# Attraction through love or love through attraction



## Boromirror (Apr 25, 2017)

've thought about doing some sort of counseling for a while now but didn't feel like my problems warranted such measures. I also didn't want to give the wrong impression to my wife. I'm not an unhappy person. I've just been struggling in the relationship with my wife through no real fault of hers.

She is the same person I married 9 years ago though she's matured mentally and emotionally a great deal which only adds to the strength of the relationship. The problem is a lack of physical attraction and there's no real desire for intimacy with her on my part. I feel like a terrible person for saying this, but she has put on 70 lbs since we've been married and the physical attraction just isn't what it once was. I still love her (at least I think I do), but i feel like love isn't enough sometimes. And again, this isn't her fault. She's born two children, has hypothyroidism which makes it incredibly hard to lose weight, and is predisposed through genetics to store extra calories rather than metabolize it. She is a very active person and I don't feel like it's my place to ask her to do more. We eat very well compared to the average american. We eat out maybe once every two weeks, only eat lean meats, and our portion sizes are actually really conservative. She goes to the gym 3 times a week and is active throughout the day every day. She's doing everything I could ask her to do to help the situation, it's just not working. I find my self looking at other women more and more often, and wishing... again, I feel terrible. This is a significant source of stress for me and not something I can talk with my wife about as it directly involves areas of her life that I know she struggles with and can't easily change.

We still are occasionally intimate, maybe once a week or once every other. But the fire and the drive is gone completely. So I ask, does attraction to your spouse come from the love you have for them? Or are they two entirely separate entities? And how can one increase their attraction to someone they love?


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## Yeswecan (Jul 25, 2014)

My W gained weight(a lot) after 2 children. The attraction comes from love I have for my W(partially) the other is physically. I find her attractive physically Plus, my W is a freak in bed. My W qualities and general overall way she cares for me make me attracted to her. I see beyond the physical and appreciate her for what she does daily. 

Your W has a lot of issue going against her when it come to keep weight down. Be supportive of your W in that area. I would suggest cooking from a site called Skinny Taste. My W and I do this together. My W has lost 45 pounds and me 25 pounds. We do it together and that helps with our relationship.


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## MovingForward (Jan 19, 2017)

Boromirror said:


> 've thought about doing some sort of counseling for a while now but didn't feel like my problems warranted such measures. I also didn't want to give the wrong impression to my wife. I'm not an unhappy person. I've just been struggling in the relationship with my wife through no real fault of hers.
> 
> She is the same person I married 9 years ago though she's matured mentally and emotionally a great deal which only adds to the strength of the relationship. The problem is a lack of physical attraction and there's no real desire for intimacy with her on my part. I feel like a terrible person for saying this, but she has put on 70 lbs since we've been married and the physical attraction just isn't what it once was. I still love her (at least I think I do), but i feel like love isn't enough sometimes. And again, this isn't her fault. She's born two children, has hypothyroidism which makes it incredibly hard to lose weight, and is predisposed through genetics to store extra calories rather than metabolize it. She is a very active person and I don't feel like it's my place to ask her to do more. We eat very well compared to the average american. We eat out maybe once every two weeks, only eat lean meats, and our portion sizes are actually really conservative. She goes to the gym 3 times a week and is active throughout the day every day. She's doing everything I could ask her to do to help the situation, it's just not working. I find my self looking at other women more and more often, and wishing... again, I feel terrible. This is a significant source of stress for me and not something I can talk with my wife about as it directly involves areas of her life that I know she struggles with and can't easily change.
> 
> We still are occasionally intimate, maybe once a week or once every other. But the fire and the drive is gone completely. So I ask, does attraction to your spouse come from the love you have for them? Or are they two entirely separate entities? And how can one increase their attraction to someone they love?


I am attracted to personality traits, don't get me wrong I like good looking woman but I can be attracted to someone and quickly turned off after spending some time with them, I was not initially very attracted to my STBXW I thought she was cute but nothing special but after we spent some time together I became extremely attracted to her and had eyes for no one else, even with huge weight gain from pregnancy(she lost is eventually) I was highly turned on by her still but that's just how I am if I am in love not sure if that is the norm. Unfortunately for me I am still highly physically attracted to her as we are Divorcing. 

I have never been in a situation where I loved someone but was not attracted to them, maybe you have grown apart in other ways potentially or there is a missing connection?


