Well, that seemed to be the "sex advice" being tossed around here a lot back when I was a lurker this summer. Part of why it took me so long to post, and tell bits of my story. I was afraid that if I posted about the problems, I'd be told blanket statement, feelings follow actions, even with sex, and that I need to give my husband what he needs because it's an important EN. I am willing to fill his love bank any other way until he starts filling mine.

I will not engage in SF that I am not 100% enthusiastic about, and I will not play "mind games" with myself to get there

I am not a vet or an expert, but I agree with you. For a female, sex is an extremely intimate act. One that cannot be "faked" until it's "maked." Perhaps a vet will come along and enlighten me, but that's how I see it.

If my husband were to suddenly try to hop in bed with me and initiate sex, what would I do considering all which has transpired? Would I push him away in outrage or would I join in without knowing he is committed? I really don't know. Luckily he's not. I did ask a question about that before in this thread and no one answered it...which scares me to pieces... but I digress.

Anyway - Yesterday *I got undressed while he was *tucking me in and he practically ran out of the room.

*Tucking me in & getting undressed: In the situation above, DH followed me up to the bedroom to make sure I got there OK after I had taken some pain killers. It has been about a week since I've been showering on my own. So no more peep shows for DH. I sleep nude, so that's why I got undresssed.

Any guesses as to why he practically ran out of the room?

Let me see if I understand correctly. You guys don't have sex as much as he wishes. In part because he can tell you are disgusted by it when you are not in the mood. To the extent that he is now turned off when you are not in the mood. And you want to know why he runs out of the room when you get naked?

Well, maybe in his mind (even if not in yours), your naked body triggers sexual thoughts. And if he knows that you are not in the mood, he is turned off by sexual thoughts. To avoid the sexual thoughts, he avoids seeing you naked.

Or maybe he imagines that you think he only wants you for your body. And he wants to demonstrate that he wants you for other things. So he makes a show of avoiding you when you are naked. With the (perhaps misguided) intention of showing you that he doesn't stay with you merely to get an occassional "peep show".

No...nononono

DH was in Withdrawl ~ 2-3 weeks ago. Oddly enough - during the Withdrawl he had to physically help me take showers & even lotion me up afterwards due to a temporary physical thing (my surgery).

We slept separately at first due to the physical thing and now, it's partially the physical thing but also because he is thinking about whether he wants to divorce or work on our marriage.

I started using MB & he has responded positiveley to it but he is still "thinking things over." A recent confrontation about us not sleeping together confirmed that he is not sleeping in the bed with me because he is still "thinking things over." (This was a few days ago.)

I am healing very well & at this point, I need no more help in the shower. So it's been awhile since he's seen the goodies. Last night, he ran out of the room at the sight of my nude body.

Do you think the reasons you gave still apply?

Let me see if I can do this while at work...

The point of UA time is to meet the 4 Intimate Emotional Needs. These four are Sexual Fulfillment, Intimate Conversation, Affection and Recreational Companionship. Typically Affection and Conversation are ENs that are near the top of the list for most women. RC and SF are usually in the top 5 for men.

When time is set aside specifically to meet these four as a group then the process gets easier with time unless something shorts things out along the way. After a day of being together, having good conversation, getting affection and both enjoying the time together, sex does not seem to naturally flow from that. The problem is that unless it does, men quickly lose interest in the other three.

Affection does not always have to lead to sex. But once that possibility is removed from the mix, then Affection is taken off the table as well.

Everyone knows about Pavlov's dogs. The bell became a directed stimulus that caused a response that was originally associated with food being given to them after a bell had rung. When the response became a directed response, dependent only on the ringing of the bell, then the bell alone triggered the appropriate response.

But another experiment was done with dogs as well that had to do with the way the reward system works in the brain. Two dishes full of food were given to a dog. One was round and the other was oval shaped. When the dog ate from the round dish, he got to eat. When he tried to eat from the oval dish, he got an electric shock. This shock was not extremely painful, just enough to be uncomfortable.

