Actually, I believe that the Love Busters, especially the ones like Angry Outbursts, Disrespectful Judegements, and Selfish Demands, and perhaps even Independent Behavior, are applicable outside the marriage relationship too. These things are not apporpriate in the workplace, for example. They are not appropriate in our friendships or in our relationships with children or parents.

I agree with Markos. DJ is abuse. Both within the context of marriage and outside of it.

To Mark's defense, I don't think he was intending to mean that ALL women use sex as power ALL the time. I think he was making a generalization that some women use sex as power some of the time. That's is how I read it anyway.

Funny - he didn't use the word "some".

Well, you can read mine the same way and give me a pass on that basis as well: I was saying SOME and not ALL too.

ETA: Kudos to you for "defending" the "male" POV. Where are the male defenders of the "female" POV I wonder... ((birds chirping)) This relates very nicely with a book I am currently reading: The Dance of Anger. Perhaps you've heard of it Think.

This article was written by a man. I think it is excellent.

Frigidity and Sexual Coldness in Normal Women - When Your Wife is not Sexually Responsive

Enjoy!

I think the SF discussion can rapidly become a chicken/egg discussion. As a woman with SF as a high EN, waiting until I have crossed enough t's and dotted enough i's become frustrating. But that is because I don't just have a high need for SF; I have a high need for sex, period. Remember Elaine on Seinfeld and how she got "stupid" after going without for awhile? That feels like me sometimes - LOL.

I think that often sex is seen - at least in part - as a more "base" need, one that is not of the same stature as the more "elevated" ones. That's the only problem I have repeatedly seen when I hear friends talk about sex. "My H is just an animal." No, your H is attracted to you and wants to express that....plus he has a need for sex. I have never actually told a friend that because I try to avoid concussions if possible - har har.

The big thing I take away from the way Dr. Harley sees it is that all of these EN's really are on a level playing field. And to make one depedent on the receipt of another really can be a slippery slope.

As far as feminism goes, the origins of feminism are very noble. As to what is has morphed into....that's a whole other thread.

The problem I see in this thread is precisely the opposite - with certain males attempting to get us to accept that men will not work ontheir marriage without SF and the insinuation that SF must be met before a woman can expect her needs to be met.


Exactly.


I don't see Feminism as a dirty word. All I know is that I can vote, own property, and apply for credit without a male sponser & I am glad the Women's Movement & Feminism happened. Anyway - I am here to learn MB.

I think for folks in MY generation, sex is even further detached from relationships. Casual sex, one night stands, friends with benefits, etc. My generation has a tendancy to be downright hedonistic, just to get the next �hit� off the love bong. That is a generalization, but I think it is true. Not because women and men in �generation X� are �bad� people, just addicted to love.


I have never taken a class in feminism or �the women�s movement.� What I�ve learned I learned from my mom, who was a woman of the 60s who actually chose to be married, be a stay at home mom, and be a traditional wife and mother. CHOSE WILLINGLY. And she was made to feel INFERIOR by other women of her generation because she was �wasting� her life. My mother is incredibly bitter about this. Because she KNOWS how hard it is to be a stay at home mom, how lonely it can be, how frustrating to have a husband who doesn�t understand. And then to have other women try to tear her down? Feminism SHOULD be about choice, but in practice, many leaders of the feminist movement actually tear down their sisters. Because of �feminism� we now have a standard of living in many parts of the country that make in impossible for women to have the choice to stay home with their children. Two incomes has increased the cost of living, especially in the area of housing. I�m not pinning ALL of it on feminism. Just saying that one of the unintended consequences is that women now have fewer choices because of the economic ramifications of feminism. Not saying it�s necessarily right or wrong.

�During this time men really got a lot of mixed signals about sex and often the woman that freely had sex with him before marriage (and often with a host of other men as well) decided that sex was not something she wanted to engage in after the wedding.�

This is an undisputed fact. This happens. Mark is pinning it on feminism, which may or may not be misguided. Maybe this is just another unintended consequence. Because both men AND women were getting and giving a lot of mixed signals and still do. And they willingly have sex prior to marriage, and something about marriage itself throws them off.

