Would you consider...

"I wish you would take my compliments as being about me, already. I want to share with you what I experience, not make it about you. When I saw you naked just now, I thought "wow, you look great" and then shamed myself into not sharing what I thought. Because I feel shamed by your usual reaction.

I want to break this shame chain. Will you help?"

You don't have to stifle...her self-shame becomes yours...in this anti-intimacy dance. Yet the very act of claiming your own opinion as yours, about you, IS intimate. When you share it with her as yours.

Some women (like me) were taught shame of their bodies and to transfer it to men who looked at their bodies, even their spouses. Because they degrade themselves (disowning humans are all body, spirit, heart and mind), they degrade others. Only seems to relieve the shame pain...

when it really doubles it.

You don't need to learn better shame-in-silence control, Hold...you've got that self-degradation down as an addictive substance...I'll be like Jayners and double-dog dare you to...

Tell her you love her complete being because you can't find a way to love yours...would she help?

When you're truly sick of the shame pain, you'll lay it down...and then you won't allow others to...and you'll thrive.

No more lies like "I have to stifle" to yourself.

"Woah" "Ouch"
"Settle down" "Ouch"
"Enough already" "Ouch"

When you know you're really heard, that you're sharing your experience to share yourself (not to GET her to feel/think/believe anything), then you won't feel the urge to do the extreme...moderation will be easy.

Each time you feel the urge to run away and withdraw, state it right then, even if you're interrupting..."I feel like running away right now and not dealing with you at all." Then you breathe. And stay present. Look at her...she's your real partner. When you let her.

Courage isn't for wimps. However, I think a lot of men were wimps when they taught their sons that avoid conflict and lying were the key ways to stay married and stay a man.

It's the opposite. When you lean on your partner at times, you are demonstrating they are strong, whole, wonderful partners, whom you cherish. When you treat them like glass, you degrade them...enable, pander and lie and manipulate them. Just as instructed.

LA