Honestly from a woman's perspective, the amount of times you talk about sex suggests she is likely repulsed at this point. Any single moment you do anything, she likely believes you are only doing it for sex. She must feel like a piece of meat. I would hate my own husband for that.

Can you learn to stop this?

Hopeless, my past can relate a lot to you and your wife's case. Me and my husband were best friends. We were never on romantic dates prior to marriage. We were best buddies who did a lot of homework together and got along real well. We abstained from pre-marital sex and then I had an awful first experience on marriage night, which went worse and worse. I did everything I could to avoid sex, so I understand what your wife is going through.
You said you work from home and she is a home stay mom, so you are together all day. That doesn't mean you are "emotionally together". I spent the first six years of my marriage ALL day with him, going to classes, doing homework, doing chores under the same roof. Guess what happened next? I shamefully started chatting with my ex, then actually tried to leave my husband, my husband went to get me back, but some years later he got revenge, then I did everything I could to rebuild us. Nothing worked. A woman can't win a husband back. You can read about that over in different posts. But a husband can. A husband can make his wife fall in love. We didn't move anywhere UNTIL he, the husband, started implementing MB concepts. That means two basic things... meeting my needs and not love busting me.

My husband many times said to me he wasn't a romantic person, that he wouldn't be, because that was not him. He said he would never say again he was in love with me. My husband started around a month ago bringing flowers, sending a card, telling me I am special, I look pretty, hugging me, taking me out on dates. He finally said I am in love with you. I tell you, I really thought I had a sexual problem. Guess how it ended? Today, SF=100% for both of us.

Summarize: Meet her needs. Affection is usually a woman's number 1 need. Be romantic. Buy her flowers, make a surprise for her, give her a just because I love you card, hug her, kiss her. Make her fall in love with you, as in romantically in love with you. Win your wife's heart. Start from there. Then, she can join you in MB, so she stops love busting you. Go, be romatic as creative as you can, and... go on many dates. Its expensive with the babysitting, I know, I have a 2 and a 4 year old, so I know, but its worth it.

Check the 175 romantic ideas on this site. Example: Put rose petals on the bed.
Have you read the love busters section? and the emotional needs section on this website? I get she is love busting you a lot, and you feel uneasy, but maybe after you start your romantic gestures kindly ask her to also read the love busters section and write down your love busters.

Can you post a link to the romantic ideas?

Hopeless...on your list of stuff:

#1: Read the list of 175 ideas posted and edit your own list to remove anything that's not JUST the two of you, out of the house, recreational activity. Spending time with your in-laws is not UA. It will not help make love bank deposits.

#2: Don't make assumptions about what people here are/aren't going to tell you. It's disrespectful. You've barely been here and I can tell by your list that you haven't spent much time yet soaking in the information here.

Here's where you should start on how to build pleasant conversation with her:

The friends and enemies of good conversation.

Also, conversation can be your enemy if you are lovebusting her with it. You need to read the book Lovebusters. Everyone finds at least a few things they are doing wrong without realizing it. It is crucial to what you're doing here.

#4: Ditch this idea and replace it with ordering and reading Lovebusters. The camera thing is very odd and I can't see how she wouldn't feel like a lab experiment with you doing that.

You probably have no idea how many different ways you are lovebusting your wife (very normal for men) and reading the book/learning about them will do you a lot more good than recording your own conversations with her. You need an outside perspective (like Dr. Harley's in his book) to effectively critique what is happening here.

Axslinger85,

I'm so sorry to hear about your divorce. Hope you heal quickly.

A few women on this thread really misunderstood me and were disturbed by how much I talked about sex. But as you mentioned, it is very confusing for a man when a woman that previously was all over him completely stops allowing sexual intimacy from occurring.

This has had a major impact on my life. 10 years into the marriage and it obviously still has a damaging effect. I've made huge improvements in my attitude.

At one point I though my wife simply played a cruel trick. I thought played up her physical attraction to me and was faking the "can't resist having sex behaviors" in our dating relationship. Then once we were married, on our honeymoon, she completely shut down.

I would replay this in my mind and started to think it was an intentional plan on her part.

I'm sure women reading this want to reply that her emotional needs were not being met by me, but I assure you this was not the case. She was having a blast on her honeymoon and we were so excited to draw our nearly 4 year long distance dating relationship to a close as a married couple.

