This is more a letter to you than a post, I hope it is ok with you all. I find it has great value for me to write about it and to exchange experiences with you in order to better understand what we initiated last week. Also, I’m aware that not everyone have any simple solutions to find by backtracking how you may have contributed to create the problems.
Reading your posts, especially Sparkyx and Monty’s, I sympathize deeply with thoughts about her being the one that needs to change and adapt to your needs. For too many years I did everything possible to make her feel like having sex more often; showing my appreciation of her looks, great body and intelligence, showing respect to her in everything I do and say to her, showing that I am very attracted to her, surprise her now and then, etc. I even wanted to surprise her with a meatier, harder dick to see if it helped boost her sexual appetite. I also tried to talk about it with her more directly of course. Reminding her how long it was since last time was my idea of how to be explicit and honest about my needs. It just made her upset, she felt even less for sex when hearing me repeat it “so often” as she said. I could not see that she made much of an effort: she almost never took the initiative for sex, and turned down at least 95% of mine. Being rejected like a horny dog made me angry, if she really loves me she should have no problems to satisfy my needs to make me happy. I recognize exactly those feelings. I could not understand why she did not to try harder, considering the fact there are lots of other women around that would be more than pleased to give me what she denied me.
Yet I think most women try hard to find a way to adapt. They try to live up to their ideals of the perfect woman/wife/mother, formed by her upbringing, school, previous sex experiences, religion, movies, books, magazines, advertising, infomercials. As with us, conforming to the ideals and norms boosts their self confidence, deviations make them feel depressed and miserable. It is easier to see the stupidities that go into the complex matrix of ideals in women than those that shape our personality as men. For instance, women, much more then men, are led to believe in the importance of a perfect body. In my limited experience, they are almost never pleased with their physical appearance regardless how beautiful they are, and there is very little we can do about it. It makes them feel unattractive, less confident, and their libido suffers. As you say Sparkyx, many women are also fed a bunch of lies and stereotypes about “how men are” -basically simple animals- and that it can be a good strategy to keep them on a sex starvation diet as a means of control. I have not read Dr. Laura’s book, maybe it can give many women something to think about. However, as I understand the general idea from your description, if I had my wife to read the book she would probably feel even more guilty she was unable to satisfy my sexual needs as she perceived them. The consequence would be even less sexual appetite and activity from her side. This is because the problem was not a lack of effort from her side. On the contrary, she was almost too quick to learn and jump to conclusions about how to behave sexually, and I reinforced those assumptions and beliefs without knowing how it would hurt her libido in the long term. I see now that I basically share ModestoMan’s impression of the book as described here, I’m sure it is worth reading to see if it could be useful to boost her libido despite our doubts!
If I elaborate a little about my own experience, I was extremely surprised to learn that she inhibited her desires of quick sex at odd places in order to accommodate my perceived need for “long, intense, perfect sex sessions”. Here, she thought she was expected to have her multiple super orgasms in silence in order not to disturb my erection, based on what she learned from trial and error and a few instances of “failing performance” from my side. She did not believe I could change my preferences as she had learned them, and was afraid that exposing them for open discussion could have consequences for me such as ED and ultimately killing the few instances of good sex that was left after all. So she adapted. It was still quite ok for her, she loved the infrequent long sessions giving us both great pleasure, and there was always the good old vibrator to make up for the lack of quick sex she secretly desired now and then. Our hugs and kisses was enough to fill the basic need for everyday love and closeness.
I knew exactly where all that crap was coming from, it is not entirely right to call them ‘misunderstandings’. I’m ten years older than she is, and she was just 20 when we met: I think she saw herself as the great sex master’s apprentice, since I was the only man she had met who could give her orgasm. Although she played her part with great enthusiasm when I got inspired by Tantric sex in the beginning, what was left of it after being constrained by family life and work a decade later was nothing but a bag of tricks and expectations of orgasms as more or less mandatory. That is, her impression of my expectations were partly true in the sense that I really love to give her orgasms, she loves to have them as well of course, and to experience mine. What I did not realize was that also made her feel unable to meet my expectations on a more regular basis. We agreed that we should take the full responsibility for our own orgasms from now on, care less about whether or not the other had one, but not be shy about asking for or receiving ‘assistance’, giving guidance and so forth.
The results from our talk came as a natural consequence. It started the same evening we had our chat with her taking initiative to show what she meant by making love without implicit performance requirements. This was a new and very exciting experience to both of us, and I gladly left it to her to take the initiative for the continued learning/training sessions. I think it is important now for me to stand back for a while and let us realize and develop her exciting fantasies. Training in those “awkward situations” was especially important to prove to ourselves it can be made to work and feel fantastic for both, accepting ‘failures’ as necessary experience. I found my PE exercising helped very much to overcome the difficulties I had, to speed up the reprogramming process. It was a great relief for me to simply quit worrying about the level of erection, just making love without expectations. The fact that we have had more sex during the last week than in a whole year before is a side effect, a very nice one of course since that was my original goal together with increasing her sexual appetite.
As Rita commented, our talk caused dramatic change to our relation, which is irreversible. It requires that both parties drop the usual armour and expose themselves to each other about beliefs, assumptions, secret desires - to a certain limit! This should not be something to be afraid of if the parties have complete trust and feel confident nothing that is revealed will be turned against them under any circumstances. However, there were some subjects that felt extremely dangerous when approached, traps if you like. I would not tell her about PE at this time, for instance, far too high risk she would take it in the wrong way. Maybe later, in some form like “darling, maybe you feel it is much harder and bigger now so be careful. I’ve heard it could happen after the kegel practising I do regularly”. Another one was the issue of mutual and absolute faithfulness that proved to be an indivisible core value that was to be left out of any analysis. To ask or tell her about the existence or fantasies about other partners, threesomes etc would have disastrous consequences for us. I made a slight probe in that direction, she reacted very strongly so evasive manoeuvres were called for. I guess a good rule is not to ask things or approach issues where a truthful answer has potential to destroy your relationship. On the other hand, without subtle probes there is no way to find out areas of shared secret desires that may be explored and perhaps acted upon… J
Bottom line is that I saw myself as a quite sensitive, considerate guy until Wednesday last week. Then I learned my wife had to live with a dominant sex dictator for a decade, making her feel increasingly inadequate to the point that he almost managed to kill her sexual desire… the truth may be somewhere in the middle.
