bcboy

Yes, I've watched the movie - pay it forward. Would have never thought about it for my situation but it is a really inspiring way to look at my relationship. Thank you. We haven't had sex since Christmas and I must admit it is rather sad. I think I was in a state of withdrawal and very much indifferent. In fact, not indifferent. I decided I wasn't going to go through the motions anymore. I feel very very very bad for my H and would like to honestly make him happy but from a loving place not just a perfunctory one. Beginning to change my thought process is already making me stop thinking just about what I need but that my H needs to feel and be loved.

Hi ears_open

Yes, I have read and completed the love busters questionnaire. It was not an easy task for me. There were no glaring problems but a lot of habits and attitudes that my H has that have bothered me over the years. I just put it under the umbrella of things you can't change but now I realized how much of a wall they have built up in me and ultimately I withdrew.

I have identified my two top EN's but haven't talked about this with my H yet. I assume SF is his first need and respect and trust somewhere 2nd. Should I start talking to him about all this now? Yes, I'm very hesitant to start talking now. I guess there are two of us in the marriage but I just don't want him to get all super hopeful/expectant and in my face - if you see what I mean. However, I am more than willing to do it if it is the right thing to do now.

Hi When,

I would guess I am in a very similar situation as you are. I admire you for posting. I have been reading everything here but felt timid to post until I read your story.

I prepared a private message to you and am having trouble sending it. If you can find a way to send me a message I would really appreciate it.

Thanks!

Hi Merepell

Would be happy to share with you. I don't anything know about private message sending either as I am newish too. I do have an email address but is there a way to give you this privately? If not, I will post it here.

Talk soon

Hi when,

Thanks for replying. Drop me a line at merepell@yahoo.com

Thanks!

I am impressed with how well you are doing regarding your thought process. This is step one. A change in thought is only just that until you put something into action. Now you need to act. As a show of good faith to your husband you need to show him. Act the way you wished it could be. DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE the importance and the power of seducing your husband. You need to initiate, and you need to make it look exciting. Pretend, do what ever you have to do to start building the connection between you.

Sex is the most powerful thing (IMHO) that a woman can offer to a man. It really makes us feel like men. And you have the opportunity to make him feel like a super hero if you want to. This is an investment in your marriage and it costs you nothing but has potential to pay YOU huge dividends. If you have not had relations since Christmas I would stongly suggest he is ready and would more than welcome your invitation. You can even start by saying its been a long time and that you need to make up for lost time. Remember your objective at this time is to wear him out in this arena. It is time to take one for the team and sacrifice your feelings. Before you can expect your feelings to change in this you will have to prepare the environment for change.

He is the injured party here and now it is your opportunity to show you are serious about restitution and reconcilliation. Because of your circumstance I suspect his confidence is at an all time low about now. You have the ability to directly impact that. He needs to know you WANT him. And you need to show him regularly, freqently, (until HE cries uncle I can't do this that often) And then you keep after him. He may wonder what on earth is going on. Let him. I can't think of anything that will help restore his confidence more than this.

I suspect you are reluctant to do this. Your name and your post title indicate (IMO) apathy. Your first post started out by saying
- nice guy ; best friend
- loving husband
- not enough physical intimacy - HE DESIRES
- he loves me so much
- he continues to live with me ; needs not met

What am I not doing or understanding?
What you are not doing is inviting him, participating, waving the checkered flag. This is all under your control. If you are looking for permission from someone here to say "Yeah your right it is hopeless you may as well leave" You are probably in the wrong place. If you are serious about restoring your marriage then I am going to be very blunt (just like those who have cared enough to help me have been blunt) get on with it.

You have the ability to deal with your feelings, you can acknowledge them, and you can feel that way, and that is OK. Your feelings may not be accurate right now, so don't let them impair your actions.