It took me a long time to realize it was really two sexual encounters that went wrong on our honeymoon, that kicked started a sexual aversion...something we never experience in our relationship in the past. Knowing my wife, she probably wanted everything to be perfect in the bedroom on our honeymoon and got tense about performing vs. per-marriage, we were trying to refrain from sex, but couldn't fight the temptation.

Thanks for the ideas and pointers.

AlienGirl,

Thank you for sharing your story and congratulations on restoring your marriage.

Despite my screen name, I do believe the MB program can unlock this crazy mess in my marriage.

I have a few good things going in my marriage. One of which is my wife always me around. I know wives that love when their husbands get out of the house...the more they are away the better. I think that would be challenging to rebuild in that type of situation.

Before my wife and I got married, her favorite thing to do was to just be with me. I think being a mom and a home maker might have pushed me down a few spots, but it is still a high priority that I'm around. She even says she doesn't like how we need to split up to run errands now that we have kids and she wishes we could do everything together. Unfortunately, it just isn't practical. But I have a big problem. I love being able to run errands by myself without her.

Because when I'm around my wife, she's typically making withdraws from my love bank. When I get away from her, I feel like I can recover a bit and actually build up my love bank again just by being away from her.

This 8 day business trip has been wonderful. I feel like my love bank is fairly full and I could take a lot of hits from my wife right now. Which is perfect, because I need to engage in conversation to try turn things around.

Also, I'm going to go in with the attitude of "she's not frustrated or angry with me...she's just focused and direct...and I'm not helping in her mission of accomplishing her goals."

I beg your pardon? You were not misunderstood at all. You don't understand the dynamics behind sexual desire and you don't understand how to fix it. You do realize that myself and others have posted extensively on your thread and you seem to be ignoring it. Just so you know, I post here in my very valuable, limited time. I would appreciate a response to my post.


This happens in MOST marriages and we have a plan to overcome it, if you will listen.


Please stop with the arrogance and read our posts.You have no earthly idea what happened because you don't understand the dynamics of marriage. You especially don't understand how women think.

We have posted Dr. Harley's solutions to these very common problems, but if you won't listen, nothing will change.

How about taking the cotton out of your ears and putting it in your mouth? Put aside your own failed ideas about marriage and listen. Otherwise, I will have to conclude you are not serious and will move on.

I spent an enormous amount of time carefully posting a plan for you this morning and instead of reading the plan and responding, you arrogantly make a comment about women and say nothing about this post.

Can I remind you, in your blind arrogance, that I have a fantastic, loving marriage that is fully recovered .........AND YOU DON'T. You are the fat man who can't lose weight who asks the slim people for help and then arrogantly dismisses the advice. How smart is that?

I assure you that you are quite wrong.

Hi, Hopeless. I'm a man. Have you listened to the Marriage Builders Radio show?

Every man who shows up here thinks he's doing all he can do. Usually they are wrong about that. Listen closely to the advice because some people have been learning Dr. Harley's methods for five, ten, fifteen years here, and had the chance to apply it to thousands of couples. It works when followed!

Hopeless, listen to MelodyLane and follow instructions. Give it a shot. It'll work. She knows this plan backwards and forwards.

As long as you think you can possibly state that on your wife's behalf, you are not even close to understanding the program here.

For heaven's sake, again, you dismiss the screaming hint that you are not meeting her ENs and go back to detailing sexual problems.

Can't help you if you have all the answers and are always right. Which is it?

If you haven't noticed, there are not just women responding to you that are giving you information on how to turn this around. There is no good ol boy network here of men that will give you a head nod of understanding that wife just won't put out even though you apparently are doing everything perfectly. Ax is not going to tell you anything different than any of us women are. We ALL advise on Dr Harley's program.

For instance (and there are many more I could quote here), this entire paragraph is what Dr Harley refers to as a DJ - disrespectful judgement. You have single handedly solved the reason why your wife is having a sexual aversion, without any input from her. You are telling us how your wife wanted everything perfect in the bedroom...blah blah blah. You do not KNOW why her sexual aversion has occurred, nor do you know how she feels, only she knows that. You also do not know if her EN's are being met, only she can tell you that. This is a huge LB and probably one you commit often, based on your thread. You can learn to stop this, if you follow the program.

