Make your choice! Porn, or ME? II.

Dear Doctor,

First of all, thank you for your fast answer. I read and re-read your letter several times in order not to misunderstand something.

The need to touch him
Here’s my answer to your letter: I agree with you that it takes two to cause a decline in a relationship. And most probably I am also to blame for the fact that the length of sex with my husband has decreased to the time of the actual intercourse. I’m still not sure where all of this started. (Which came first, the chicken or the egg?) One thing is for sure: I have always been, and I remain to be, in daily contact with my husband’s body. Yes! There isn’t a day that passes, and there isn’t an hour in a day (when we’re together) when I don’t touch him somehow. I like to caress him even when family members are present, and when they’re not, I do it even more: sometimes erotically, sometimes passionately, and sometimes lovingly – I always have to touch him. My fingers delight in the pleasure of touching him, and through my fingers I experience the pleasure of touching the person I love most in this world. And yes: I also take immense delight in simply looking at him: sometimes I can’t stop looking at him because I just can’t get enough of the sight. And when we cuddle I love to smell the scent of his body and his skin. He’s a very clever man and he likes to talk to me about any period in history. I love the sound of his voice, and I always listen to his “presentations” with pleasure and admiration. And I also love the way he tastes. I love to kiss and lick every single inch of his body. So, I love this man with all my senses, totally, devotedly, and with all my heart.

I have forgotten how to LOVE
But there’s one thing I’ve forgotten over the years (and it was what you wrote in your letter that reminded me of it): the feeling of unconditional love, which was something that used to come to me naturally in the past, has indeed turned into expectations, for one reason or another. I expect this and that, and then I go into a fit of rage if someone cannot read my mind and I don’t get what I’d been hoping for. I’ll try to change this and I’ll try to bring back into our lives that feeling of true and deep unconditional love…. Which is about loving someone for who they are. There are thousands and thousands of things that I love about my husband and there isn’t one thing that I don’t love about him.

You asked me a question in your letter:

“What did you do? You got turned on, and in two different ways at that.” I don’t think that I got aroused on my own: it was my husband’s words two minutes earlier that got me aroused (when he said we should have a shower and climb into bed). This is what stirred my imagination, and I thought I was right in thinking that he desired me. And, again, those damn expectations;)…, I also thought I was right to expect that if he wanted to sleep with me he would caress me and show me how much he wanted me. I need this: if not always, then at least from time to time, I need him to show his love in a physical way. Because in my mind I know that he loves me very much and that he would never cheat on me, but at the same time I’m very disturbed by the fact that while he regularly looks at porn magazines, his interest in me has noticeably declined.

He moved out
My answer to the events: when I wrote my letter, we’d had that big fight just one day before, so the pain was still fresh in my heart. My husband “moved out” of our flat the previous evening. He went back to his old flat and stayed there for three days. But we met every day and we tried to talk calmly about the events. Among other things, I told him that I’d written a letter to a sexologist (at that time I didn’t know exactly who I was going to send it to), and I asked him to write one himself and share his current thoughts and feelings. My idea was that we could send both letters at once so that the specialist could see both sides of the problem. He considered it a good idea, but unfortunately he still hasn’t written that letter, and the reason why I sent my own letter is because I still had the curiosity and the need for an answer and to reflect on things.

I’ll refine myself
But quite a few things happened over these (almost) two weeks.

After the third day that we spent apart we agreed that he would move back home because we both wanted to put our mutual life back in order and we didn’t want to punish ourselves even more by being apart. This was on Tuesday, and we decided that we’d have a date in our flat on Friday.

I also gave a lot of thought to how I could change our relationship in a way that would be good for both of us; in which neither of us would feel that it’s an obligation or a compromise. I visited lots of websites, blogs, and message boards in order to collect new information. Well, it’s quite difficult to find the right answers in these places because we are prone to accept those answers that we ourselves consider to be right and we’re not necessarily open to new solutions. I tried to remain open and recognize the mistakes that I myself had committed over the years because I thought this was perhaps the best way I could change our relationship and urge him to make some changes as well. And I really agree with this sentence from your letter (and I’ll try to embrace this view wholeheartedly): “If one of you changes, then through your relationship this will change the other person too, and they’ll start making changes in themselves as well if they consider this an interesting task.”

So, really, for now I’ll just forget about what I had previously considered to be his faults. I’ll focus on my own faults and I’ll try to correct them and refine them somehow. If I succeed in this, then it’s really possible that he will also feel the need to do the same.

My personal list of faults
Some of the mistakes that I’ve discovered about myself: Although I feel like a woman, I rarely ever do anything to appear woman-like on the outside. This means that I don’t really dress in a feminine style and at night I go to bed in one of my husband’s shirts that he outgrew. I usually don’t even take it off while we have sex. I really don’t have any sexy underwear, so in fact what reason do I have to feel like a woman? The fact that I feel sexual desire? Yes, coming from someone else’s mouth this question would have been really hurtful, but since I asked it of myself it really gave me food for thought.

12 days of passion
For our date on Friday I bought myself a pair of really hot and sexy underwear, and although we’d had sex the day before, Friday night turned out to be highly exciting and successful. I would never have thought I could get my husband to have such passionate sex with me. ;)

And this is how we spent the past 12 days: we were full of passion; we made love all the time – my husband has really changed completely! Apart from correcting my own mistakes, I’ll also consider it my task to somehow maintain this state in the long run and to feel this happy for the rest of our lives. I’m sure I’ll keep asking for your advice and guidance because both my husband and I would like to give each other as much as we possibly can.

Thank you for your kind attention.

Answer from Dr. Emese Toth, doctor-sexologist
I’m very glad things worked out in such an amazing way. Thank you for sharing this with me and with others. You are a very kind and intelligent woman. You deserve the great result that you achieved on your own. You had a good partner for this; without him, things wouldn’t have turned out the way they did, so congratulations to him too. Don’t stop what you have started: it’s not enough to be able to love – love is there to be put to the test and to be lived.