Sex with the Wife

I put up this topic and thought instantly of this blog I had been reading. So I gathered up the courage and asked Mr. B if I might use snippets of his blog Sex with the Wife to tell the guys perspective for this issue:

***What do you do when your significant other just doesn't want to be intimate. Are YOU the one that doesn't want to be intimate? why?

Instead he emailed me his answers-this was his reply to my email:

I'm going to give you two answers: "what I do" and "what I should do".

What I do: Stay away. I find that if my wife doesn't want to be intimate (and I do) then I tend to smother her. I am overly touchy. I give her unwanted kisses on the back of her neck. I pat her tush every time I pass her in the hallway. This is not well received and generally felt to be pushy. To avoid this, I just keep my distance. I wait until my wife is done in the bathroom before I go brush my teeth. I watch TV in the other room. I just stay away from her until she comes looking for me to see where I've gone. Sometimes this takes days before she notices I'm avoiding her, but generally it does the job.

What I should do: Keep busy. Much like what I do, but more productive. The house is full of projects that need to be done. Organize my work bench. Winterize the camper. Pick up the office. When I am trying to avoid my wife I should do those things and get really involved in them so that I forget the fact that my wife is sexually 'off' at the moment. It's great when I can do this, so it doesn't feel like I'm sulking about my wife leaving me to my own devices.

I loved these answers. He's so honest and open about the issues going on with his wife. In fact, his profile states, "my wife went into therapy for depression and messed up hormone levels...Now people have started to read the blog and I have found a whole community of guys who aren't having sex with their wives and still aren't cheating on them. I guess I am just another guy frustrated at not having sex but is trying to be a man about it."

Here is a snippet of a weekend he was hopeful for but it didn't turn out so well:

"My wife and I were in bed around 9:00 pm. Unfortunately, my wife stomach was pretty gassy and she couldn't relax. I rubbed her shoulders a little to help her relax, and did some soft touching exercises, but the bloated feeling in her stomach was too much of a distraction and she wasn't able to get aroused. Eventually she asked me to stop.

After that I had a very hard time going to sleep. I tossed and turned much of the night. The bed in her rental house is smaller than our bed back home and not as firm. My back was a little sore from the soft bed and I couldn't sleep for more than two hours at a time. I kept waking up with a distracting erection, needing to go use the toilet before it would go away. All of my tossing and turning kept my wife awake, but she didn't want to hold each other or be close in bed; she just wanted to sleep.

This is one of the sources of conflict for us. If I get to hopeful about sex, I don't sleep well in bed with my wife. I keep thinking about the beautiful woman lying two feet away from me, whom I am not allowed to touch. I can't sleep. Then my tossing and turning keeps my wife awake. Then when we go to bed she can't get aroused, because she is too tired. But I can't sleep because I am too aroused. And so goes the vicious cycle. I am hopeful we will have more success with this during our weekend, but so far Iowa City has not been kind to us."

And from THIS post he writes:

"My wife, in her quest for self-discovery, has decided that she does not like multiple forms of stimulation at the same time.

This is very hard for me to remember in the heat of the moment. I enjoy lots of stimulation (Of course I do; I'm a man.) so I have to keep reminding myself to go slowly and be careful not to overstimulate her body. When I haven't seen my wife in a week, and I haven't been naked with her in a few weeks, it is especially easy for me to get overly distracted.

I have also discussed that my wife has difficulties with sexual intimacy because she is unable to get lost on the moment. She always has the concerns of the day hanging over her distracting her from our love-making. By contrast I have to work hard not to get lost in the moment. If I get lost in the moment and make love instinctually, I am likely to do something wrong, make a mistake, touch my wife in a way that is annoying and not arousing. I am constantly working to stay detached and not get lost in the moment. This is not easy.

Again he is honest and straight forward about the issues in their marriage and how he is dealing with them. I love the fact that with each post you can feel his love for her. He states in many posts how his wife is his best friend. It's a difficult issue to work through, yet they are making the effort. His wife is seeing a therapist and he continues to be sensitive and understanding to that.

Thanks Mr. B for allowing me (Shelle) to introduce you to the Real World Blog. I know I have learned so much as a wife reading your blog. I find that I myself have done the things that your wife does said the things that she has said because I just wasn't in the mood, I felt so bad after reading how it made you feel and how it messes sometimes with your confidence in performing well for her. If I step back and look at my husband and is trepidation sometimes to start something I can see that the many years I slapped his hand away or told him "not now" really effected his confidence. I definitely have a LOT of making up to do, I really wish I would have heard it from "his" perspective sooner.

I think that is what Mr. B's blog will do for women.

So how do you see yourself and your intimacy as a couple? What do YOU do when your Significant Other doesn't want to be intimate? Is it similar to Mr. B's? How does it differ?