I relate to this a lot. Because I struggle with an inner belief that marriage is bondage. And I�m NOT a traditional feminist. I want the traditional female life. But I also want freedom. And if I equate marriage with slavery instead of partnership, that belief will undermine my desire to have a traditional marriage and family. I, too, am the �victim� of misguided and misapplied feminism. Except that I�m not, because as soon as I recognize myself as victim, I have the power to seek freedom. Freedom from my own warped thinking, freedom within marriage.


Sex IS marital currency for many people. Shouldn�t be. But sometimes and in many relationships, it is. Just look at all the folks who post on MB.

Sorry to go off on the tangent of feminism.

However, back to the original point.

The bottom line with SF (or any EN) is that if it is a top EN for my spouse (whether male or female), the person who is HERE on MB has the responsibility to "go first." Most of us do not have the luxury of having a spouse who is as on board as we are with the MB program, at least while starting out. If I wait for my own needs to be met, I'm missing the point.

The point is that simply by being here, opening my mind, and listening to what others are saying, I then have the responsiblity to use what I've learned. Because I have learned better now, and I have an obligation to do better. Regardless of what my spouse does or how he reacts.

For me, as a newbie, this is very easy to say. Because I don't have years of practicing MB under my belt with little or no result. I think some of the guys who are "vets" and still struggling are extremely frustrated by being caught between a rock and a hard place. It is much easier economically and emotionally for a woman to initiate a Plan B. We get to stay with our kids for the most part. We are entitled to some financial help often (though many don't get it when they ought to). We have a better support network of friends and family than many men do. And so their options are limited.

I feel sorry for the guys.

Because I can get my need for conversation met by someone other than my husband. Heck, I get it met here

I have no other recourse to get SF met. Whether it's actually "fulfillment" or "just sex." Neither does my husband. We are each other's only source. Having a source that refuses to care for that need is abuse.

Boy, have I done a 180 or what? Ya'll are awsome. Or just very good at brainwashing

I don't see feminism as a dirty word, either, and at a certain level I consider myself a type of feminist. (Note however that my wife does not.) I am glad that women can own property, hold jobs, etc. Though I join thinkitthru in lamenting that often women need to hold jobs and have no other choice due to economic concerns.

But I think in general feminism, like many other philosophies, has practically nothing to offer in terms of improving marriages. And I think you focused on Mark's simple statement that feminism has been one reason why some women have adopted certain attitudes toward sex that have been detrimental from a Marriage Builders perspective -- and completely dismissed everything else he had to say. I really think you are the one who "wigged out," not he, and I really think you would benefit from slowing down your replies and thinking over posts that bother you for longer and reading them over more times before closing your mind to them.

End of sermon.


Now, you know that Mark did not do this, right? You know that Mark patiently met his unfaithful wife's emotional needs in a long slow painful gradual process while she was still in love with the other man, right? I doubt she was offering him sexual fulfillment during that time, and I doubt that he adopted a policy of not working on his marriage unless his need for sexual fulfillment was met. I haven't read the whole thread, but I really hope you aren't referring to Mark in this paragraph, but if so, I hope you'll realize that you completely missed what he said, because he certainly wasn't saying that.

Can we get back to understanding this with a love bank model? Emotional needs vary from person to person. An emotional need is a craving that, when satisfied, leaves you feeling fulfilled and happy, and when unsatisfied, leaves you feeling frustrated and unhappy. Sexual fulfillment is an emotional need for many people. This emotional need disproportionately occurs more often in men.

Under some circumstances, some people, including Dr. Harley, recommend issuing an ultimatum to a spouse and declaring that if the spouse will not meet emotional needs then the other spouse will leave the marriage. Sexual fulfillment is no different from any other need in this regard. If it is right for a wife to issue such an ultimatum regarding affection or conversation, declaring that she will stop working on the marriage and divorce, then certainly it is right for a husband.

Interestingly enough, though, in a marriage with no affair, and with children, Dr. Harley generally does not advise a husband to issue such ultimatums:

http://www.marriagebuilders.com/graphic/mbi8111_quit3.html


Also take note of this:


I'm probably blurring the distinction between divorce, separation, and simply refusing to meet emotional needs/work on the marriage anymore, but the distinction may not be the same in my mind as it is in Dr. Harley's.

