Just got back form a week of training in the mid-west. No laptop so really couldn't post or look in on things here. Anyway the new job is great so far - great for my attitude and great for Mrs. 5's as well.
Got to thinking about what I was reading on SillyOldBear's thread - My W is just not comfortable at all with exploring her sexuality. I mean anything that is out of the box (box meaning her normal comfortable repretoir, in the dark, man-on-top, etc.) is a total embarrassment to her. Even last night I requested that she get ready for bed in only some heels and a slinky robe. For me this was a total turn-on. For her she couldn't wait to turn out the light and get out of them.
We've talked about this with our ST - her embarrassment - but nothing ever changes. She rarely if ever talks during sex. Noises? Nope. She does move more now, which is a change. Maybe it will just take years of my coaxing her to let herself be free to express herself without holding back.
I still don't understand it. I want her to enjoy herself not feel awkward.
Glad, super glad, that things are looking up, Cinco!
RE: your wife's apparent embarrassment with matters sexual.
Think back to all your infidelities. Were you in a hurry to come forward to her about them? Or were you worried that she would reject you? blame you? judge you? hate you? be hurt? How incredibly hard was it for you to come forward?
Can you imagine that she might feel the same way about openly displaying her sexual self to another person?
You would say and I would say that it's not the same thing at all. But to *her*, it might be.
I'm not saying "give up", at ALL ... but imaginative empathy is always in order.
It may be that you gotta give to get. Not openess with your sexuality, but openess and honesty with her in the areas where YOU feel vulnerable, scared, and less-than. Not to the degree where you become a sniveling weak weasel of a man .... but simple revelatory honesty. Sometimes, it does evoke the same.
"Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock." -- Frank Herbert
[quote=Kettricken]RE: your wife's apparent embarrassment with matters sexual.
Think back to all your infidelities. Were you in a hurry to come forward to her about them? Or were you worried that she would reject you? blame you? judge you? hate you? be hurt? How incredibly hard was it for you to come forward?
Can you imagine that she might feel the same way about openly displaying her sexual self to another person?
You would say and I would say that it's not the same thing at all. But to *her*, it might be.
I'm not saying "give up", at ALL ... but imaginative empathy is always in order.
It may be that you gotta give to get. Not openess with your sexuality, but openess and honesty with her in the areas where YOU feel vulnerable, scared, and less-than. Not to the degree where you become a sniveling weak weasel of a man .... but simple revelatory honesty. Sometimes, it does evoke the same. /quote]
OK, I gotta know what you mean! Please help me understand.
Even when I have asked, my wife will not wear heels and a slinky robe to bed. If buy her anything slinky it is a fight. If I suggest she dress in something slinky before she get's into bed that she already owns that I find sexy, it is a fight. She has told me that she has body self-image issues and I can say that I believe her. I complement her on those parts of her body that I find attractive and tell her that I do have strong feelings of desire for her. However, it is flanel and lights out before any kissing or hugging and then it is take the flannel sleep shirt or top & pants off briefly to have intercouse, have her cuddle a moment or two, put all the flannel back on, get up go to the bathroom and then come back to bed and GO TO SLEEP!
I have never had an affair of either the heart or physically in 38 years.
I think I can understand the concept of sharing shameful or hidden feelings.
Could you please expand on what kind of openness and vulnerability you think would allow a woman with body self-image problems to open up and satisfy her husbands desire for playful and varied sex.
>43 years of marriage--My wife and I are now closer than we have been in decades. I believe that my SSM is over.
Glad, super glad, that things are looking up, Cinco!
RE: your wife's apparent embarrassment with matters sexual.
Think back to all your infidelities. Were you in a hurry to come forward to her about them? Or were you worried that she would reject you? blame you? judge you? hate you? be hurt? How incredibly hard was it for you to come forward?
Can you imagine that she might feel the same way about openly displaying her sexual self to another person?
You would say and I would say that it's not the same thing at all. But to *her*, it might be.
