Originally Posted by Hilltopper1972
How are all of you? It's the legend of legend Hilltopper here! I would say Tgrace and I are agreeable most of the time. She doesn't like me being here which is why I've stayed away for so long. Anyway you slice it my wife is still not into me. Because of this I go through ups and downs. I try hard at times and other times I throw my hands up and tell myself what's the point? Tgrace denounces the forum and blames it for my accusing her of cheating and a number of other insults which all of you who know me know very well about. We get along pretty good and I would say our time here was well worth it. We still don't have a fruitful sex life. It is very infrequent and more than the sex it is more that she is just not into me. I don't feel loved like I once did. We can go to dinner and have a fabulous time and afterwards I feel great. It never turns into anything that makes me feel that she is interested in me. I realize after all of this that sex is the culmination of her being into me, but the overall feeling that I get from her backs up the no sex. Her body language is just not into me like it once was and I am lonely because of it. What IS she into? Honestly she never stops talking about what we need to buy for the house. After a long time of debt we are finally very comfortable and yet she seems obsessed with anything and everything that costs money. Every time it comes out of her mouth I feel this sense of disapproval which I know is judgmental and a DJ. Despite this I can't stand it. I figure out how to make money and she gets to figure out how to spend it and it is a problem. I told my wife about 10 months ago that I'd "move on" if things didn't get better. I'm conflicted. We fight about once a week instead of 3 times a day. We have sex about 1/10 days but it is a chore for her and that makes me not want it. Where do I go from here?

Hill

I am a little more awake now, I hope.

As you can guess I've listened to hundreds of hours of Marriage Builders radio since we talked last. smile What I've learned is that the case where the husband is on board with Marriage Builders and the wife is not is kind of a special case. Dr. Harley does talk about it on the radio from time to time.

When a wife has been presented with Marriage Builders and doesn't want to do it, she usually has beliefs that conflict. The belief is usually "I don't believe this can work." Sometimes it's "I don't believe marriage really needs to be like that" or "I don't believe it should take this much work" or "I believe it should come naturally, if it doesn't, maybe we're not right for each other."

But according to Dr. Harley, our beliefs actually tend to line up to match our feelings.

And her feelings are under her husband's direct influence.

It turns out that when someone's account in our Love Bank is above the romantic love threshold, our instincts start prompting us to want to meet their emotional needs. Husbands suddenly start to want to be affectionate and have conversation. Wives suddenly start to want to make love and be together for recreation. Dr. Harley says it is sudden, not gradual, and it comes without warning. And for awhile it can be rocky, as the feeling comes and goes suddenly while we bob over and under the surface of the romantic love threshold.

Dr. Harley says he's had men testify that it's like their wives suddenly took hormones or something.

I can testify that my marriage has been like this. Prisca's sex drive, as well as interest in meeting my emotional needs, and even her interest in having her own emotional needs met, has been NEGATIVE, and has been STRATOSPHERIC.

What it takes is a long LONG, patient deferment of gratification, making tons of love bank deposits, avoiding love busters like the plague, changing lots of habits PERMANENTLY in order to rise above the threshold and get way beyond it. Then suddenly there is a sudden change, and 80-90% of the marital problems seem to go away.

I have found that I have to follow this plan. It condenses a lot of what I've heard from Dr. Harley, and it works:
* If I am unsatisfied with something in my marriage,
* Ask myself: is my wife in love with me?
* If the answer is no, then, ask myself what her complaints are. Then ask myself what I can do to address them.
* If the answer is yes, then make a thoughtful request or respectfully complain. But in general if I am in this frame of mind, my wife is not in love with me.

I usually find that the complaints she has are things she's told me about and been waiting on awhile.

Sometimes I can turn into a disrespectful jerk in my thinking and think how long I've waited for some of my complaints to be addressed. But, if she's not in love with me, then she's not willing to address them, period, and there's only one way to change it. And if she is in love with me, usually I don't have any complaints! Almost all disrespect on her part disappears when she is in love with me, along with reluctance to be with me and other things that I have complained about in the past.

Another important thing in there is to ask her if she has any complaints. But usually I don't have to do this if we are that point. Usually, I already know, if I am honest with myself, and drop any kind of disrespectful rationalization about why she shouldn't feel that way, or shouldn't complain about that, or whatever.

The solution is single-minded devotion to getting real answers to her complaints, making the changes permanent, NEVER LOVE BUSTING FOR AN INSTANT because she has already been through far more and far worse than she deserves and can't take any more, and making the biggest love bank deposits she is willing for me to make.


If you are serious about saving your marriage, you can't get it all on this forum. You've got to listen to the Marriage Builders Radio show, every day. Install the app!

Married to my radiant trophy wife, Prisca, 19 years. Father of 8.
Attended Marriage Builders weekend in May 2010

If your wife is not on board with MB, some of my posts to other men might help you.