For example if you happened upon an accident scene and someone was laying there bleeding, not breathing, they are about to die. You might feel shock, horror, fear, revulsion and the desire to run away as the thought of doing anything is overwhelming. The appropriate course of action is to overcome these feelings and go help the person, stop the bleeding, and get them breathing. This is similar to your situation.


You decide you were not going through the motions? What precipitated this decision? What do you hope to accomplish by this? Changing your thought process - good move - you need to think a lot more about your husband and what he needs.


Your marriage is bleeding and it needs the breath of life. This is within your ability.

You are not at the end unless you choose it to be the end. Perhaps you are at the beginning
- he loves me so much
Where does the problem lie?
Stop procrastinating, get in there and heal your marriage. Restore your husband.
Lift up your husband.
Thank him for all he does.
Reward him for what he has done.
Pray for strength. (What so ever you ask in my name, according to my will it shall be done)
God wants you to have a healthy marriage. It is within your grasp and ability if you so choose. But somehow your mind is inhibiting you.
Have you ever been able to change your feelings in the past by changing your perspective?
Councellors can guide us, and encourage us to make changes. Councellors in our society have taken the place of the wise elder in the community, that can help provide us with reliable advise. But it is only advice. Advice is useless unless it precipitates action.
Sometimes we just need to close our eyes and jump, take a leap in faith.

Your husband sounds like he keeps giving to you and treating you like a valued wife. It is time to start treating him like a valued husband. You devalued him two years ago so now you have some restoration work to do. You are not operating from a postition of strength here. You need to be operating from a postion of humility.


I heard on the radio today a thought that was provoking. A priest said in councelling he said he tells people the objective of marriage is not happiness but unity. Interesting thought don't you think?

You stand at the crossroad of the most important decisions you will make in your life. What you choose now has the potential to change your life forever. What path will you take?

No longer should you be known as WHENIFEVER. You need to be known as NOWISTHEMOMENT.

Our character is refined in the difficulties and struggles of life, I pray you choose well.

May God Bless you, your husband and your children. Your, and their future is in your hands.

No there are three of you in the marriage still. You, H , OM That has not been dealt with. His essence still lingers in your relationship.

I do not know what you mean. Please explain. You don't want him to get hopeful about what? In your face ?????



Good get on with doing the right thing, then repeat, then repeat, then repeat........

By the way all you get when you keep sweeping things under the rug is a lumpy rug. Time to get working together. Not easy but necessary.

Good luck, I'm praying for you.


I have just reread this entire post and my responses to you. It sounds like I am preaching at you and I don't want to do that. I had a similar problem when I watched my sons soccer games. I would get very excited cheering the team on especially when they got close to scoring a goal. Please understand I am cheering you on because I think you are close to scoring.

My heart aches for you right now because I sense the remorse you feel, but it seems you are stuck. Stuch in the quagmire of a relationship where you are surviving and not living. I get the strong sense you want to do the right and honourable thing, yet I sense you are wondering if it will make any difference in how you feel. I sense you want it to be better, you are missing the passion. I understand the pain of troubled relationships. My marriage is in trouble too, and my wife is looking to separate. I don't want to. But you, you have a chance to make it better. Joni Mitchell sings a song "Parking Lot" one of the lines in the song is "don't it always seem to go that you know what you've got till its gone" Try to realize what you've got before its gone.

I talked to a friend whos' wife had an affair, and some of the guys could not understand why he stood by her. He said to me it is more than just the sex. Sure the betrayal hurts, but we have a shared history, memories. If I left today she would still be part of me.

I wonder if those annoying things your husband does that get under your skin can be dealt with. Maybe not right away but one at a time in a gentle and caring manner after you build your platform.

I wonder how the brides who came from England to this land called Canada did it. They came on a ship to marry men they never met before and start a new life homesteading. I read one pioneers story, where she said it was rough at first but I grew to love him. Can our love grow? Do we have the right concept of love?

I have been inspired by some of the other posters on this forum. One of them has purposed to further understand the love of God. I need to take his lead and discover that for myself, so I may learn how to love the way God intended.

