Sunday, November 04, 2007

Getting more sex from your wife

Getting more sex from your wife


Hi,

I’m back. I sort of fell off the Bliss Wagon and didn’t want to spoil it for you… because it works, but only if you work at it. Actually, it more than ‘works’. Once oyu’ve seen inside her mind, your own mind can’t go back to its previous shape.

Let’s just say I am now exploring the furtherest reaches on the interior of this new continent that I discovered, my wife.

And let’s start with a little bit of orientation: I still surprise my wife with little (and big) gifts. I still massage her 2 times a week (with no promise of sex in exchange – and she sticks to that rule). Perhaps the most important thing for her is that we are now in business as equal partners. I have let go my command and control model and let her take the reins a lot more. And she is very encouraged and fulfilled by this.

I am still very sensitive to her need to feel equally valued. I refer to her as my ‘manager’, etc. and when we are talking to groups of farmers about climate change (this is our new enterprise), I introduce her as the ‘farmer’ and say she refers to me as being worth ‘half a sheep dog’ and I add “and she says I’m the wrong half” referring to my incompetence when moving our sheep.

But I am not Mr Perfect and I don’t clean and cook etc. andavoid laundry duty,etc… I have fallen off the wagon. But she’s not going anywhere, which was the objective of the exercise. I provide proof that I love her regularly.

Our relationship is good, but SEX doesn’t rear it’s ugly head often enough for mine. And too often for hers. She has gone through/is going through/who knows, “the change” and since that started 4 years ago she has been less interested in sex.

Her interest in sex and her pure animal energy first attracted me like a moth to a flame. I got burned, as you will read in the book. And lived with the smell of burning wings for many years. Now the irony is that her hunger for sex – which caused me so much grief with other guys and haunted me for years – has diminished. (I doubt it was ever there to the extent that I imagined. By now I have worked out that she enjoyed sex but enjoyed the excitement of the romance that went with it even more and that this was what she craved more than sex: romance. Sex was what made boys interested. It’s a common condition. It’s called “wanting to be loved”.

So, where does this leave me now? No sex for a week and I’m going bananas (quietly). She is very mindful of my needs and “does it” weekly. This reminds me of the Woody Allen movie Annie Hall, which stars Woody Allen as Alvy Singer and Diane Keaton as Annie Hall.

--------------------------------------------
ALVY'S PSYCHIATRIST
How often do you sleep together?

ANNIE'S PSYCHIATRIST
Do you have sex often?

ALVY
Hardly ever. Maybe three times a week.

ANNIE
Constantly! I'd say three times a week.
Like the other night, Alvy wanted to have
sex.


Three times a week? HEAVEN! And it is just now that I really find my wife more sexually attractive because I ‘know’ her better as a person, that fate has dealt this cruel blow. (Not blow job.)

So I googled “How to have sex with your wife” and I am afraid there’s not much hope for us. Here are some of the gems of wisdom I discovered:

One medical expert said: “Discuss the problem with your wife frankly, but be patient and supportive, always looking for mutually satisfactory ways to achieve intimacy and express love and affection.” (Do doctors have sex?)

One poor guy who gets none got this response from a chat room:

“Maybe you're presenting yourself as TOO nice, TOO needy, TOO interested; stop asking for sex, stop initiating it, stop staring at her; you may be appearing as obsessed instead of challenging; see how long it will take for HER to ask about it, then give her one of the excuses she gives YOU; this "role play" will hopefully and ultimately lead to a dialog where she SEES the issue more clearly; certainly, there could be alot of reasons for her disinterest, including hormonal imbalances, medications, or, as i mentioned, her dislike of your attitude, approach, etc; however, though she may have a legitimate reason for her feelings, it is still her RESPONSIBILITY to engage in open, honest discussion about them with you, with the goal of re-discovering the missing passion, and up to YOU to INFORM her that the lack of such dialog is UNACCEPTABLE; if she still refuses to cooperate, CONSEQUENCES would follow, but that's for a later email;for now, adjust your approach from needy to "aloof", as stated above, let her wonder about it awhile, then continue as outline.”

Souns like sound advice, but hard work and not very likely to work for me.

Then – as a little light relief (and don’t I need it) – I found this book: The Sex-Starved Wife: What to Do When He's Lost Desire By Michele Weiner Davis in Hardcover at SimonSays. (Oh happy day.)

There were some choice pieces of advice when some poor fellow submitted this tale of woe:


Subject: Why does my wife not like sex?

So my wife and I have been together for about 4.5 years now. I can count the number of times we have slept together on my toes and hands.. When I ask her about it all she says is " I dont know why I just dont feel like it." I love my wife and I know she loves me. What can I do? This is driving me nuts. I have not cheated on her but the thoughts are going through my head. I dont want to, but can this work with out sex? someone pease help.. I'll try anything at this point…

….