I don't think that men are excused from trying to meet a woman's ENs merely because his need for SF has gone unfulfilled. I understand his odds of getting SF go up if he meets his wife's ENs. I understand that she is just as entitled to get her ENs met as he is to get his.

I think both sides are saying the same things. It is much easier to meet your ENs if mine are already met. Everyone wants their spouse to "go first".

My advice is aimed to those women who have not historically met their husband's need for SF despite his making an effort to meet her ENs. I merely ask them to recognize the difference between being forced to have sex despite a lack of consent and being asked to consent despite a lack of desire. One is rape. The other is grace.

My sympathies to those women who have provided sex despite a lack of desire only to see their husbands refuse to reciprocate by meeting the wife's ENs. That is just as painful as going without sex.

I don't want to derail this thread into a discussion of the "women's liberation movement", but in the context of the subject, the fact is that the misinformation and bad ideas coming out of the 1960s Womens Liberation were poison to marriage, to relationships with men, and to women themselves. Long after women are the majority of college students and most are working in any jobs they want, there are radicals who talk like no progress has been made... Just like the civil rights movement, long after black Americans have full opportunities and many have become prosperous, is still kept alive by racists, those making money off it agitation, and those with narrow fringe agendas like reparations for slavery, etc.

If many of the leaders of the so-called "women's movement" had not been more obsessed with hatred of men, paranoia, persecution, complexes and their own homosexuality, it would not have had these socially destructive consequences:

1. Denigration of marriage and motherhood
2. Excusing "open marriage", "swinging", and adultery
3. Serial marriage, serial divorce
4. Living together without ever getting married
5. Subordinating children to careers.
6. Social attempts to emasculate boys by behavior control
7. Girls gone wild in their 20s
8. 70% rates of illegitimate birth among some ethnic groups, with the attendant poverty for the women and their children.

Funny how so much of this "liberation" created more cheap sex for the worst kind of men, married or single.

Many of the property rights of women to their husband's estates, dating back to the colonial era, were repealed.

Well, I sure stirred that up, didn't I?

Chris, As I mentioned above, both my wife and my mother were active in The League of Women voters during the 70s and early 80s. Between them they spent more time in a state representative's office than he did for a couple of terms.

The woman's suffrage movement was good thing and something that was many generations overdue.

However, during the middle to late 60s and throughout much of the 70s, radical feminism took hold of the imagination of women in the western world. Marriage became an institution of maintaining women as chattel and turned into a symbol of all that was wrong with the relationship between men and women.

At the same time, the "free love" movement took hold and sex was relegated to mere recreational status. Reproductive rights turned to issues of termination of unwanted pregnancies rather than just the right to refuse to have sex with a man.

On the heels of the previous generation's views on sex that women didn't like it and men wanted only sex from women, these two turned the women's movement as a whole from ensuring the right of women to be valued and treated with respect toward a view of men as oppressors and the keepers of an archaic tradition that placed men in a dominant role and women subservient to them.

Teenage girls are taught, often by their fathers, that they have the right to refuse to have sex with a man. This is absolutely true and valid. But something happened to this teaching that caused it to become a right to refuse sex with the man you were married to in order to demonstrate the right of women to be their own person and stand up for their own rights.

Just for the record at this point, I do NOT believe that the right to have sex with one's wife gives him the right to sex any time he decides he desires it.

But sex within marriage is one of the primary reasons for getting married. Girls are taught to not have sex with a man until they are married (hopefully boys are taught the same) and that sex is only permissible within the confines of a committed marital relationship. (BTW, this was another side effect of the radical feminism of the 60s and 70s, that marriage itself became something that did not have to exist and that only the commitment, for a time and not forever was required to validate the sexual union.)

Any of the other ENs can be met outside of marriage. Only SF is kept as that special EN that we agree to never allow anyone else to meet and that we agree to never meet for anyone else when we say "I do."