Oh, Hopeless, your case is not at all hopeless, you need to read what people are telling you and apply it. Melody is pretty much an expert poster, goes straight to the point. Listen to Ax too, he is talking from personal experience. And other people posting, are posting because they care to give their time to post because of what they have learned. Listen to what people are saying to you. I don't tend to post on other people's thread, but I was drawn to post here because of the way you both were 24/7 together, best buddies with no romantic predating background and her having sexual aversion.
1) How do you know her emotional needs are being met? With the busy life around, that is something we seldom consciously analyze about our own self, much less can you know about hers. Has she stopped to consciously analyze her needs, and has given you the results? How do you know you aren't love busting her. You have a lot of love busters that you are not even aware of, that can be seen in your writing. EN and love busters are two basic important factors to turn your marriage around and set a proper environment for SF for her.
2) Sexual aversion, I know about that. I really do. I too had a really bad experience during honeymoon, and believe me, I was too having a great time, enjoying the beach and dancing with my husband, my buddy and best friend. The sex got as bad as it being impossible, literally, involuntarily impossible, and if her sexual aversion is as bad as mine was, you understand what I mean by impossible. I tried, as in tried, felt that was my "duty", but it got to a point it simply wasn't possible. And you are right about one thing, when OM came along in my story, completed all my needs I still had a sexual aversion, I was hesitant about sex, although EN were being fulfilled, but I did start to desire sex. I got back with my husband, who was now completing my EN, I learned to relax, and be able to have sex the once a month duty part. But I wasn't enjoying sex. Completing emotional needs and eliminating love busters is a must do in your list before your wife overcomes sexual aversion. After my husband started completing my needs and starting to overcome love busters through a rigid program he learned here exactly, I then paid more attention to resolving this other topic. I came across this website a section on sexual fulfillment, check it out, it explains about sexual aversion describes a solution. Read it. I was on the radio show, I was sent the book LOVE BUSTERS, because actually of love busting problems we had, and I had read chapter 13 specifically. It talks about resolving conflicts over sex. It talks about a story of Grace and Ben, and how Grace was taught by her mother that sex had to be painful and didn�t enjoy sex. It references a book on woman�s orgasm. After I saw real changes (which are very recent by the way) in him, I decided to do a lot of reading on this subject. My husband did too. That was the second part of resolving SF issue. And that gave us the final boost in recovering a completely dysfunctional marriage, and we still have a lot to do. But SF didn�t start to even get close to resolving without point 1 (EN and love busters).
3) Woman and men are brain wired differently. Don�t forget that. Don't assume.
Hopeless, you have more that a lot of hope. There is a solution. Read it. There is a lot to read here, and in the books. Wish you best of luck with your case.

Hopeless - I'm fairly new here too, but I can tell you this stuff works pretty well. I've been tremendously busy at work the past week - (interview in 1 hour) during the day and with my fam during the evenings so I haven't updated in a few days, but you can see my thread in this forum.

DW and I have been working on this stuff for only two weeks, but have made tremendous progress. I'm talking to her a lot more, quit being controlling (mostly - still working on it), I'm more relaxed after work instead of bringing home the stress, trying to find ways to have more fun with her, and she is giving SF nearly every day. Last night she even woke me up at 3 am for it, which hasn't happened in over a year.

Hi MelodyLane,

It does appear that I ignored your last posts, but in reality, my wifi access package ran out in my hotel and my last post did not come through.

I did want to log in here again to express my deepest appreciation for all your assistance and the time you put into this. I do assure you it is making a difference. And I have listened.

When I get home, the 15 hours of undivided attention will start to happen. I'll continue to work through the love busters items. I'm not going to impose any of my needs on my wife, rather focus on her needs.

This will be blended into the other studies we are currently doing. My wife did promise a list of deposit and withdraw items a week or so ago. I might ask her again if she can deliver on those.

I'm traveling home right now. I probably won't be on the forum again for a while since many things in this post would probably hurt my wife if she read them. I've debated even deleting this account.

The remark on my part about being misunderstood by some on this thread was not directed at you.

I realize some people thought I'm wrong about my wife being in love with my on our honeymoon, but this is coming from people that read a post and made a judgement with no evidence. And I'm not bringing my wife into this discussion online to verify that she was in love with me on our honeymoon.

Again, thank you for everything. I might pop back on some day when my wife isn't around. But that is rare because we are ALWAYS together.

Keep on doing the good work here, MelodyLane. For some of you others, watch being combative with folks seeking help here. Regardless of how arrogant or misguided they are. It could drive folks away from the marriage builder forum.

Take care.