First time poster. I’m 49, wife is 44 – two kids, been married 13 years (second marriage for me…yes, I know I know). Swallowed the pill, read all of the sidebar, lifting, losing weight, leading, etc. I had an interesting exchange with my wife that brought me some insight that I think I’ve been missing. She was changing clothes upstairs so I went over and grabbed her around the waist, picked her up and spun her around for a kiss. As soon as I did she got angry and started saying that I never show her affection that isn’t sexual. Now, I’ve heard this argument before but unfortunately my A&A response ended up leading me to engage with the hamster. It was short, but the money shot was her saying that all my affection is sexual. This comment led me down the road to thinking about what it means for me to give affection, sexual or otherwise. The epiphany came when I realized that all of my “affection” for our entire relationship was really just validation seeking by me. Essentially, when I kissed her, hugged her or whatever I was really just looking for her to respond back in some way that said “I want you too”. Of course, I assume that most men would expect their wives to respond in an “I want you too” sort of way if they tried to kiss her. But what would surprise me would be for them to continue this little charade for years when their wives had shown no interest, in fact had pushed them away or deflected his advances. I think I was doing this to try to push her to act like she was attracted to me when she really wasn’t. The next phase for me came when I realized that I had been “carrying” the affection portion of our relationship since we met. Basically, I was the only one showing any affection. She essentially never kisses me. It has always me initiating the kiss, hug, whatever. Translation – I thought that I had been showing her affection and was mad that she wasn’t returning it (because she wasn’t attracted to me), when what was really happening was that I just looked needy and validation seeking to her. She wasn’t attracted to me – WOW, big stunner! I realized I had to stop this validation seeking behavior ASAP. Our relationship had to stand on its own and that if she wasn’t attracted, didn’t show any interest in me, that I should face that as the reality instead of trying to force it. The important thing would be for me to focus on being the best version of me and just seeing where things went from there. (It’s like stumbling onto the Red Pill by accident) This was both terrifying on one hand (I guess this is the definition of jettisoning the oneitius) but remarkably freeing on the other because I no longer felt the burden to push her all the time to see if she was attracted to me, I could just see how she responded to me and face that reality.
But now I’m not really sure how to proceed. Specifically, last night we are lying in bed and I’m sure that I could have initiated with success but I just wasn’t feeling it. I just felt like it would just be another situation where I was acting like I was interested when I wasn’t. I knew that it would be a lackluster session, that she knew that it had been a while since we had had sex so she was going to starfish me. I’ve seen this show a thousand times. She hadn’t shown any interest in me all day, she was laying there checking Facebook and then when she put it down she was babbling on about stupid shit. I knew I could get my rocks off but I just rolled over and said goodnight. I’m not being trite when I say I’m not sure where I’m at right now and would appreciate some input.