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Post by flyingsolo on Jun 4, 2018 16:01:02 GMT -5
Yep, I feel at my best when I have a fresh haircut, a sharp suit with maybe a vest on underneath (maybe my nice blue or black pinstripe), a colorful tie, freshly shined shoes, etc. Throw in my Audi coupe and I get a few looks now and then from the ladies. It's always a nice feeling.
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Post by flyingsolo on Jun 4, 2018 13:05:33 GMT -5
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Post by flyingsolo on Jun 3, 2018 20:14:30 GMT -5
This part of the article especially is important: “One of the things that can emerge as you explore this territory is an inability to love yourself...” Seems like I get in a lot of "self loving" lately being in a sexless marriage. Thank you Rosey!
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Post by flyingsolo on Jun 2, 2018 19:32:50 GMT -5
Your Scores
11 Words of Affirmation 10 Physical Touch 5 Acts of Service 4 Quality Time 0 Receiving Gifts
So apparently I really like compliments/support and sex. I am definitely not an insecure person (at least I don't see myself as one, present sexless marriage issues excluded), so the first one surprised me until I thought about some of the conversations my wife and I recently had. She basically completely devalued me building a successful business, building her a beautiful house, etc. by indicating that "none of that matters to her". She's the one that wanted to build the new house btw. I was perfectly happy living in the old one. I'm sure some of my feelings over being irked about her comments weighed on my response (i.e. not feeling like I have a supportive spouse right now). I would normally probably rank physical touch as the most important. I was surprised quality time was ranked so low. Maybe if I was having more sex, physical touch would be lower on the list and quality time would be higher?
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Post by flyingsolo on Jun 2, 2018 16:43:29 GMT -5
Agreed! I had a very attractive woman compliment me on the way I was dressed out of the blue a few months ago while sitting at a bar eating lunch and minding my own business. I was feeling pretty down that week and it made my day. I ended up talking to her for the entire lunch. I agree with putting your best image forward. It can do wonders for you and might even find you a nice member of the opposite sex.
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Post by flyingsolo on May 18, 2018 17:48:13 GMT -5
My spouse would say he loves me and I love him but we are not in love. We love each other like family but not in an incestuous way. I divorced him in 2016. I told him I love him but I'm not in love. Sometimes I feel like I have the pov of the refusers because I no longer want sex or intimacy with my spouse. We may cuddle and kiss but it's not passionate. It is affectionate though and I like that. We got back together in 2018 and I moved back to the marital home. We were just sexually incompatible but compatible in other ways not to mention our kids and having the family back together again. I came to the epiphany for me (and it works for me but it's not typical), I can get my needs met by more than one man. So passion, sex, intimacy, etc is with fwb who at this point is a good friend we've been doing this four years. Family life, companionship, stability, from exH. Not in love but I feel loved, wanted and desired just by two different men. Interesting dynamic that you were "out", but got back into the sexless relationship. Does your current ex-husband know you outsource bballgirl? (i.e. did you have a discussion like "Hey, if I'm coming back understand that we aren't going to have sex and I am getting it elsewhere" or do you outsource behind his back)? Do you have sex with your ex-husband also since you are back in the house? Forgive the questions, the dynamic is just fascinating as I haven't heard of this happening too often.
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Post by flyingsolo on May 18, 2018 12:45:46 GMT -5
So, here's a bit of a curious question, that I am sure goes WAY deeper, but I'll ask it anyway:
For those of you that are married, but in a sexless marriage, if you asked your "refusing" spouse, would they indicate that they "loved you"?
Some background on why I ask:
I realize of course that you can love someone and not be "in love" with someone but I am asking out of curiosity. Currently my wife and I are in counseling (and have been for about 10 months) and I'm pretty sure we would both agree that we love each other (which is why we are still trying to work it out). In general, we get along well most of the time, but I really feel like roommates more than spouses whenever intimacy comes up. I cannot get over the flat outright refusal of my wife to engage in any attempt at physical intimacy, other than maybe a quick kiss or hug, with someone she claims to love. Believe me, I am all about pleasing her first, so I don't think that's the issue. However, when it comes to any attempt to move into something more physical, it quickly dies. I know this is the age old dilemma - men can do physical intimacy without emotional intimacy and women are generally in need of emotional intimacy first.