I'm not saying "give up", at ALL ... but imaginative empathy is always in order.
It may be that you gotta give to get. Not openess with your sexuality, but openess and honesty with her in the areas where YOU feel vulnerable, scared, and less-than. Not to the degree where you become a sniveling weak weasel of a man .... but simple revelatory honesty. Sometimes, it does evoke the same.
Thanks Kett. Yes, I do see what you mean. For us my closing myself off from her had very much to do with her closing herself to me. I was so worried about losing her love it scared me to death to come forward, be honest.
Of course that has all changed for us now. We are honest with each other now. She is honest with me about how she does not know why it is so hard for her to feel free in the bedroom. We have moved forward from where we were a year ago (I have something to add below to Young at Heart about that). Slow progress, we are getting there, it just seems so slow.
Originally Posted By: Young at Heart
Even when I have asked, my wife will not wear heels and a slinky robe to bed. If buy her anything slinky it is a fight. If I suggest she dress in something slinky before she get's into bed that she already owns that I find sexy, it is a fight. She has told me that she has body self-image issues and I can say that I believe her. I complement her on those parts of her body that I find attractive and tell her that I do have strong feelings of desire for her. However, it is flanel and lights out before any kissing or hugging and then it is take the flannel sleep shirt or top & pants off briefly to have intercouse, have her cuddle a moment or two, put all the flannel back on, get up go to the bathroom and then come back to bed and GO TO SLEEP!
Young at Heart you won't believe this but what you are describing is almost exactly my W's and my SL a little over two years ago (before our working together on it). I had to tell myself just how far we have come since then (and sorry, it made me smile a bit too ). Even way back in my posts somewhere I complained about flannel and the leaping out of bed to re-dress for sleep.
That was before I made it perfectly clear how much it meant to me for her NOT to shield herself from me with flannel and to stay nude and snuggle afterwards. I knew my W loved me but it didn't feel real without the physical affection (and skin contact).
The sexy extras are just icing on top. I am very grateful for how far we have progressed from those "flannel quickies".
I didn't happen until I let her know how I felt. It hurt me to not get affection. I had to tell her, make her understand that I was hurting. Our ST also asked the question, "Mrs. Cinco you love Cinco don't you? Affection is a way show him your love - Don't you want him to feel your love for him?"
Young at Heart you won't believe this but what you are describing is almost exactly my W's and my SL a little over two years ago (before our working together on it). I had to tell myself just how far we have come since then (and sorry, it made me smile a bit too ). Even way back in my posts somewhere I complained about flannel and the leaping out of bed to re-dress for sleep.
That was before I made it perfectly clear how much it meant to me for her NOT to shield herself from me with flannel and to stay nude and snuggle afterwards. I knew my W loved me but it didn't feel real without the physical affection (and skin contact).
The sexy extras are just icing on top. I am very grateful for how far we have progressed from those "flannel quickies".
I didn't happen until I let her know how I felt. It hurt me to not get affection. I had to tell her, make her understand that I was hurting. Our ST also asked the question, "Mrs. Cinco you love Cinco don't you? Affection is a way show him your love - Don't you want him to feel your love for him?"Cinco
Thank you for sharing and for giving me hope that the "flannel shield" may come down. It seems as impossible as the Berlin Wall coming down, but now I have hope.
You said that "it didn't happen until you let her know how you felt." Could you be a little more explicit as I would appreciate the advice from someone who has fought and won this battle.
Good luck
>43 years of marriage--My wife and I are now closer than we have been in decades. I believe that my SSM is over.
"Letting her know how you feel" is easier said than done. I have not heard from a single person here who was the "low-desire spouse" and really understood what the "high desire spouse" was going through. If you read through the stories of the "LD spouses" who put their marriages back together here, they consistently talk about a time when they finally really came to understand how much the HD spouse was suffering. Until that epiphany came, they were convinced that their HD spouses were making a big deal out of nothing. They thought their HD spouses just wanted a quick physical release, or they thought they just wanted to brag to their friends about what studs they were.
