Hi

wait do you not like when people refer to you as that? serious question.

ok. just checkin. thats all ive referred to him as so im just makn sure here.

I have experience in a couple different things this long ass thread has talked about.
I lived in a nearly sexless marriage for years. I tried everything to get him to just be with me. I dressed up, I bought him porn..All kinds of fun surprises. I'm not repulsive. I'm a fairly attractive woman.
And I was continually rebuffed. Sex was occassional at best. And only after I'd gone to great lengths to make things happen.

Yet he blamed our lack of intimacy on my childhood abuse.
It made me feel like I was just broken. And I bought it, I believed him.

But it wasn't like our relationship was perfect except for our sex life. and it didn't start out that way.
As other parts of our relationship deteriorated, so did our physical intimacy.
Therapy was always a wonderful idea as long as I was the only one who had to go and of course it was my issues, not him or "our issue".
I am grateful to say that in my new life, this is not a problem. I am not "broken."
I have a healthy relationship and sex is an important, not integral but important part of it.

I guess what I was trying to say is it's not always the woman saying no.

I was the one that said "No" - and I am a man. But after the constant "You are this..." and "You are that..." and all the other crap it makes it impossible to then say "Come make love to me..." and expect me to perform like a trained seal! Um..."No".

ACTx,
I'm sorry you had that experience. I understand being asked to "peform" after being treated poorly is cruel. Not what I'm talking about. No one deserves to be treated that way.
I read earlier in the thread that intimacy is just a bigger deal for women and I disagree. It's a big deal for everyone.
My experience was that the majority of the time I was rejected and I was not asking him to behave as a trained seal.
I justed wanted him to be my partner, my lover and my friend.

Kelly and TD get the difference between CAN'T and WON'T. I think Rman does too.

@Jaken

@Jaken

well,

if you try twice to post something and the universe intervenes both times that's a sign that you should stop

Interesting.....

I want to be hopeful for you, but given my experience in my own marriage, it cannot survive. Lack of compatibility leads to lack of affection and lack of affection leads to resentment and feeling unloved and unloveable. If your partner isn't willing to look at changes that can be made, run, run as fast as you can and do it now. Doing it later will only hurt your self image.

Who gets to define effort? Who gets to judge success?

I think if you are incompatible in the bedroom, it is a sign and symptom of incompatibility elsewhere, possibly everywhere.

Incompatibility could be quality. Or it could be quantity.

If you get to that point of resentment because he asks too much. Or resentment because she says no too much or any combination of those, it's likely everything else is messy as well.

I remember being on the same page. I remember when it began to change. It's not what ultimately ended my marriage but it was a factor.

I know couples who are still on the same page, and quality and quantity are not issues for them. But neither is how they spend money, or where they attend church or not, what to do about the kids or anything else.

You can't isolate this issue and think "oh, if we solve this...everything else will fall into place". It's likely it will not. Even if you solve this one issue.

No....


....not happily anywayz.