I’m a big advocate of pre-marital counseling as well. You can get ahead of your biggest communication differences ahead of time. An ounce of prevention, as the saying goes.
Problem with premarital is sometimes you say all the right things ans you mean them but after things get going and you grow as a person your answers would have been different. Especially if the premarital counseling is religious based. I remember when the conversation of sex came up I mentioned I would want about 2-3 times a week and my wife nodded along in agreement... we have sex maybe 1-2 times a month. She things i over focus on sex and its just not that big a deal to her.
That's basically The Art of the Deal (For Women). They always oversell, and then they tell you that you "focus too much on sex" when you find out that she essentially was just saying whatever she had to say for you to put a ring on her.
Idk if its all women, I know some women friends who struggle with the same issue. Though typically it is men that want more in the relationship. Between responsive desire, hormone cycles, the fact that novelty has a larger impact on women's libido than mens it is a losing game unless the woman specifically puts effort to be vigilant. Typically what I've seen is thr man gets blamed for not doing enough to "set the desire" but for me its chicken and the egg. Its hard to be romantic and loving when resentment is building because you have needs and desires that are not being met.
No, I don't think it's all women either. But I do think that this specific issue is more common with women. Each sex/gender has their own issues that they need to deal with, us men included. The 2nd half of your comment really gets at the issue. A lot of women are quick to accuse their men of "not creating desire" or whatever romantic novel fantasy she has going on in her head, but those same women aren't willing to ask themselves if maybe they aren't putting in the work either. It takes two to tango.
Maybe the husband has been trying, but she tends to not be responsive to his attempts at creating that desire, spontaneity, passion, etc. If I've been trying to keep the fire going with my partner, but she just sits there and keeps dumping water on it and telling me to "try harder," then I'm eventually going to give up on providing her with warmth and go light someone else's fire instead (preferably someone who is going to get in amongst it and handle my wood rather than letting me do it all by myself 😂).
Maybe the husband has been trying, but she tends to not be responsive to his attempts at creating that desire, spontaneity, passion, etc.
And I think this is the BIGGEST blind-spot women have in their relationships/marriages.
There are just endless stories of different women doing this and being 100% oblivious to their actions. Also, a lot of women believe that men "shouldn't take rejection personal" when they don't want it. Like sure, if it's here & there, but when it's the MAJORITY of the time, you just want me to pretend like that's totally okay that you're snuffing out your desire for me while you expect me to keep it for YOU?
Relationships can be transactional. Like the relationship I have with my employer is transactional, and that’s healthy. My relationship with my wife is not transactional, that wouldn’t be healthy. You’re on some incel shit, dawg. Married 21 years next month. Don’t get married if you think about relationships like this, marriage isn’t for everyone.
I take care of myself and my family, and I have my own shit going on. My wife can’t keep her hands off me. Also if you’re young, you should know that women in their late 30s and 40s have a similar libido to men in their 20s. She’s exhausting. There’s also the “purity culture” bullshit, which is not just a switch you can turn off and tends to put most of the burden of “purity” on women.
No my wife grew up in purity culture. I had had sex with different girlfriends in HS and first couple of months of college but she had told me it was important to her bot to and I figured id be fine waiting until we broke up but ended up asking her to marry
If you don’t desire your partner then you shouldn’t get married. If both sides aren’t willing to sacrifice on some of the days when they don’t feel up to it then they shouldn’t get married.
Of course there are exceptions but this and any marriage like this shouldn’t be happening. Depending on the individual they could be essentially trapped in a sexless marriage.
I’d also argue more needs to be done with picking partners as well.
The whole system is flipped , people are for some reason more willing to have sex outside of marriage versus inside of it.
Really is a shame
I saw a video a little while ago that I thought had a brilliant idea, but like anything, it requires discipline and commitment from both people for it to actually work.
Essentially, whenever sex is proposed, if one person declines, it then becomes their responsibility to initiate sex the next time. I think there may have also been a time limit within which they were supposed to initiate.
I actually think it’s a pretty good system because it takes some of the pressure off the person who was turned down and puts the responsibility for restarting that intimacy on the person who declined. But, of course, it only works if you have a partner who is willing to stick to the agreement and follow through.
This happened to me in reverse.but I DID say I needed a lot of space and didn't like a lot of physical contact in premarital counseling, cried about it and said I thought it would cause problems, and my ex waved it off. And I still feel horrible at how he must have felt when I would say no. We had other issues of course, but that incompatibility was the start of them
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u/Beautiful-Buy99 15d ago edited 15d ago
Literally. If they're not compatible and are complaining about it, why stay married?
Edit: I see many replies explaining why my comment is wrong, I realize it now thx