For my wife it was several discussions into The Sex-Starved Marriage when she finally started to get it. She broke down in tears that were somehow different than all the floods of tears before. At that point, it isn't just the realization that you've been suffering and tormented for years, it's also the realization that they've made it worse by dismissing your feelings and denying that your suffering is real or important.
My only advice is to get other sources involved. The LD spouse has a hard time taking what the HD spouse says about sex at face value. They can't seem to help but wonder if all the talk about hurting and suffering is just a crass ploy to get laid. Cinco mentioned his sex therapist, who probably wasn't saying anything he hadn't said a thousand times, but because the ST wasn't trying to get sex from her, Mrs. Cinco had to give her advice a fairer hearing. For me it was the book, and later a friend of my wife who was the HD spouse in her marriage and could tell my wife how lousy it was.
The "Flannel Shield" is another matter and will take a lot more work. It's a matter of her comfort level, and that's going to be one of the last things that gets any better. Even if this all works well, you should still expect a period of awkward, fumbling attempts at intimacy that don't go well. Just laugh when that happens and keep going. There will probably be times, too, when you should pass on sex, but whether out of desperation or determination, will try to forge ahead. Just laugh it off and keep going.
My wife had the same flannel shield. Her "signal" for intimacy was to go to bed before I did in a silky teddy, and over the years those teddies began to gather dust. When we started working on this, she tried to bring the teddies out of retirement and it worked well, but it also worked as a limit for her. If she didn't have one on, it was likely impossible to get anything started that night, because it had been "marked" in her mind as a non-sex night. Now it doesn't matter much what she wears, because I honestly don't care. The slinky stuff is nice, but it all comes off! Don't get too hung up on the outward symbols of sexiness. She's the sexy part. The rest is just decorative.
She makes a real effort now to stay in bed and snuggle after sex. But that took a long time. Even then, she'll snuggle for awhile, but she almost never falls asleep that way. The truth is, she can't. She genuinely gets cold and uncomfortable, and she needs her warm PJs to sleep comfortably. And now that she snuggles with me for at least a few minutes after sex, I find that I just don't mind much when she gets up and puts on the PJs. She always comes back, after all.
You may not end up doing things exactly this way, but my point is that we found an accommodation that lets us meet halfway. Would I like to sleep naked with her all night and wake up in her naked arms? Sure, but it isn't a big deal and (this is important) she has shown me that it's not some kind of personal rejection or a rejection of sex when she puts on something warm to sleep.
Besides, the truth is I could probably get her to sleep naked by turning up the heat in the room to a temperature that would leave me sweating and awake. I'm just not willing to do it!
One more thought: finding out that most LD spouses didn't understand their HD spouses' suffering was actually important for me. I was all anger, all the time by the time I found this place, and I had become sure that my wife understood exactly what she was doing and was doing it for the purpose of breaking me down and controlling me. I was convinced. Not without reason, either, because I had explained explicitly how miserable I was and exactly why (as far as I understood it myself.) She had brushed it off and seemed not to care. Finding out that she had misunderstood me, rather than making the choice to hurt me, was a big deal. Unfortunately, believing it took quite a bit longer.
"Letting her know how you feel" is easier said than done. I have not heard from a single person here who was the "low-desire spouse" and really understood what the "high desire spouse" was going through. If you read through the stories of the "LD spouses" who put their marriages back together here, they consistently talk about a time when they finally really came to understand how much the HD spouse was suffering. Until that epiphany came, they were convinced that their HD spouses were making a big deal out of nothing...
...For my wife it was several discussions into The Sex-Starved Marriage when she finally started to get it. She broke down in tears that were somehow different than all the floods of tears before. At that point, it isn't just the realization that you've been suffering and tormented for years, it's also the realization that they've made it worse by dismissing your feelings and denying that your suffering is real or important.