My comment about control being the issue is that I think that sex has been used as leverage, called around here in recent months "marital currency," for many generations. Knowing that men have a high desire (EN) for SF, many women have learned to use it as a reward system. Some begin this pattern in their teenage years and reward a date for spending a lot of money on them or doing something extra special for them. This extends into marriage and sex becomes a reward for doing everything right, meaning, the way the woman expects it all to happen.

The problem is that when things don't happen just right, she then feels justified in disallowing her husband from having sex with her. The more committed he is to her and the marriage, the more power this gives her and she ultimately becomes the person who decides if and when sex will take place and using that ability to decide as a way to ensure that she can get what she needs and wants from the relationship.

Your assumption that unmet Emotional Needs is a leading cause of affairs is correct, according to Dr Harley. That though does not make it right to refuse to meet any EN and does not make withholding meeting an emotional need in order to gain at your partner's expense right either. This applies not only to SF but to Financial Support, Domestic Support, Affection, Conversation, Honesty, Family Commitment, Recreational Companionship & Admiration as well. This IS controlling behavior and IS an effort to leverage and control the actions of our spouse. It is abusive and reprehensible.

The difficulty really arises when an unmet emotional need gets met by someone outside of the marital relationship. This is what we call an affair around here and it is as damaging to the marriage as if it were a series of sexual relationships like Tiger seems to have been involved in over the years. A man who does such a thing is considered to be a total idiot and called selfish, misguided, abusive and all sorts of things, all of them true.

But women often fall into an affair with absolutely no sexual intentions of any kind. Often and EA isn't about sex at all or even sexual attraction. It can be about noticing them, talking to them, showing affection without it ending up in sex...All of these things make Love Bank deposits until a woman is ready to leave her marriage, even abandon her children to get more of her ENs met.

Neither the case of the man seeking SF outside of marriage NOR the EA of a women whose husband has neglected her for so long, probably honestly being clueless as to what she wants, BTW, is justified in any way.

Just like you have a right to feel cared for, your husband has that same right. If his top EN or one of his top ENs is SF, then he has as much right to getting that need met as you do to getting the need for Conversation and Affection met by him. The biggest difference is that women today have been taught that they have the right to refuse to meet his need for any reason whatsoever. IF he failed to meet her EN for Financial Support, she'd have him before a judge before lunch tomorrow.

What I am driving at is that using SF as something that is granted, only when convenient or the conditions are just right and then turning the other ENs into rights is as wrong as if a man laid around all day, contributed nothing to the relationship at all and then throwing his wife over the table and raping her as his right to have sex with his wife.

I'll be back if I get time. I've been trying to finish this for two hours or longer now.

Mark

I agree 100%, Mark.

It isn't always the case that there is no beginning. Some spouses of either gender don't GET, don't HEAR, don't comprehend or perhaps can't comprehend that their spouse has needs that are different, and even if they DO recognize it, they don't/won't/can't place much priority on needs that they don't share as highly. How often have we heard that men's need for sex is so superficial? How often have we heard that women yak too much?

Some spouses, even very well intentioned and good people, just don't get it. THEY are happy so their marriage is good. HIS/HER complaints must not be very important cause "We're happy aren't we? I am so they're happy too aren't they! Were still together aren't we? It must not be so bad. They've stuck it out this long and if I was truly unhappy, I wouldn't have, so it must not be that big a deal."

My wife wouldn't have married me either if I had said there wouldn't be any sex. But her idea of a good sex life is coming together once a month or less after weeks of daily romance. I am NOT exaggerating. Good Sex to her should ALWAYS be the spontaneous result of weeks of pursuit and only when all other important tasks are DONE and she is 100% rested and there is no stress or pressure in her life. Otherwise, how can it be romantic? And yes, I did keep up the courting for YEARS. Poetry, flowers, weekly dates, weekend getaways, I even used to serenade her, gifts and roses left in her car multiple times a week. A myriad of love notes. (I just found a stack of love notes that I had written her in a box in the garage) I once kept her in live roses for two years straight. It was my goal that she always had flowers. She saved all the petals and had contractor bags full of roses.

