Originally Posted by Mindful Coach

Great information NoIssues!

Thank you. I enjoy your posts also MC

Men need sex like women need love and attention, when the love and attention stop, the sex stops, and vice versa. So many marriage, outside of addiction issues or abuse would show an immediate 100% improvement if everyone involved were to remember that.

Originally Posted by NoIssues

I think the chemical ****tail that is the endorphins and such that is present during new love is the ultimate.

Is it a cruel trick our biological design plays on us that it doesnt last forever? Is it even accurate that it cant last forever? Im not completely sure.

Have fun

Originally Posted by Runs like Dog

So, shorter form....do all the work, she's a special snowflake.

Originally Posted by Sawney Beane

Runs, I think of your worldview like that of Warren Zevon:

wry, quirky, clever and no doubt rooted in the truth - but not how I'd choose to do it!

Good luck, pal.

Originally Posted by Runs like Dog

"King of the Goons, with a box for a throne"

Originally Posted by NoIssues

Run,

I dont much care for your sarcastically calling my wife a special snow flake or dismissing my ideas because you are consistently cynical of anything positive.

What is it you are trying to accomplish other than raining on every parade that gets started here?

Do you have anything positive to say that isnt couched in sarcasm?

Originally Posted by Runs like Dog

That's my point. Fixing something means not just shared effort but shared sacrifice. Unless and until my mate, or yours or anyone's has significant skin in the game then there's no point in going forward.

Originally Posted by Runs like Dog

Sure. But when you boil it all down, when you strip away the Hallmark card, it's really little more than you convincing yourself that if you only worked a little bit harder she would come around or at least you would feel that way.

I disagree totally. Your stating "its little more than my convincing myself she would come around" is innaccurate and disrepectful of my statements and experience.

I dont have to convince myself of anything. I could see it clearly after I was woke up to it. My marriage sucked because I neglected my wife and she wasnt able to verbalize it politely in a way I could grasp. Then she blew the lid off and I got the picture immediately because she was finally direct.

She closed down as a reaction to my neglect. That is common. When my neglect stopped, she opened back up. Thats not convincing myself she would do something that she did not do.

My marriage was fixed. I got what I wanted by going first with affection and respect. I enjoyed her REACTION of a sex filled loving and respectful marriage.

I took the first turn because it was the right thing to do, it was my intent all along and I did so without an insistance she reciprocate because agendas are looked at with suspicion. It worked.

You want to dismiss that with a cynical view and disrespect of an experience different than yours. Youre convinced. Well then, I suspect you are destined for continued misery. Rejecting every success story will keep you where you are lobbing bombs at everything that doesnt sit right with your stubborn failing theory.

She reacts in a positive way to my filling my role. Thats all it took. I certainly didnt have to negotiate. I just had to offer my wife love. It wasnt hard either.

I am a negotiator by habit. But that means to me that the other party has to seriously concede a bunch of things as well. They have to seriously want to sacrifice something important for the greater good. And that has to happen.

Thats your problem right there. You dont take responsiblity for creating the warm inner glow inside your wife with loving gestures. Instead you treat her like an opponent in a win-lose negotiation that you are pissed to have to bother with.

Why would she like any of that? How would you expect her to react? I wouldnt recommend anyone date someone with your view. It sounds like you make it a battle of everything. Thats not enjoyable as a constant. Some people never want to debate. Intellectual pursuits dont appeal to everyone. We arent that way but many are. Constant competition doesnt work for everyone.

I go first, she reacts. I dont say Ill do this if you do that trying to wear her down like a nuclear disarmament negotiator. Exhaustion is one of the most common reasons women shut down.

Everyone here, me included, is here because something does not work.

Bull****. Thats not why Im here. Will you ignore that too?

It's broken. But if the solution to all of that was a management seminar in 'reframing the problem' then it would be easy. We'd all simply redefine it, declare victory and go home. That obviously is not the short run or the longer term fix. But if today's solution to mine, or your issue was a squishy complacent thing, a coming to terms and chipping away at the edges of it, a low risk low impact, low speed, cost free accommodation you'd be back here in 6 months or a year or two with more or less the same problem the same broken thing and wondering why appeasement wasn't enough. Why feeling better about feeling better didn't lead to it being better.

Your labels are completely inaccurate because they all assume I just settled for a lousy marriage like a doormat while appeasing my wife. You are the only one saying that and its a blatent misrepresentation. I took the steps I needed to and my wife opened back up. You fail to read the second half because yours wont.

I spent the time needed to learn what my wife needed to function as I expected and she expected and represented she would by reading about all wives and women in theior own words mostly. My former lousy marriage was my fault because I did not know what I was doing. Once I learned the needs of my wife, I made it work for both if us. It doesnt piss me off that it worked that way. Im happy to have my sexy loving wife back. I really dont think it was all that difficult either.

I have a spouse who genuinely believes in nagging. She likes nagging. She says she likes nagging. She likes herself more when she nags. She believes that if she can simply nag, scold and correct a little bit more everything would work out fine. For her. It's a kind of sick pathological OCD. All we have to do as a couple is readjust my feeling about that. All we have to do is get on board with the nagging program. So were I a robot, we could reprogram me to be unaffected by the nagging program. She'd be free to become the Mrs. Spacely she always wanted to be and the world would be perfect. In only that twisted way that paranoids are happy when the world and everyone in it is as miserable as they. But - it's a solution, in theory. Not a great one, but a solution all the same. I do all the work, I do all the adjustment and everything is fine.

With your obvious command of the language and your obvious intelligence, you cant seriously think that my sincere and accurate representation that I was the one at fault for my marriage sucking for a few years is a suggestion that you have the same situation.

If you wife is as represented then so be it. Thats not the case with me. I was the issue. Dont get all pissed and dismissive that my experience doesnt fit your pattern. My wife was not the problem beyond her inability to express herself directly enough for my maleness to comprehend until she blew up and was direct. I took the ball from there and it worked as she REACTED to my filling her needs first. I dont resent that. Why would you? Because its not fair? Neither was my prior failure to her. They equal out.

That's my point. Fixing something means not just shared effort but shared sacrifice. Unless and until my mate, or yours or anyone's has significant skin in the game then there's no point in going forward.