She claims that we aren't emotionally connected and therefore she can't engage in sexual intimacy (apparently of any kind). She's also stated that she just isn't interested in sex right now, and if she were, it would definitely be with me. Needless to say, the past five years or more have been virtually sexless (maybe three or four times per year, and the past fifteen months have been completely sexless). I would think if you are trying to work out a marriage and truly love someone, you would be willing to engage in activities which promote closeness and intimacy with each other, which foreplay and sex certainly do. I really try to understand her position, however, I struggle with it severely to the point where this is the biggest stress in my life right now, more so than my career, money or recently losing a parent. In my mind, if you really really really love someone and are committed to making a marriage work, you may need to step out of your comfort zone at times. She refuses to even go away with me for a weekend without the kids.
Our past sex life used to be pretty good, then came kids, careers, etc. Any attempts I've made to restart anything gets quickly shot down. This definitely isn't where I pictured my sex life with my wife ending up when we started down this path twenty plus years ago. I am wondering if we just aren't sexually compatible anymore. Am I just "why chasing" here or am I missing something here ladies? Would a spouse who truly "loves" you, continue to refuse you?
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Post by flyingsolo on Apr 3, 2018 22:26:51 GMT -5
So, life is crazy busy for me right now as based on my profession, it's my "busy season". I often eat very late lunches (mostly alone) and come home late at night after my wife and kids are in bed. The next morning I am up doing it all over again. If you ever wonder what being a vampire feels like, ask a CPA during tax season. Bottom line, other than being at the office with my staff, I spend a lot of my time alone lately. Add to the mix being stuck in a sexless marriage and I feel REALLY alone. I won't call it depression but some days I wonder how I ended up in this mess of a relationship. On the rare instances that I am at home and not asleep, I feel like there's an elephant in the room whenever I am around my wife and not really being able to relax. I won't even mention sex at this point as I know it will start a fight, which is a whole other thing that just pisses me off that we can't even talk about it.
I know deep down that I still love my wife, but the longer we go without physical intimacy, the easier it is to think about moving on. Even getting more than a peck on the cheek or a brief hug is a stretch and she's never the one initiating it. Were it not for our three kids and a number of significant investments that would need to be untangled if we divorce, we may have agreed to part ways some time ago. We are in counseling though and have been for about nine months and the non-physical part of the relationship has gotten better - at least how we interact with one another. However, thirteen months later, still no sex. No making out, no fooling around - at all. Notta. Not even a remote shot of something physical happening. I haven't even seen my wife naked since the last time we had sex thirteen months ago. She actually locks the bathroom door when she's in the shower. However, interestingly enough, she has no problem walking in on my when I am in the shower and does it often. Nice double standard right?
Anyway, I'm rambling a bit, so I'll get to the point. This past week the weather was somewhat nice so I pulled my toy out of the parking garage and took it for a spin to the local burger bar for a beer and a burger for a late lunch. The restaurant was relatively empty at about 4PM with only a handful of people sitting at the bar. I happened to notice two women sitting at the bar with an empty chair next to them so I figured WTH and sat down next to them, minding my own business (something I wouldn't normally do BTW). As I glanced over I noticed one of them was exceptionally attractive (the one furthest from me). Now, being that it was a work day, I was pretty dressed up with a tie, sportcoat and vest on. After about five minutes the very attractive girl (who I am guessing was in her late 30's) says "Wow, I love the way you are dressed. I wish more guys dressed like you". At first it took me by surprise and I wondered if she was actually talking to me, but after I looked around there was no one else around me. That comment started a conversation with her and her friend which lasted my entire lunch where she did nothing but compliment me and ask all kinds of questions about what I do for a living, my family, what music I like, etc. I ended up talking to them for about 30 minutes and learning a lot of things about her also in the exchange to the point where I think she'd be a fun girl to get to know better. She was nothing but complimentary and interested in everything we discussed and I found it quite a refreshing change. I talked them into another round and ended up picking up their tab as I left. She asked me for my business card and sent me a thank you email before I even got back to the office. There was definitely a chemistry there and if things were different with my situation, I would have gotten her number in a heartbeat. I know she was definitely single because she commented on how bad the dating scene was and added "Ugh, I have another date tonight and don't want to go". I also get the sense that she was interested, but respected the fact that I was married.
