I have never been in a relationship where love happened before desire. Every relationship starts has always started with physical desire, and then SOMETIMES love would follow. So everyone talks about restoring romantic love. I could see myself working on this, maybe even restoring romantic love for my wife. I don't however see romantic love for myself as long as my wife does not desire. For me love never occurs without desire. I was kind of wondering among the men, have you had to change your perspective, have you had to force yourself to learn to love without feeling desired? I just struggle with trying to understand love without desire. It just feels like companionship, and that is not a pleasant thought.

Hey, cemar, I asked a number of questions of you on one of your other threads that I haven't seen an answer to, yet.

For example, have you talked to your pastor about the fact that you are insulting your wife here online? How does he feel about this behavior?

And when are you going to take advantage of the opportunity to get answers from Dr. Harley for free from his radio show?

How am I insulting my wife?

deleted by Iss

This was really insulting


Let's turn it around and suggest that why would a husband have a love language that is not conversation, unless there was some dysfunction in the past?

Since you assert your primary love language is your version of affection, I'm saying that you are dysfunctional with my statement.

That's rather offensive. Therefore, when you question your wife having a love language other than physical touch, you are in fact being rather offensive.

Your wife is not you. She is different. Not different in a bad way, different in that she is her own person. After all, you didn't marry yourself, you married someone else.

The choice is yours, you can celebrate the differences or complain about them. However, remember, the only complaints that are valid here are those about yourself. I.E. it does no good to complain about your wife, to claim she is inferior, or broken or dysfunctional. None of that will make your marriage better.

If you want to complain about your inability or unwillingness to accept and celebrate that she's her own person, then I'll gladly hear you run yourself down.

But as I've said and have suggested that others follow, as long as you are talking about your wife, complaining about what she will or will not do, or writing your Disrespectful Judgments about her, I'll not answer you.

Your statement is very offensive, and I do think you owe your wife an apology for even thinking of her in those terms.

This is what you said on my 11th EN thread. Markos already pointed out that it is very insulting for you to say that something must be wrong with your wife because she is different than you. Basically, she must by "dysfunctional" because only a dysfunctional person would feel that way.

I'm actually beginning to believe that your wife isn't the one with the dysfunction.

Oh, and to answer your question, I have never felt one iota of physical attraction for a person I haven't at least believed that I was in love with. The thought of being physical in a passionate way with a man I'm not in love with makes me nauseous. I think this is a pretty common way for women to feel. It helps if a man thinks its important as well. If people in general didn't value falling in love prior to entering into physical relationships then everyone would be jumping into bed with every physically attractive person they meet.

I didn't sleep with my husband until I had a ring on my finger. We were engaged, not married, but we were madly in love at that point and we had no physical relationship other than hand holding. We were living as roommates by then, but weren't having any SF until after we'd made commitments to each other.

This is so absolutely backwards I don't even know what to do with it.

Are you suggesting that it's normal to go around sleeping with everyone that you feel a physical attraction for in the hopes that you might happen upon one that you can fall in love with? Don't you think this would be a pretty bad idea, even for single people? Imagine the huge explosion in sexually transmitted diseases alone.

May be true for you, but patently untrue for a lot of folks. Romantic love does trigger desire.

What you are fixating on, is some kind of "time-stopping-love-at-first-sight" idea, and ignoring every story of the long-time best friend who suddenly became attractive through the realization of all the love and care expressed over time.

You are ignoring all of those couples that we all look at and go "wow, how did those two end up together?"

I have the answer to that.

Start helping out around the house. Stop obsessing about desire versus romantic love. Give your wife a break. TALK to her about stuff! Make her feel like she is more than a *edit . Work out, dress nicely, clean yourself up. Let her see attractive changes in you. Take her on a nice vacation!

See, Cemar, it's something with YOU that is breaking her desire.

And yes, MB does address this. It's called a Plan A.

My relationship with DH began as friendship, then attraction, then dating, then love, then a wedding, THEN sex....because that is what the Bible says about when sex should occur.

I did have one time where desire came "before" love.....in 2006 when I had an A. And I think that sentence makes my point pretty clearly.

Why do people assume that the Husband is the cause of the woman's LD. I have found that to actually be RARE. Several of the LD woman on here have already admitted they have physical problems. The whole romantic love stuff is to encourage the woman to face her issues, but she MUST FACE HER ISSUES to fix the marriage. The romantic love does not fix the marriage, FACING HER ISSUES fixes the marriage. We have plenty of advice on the romantic part, but there is little ot no advice on the FIXING HER ISSUES part. These things don't just magically clear up and go away.

People get into relationships normally becasue their is some initial attraction. This initial attraction is desire. Men desire women they see all the time. But we CONTROL ourselves and don't ACT upon it. I see beautiful women all the time and will be sexually attracted to them, but I don't ACT upon it. I focus ALL of my sexual attention on my wife. It is called the male sex drive. I can't imagine asking someone out with out having SOME physical desire for them.

I'm in the same boat as Tawanda. My H and I were friends for a long time before we actually started dating. There was attraction (on both our parts) when we started dating, but that was after we'd been friends for quite some time. The attraction came because we knew each other and we enjoyed each other's company. It wasn't just a physical thing.