We all have baggage. Going to church will not solve the issues you are facing. Though going to church is a good thing. Going to church is like reading a roadmap. That is their function is to point you in the right direction. The hard work is developing that personal relationship with a loving God so we may live a fulfilling and inspired life. Your husband cannot do that for you either.

We all face the same journey. You and I are strangers in a foreign land, travelling to a destination. What is that destination? Are we heaven bound? As I write this I am wondering if I am pointing you in the right direction? As a pastor told me, "once we enter into a right relationship with our Heavenly Father, everything else falls into place".

You have been wounded, by your father. That wound is impacting your relationship with your husband. May you be healed from your wounds.

May you find peace, love, joy, patience, and understanding. May Grace abound, may God be your guide. I'm praying for you.

Hi bcboy

Saw the Therapist. She has asked me to come back with a list of specific things that I feel I need to deal with. I'm sighing a lot. I talk a lot, with little feedback. Sigh..... Let me come back to that subject.

I appreciate you taking the time to write.

I think I understand what you are saying. I understand how instigating, taking charge of and having sex would be 100% what he needs.

Are you saying that if I put my body into action that it will change me, the way that I feel. No doubt he would be happy about it but it would have a major life changing effect on me? I am skeptical but NOT closed to it.

I don't look at my H in a sexual way and am trying to see him differently. I'm trying to connect that 'nice' guy to someone who I sexually want to be with. There's a big disconnect for me. I don't even want to kiss him. Kissing stopped a long time ago.

bcboy, right now I have the biggest aversion to doing what you say. Let me try and articulate what I feel because I'm shaking my head right now. When you want something badly - you think about it a lot - it comes to mind a lot and fills you with feelings of happiness, excitement, desire. You want to have it, hold it, touch it. Stroke it, look at it. You admire it, take care of it. It fills you with, overwhelming desire. You want to make it your own. I know once you have it, you may go off it a bit. Have to work at taking care of it, however, fundamentally it still makes you feel good even after a long time.

Over the years, I have tried to get those feelings. Wanting to feel that love, that badly for my H. To make love and not just function. However, I do not have those feelings towards him no matter how great a guy he is. I would like them but they haven't come in 20 years. How do I get them because apparently my H is wonderful. Why would I not want to make love to a guy that looks after me and takes care of me and shows me love? I don't know. So when you talk about just doing it - I think, yes, I have tried but it ends up making me feel fake. So, should I just do it anyway for him? Just be selfless? I don't want him to want me because I don't want him that way back.

I've just had a major thought - So, making love should be about appreciate and saying thank you to that other person. It is selfless, just about giving to that other person? I should think about doing it in this way?

So, I can only believe what you say, and I have said to myself, that my feelings are inaccurate. Something has been very wrong in my thinking and feelings for a long time. I'm seriously skewed. This reminds me of earlier responses that I had on this board. I think I have issues that I can't really articulate and need therapy for.

Sorry this is rambling. I don't know if it helps. All I know is that I want to change. I'll do what it takes.

Your next post was a perfect appendage to the previous one. I understood your intention and that you did want to come across as preaching.

Everything you have said has been food for thought.

The brides coming from England to Canada and how they grew to love their husbands - a thought I have all the time. I often think about what women do that have arranged marriages and how some of them turn it into love.

Your friend whose wife had an affair but he stayed with her. That is love. I have that person! The affair was a physical one (which has affected us both emotionally and mentally but we haven't talked about what it has left behind). My H says that he hurts about that from time to time but it is in the past. You know the elephant in the room - that is her baby! Or, as you put it, a lump under the rug.

When I say I don't want my H to be in my face, it means when I try to be loving he is very enthusiastic about it and immediately wants to reciprocate and be very intense. I feel under pressure particularly as my feelings usually start to dissipate and then I am disconnected and I retreat.