It's amazing that when you are feeling your worst and alone in the world, one bright smiling face or someone who shows an interest in you and pays you the slightest compliment can brighten your whole day. She was pretty darn amazing and hopefully one day our paths will cross again so I can tell her. I know she has no idea of the impact she made on my day and my demeanor in general, but it was pretty cool to feel desired by a beautiful total stranger for awhile.
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Post by flyingsolo on Feb 9, 2018 19:07:20 GMT -5
To answer the OP - if my memory serves, it was about two weeks into our legal separation and with a friend I'd met two summers ago. Life will never be the same. Better - so much better already. All of that fear of the unknown has proven to be a real waste of energy for me. Personally, the thought of jumping into a relationship immediately after getting out of a long term sm seems Nuts to me. If it works for others, that's awesome, but, I know I've got to know me - the authentic, unedited version before I could imagine having a real relationship anytime soon. If I jumped in now, the next guy would be getting left-overs and that doesn't seem right. But that's just me. Now, a fwb - completely different story. Nice. My wife and I have a mutual friend who is very attractive who has been divorced for a few years. She used to tell us about her sexual exploits right after becoming single again and she has quite the high sex drive. If it all goes to hell for my marriage, I wouldn't hesitate to look her up after a bit of time to get my head straight again.
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Post by flyingsolo on Feb 9, 2018 18:58:58 GMT -5
I find myself asking a different question and will ask you all the same - Do you spend more time thinking about what your spouse is, or more time about what he/she isn't? flyingsolo I think this is a great question buried in the responses here. As for me, when I was happier with my H I spent more time thinking about what he WAS (all his good qualities) and overlooking the bad. But now that I am unhappy and frustrated in the marriage I spend more time focusing on what he ISN'T. I'd be willing to bet for those of us in unhappy SMs that is likely more often the case. If you were to try to work on your marriage you'd need to actively try to focus on the good qualities of your spouse. Agreed, but focusing on the positives can be SO difficult when one has gone through years of rejection. My wife and I have been in marital counseling since June. I do believe it is helping on some levels and I do still enjoy spending time with her. As you noted though, it is difficult to focus on the positive qualities of someone and everything that is going well in life when there's always the elephant in the room when it comes to emotional and physical intimacy with my spouse. For me, it would change by leaps and bounds on both a physical and emotional level if once, just once, she would initiate physical intimacy. We are coming up on a year without sex, and when I say without sex, I mean without any sort of physical intimacy other than a kiss and not even any passionate ones at that. My wife thinks it is perfectly normal to go a year without any kind of sex when you are working on marital issues. I've stated many times to her that I believe we need to work on both emotional and physical intimacy to fix our marriage. She has made it clear that emotional intimacy is way more important to her and that nothing is happening on the other front.
Now, I will preface this by saying my wife has lost a lot of family members in the past 20 years. We've had kids and I've spent a lot of time growing my business over the same time period. There are a lot of factors on both of our sides that have led us to where we are today. There is blame on both sides. The trick is overlooking the blame side of things and focusing on what is still good and worth saving in our marriage. However, going back to same old sex with me initiating every single time isn't something I am really willing to accept at this point. If I am working hard at becoming more emotionally connected and open with her (which is very difficult to do when being rejected for so long), I would expect her to be working on how to become less inhibited physically and actually take some role in our physical relationship. I don't think that's too much to ask. In the past 20 years, I think I can count on less than one hand the number of times she was the one to initiate sex. That is more than a little disappointing.
So, as I have stated on here before, I will give it 100% for my kids' sake if nothing else because I still do love my spouse. However, I do have the foggy idea of a timeline in my head where I either need to see marked progress on both intimacy fronts or we are going to have a serious discussion about how we plan to live the rest of our lives as I can't continue to live without intimacy. If we get to two years without some re-establishment of sexual relations, I think I'm done. It will suck and suck badly, but there are plenty of other beautiful fish in the sea. I don't mind going fishing to find a few.