The "Flannel Shield" is another matter and will take a lot more work. It's a matter of her comfort level, and that's going to be one of the last things that gets any better.
...Even if this all works well, you should still expect a period of awkward, fumbling attempts at intimacy that don't go well. Just laugh when that happens and keep going. There will probably be times, too, when you should pass on sex, but whether out of desperation or determination, will try to forge ahead. Just laugh it off and keep going.
...You may not end up doing things exactly this way, but my point is that we found an accommodation that lets us meet halfway.
...(this is important) she has shown me that it's not some kind of personal rejection or a rejection of sex when she puts on something warm to sleep.
Thanks for your comments, experience and advice.
I am not sure if my breaking down last night may have shown her how badly I was hurting or not. I know it wasn't stagged and I had absolutely no control over myself when it happend. If it is my wife's epiphiny, that will be great. If not, I hope it will come at some future point in time. And I will lighten up on the pressure I have put on her.
Thank you in particular for the advice on what to do when and if sex ever happens again. I am actually afraid of the time she may say she wants to have sex with me and how I will respond.
Since I was the one who stopped having sex with her, I still have some deep scars from the rejection that caused me to end it. This past five months of no sex and her not touching me has also left me feeling unloved. Even though I have felt unloved, I have expressed my love for her in a variety of ways the past two months that she has excepted and appreciated. She has commented a number of times that I am doing things to show her my love for her that she never thought would be possible.
I will try to laugh at any fumbling and such if I ever get the chance again for sexual intimacy. I will also tell myself that her in lingerie is probably a 40th or 45th wedding anniversay gift from her, if I am lucky.
Thank you.
>43 years of marriage--My wife and I are now closer than we have been in decades. I believe that my SSM is over.
Silly ol' Bear said it better than I could. Thanks Bear!
I had lots of anger and built up resentment to get past before she could see the real me inside that was hurting. It took many times of talking and writing to her explaining in many different ways what I was feeling. Many of you have an easier road than I did with my infidelities as well.
One thing DQ helped me understand was that the conversation continues no matter what. Notice I said conversation. You have to learn what she is thinking as well. Little by little what you are trying to explain to her (each other) will seep in. It may not happen in a day, a month or even a year. I was almost ready to give up after a year. When I was ready to throw in the towel, enough had gotten through to her that she wanted to make it work at that point. I had dropped the rope and she had picked it up.
The point is this all takes time and even then the conversation continues. Intimacy is all about letting her know what is going on inside.
---
I guess one advantage of living in the south is that we stay nude all night after ML. Last summer we even slept nude for a couple of months every single night. Not sex every night, just snuggling. It felt great and I told her so. Also told Mrs. Cinco that this is the M I have always dreamed of with her. It made her smile.
Sometimes it's just so much easier to say the substance of, "You should be ..." or "married people are supposed to ...." or "Everbody else does ....." or "Experts say ....." -- instead of "I feel unloved and ugly and unsexy and alone."
Whether it's because we don't, deep down, feel that our preferences really matter at all or because we aren't comfortable with expressing vulnerability or what.
When you come right down to it, though, pressuring our partner to be just like us or like what we think is healthy is kind of controlling and unfair. It tells them *they* aren't good enough, just as much as them not desiring us physically can send us the message that we're not good enough. An invalidation for an invalidation, yep, that helps nobody.
The best we can do is express what makes US feel most loved and satisfied, personally, without casting ourselves as as the acme of all that is true and right. Then the ball is in their court.
IMHO.
In my case, I left this site up on my computer (not on purpose) and my husband read a bunch of the personal stories up there in the top thread, about how being sex-starved made other people, strangers, feel. Reading it like that, on his own, with no pressure from me, made him understand what I had been feeling more than ever before.
"Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock." -- Frank Herbert
). Even way back in my posts somewhere I complained about flannel and the leaping out of bed to re-dress for sleep.