We had sex once a day on the Honeymoon, but then when we got back, within the first month, right when she went back to work, it went to once or twice a month for about 4 years. This was without kids and 8-5 jobs. Basically ZERO responsibilities. I did all the laundry and cooked about half the meals. I'm the neater one so I did most of the housework. (Not much since we were in an apartment without kids.) Still almost no sex. I figured it was me, so I tried even harder to court her. Spent hours on poems. Songs I sang for her and about her. I've been getting her doors and holding her hand everywhere we go for 20 years now. I'm not perfect, but I did everything I could think of, but I couldn't seem to hold a candle to relaxing in front of the TV for 5 hours straight after work. Eventually, after about 8 years, I let the uber-romance fall away. Got sick of the rejection in the bedroom and realized it would never change.

I love romance. I really do. But I can't stomach it now. Like Dr Harley said, conversation and spending time together make a man want to have sex.

You know, I've never had sex on Valentines Day. My wife, even now will say literally "That was a perfect Day!!" (after lunch and flowers and candy and a play at the local playhouse and hand in hand walks... But if I even suggest making love, she will push me away with a smile (She likes being pursued - just doesn't want to be caught very often)

Its like my marriage is one gigantic "tease" even though she wouldn't see it that way.

Romance without sex is empty. Just as sex without romance is empty. They go together. Romance is a mating dance.

I guess my wife is the female version of the husband in a marriage where, though a good guy, he fails to see the importance of talking to his wife, so sits down in front of the TV every day after work, doesn't talk to anyone and wants sex before bed. Every week or two, he may feel conversationally "frisky" and engage in a 20 minute conversation with his wife. "See, I talk!"

My wife says yes to sex once a month or so. "See, I like sex!"


Anyway, just adding the perspective that the issue can begin with either the man OR the woman.

Mr Hold,

We are here --><--

Acceptance (of a less than ideal marital situation) without Awareness (of the issues making it less than ideal) is just pre-emptive denial.

I sometimes don't understand how anyone can just accept medicrity. Except I have done it too. The risk doesn't appear to outweight the benefit. How many times as a child did I wish my mom and dad would just TRY for God's sake? Just frikkin TRY? BOTH of them????? I knew what it was like to grow up with that resentment and justifiction just under the surface. And For those who are in marriages like this who have children, don't think you aren't damaging your kids by "staying together for the sake of the kids." I really couldn't say which is worse on a kid, divorce or bad marriage. But neither is worth the pain it causes to the child.

My dad did not meet my mom's need for SF. I didn't learn this until a few years ago, as an adult, and suddenly a lot of things made sense. I always believed that it was mom who was the "cold" one. that it was SHE who should have "gone first". Luckily, my parents did a lot of things "right" in the way they handle money, the way they spent time with us as a family. There was more unity in their disfunctional marriage than there is in my marriage, that's for sure. But they didn't meet each other's intimate EN, and the resentment is plapabale even today. And it didn't have to be that way. They could have chose differently and didn't have the courage.

I want to have the courage. I want to right the wrongs they haven't allowed themselves to right. If only to know that at least I made an attempt.

.......some people do go first for YEARS and nothing changes.




(I'm not arguing against going first and I think its a VERY wise methodology and can often be curative. probably is in the majority of cases. Its just that sometimes it isn't as simple as just breaking the cycle. Some spouses are HAPPY with the status quo so making them even HAPPIER isn't going to change anything It can actually prove that everything really IS AOK! )

I'm sensing a generation gap here...

As am I.


I suspected it a few pages back though...

HOW DOES ANY MARRIAGE STAND A CHANCE... given how heated it is getting ON THIS SITE between people who actually BELIEVE basically the same thing and are NOT intimately associated with each other.

Some women... and some men...

Perhaps we all don't believe the same thing.

Some men are made absolutely crazy by SEX.

Some of these men were arguing that their need for SF trumps other things because it is "unique" - Their position is that it cannot be fulfilled outside the marriage without an affair and it is therefore cru-el and unusual "punishment" that they must go without.

I called BS. MB teaches us that ENs are ENs, no EN is more "worthy" than another, and the ENs most important to you are your spouse's ENs.

Comprende?

(And I said all that without typing a 200 word post )