Maybe women are just different. I see lots of physically attractive men, but I don't find myself sexually attracted to them. I don't even know them. My H doesn't seem to be sexually attracted to every pretty woman he meets either. We've actually had this discussion before, and he told me he doesn't really even notice other women most of the time. He doesn't stare at other women when we're out or give any other indication that he may be attracted to them, and he says he's not, so I have no reason not to believe him.

Just because someone's good looking isn't enough to make me physically attracted to them. There are lots of good looking men in the world. I can't imagine how annoying and, well, inappropriate it would be if I found myself physically attracted to every one of them.

So given what you've read, (not what you are thinking) what are the reasons already presented for suggesting the husband go first?

You are asking the same sorts of questions over and over again and you are going to get the same answer.

YOUR WIFE IS NOT HERE FOR US TO FIX!!!!!!!

Furthermore, since you are the one here, we have to ensure that you are not the cause or even a contributing factor.

But apparently, given how obtuse you appear to be, I'd say in your case you are the primary factor and your sex life will never get better because you are not trying to get better.

So as long as you are complaining about her, the message you are sending is that you are just kidding about wanting a better sex life.

Complaining about the advice simply means you don't want a better sex life, you just want to complain, and this is not the right website for you.

So get this through your stubborn and/or thick head. YOUR WIFE IS NOT HERE, YOU ARE!

You've been advised to work on your part for 6 months, and if it doesn't get better, leave!

What do you hope to accomplish by kicking against the goads of the advice that's offered?

I'll tell you what, I'll agree!. Your right! Your wife should do what you want with the enthusiasm you want.

Let me know if that fixed your problem and you are now having enthusiastic sex. This should work immediately, so go try now!

You are right, go have sex with your now enthusiastic wife.

Cemar, I have resisted responding to you because I didn't think there was a way for me to say it without being rude. But this must be the 7th or 8th thread on your situation and I can't take it anymore. So I apologize to respected MBers for what I am about to write. It was my knee-jerk response when I first read about Cemar, but sadly, it has not changed.

Cemar, you don't want a wife, you want a prostitute. A prostitute will give you all the SF and physical affection you want and you won't have to put out any conversation, romance, housework or anything else. It will cost you a bit but so does being married so really, we're just talking about eliminating all those pesky things like the relationship aspect.

I don't even know your wife, but I can certainly understand why she has no desire for you. What have you done to be desirable? I can tell you that if I was treated like a poor-excuse for a prostitute, I wouldn't desire my husband either. Get this: your wife doesn't WANT to be a prostitute!!! She doesn't want to be THOUGHT of as a prostitute!!! But everything you want means she needs to be one, and she DOESN'T WANT TO DO THAT!!!

PLEASE, at bare minimum show her some respect. Why don't the two of you go to counselling together with the Harleys? If it's all her fault, why are you here ignoring everyone's advise?

I am a HD woman, I NEVER feel attracted to men that I see. Never.

Attraction and therefore desire, comes always through conversation and honesty and openness. The more someone talks to me and shares with me about themselves the more attractive I find them. Desire simply doesn't come before that.

We've had a rough couple of weeks here, everyone in our house has been ill, kids haven't been sleeping, hubby has been working a lot and we haven't been talking. So my need for conversation having gone unmet, means I don't particularly want to even cuddle with my hubby let alone do anything else with him.

I do it anyway, because I'm familiar with marriage builders and why exactly its necessary but at this moment in time I'm doing it because I know its the right thing to do, not because I desire it. But me doing this opened up my hubby to talking to me again, so I'm beginning to desire him again.

Cemar why don't you just dive in 100% to the program with as much emphasis as you do trying to figure out why your wife isn't as sexually wanting of you as you'd like her to be.

What is there to lose? You're already stressed out. She's stressed out. You're not happy; she's not happy.

Just go for it. No expectations other than you'll become a better husband. Give it 60 days. And this doesn't mean remind her every 3 days about how you're meeting her needs and she's not doing the same back. You do it to become a better you.
Print out the lovebusters and emotional needs questionnaire. Ask her to fill them out because you�d like to become a better husband. You start spending 15-20 hours a week together just focused on each other. Just do the program.

You know, it might not work�she still might not want to meet your sexual wants like you want her to. However, you�ll be here 60 days from now complaining about the same thing if you don�t do the program the way it�s supposed to be done.

I know you�ve said you�ve tried the program before. However, this time do it without expectations. Pretend you�re doing a self help course. Of course you prob won�t as you�ve posted the same things over and over again time after time after time.

Cemar, I don't think you even read what people write. I have never encountered someone who seems to dislike their wife as much as you do. I know sometimes I get into trouble with this word.....but bitterness oozes out of your posts. You don't want to learn. You want to verbally beat your wife - and pretty much ALL women. I am very HD. My DH could call me fat right this minute, and if he followed it with "let's go have sex," I'd be up for it. But if I even thought for a minute he felt about me the way you feel about your W......I'd never let him touch me again. I'd allow myself to spontaneously combust with sexual frustration first.

I've tried to be nice and sympathetic because I know how much refusal hurts....but you need to look in a mirror.