Eventually the dog got to the point where he would sit in front of an empty round dish for an entire day rather than attempt to eat from the oval dish even though it already contained food.

Then the round dish was made to be more oval each day and the oval dish was made to appear more round each day until they were nearly identical to each other. At that point, the dog went into the corner and had a nervous breakdown...

My point is, that when Affection and Conversation lead not to SF but to rejection, before long, conversation and affection are not being offered. The problem is that unless a man knows when it can and when it can't lead to sex, he doesn't have anything he can depend on and after a few times of trying to provide conversation and affection the right way but getting no payoff in the end and in the absence of knowing how to tell when rejection will occur instead of the reward he seeks, he basically stops anticipating SF entirely. It isn't that he no longer wants it with his wife, simply that he can't figure out when it will happen or when he will get the shock (rejection). So to avoid possible rejection, he stops anticipating the reward and stops seeking it as well in order to avoid the pain of rejection.

If UA time is only for Conversation and Affection, even including recreational companionship with his wife, if he can never tell if he will get SF or not from the process, the process itself becomes a burden to him. He then begins to spend his recreational time with his buddies and does things that the guys can do together. Since UA time is now nonexistent, affection and conversation also vanish and soon neither one is getting their intimate emotional needs met by their spouse.

Enter that guy at the office who is willing to talk to the wife or the girl at the club house at the golf course who likes to flirt and the marriage becomes a statistic.

SF IS unique. It IS special. It is the only EN that we agree to do exclusively with each other when we get married. All other ENs, including the other IENs can sometimes be met by others not in the marriage relationship. This can be done within the guidelines of legitimacy.

But sex, for all the emotional attachment and all the reason why it should never be entered into indiscriminately outside of marriage, is the one thing that makes a marriage so unique and special as opposed to all other relationships, even intimate relationships.

Suppose the tables were reversed. What if your husband would only agree to meet your need for conversation every once in a while and only after sex? Or what if he never touched you except as part of sex? How would you feel if he said at the end of a long day at work, "I don't want to talk tonight, or spend time with the kids. I just want to have sex and have you fix me some dinner."

What if you had sex with him and then wanted to talk and he said "Sorry. Not tonight. I don't feel like talking. The sex wasn't that great anyway."

If UA time does not include SF as part of it, when does it happen? Spontaneous might be nice after everything works just right and all the stars are in alignment at the end of a 12 hour day of perfect romance. But if that is the only time it can happen and never happens except under those conditions, then you probably need to get away for the weekend every week.

Affection and conversation don't have to lead to sex. But UA time should include a plan for it or it never happens. Just like you ladies get stuck with this "I won't give him sex unless he gives me Affection and Conversation" men get stuck on the other end of the deal. "Unless I am going to get what I want, why should I bother to work so hard at doing what I don't want to do and what is not one of MY ENs if she won't meet MY needs?"

If SF is an EN, it is up to you to meet it, just like meeting Affection, Conversation, Financial Support, Family Commitment and Honesty need to be met. Of all of these, only SF cannot ever be met outside of marriage. If he talks to the waitress, you don't get mad. But if he has sex with her, the marriage is off. If he talks to her late at night about intimate topics we call it an affair and you DO get mad because that too is one the intimate emotional needs.

SF is the reason we get married.Just about any of the other ENs can get met without being married and no one bats an eye. Only SF is kept in reserve for marriage. If marriage does not result in SF, then not much reason remains for the institution.

[/rant]

Mark
(Who took almost 3 hours to type this because I'm supposed to be working right now)

Yes. He is in withdrawal. He doesn't want to see you naked. I do the same thing sometimes with Mrs. Hold. When things are bad between us, I do not want to see her naked. I don't want to think about the sex we aren't having. I don't want to be tempted. I want to stay strong and stay away, comfortably ensconced in my withdrawal. Seeing her naked might remind me how much I love her and want her and motivate me to exit withdrawal. Which I would view as a weakness within myself. So I flee the sight of her to flee temptation.