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Post by flyingsolo on Feb 7, 2018 20:06:25 GMT -5
Yes, please don't consider sending anything that starts "Dear a-hole"......(save that one away for a rainy day)....
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Post by flyingsolo on Feb 7, 2018 19:32:33 GMT -5
I have another quote that sticks in my mind and has for the past twenty plus years, however it is not of the "inspirational variety". I will, however, share it here because we're all friends now right? It requires a small bit of back story. I had a tight group of guys that I grew up with that lived in my neighborhood. We hung out every day in grade school and high school played football or basketball every day after school and all summer long, basically until dark. As we got older and discovered girls, we started to date. One of my buddies (we'll call him J to preserve the guilty) was dating a girl (named M) and she was one of the first girls he had sex with. Apparently M was also dating my other friend (we'll call him C) and was sleeping with him as well. Apparently J found out that C was doing the nasty with M when J thought he and M were in an exclusive relationship. Needless to say, fireworks erupted between my two good friends upon the discovery that M was sleeping with both J and C, and doing quite a few nasty things with each, sometimes on the same day. After much discussion (with me trying to mediate to avoid said friends beating the shit out of each other), J got a rather puzzled look on his face. C looked very concerned.
"Dude, look, I just have one question" said J to C, after much pondering.
Looking rather perplexed, C waited with anticipation for said question, wondering what on Earth could be coming next. Is the friendship over? Has he permanently destroyed the brotherhood? "Sure, anything man" replied C.
"How the hell can you kiss where my dick's been?" Boom, mic dropped. C then realized, not only had he been kissing where J's dick had been, he'd been licking and sucking there too. Awkward silence followed....Neither one of them ever slept with her again. Perhaps a bit of a long story, but that quote has stuck with me from that moment on and the story still comes up now and then when we are all together and it happened over 20 years ago. I hope you found it a bit humorous as we all need a laugh now and then.
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Post by flyingsolo on Feb 7, 2018 19:02:27 GMT -5
Okay, I'm going to weigh in on this since I use this, "It's not a date," line all the time. This is what is going on inside of my head when I say this. Here is the decoder ring from the cereal box: I'm not sure I'm into you (age, not knowing enough to have a good read yet, could be lots of factors). But here's the thing, if I AM into you, I will try switch that 'hanging out' into a date, PRONTO. I'm not going to announce, "OK, now it's a date!" My body language will change and you will notice you've been let out of the friend zone. It's not a game or tricky. When my hand goes up your leg, it's a pretty good green light. But what I'm also saying to the guy is, "Please don't put your hand up my leg. It's not a date." I don't want them to have expectations and then be disappointed if it's just not clicking. Double standard. I agree. Now, with my friend Bob, here-- we both already knew it was not a date, but it helps to say so when you are dealing with the opposite gender. We are on a therapeutic site, and really, we kept in line with what this site is all about: offering support and sympathy from others in the same predicament. Bob is a wonderful gentlemen. We had a good time, and that was that. And he has awesome taste in music, by the way. Now, about the cadet/midshipman mistake, he is joking. I yanked his chain for making such an egregious mistake (never confuse navy with army), but he is too smart to realize that that would end his chances (were he trying). Just saying this to clarify that surfergirl is a nice ball buster. So to summarize, if a girl backs off the language of a "date", it means she isn't into you romantically or isn't sure she is into you romantically yet. Now, I believe baza (?) and I had a little back-and-forth regarding whether it was honest for me to post not great pics of myself, so that men would be pleasantly delighted instead of disappointed when we meet in person. The pics I posted were/are real, enough to make you say okay to meet, but I know they are not great pics. I'll let Bob weigh in if he wants to regarding whether it was "honest" or not. Did you feel lied to, Bob? Honest question and you know I can take the real answer. By the way, this could be taken as "Netflix and chill" which is code for booty call. I have legs......just saying......
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Post by flyingsolo on Feb 7, 2018 18:55:20 GMT -5
I think you should go. Very often attraction changes as we get to know someone better. That's a two way street bballgirl. Sometimes it goes the wrong way and you don't want anything to do with the person that you originally liked.
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Post by flyingsolo on Feb 7, 2018 18:53:01 GMT -5
"Don't eat yellow snow".......
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