Sadly, for our sufferer, the first sympathetic soul was a God-fearing, no-sex-before-marriage guy who said:
“I'm not married, so I have no idea how you feel. I do know that God can help you here.” Maybe God is the person these complaints should be taken to. Afterall, He started this game, by making Men like Men and Women like Women. So, God, what’s the deal here? (He will answer in due course.) Meanwhile our unmarried, no-regular-sex guy had a good suggestion: “Continue to love your wife. Have you ever heard of "love languages"? google it. there's a book that might open your eyes to some things. like i said, i'm not married, but it sounds like you might not be speaking your wife's love language.” Right on. We’ll come back to this.

In the same string was this unkind contribution: “Maybe you suck at sex? What are you leaving out of this story?”

Someone else added: “If a person does suck at sex, and their partner lets them go blindly onward through life without ever mentioning that to them, then it's not just the partner's problem. People have to speak up, if they think their partner sucks at sex, right?.. It cannot be *simply* the case that he sucks at sex - his wife sucks at communicating about sex, just as much.”

After reading this description of the sex life of a fundamentalist Jewish couple, I decided I might like to become a Jew. Listen to this:

“Sex is the woman's right, not the man's. A man has a duty to give his wife sex regularly and to ensure that sex is pleasurable for her. He is also obligated to watch for signs that his wife wants sex, and to offer it to her without her asking for it. The woman's right to sexual intercourse is referred to as onah, and it is one of a wife's three basic rights (the others are food and clothing), which a husband may not reduce. The Talmud specifies both the quantity and quality of sex that a man must give his wife…. (From Judaism 101 - http://www.jewfaq.org/sex.htm)
….

So far, from what I came across on my search, we have ‘talk about it’, ‘don’t be no needy’, ‘try to speak her ‘Love Language’, and convert to Judaism.

Let’s look at these options:

1. TALK ABOUT IT: I said to my wife, when she started refusing sex more frequently, “I am a normal adult male with a normal sex drive.” That’s all I said. I didn’t say, “If you don’t come across, someone else will.” But that could be what she heard. Because it worked. For a while. What else can you say? “Let’s talk about this… I need sex and you don’t. What can we do about it?”

What a foolish exchange. In terms of the power situation, she’s got all the cards. As*name* writes in book, the partner least interested in sex determines the frequency of it. So I say talking is great, but have something compelling to say.

2. DON’T BE SO NEEDY: If you’re always pawing you wife (fondling, feeling up, squeezing, etc.) or always asking for sex when you are cuddling, she starts to feel you only want her for sex.

This is a BIG NO NO. Because it reduces her sense of worth as a person. Her “integrity” as a human being. So I have got to learn to keep my hands to myself.

3. LEARN HER LOVE LANGUAGE: Gary Chapman has a book called The Five Love Languages is based on the theory that each person has a different way of communicating and understanding messages about love from others.

The basic principle is this: She is more likely to make love to you if she feels love from you. You can only prove you love her by using the communication style that rings her bells.

4. CONVERT TO JUDAISM: (Or rely on a religious doctrine to regulate sex in marriage.) I don’t know about you, but I like to feel that my wife is getting off on what I am doing. Is she’s doing it out of sympathy, it is debased coinage. (Though sometimes I get so strung out that rape becomes an attractive idea.)

MY ANSWER: I think I have an answer, for me at least. My drought conditions coincided with the reduction in intensity of my seduction strategy: Love Bliztkreig. If I can return to a more maintainable level of total war/love attack, more acceptable to my own sense of integrity.

Remember, the Man Overboard is based on total surrender (to interrupt legal action or a walk out) and constant, regular proofs of your love. The man cedes victory to the woman, simply stops the struggle, and does whatever he can to win her heart again.

This works on the understanding that women have a natural sense of justice and will return the scales to the centre. But some women are so deeply scarred with the years of male insensitivity that this period of “positive discrimination” or capitulation to the woman can be long. It is easy to lose faith. (I did.)

I’m going to reduce her anxiety. I am going to reduce her feeling of being undervalued or typecast as kitchen hand and short order cook. I am going to romance her more subtly. And I am going to tell her if I find another woman attractive. The latter is not a threat; it is deepening our intimacy.

After all, she told me several times when we were young and times were rocky that she wanted our relationship to be such that she could tell me about her experiences with other men. (It terrified me at the time. It would turn me on now. Strange how the worm turns.)

I believe the answer to this ‘wife/sex/no sex’ issue runs deeper that this, and goes to the core of my identity.

More on this anon.


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