[WildChild]

Alrighty, I've got some time now. I'm going to set the stage a bit for you first - bare with me, a lot of this has been discussed before but we have so many new people and it's been on my mind lately too. You're just going to have to take the whole package today. Some days I'm all one liners - this isn't one of them. You get the book. LOL

This can happen for many reasons and so I'm assuming that that there hasn't been a serious breach of trust such as an affair or abuse.

One factor is expectations; we are conditioned and taught from infancy to see marriage or a relationship as following a certain pattern. This comes from many sources, our parents, TV/media (Father Knows Best, Leave It To Beaver, The Brady Bunch, I Love Lucy or whatever fits your time period) the neighbors, our friends parents, church and our peers. We got a host of messages and for women most fed us the idea that women are in supporting roles, not leaders, moms aren't sexy, and we aren't fully competent to run our own lives.

We women get very conflicting messages, we are shown over and over that a significant part of our value is in our looks. We are supposed to be ornamental and entertaining. We should look sexy and alluring. We should also be 'good' and pure and save ourselves for our true love, who when he shows up (having been schooled over beers at PTs and a steady diet of porn) will sweep us off our sexy but virginal feet and we will suddenly become the classic lady in the livingroom/ho in the bedroom. Mixed in with all of this we are supposed to defer to men but earn a living wage, be his back up when he wants one but cope with whatever comes down the pike when he isn't feeling like putting on his armor and getting on the white horse to rescue us.

Men have equal challenges. The models of male/female interaction handed down in some form for generations don't work for most us. They never really did, but women and men were legally and socially limited to stick with them. We have more options now but we are still figuring out how to use them. Both women and men have different expectations from each other and from their relationships, than our parents and grandparents had. However, we still have much of the same religious and social structures that are predicated on a different set of expectations.

So what does this have to do with solving your concerns? Well, obviously what the two of you have been doing isn't working. I wanted to encourage some thought about expectations and patterns because they are a big part of the deeper issue under the surface.

Now, what can you do? This is my opinion - I don't know you or your wife but from my experience what often happens is that we slip into complacency, thinking we have a ready sexual partner and back up. Your car may run a long time without an oil change or tune up, your mower may keep chugging along for quite a while even if you don't change the air filter and clean the intake but at some point they will quit or develop serious problems that you will have to deal with and it will take more time and be more costly than if you had done regular maintence. The same thing is true of our relationships. A quick peck on the cheek, fixing the squeeky door after months, and ignoring what she is saying because you are glued to the game on TV is rather like ignoring everyting under the hood but the windsheild wiper fluid.

This applies to women too, although it may manifest in different ways. We need to feel loved and valued, not as a ready vagina, but as people, valued for who we are. I know the caveat is that men need sex to feel loving, women need love to feel sexy and for many people this is very true. We all need a balance to it. For most women this means loving attention that isn't goal oriented to sex. It will take some time to re-establish her trust so that she feels safe dropping her guard. This is of course, assuming that there are no factors such as BC messing up her libido, health concerns, substance abuse, other things that would trump all other efforts. Will this absolutely work? I don't know, but its a place to start. Some of the men in our WH family apparently do all this and still get no where, but in many case it does turn the tide.

Start with backing off on sex, not sullenly and start focusing on giving loving, non sexual support. You may already do a lot and just need to tweek it or you may really have to make some changes but try stepping up to taking care of things without being asked. Fix the whatever, touch up the paint, wash her car, give her a call and say I'm driving past the store is there something I can pick up? Give her a loving kiss and then leave the room and go do something - don't stand there looking like you're hungry, even though you are. Give appropriate compliments, notice things like her hair or when she's taken extra care with something. Do this without expectations.

Set the boundries to lower her resistance to receiving from you. For example, tell her I've got 5 mins before I have to go, I'd love to spent it giving you a quick shoulder massage. Do exactly that, a nice little massage, a kiss on the side of her neck, an I love you and leave. Things like this show her that you thinking of her, caring for her and doing so not just because you want sex. In many cases this will make the difference but you have to set the intension that you are doing it to show your love and care, not to get sex. Chances are she will start to soften, it may take time though.

There are few bigger turn offs for a woman than to have a man treat her like a tool he is trying to fix. He takes her out of the case she's been stored in and starts working on her.
"I tightened up the connections, lets see if she works now. Nope, well, lets try a few drops of oil here and there. "
Click. Click. Click.
"Ohh thought she was going to start for a moment there." "Maybe I need to replace the switch, if that doesn't work I'll try cussing and banging it on the table". "Maybe I just need to get a new one, this one is defective. I saw a great new model the other day with lots of features this one doesn't have..."

It takes regular care and maintence to keep a relationship working right. It also takes communication and we are almost all lousy at that. We are scared to say the wrong thing, to be misunderstood, to be judged and valued less or discounted. We've all had our confidences thrown back at us or used as clubs against us, our past mistakes used to devalue or 'prove' that we are somehow defective. We need to articulate that and set ground rules in our communication, recognize that we love who this person is now and that means accepting the things that got them there - in them and in ourselves. It's a journey.
I hope this ramble offers some ideas and food for thought, or a usable insight. It did me good to get it out of my system for the day.

[rcoreyus]

I've been trying the "no pressure for sex" approach. I haven't asked or hinted for sex, but still give her back and foot rubs before bed. I give her random hugs and kisses, and "love yous" during the day. She seems very happy - but we still don't have sex. (~3 months now).