Not very MB. But perfectly understandable. At least to me. Which should scare you, since my wife and kids think I am the wierdest person they have ever met. Still, they love me anyway.

From Lifetime Fitness

From American Mental Health Alliance

Two articles to read. Both are from Dr Harley's stuff. Take the quiz with the first one.

Mark

So - I should make sure he sees me naked OFTEN?

Update. Husband and I had a somewhat decent conversation (non-relationship) this evening. He was hoping it would lead to sex, and given that I will ovulate any day, have a yeast infection, and am exhausted due to late nights and waking at 5 every morning, it didn't happen. Oh well, sorry Mark

I don't have time to spend really reading the posts that have been made about SF. I will say that I totally understand the male perspective.


This image made me crack up for some reason. I must be really tired.

Anyway, I'm glad we were able to have a nice casual conversation in which I could share some of my concerns about my husband's anger in a non-threatening way. It meant listening to his justifications for it, which was kinda an LB . . . "I'll work on the anger problem when you figure out a way to deal with stupid people." I told him the way to deal with "stupid people" is to stop saving them from their own failures and depriving them of the chance to learn from their mistakes. He didn't buy it. But we didn't argue about it either. Just shared our opinions and moved on to other topics.

So good night. I need to get to sleep because otherwise he will question what I'm not doing in bed

Actually, I did offer for us to go to bed together naked. But I guess he doesn't want to deal with potential rejection.

Cat recommended a book, Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men, by Lundy Bancroft, that brings understanding about this and hundreds of other things like this that we heard over and over and over again, so I could remind myself to stay in reality instead of following folks down the rabbit hole falling into believing this stuff. When I hear something like this, I remind myself that respect is a basic right we all have, not something that must be "earned" first. It's up to me how to protect myself from folks who tell me plain as day that they do not respect this right I have. A growth step was for me to affirm this for myself out loud, "Respect isn't something that I have to earn."

Thought more about it overnight.

I'm operating under the assumption that we all agree that premarital sex is not ideal and should be avoided.

If a couple in their 20s is dating but not sexually active, then it is the meeting of the other EN that naturally leads to engagement, marriage, and THEN the consummation of marriage with sexual intercourse. Can we agree that this is the natural order of things?

So if this is the natural order of things PRIOR to the marriage commitment, why would it no longer be the natural order of things AFTER the marriage commitment?


If my 20-something daughter meets a great guy who meets her EN of conversation, recreation and affection, but starts to slack off in these areas and they fall out of love, I wouldn't advise her to have sex with him so that he would start meeting those needs again.

So why would we advise someone who is married any differently, simply because there is a piece of paper and some words said on a day in the past? I believe it's not the words or the document that make it a marriage, it's the actions. And in my view, it is the actions of mutually meeting all the other EN that lead to sex. For it to work the other way around is unhealthy because it puts sex in the category of marital currency.

A lot of men say that they need to have sex in ordrer to feel close to their spouse or partner, and only THEN are they able to meet the other EN. And women say they need to have the other EN met before feeling close enough to have sex. Outside the marital relationship, having sex to feel close would not be acceptible. Why is it acceptible within marriage?

I think this delimma is what makes it more difficult for a wife to lead her husband out of withdrawl than it is for a husband to lead his wife out of withdrawl. He has to go back to the "pre-marriage state" of courting without sex.

But if a wife goes back to the "pre-marriage state" of courting without sex, she's blasted for not meeting his EN for SF. Instead, she is put in the position of having to engage in SF BEFORE she is in love with her husband, in the hopes that by givng SF her husband will start meeting her EN afterwards and then fall in love with him. I have a word for that type of woman, and I certainly don't want to BE that type of woman.

Markos posted the article about leading a spouse out of withdrawl into conflict and finally into intimacy, and one of the things it stated is that the "leading" spouse is the last one to find themselves in the state of intimacy.

