So here I am. 20 years and two kids into this marriage. I really can't remember a time when my wife and I were on the same page when it came to sex. Over the years it became much more predictable, but still the same.

What I found is that my wife was most receptive to me when she was ovulating. Any other time would take much pressure from me. So, I have found that if we don't have sex at the second or third week of her cycle forget it. Nothing would piss me off more than something that would interfere with that. A cold, a hemorrhoid, kids staying up too late or getting up too early, job, etc.... because I know if it doesn't happen then, forget it.

I can't tell you how many times I have flown off the handle with her because of this. Then I would always have to come back and basically kiss her feet to ask for forgiveness for the things I said or threatened.

This time has been different and is probably the reason I found your site. This time I said very little, I held it in. I let her know that it upset me, but I didn't say much. I have also basically closed my self down romantically towards here. No hugs, no kisses, no affection at all.

Yes you can publish it. You don't need to change anything but there is something I would like to add.

 

When I wrote that I was very upset. We have reconciled somewhat, but I still stand behind the realization that I was viewing sex as a reward. Maybe the truth is that it is some kind of a reward. I want to work toward a place where it will be just something we share. A reward for us both, given to us by us. I guess even at my age I still have some growing up to do.

I am continually amazed by the way we can so often solve our own problems by stepping back and saying, "Okay, enough already. This way of looking at my situation is not working. I'm beating my head against a wall. So I have to look at this thing from a totally different angle."

In my (re)Introduction to the blog I outlined a situation where I finally understood that just fussing and fuming about my husband's little rebellions was not causing him to Get It. I was depending on the idea that punishing him with yelling and other expressions of displeasure would control his behavior, make him toe the line, do what I wanted him to do. Bzzt. Not only did that not work, it made him even more determined not to "give in" to my "demands."

Pic (just like my husband in my no-libido days -- it seems to be everyone's first resort) also tried the Screaming Solution, and when that didn't work, he went overboard in the other direction, "kissing her feet" to get sex. Naturally, this pissed him off in an even more fundamental way. He wants to be Loved, not just "rewarded" for being a Good Boy. Like any autonomous adult, he resents having to suck up to get what he wants.

As long as we believe that transactions, deliberate exchanges of emotional punishments and rewards, will somehow extract Love from our partners -- or even genuinely willing sex -- we are going to remain confused and angry. We'll swing wildly from one calculated strategy to another: play Hard To Get one week, do the Roses And Candles thing the next week, stomp around resentfully the next.

Pic made an essential transition. He disconnected himself from his habitual way of looking at the situation, breaking away from that seductive "transactional analysis" paradigm. He decided not to obssess any more about what he wasn't getting from his wife and how he could manipulate her into giving it to him. We might think that his disconnection is excessive, that his new coldness, his sense of numb resignation, is an overreaction. But it's probably necessary for Pic to back off that far, far enough to get a totally new perspective.

I'll talk more about Pic's situation later, particularly how he might start walking back toward his wife and his marriage after this emotional break, but I also have another letter that I want to discuss later this week, from a wife disturbed by her husband's porn dependence. Eventually I'm going to tie these two situations together under one (slightly tattered) theoretical umbrella.

As Roger Rabbit might say, stay tooned.