AnotherConfused
New member
Can anyone recommend a good book, or maybe some good strategies, for fixing a dead sex life? I've gone for years having to initiate all the sex because my husband doesn't like rejection, and finally just put my foot down and said this is killing my self esteem. So he's trying, and I realize that he just doesn't turn me on. He'll start to touch me and I feel irritated, and then I get mad at myself for not liking it.
Meanwhile, just laying eyes on my boyfriend C is all it takes to get me going, so that I practically go straight to orgasm by the time he actually has his hands anywhere strategic. So I know I don't have a physical problem getting aroused, but likely an emotional one.
One factor might be my polyamory. I have some resentment around not being "allowed" to have PIV sex with C. (I see this less as a rule than an awareness that it would upset my husband too much, so it's not really something I can negotiate for.) I feel kind of spoiled by C, in that he focuses on me so much when we are together, and communicates with me several times a day when we are apart, and has an uncanny way of reading my body language so that he knows exactly what I crave. He recently questioned whether I had raised my expectations of my husband, and I suppose I have. I catch myself thinking, "Why can't he treat me the way C does?" Probably not healthy.
I'm also concluding that my husband and I simply have very different tastes, sexually. Or maybe too similar -we both like to be passive recipients. He's like a cat, wanting his beautiful muscled body to be stroked, and I really wish I could get into that but it does nothing for me, so it's just something I do to please him. Then when he's touching me I always get the impression that he isn't really enjoying it so much as he is trying to figure out what will get a reaction from me, so he can move on to penetration. When he doesn't get a prompt reaction, he generally stops and gives up.
I'm turned on by a dominant, passionate, I'm-taking-you-now kind of presence. When he tries to act that way, it definitely feels like acting. I've told him my submission fantasies, but he seems to confuse it with violence, or disrespect, so he can't get into it. Or he thought it had to do with wanting to be told what to do so I didn't have to make any decisions. It's just not a dynamic he understands, and I don't know that I can get him to understand it, or if I'm wasting my time trying to change who he is. (I just tell C "You're in charge," and he gets a naughty glint in his eye.)
He says he doesn't know what kind of touches turn me on. C says I'm more communicative about that than anyone he knows. How can a husband not have discovered what his wife likes, after 15 years together? And yet, just the other day I had to remind him yet again, I don't like my legs to be squeezed (instant turn off every time, always has been). It's as if he isn't even paying attention to me when he's trying to turn me on.
Is there a book (fiction or nonfiction) that might help a polite, gentle, passive man understand the mindset of a woman who wants to be passionately fucked? Or one that can help us figure out how to rediscover and enjoy each other as we are?
Meanwhile, just laying eyes on my boyfriend C is all it takes to get me going, so that I practically go straight to orgasm by the time he actually has his hands anywhere strategic. So I know I don't have a physical problem getting aroused, but likely an emotional one.
One factor might be my polyamory. I have some resentment around not being "allowed" to have PIV sex with C. (I see this less as a rule than an awareness that it would upset my husband too much, so it's not really something I can negotiate for.) I feel kind of spoiled by C, in that he focuses on me so much when we are together, and communicates with me several times a day when we are apart, and has an uncanny way of reading my body language so that he knows exactly what I crave. He recently questioned whether I had raised my expectations of my husband, and I suppose I have. I catch myself thinking, "Why can't he treat me the way C does?" Probably not healthy.
I'm also concluding that my husband and I simply have very different tastes, sexually. Or maybe too similar -we both like to be passive recipients. He's like a cat, wanting his beautiful muscled body to be stroked, and I really wish I could get into that but it does nothing for me, so it's just something I do to please him. Then when he's touching me I always get the impression that he isn't really enjoying it so much as he is trying to figure out what will get a reaction from me, so he can move on to penetration. When he doesn't get a prompt reaction, he generally stops and gives up.
I'm turned on by a dominant, passionate, I'm-taking-you-now kind of presence. When he tries to act that way, it definitely feels like acting. I've told him my submission fantasies, but he seems to confuse it with violence, or disrespect, so he can't get into it. Or he thought it had to do with wanting to be told what to do so I didn't have to make any decisions. It's just not a dynamic he understands, and I don't know that I can get him to understand it, or if I'm wasting my time trying to change who he is. (I just tell C "You're in charge," and he gets a naughty glint in his eye.)
He says he doesn't know what kind of touches turn me on. C says I'm more communicative about that than anyone he knows. How can a husband not have discovered what his wife likes, after 15 years together? And yet, just the other day I had to remind him yet again, I don't like my legs to be squeezed (instant turn off every time, always has been). It's as if he isn't even paying attention to me when he's trying to turn me on.
Is there a book (fiction or nonfiction) that might help a polite, gentle, passive man understand the mindset of a woman who wants to be passionately fucked? Or one that can help us figure out how to rediscover and enjoy each other as we are?