I personally do not believe that anyone should engage in sex until BOTH are ALREADY in the state of intimacy, even if they said vows and have a piece of paper.

thinkin, I totally hear you, but I'm wondering about other options, too, like other play folks have fun with while courting. That may make a transition like this a lot easier and more fun.

Thinking, what are your plans for dealing with this?

NED,

Using thinking's logic (which makes sense to me) that "other play" falls into the same category as sex unless you are speaking about kissing or keeping the "other play" above the neck.

I'm not sure what you mean?

Apart from suggesting that he let the stupid people learn from the consequences of their actions (even if it makes his life slightly more difficult in the sort term at work), I don't think there's anything I can do to "deal" with it.

If I tell him that his statement is a "disrespectful judgement" I will get totally laughed at, at best. Plus, to tell him that his opinion is a DJ is in itself a DJ, isn't it?

I would be open to other "play" above the belt. My husband has a harder time with this, as he is more of an "all or nothing" guy and always has been. I'm not a big fan of kissing him though, in part because he has facial hair, and also because I simply don't like the way he kisses. His kissing has always been a turnoff for me, so I have always avoided it. However, his below the belt skills were good and made up for the lack of kissing for me.

No, he will not shave. We have gone there before and he is not comfrotable without facial hair. He will trim the gotee back really short and that is acceptable to me, but he doesn't do this very often. I don't think he really knows how to "shave" because his dad never taught him. So most of the time he is really scruffy, because to trim his beard short everyoday is something that is not a part of his sleeping late routine.

He does know that I dislike this, but I'm not going to constantly bring it up. I have made the complaint known, and he will not change it consistently.

To give some background, we did engage in SF early on in dating, after he met my EN for deep conversation and I was VERY MUCH in the state of intimacy (and the state of raging hormones). After that, sex became "expected" and I didn't always enjoy it, although I did engage in it. I wasn't honest about this until we became engaged. At that point, I shared with him my regret about my sexual past, including my sexual past with him, because it was not my ideal. I requested that we refrain from sex for the remainder of our engagement (about a year). He didn't like it, but he complied, with occasional pushing to change my mind now and then. He told me that he would become Catholic. He spent lots of time talking with me then. We spent UA time together (although even when we were engaged it wasn't 15 hours a week because we didn't live together and were both busy with our jobs.)

He expected my desire for sex to return after we were married. Frankly, so did I. I also expected that once we were married we would both be "buyers" although I didn't use that term. I found out he wasn't, so I stopped being one too.

Sex is only for two byers, IMO. If one is and one isn't, the one who is shouldn't use sex to convince the renter or freeloader to become a buyer, either by intentionally witholding it, or intentionally giving it. That, in my mind, is manipulation at its worst, and cheapens the act, even if it occuring within the bounds of a marriage.

If he's only engaging in convesation and affection for a "payoff" of sex, then he deserves the rejection, my friend.

I believe that when a man engages in conversation, affection, and RC simply for the sake of conversation, affection and RC and for no other payoff, it is THEN that a woman is most likely to initiate SF with HIM.

Please don't get me wrong, I do feel for the rejection that men experience and how it can lead to their lack of desire. I wish there were an easy solution, and there's not, aside from "tabling" the expection of SF for BOTH men and women until they are both able to fill up each other's love banks and avoid withdrawls WITHOUT sex being part of the currency.

We are talking about rekindling healthy romantic love which causes us to make a commitment to marriage in the first place. It makes sense that to rekindle healthy romantic love, both parties need to make their way BACK to the state in which they can fall in love without sex.

It is possible to fall in love and to inspire a person to fall in love with me without using sex to do it.

Not very MB of me to say it, but that may not apply to all men. It is possible that your H is one of the men for whom it is NOT possible. I hope for both your sakes that he can.

Then again, at this point I am much more of a renter than a buyer. Maybe a buyer would view things differently.

I mean, what is your plan for dealing with the attitude he has towards AO? And by "plan" I do not mean anything involving talking about it.

Do the Harleys advise fake it til you make it sex (sex to bring a Withdrawn or Reluctant spouse back into intimacy)?