He is so enthusiastic because he is thirsting for it like a man in a desert thirsts for water. What you are explaining tells me you don't really love him. You may like him, admire him, but you don't love him. Love means seeing past faults, being ok with 'as is', smiling just thinking about being with him, or thinking about what you can do that would make him happy - and wanting to make him happy. Instead you spend your time thinking about what you're not getting. It's all about you. That's not love.

If you really are sincere about taking care of him and intercourse turns you off, why don't you try other things, like HJs or BJs or massages.

It sounds to me like he's so completely desperate for a scrap of affection from you that the least little signal you give him - which apparently are few and far between - makes him hyperstimulated to respond.

That's not a healthy marriage. I agree, you need to look into your own issues to find out what you're all about. Cos none of this is fair to him.

Tell your husband to get the book "No More Mr. Nice Guy". He may also want to read "When I Say No I Feel Guilty".

NMMNG also has a web site here: No More Mr. Nice Guy Online Discussion

He needs to learn how to be less nice and more effective. The book and the discussion group will help. He CAN learn to become a man you respect and are "hot and bothered" for. He should not settle for less. He has work to do. Work that will be very uncomfortable for him. But very worthwhile.

As do you. You need to work on some FOO and personal issues. Painful frightening ones. Be brave and you might surprise yourself with how differently you feel. Good luck.

Whenif
Thank you for your reply. I agree with the previous two posts as well. I am not expert and no therapist. I am suggesting a survival strategy until the work your relationship needs is addressed.

Right now I think you do need to work on the premise of sacrifice for your husband. Perhaps it may initially be going through the motions. But HE NEEDS it. HE is probably desparate in his own way. But he sounds like he is trying.

I got the message you do not feel like it. And I am wondering if your therapist will be working with you to address your fathers wound in you.

Until the work is completed (which may take a while) do you put everything, including your husbands needs on hold? If you are not funtioning in the relationship then where is it going?

You know what they say about the definition of insanity - continue to do the same things and expecting differnt results.

Blessings

Yes, I understand why my H is the way he is. I accept that it is my fault. We have known each other 23 years. Rarely argued until my affair. Always helped, supported and encouraged each other. Parented well together, homes, finances, etc etc. The only thing my H is missing is SF, as far as I know, and that area of our lives is a serious mess.

I didn't smile just thinking about being with him. No warm fuzzy glows. I felt other things but no overwhelming surges of love (for want of a better way to put it). Did you? Is that how it works? I would always want to help him and make him happy though. So, maybe I don't love him. I don't want to lose him because if I have the feeings that he has for me then this relationship would be amazing.

Yes, I am spending my time thinking about what I'm not getting AND WHAT HE'S NOT GETTING. I should have done it years ago. Maybe if I'd have made it about me sooner we would not have been in this mess today. Maybe if I'd shouted years ago and said, this is not adding up for me, then I wouldn't be here. Maybe if HE'D said I can't live with this anymore, it's not right, then we maybe could have changed things years ago. Maybe we just loved the only way we knew how and it has caught up with us. Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Okay holdingontoit

I will ask my H to get the book.

bcboy

I guess it is much easier for me to do things like think of 3 things that I like about my H each day. Show affection in words and touches/hugs each day that are out of the norm. I've tried a lot before but not quite in this way or clearly at this desperate stage of our lives.

I guess there is a 'rub' in there. I am tired, sad and pissed off that I am still having to 'work' at it. Before I get slaughtered by everyone...... just sharing my feelings is all. I have every intention of trying and trying. I can't give up yet.

From talking through these posts I think I can give the Therapist a better idea of my feelings.

I had the idea of putting everything on hold. Stopping everything, what little there was with my, H until I had sorted myself out. I didn't want to damage him further but it seems I'm doing that anyway. So, I have begun the work despite of myself and with encouragement from you all. The sex..... ? I really will try. I really will.

