I don't know if time is enough, that time needs to be spent well. Cut your ex off from your life as much as you can, take care of yourself, make a new life. This will help us heal.

When I think about how women and men are different creatures in relationships, one thing stands out the most to me.  Sex.  I've read countless times about how men equate sex with love.  That their woman can show she loves him in a ton of different ways, but if she's not giving her body over to him, he doesn't have all of her.  It's actually kind of confusing for me in a way - men can go have sex with any old woman and not think that she loves him just because she's having sex with him.  So how they equate sex with love is confusing since they clearly are able to disconnect the two when they want.  But regardless, a straight, able-bodied man who is in love with a woman will want to make love to her, and will want her to want that from him as well.

Women, on the other hand, do no equate sex with love.  After all, men are constantly trying to have sex with us.  If we gave in whenever a man professed to want our body, we'd be sleeping with a different man every night.  To us, you need to prove that you love us before we give ourselves up that way.  This is a generality, of course.  But basically, we need to see your love and feel your love before we can give you sex.  We're wired this way.  If you want sex with us, you need to protect us, provide for us, and help ease our load in life.  Then we are freed up enough to let ourselves go.  And then we can not worry about anything else, and just let ourselves enjoy the physical aspects that come along with love.

You'll see this even before we all fall in love.  In how men and women go about trying to obtain the other sex.  Men want to be first in line - the better they impress us (they think), the more of a chance there is of us loving them.  They will literally beg for our time, for our attention, for a chance.  Listen to any R&B station and you'll hear it from all the male singers - "baby, I need your lovin'.  I need to hold you.  I need your kisses on my body.  I need to feel you."  You will RARELY hear the same words being sung by the women.  And that's because typically speaking, women won't beg for a male's attention.  She has her tools - her looks, her charm, her expressions and body language.  If the man doesn't catch on with these tools being used, he's not interested, or he's not smart enough for us to want.  Lol.  Truth, though.  We don't just want you to give us a try.  HELL no.  We want you to want us and ONLY us.  We want to capture your heart and your mind.  You want to capture our bodies.  It's why you see some men acting so jealous and possessive.  Because to him, he owns that body if she's professed love to him.  No one else can have it.  But to a woman, she wants to possess his heart.  A king can have a harem, and there is still only one queen.  She's the one he wants to build a life with, not just sleep with.

So of course it makes sense that their spouse sharing their body with someone else is likely to be a bigger deal to a man than to a woman. And why a spouse falling in love with another will be a bigger deal to a woman.  Now, a woman that knows how men think may just make that translation and think, "If he equates sex with love, and he's giving sex to someone else, then he's giving them what he views as love".  And it can bother us more than if we only viewed it through our own perspective.  The smallest of things can bother a woman.  One time waaaaaay back when I was engaged to a man (whom I never married), I gave him a watch as a present.  He wore it all the time.  I didn't notice when he stopped wearing it.  Then one day, I saw his watch on a female friend's wrist.  He said it was no big deal - she liked it and needed a watch for the day, and she just never gave it back and he never asked for it.  He'd worn it a ton, anyway.  What's the big deal?  That was extremely hurtful to me - he took something I gave from my heart, and gave it to another woman.  I don't care if he gave it to her in friendship or not - it should have meant the world to him, and it was insignificant.  That was crushing to me.  That's when I knew it was over.  I could never tell if he understood what he'd done or not, but I realized that I didn't want to live with someone who didn't or wouldn't understand.

I think it's also why some of us women who stopped getting sex from our GID husbands learned to live with it.  Because to us, it didn't mean what it would to a man.  I mean, there are plenty of times when we women don't feel like having sex, and we never view it as us not loving our husbands.  We love them immensely.  So we put it in a box and tell ourselves that he loves us anyway - he's showing it in other ways.  So don't make this one thing such a big deal.  But if they'd looked at it from the viewpoint of a man, they'd know that a lack of sex from the man means something HUGE.  It's everything.  If they understood that better, they'd be more upset with it and less likely to just live with it.

Kel
 

Last edited by Kel (April 24, 2017 10:57 am)

Kel did hit it on the head for the most part but I may be the anomaly here in that sex is a very important part of a relationship and it has really been hard on me to have that taken away.  I don't think I have ever said no to my husband back when we were sexual (he knew not to try at certain times) or in previous relationships.  I find sex to be one of the parts of a relationship that needs to be there to make it complete. I tolerated the lack of it because I kept thinking it would improve.  I know better now.