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## Vinnydee (Jan 4, 2016)

This happens to most marriages. You need to tell her how hot she is every day. You have to change up how you two have sex. It tends to get boring and routine. No unpredictability or new things. You both know what buttons to press and it loses its eroticism. While pleasant, it is nothing special. I have always done something to put the spark back into our sex life over the last 44 years. We have reignited our sex life in two ways; try a new sexual fetish or play with others.

At about the same mile marker your marriage is at, we started to wife swap and have threesomes with my wife's girlfriends. It was exciting an the sex we had afterwards was very intense. Plus we both learned some new tricks that we tried on each other. When my wife saw me pleasing another woman, she went into overdrive sexually. Wanted it more often and wanted to show me she was better. 

We tried all of the fetishes most people know of and a few that most never heard of. That took the boredom and routine out of our old sex life. We shared a girlfriend from that point on whose own marriage was boring. Her husband knew about it, was a guest in our home a few times a year and OK with sharing his wife with us. What we did was to choose our marriage rather than monogamy. Most people will do as my signature block says. They will cling to monogamy in a form of marriage that fails half of the time. Think about it. We enter marriages that have a 50/50 change of succeeding and are very costly to get out of. People rather go down with the monogamy ship rather abandon ship and try something new that fits their needs.

Read the article below and it will have a ring of truth to it. We had sex with others and it only served to strengthen our marriage because we were both happy in our lives. Sex releases the hormone Oxytocin which emotionally bonds a couple together. More sex leads to wanting more sex. Less sex leads to less sex. We even scheduled a few sex night that were mandatory and short of death, no excuses allowed. We love each other so we did what we had to keep what we have. Sure enough, once you start having sex regularly again, the desire to have it comes back. We have done this three times with great success.

Currently we are in a Chastity fetish. I am teased and denied orgasms over weeks or months. What that does is keep me horny for my wife all the time so she feels like the most desirable woman in the world. She can make me erect with just a kiss. Sex is only for her orgasms. We still have sex as usual but we just skip the orgasm for me part. As a result of my wife not having to worry about me or doing things she did not like to do, sex focuses solely on her orgasm. She has been having the most intense orgasms in her life so she wants sex a lot more than she used to. I owe her anyway. She shared her girlfriend with me for 30 years and now my wife has me all to herself again.

We do what it takes and think out of the box. We focus on saving the marriage and not monogamy or vanilla sex. We have had a great marriage for 44 years and my wife and I agree, had we insisted on monogamy, we would have divorced right about the same place you are at now.

Rethinking monogamy today - CNN.com

Give this a try to understand the four stages of love. They should really teach the science of love and sex in school. Few have any idea of what is involved in love and sex.

How long does passion last? The four stages of love - TODAY.com

Good luck and best thing to do is talk honestly with your wife. When I hit 60, lost some hair and gained a lot of weight, my wife told me that she loves me but is not physically attracted to me anymore. She also asked how could I be attracted to her anymore since she was no longer the hot girl I married. I told her that when I look at her, I see the girl I married. Looks do not matter. What I love is who she is and not the packaging she comes in. We also scheduled two sex nights a week and that did the trick for us and our sex life in our mid sixties is still going strong. By changing the dynamic of who is in charge of our sex life and relieving my wife of having to focus on my orgasm, it made a significant difference. What the aim should be is to bring back the relationship you had when you were courting her. I treat my wife like I did before we married. Because I never know when I will orgasm, I feel like a teenager. Taking a shower and shaving before the date and wondering if she will put out that night. It brings back the same excitement and lust I had during our courtship.

Not recommending my way because I know it is not for everyone. Most have been ingrained with feeling jealous when our spouses have sex with others and that sex with others is a major sin in marriage. Big enough to divorce over. A lot has to do with feeling ownership of each other's sexual pleasure when in reality, sex can be just sex and not making love. You can still use the same principals in monogamy. Just talking about opening up a marriage fan reveal a lot about yourselves and you do not have to open your marriage anymore. When my wife first told me that she no longer felt attracted to me sexually, I told her that I understand and assume that means I can have sex with other women because she cannot expect me to give up sex for the rest of my life. That is not showing me love. That is being cruel because she is saying that I cannot want anything she does not want. That got her attention and made her feel a little jealous too. Do whatever it is that works for you. Ask your wife how she expects you to do with your normal sexual urges and that will get her thinking about it. If she says that she expects you to go without, that is a whole different conversation about what marriage and love is.


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## Faithful Wife (Oct 31, 2012)

Check out Marriage Builders. They can help you (if you learn the lingo and concepts). The desire for an attractive (to you) spouse is a legitimate emotional need. Here's their take on it:

Physical Attractiveness


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