Do you know, I have never given a bj - wouldn't know how! A hj - we may have done this in ?!?

There are many many ways to enjoy SF aside from missionary position. Maybe you should look into it - together.

Catperson

Okay, thanks(?) for that?!?!

I would like to know how wild you have gotten with your lover, how crazy in bed would you have been. How much would you have let him do with you when you were wild about him?

1. Would you have experimented with giving a BJ to your other lover when you were in the heat of your affair?

2. Were you passionate about that other man enough to learn to blow him and maybe give him hand jobs???

3. Bondage, would you let him tie you up? Or, if you did not do that, would you have let him if he asked you to try it?

4. How bout anal sex if that other lover had assed you for it?

I am thinking that even though you are nervous about varies sex acts with your HUSBAND, that you were NOT nervous, in fact you were probabaly thrilled to do these same sex acts with your passionate illicit lover! This is how it usually goes, you dont do much with a husband but you are wild and crazy in bed with a lover...where the sex is all forbidden and wrong.....

So what was your lovemaking like with the illicit lover you had???? Wild? Fun? Open to experimentation?

(I am trying to make an illustrative point here that may help you and get you past some inertia)

Whenifever,

I read the first page or so of this thread and then the last. My I jump to a few conclusions based on little to no data? Thank you.

It seems to me you and your H have the word LOVE mixed up just a bit. Let me offer you a few things to consider.

Your H thinks loving you is: respecting you, not pushing you while in bed, not demanding sex, not demanding sex as he wants it, not fantasizing about you and sex, etc. He also thinks taking care of you, your children, supporting you, is love.

On the face of it he is absolutely right. But, given what you have said, you want someone a bit like your father. Take what he wants and the heck with anyone else. This is especially true in bed. You need a man that really just uses you in bed, because you equate good sex with being forced or cohersed into doing things "a good girl" would not do, BJ's come to mind.

Your H I am sure has sexual needs as well, but from what you have said they are not being met by you.

So, you have a good to great marriage. You go off and have an affair which harms your H greatly, harms your family greatly and harms you greatly.

Are you seeing anything wrong with these pictures? I do.

One your coping mechanisms are not well developed.

Two, your H is not being a good H.

Three you are not being a good W.

Other than that things are just great right?

I think you know that having an affair, is not a good coping mechanism or a good way to help a marriage become what you want. So I won't address this for a moment.

Your H is not being a good H, because he is acting as he THINKS you want him to act, not HOW you want him to act. Now in his defense, he would NOT think of being much more agressive sexually and demanding things from you that you may on the face of it object to as being a good H. But you state yourself, you need PASSION, and PASSION IS TAKING. Good sex is selfish AND it is giving. He got the giving part, he did not get the selfish part. Interestingly you have the selfish part down, but don't seem to have a clue about the giving part.

Ok, back to my point. IF he were a good H he would meet your needs in the bedroom. And it would seem in this case he needs a trip to the book store to get some ideas for what HE COULD DO, or MIGHT LIKE to do to you/with you. You need to help him here.

By the same token YOU need to know what he wants and needs and it is not just getting off with you. My guess he wants make 'love' to you, not just have sex.

If you want my recommendation, talk to your H about the fact that you often don't want love making you want him to be PASSIONATE and do what he wants.

By the same token you have failed him terribly. You have not been willing to accomodate yourself to sex other than the way you want it or fantasize about it, so he gets shut off. The message to him...BACK OFF. Is that really what you want him to do, or do you want him to in fact become more passionate? Your call.

I would like to urge you two to consider perhaps counseling with someone that understands sexual issues in a marriage. You both need to see sex in a different light than you do now.

So how is that for winging it, based on little data?

From what you have said, the issue is not sex, it is how each of you want to have sex. These things can be addressed. He does not have to be a "good" guy in the bedroom. But, he probably needs to be told a few times that you need a "bad guy" in the bedroom.

I hope something I have said helps.

God Bless,

JL