Respecting the relationship's boundaries

Back in September I wrote Fulfilling Desires vs. Respect and Love. Doug had come into the forums upset that his wife would not do something for him sexually that he wanted. He pushed and pushed and she still wouldn't do it, despite saying she would consider it. I advised Doug that it was unloving and disrespectful of him to push his wife to do something that she clearly was not comfortable with and did not want to do.

We've recently had someone come into the forum from the opposite side of that equation, the side that is being disrespected. Scott and his wife have entertained a fantasy in the bedroom of having another man join them. Initially this turned both of them on, and it was just talk. Then Scott's wife asked if they could make it a reality. Scott asked if she had someone in mind, and when she very quickly mentioned a specific guy, Scott suddenly felt insecure about the whole idea. Then his wife told him she wouldn't be able to do it the way they had fantasized, the way they had talked about it, she wanted to have sex with the other man without Scott there. Scott reluctantly agreed, but told her the other man must know that he knows. The other man balked, saying it would be difficult to see Scott at the company Christmas party if they did this before then, so it would have to be after. The further into planning this got the less OK with the idea Scott was. So he told his wife the whole thing was off, and now is feeling guilty for denying her something she wanted, and worried that she would go through with it behind his back.

My initial advice to Scott was:

Talk to her, talk to her, and talk to her. You two have been open enough to share this fantasy and, for a moment, entertain actually bringing it to reality. Now is NOT the time to stop talking to each other. Tell her how you are feeling, let her tell you how she's feeling. I think this conversation is more vital than any other you've had about this topic, because now it's about the feelings you're both experiencing as a result of almost going through with the fantasy. This is the real life side of that fantasy, and it needs to be discussed.

He came back a few days later concerned that if he doesn't let her go through with it then he will always wonder if she will do it behind his back, or if she is secretly pining for this other man. Now his wife has told him that she thinks she might have feelings for this other man. Scott seems to believe that if she doesn't explore this they will never be able to move passed it, and he will always wonder and be afraid. So Scott has told his wife to do what she feels she has to do.

I've told Scott:

Frankly, I think you need to grow a pair. There's nothing wrong with wanting monogamy, and if you aren't comfortable with her having sex with someone else she should respect that. You shouldn't have to sacrifice your desire for monogamy because she's got a crush on someone.

Scott feels that telling her it's not OK to have sex with this other man will mean living the rest of his life afraid that she's really in love with someone else. He believes that if she goes ahead with this now then it'll either be over between her and the other man, or it'll be over between her and Scott, but at least he'll know where he stands.

Here's my response to that:

So she sleeps with him, comes back and tells you she doesn't want to end your marriage. What then? Will you honestly be able to trust that she's never thinking about him or someone else? Will you honestly be satisfied with that? Or say she comes back and says she wants to continue to see him, but she loves you too and doesn't want your marriage to end, will you be able to live with that? Or she comes back and ends your marriage to be with him....will you be able to forgive yourself for giving her permission?

The seed of doubt has already been planted in your head. Her sleeping with a guy she says she might have feelings for isn't going to do anything to quiet your fears. More likely it will make it worse.

If you aren't OK with her sleeping with another man there is nothing, let me repeat that, nothing wrong with that.

Scott's wife is showing him zero respect and love when she expects him to tolerate her having sex with someone else knowing that he's not OK with it. I understand they entertained a fantasy, and that she's curious about this other man, but what she's asking of Scott is outside of his comfort zone and if she loves him she'll respect that boundary.

Every relationship has boundaries, whether it be a marriage, friendship, familial relationship or coworker relationship, and there is nothing wrong with that. Most importantly there's nothing wrong with enforcing the boundaries in your relationships.

Unfortunately for Scott I think his wife already crossed one of his boundaries, and I'm afraid there may be no coming back. My advice to Scott is to stand firm on that boundary. If he doesn't then he's shown his wife that he doesn't respect himself, and she in turn will not feel she has to respect him. He's setting himself up to be walked on.

Please, love yourselves more than that. Respect yourselves enough to demand respect from those around you. There's nothing wrong with saying "I'm not comfortable with this and I want it to stop." Someone who truly loves you will not want to continue with something that hurts you.

With love and respect,
Judi

Update 12/24/2008

Scott came back to the forum. In the past several weeks, while waiting for an opening with a marriage counselor, he and his wife have been talking a lot. Scott sees his wife as "georgeous, smart, tough, a ton of fun, loving, hardworking, and for the last five years, a wonderful mom to our son." However, he's learned recently that she doesn't believe any of that. She thinks Scott is blinded by his love for her and wouldn't give her a second glance if he weren't married to her, and that nobody else finds her attractive. This is why she pushed for the fling with the other man, to prove to herself that someone else finds her attractive, someone who isn't blinded by love, someone who isn't bound to her by marriage and parenthood.

As is often the case, is seems that Scott's wife's disrespect for him really started from a lack of love and respect for herself. Scott is hurt that his love and attraction for her isn't enough to show her that she is wonderful. Myself and others have told Scott that nothing he says or does can improve her self esteem, she needs to learn to love and respect herself with or without attention from a man.

There needs to be more love and respect in Scott's marriage, and it all needs to start with self love and self respect. I hope Scott and his wife are able to find their own inherent value.

I shouldn't have to tell you, you should just know

Hey everybody! I know it's been a while since I wrote, and I'm sorry about that. I just haven't been able to come up with any good topics. Today I stumbled onto one at one of the relationship forums I participate in.

A woman came into the forum wanting to know how to better please her husband. No, not like that! Just little stuff. He's complained that she isn't affectionate enough. He says she doesn't show him enough attention and doesn't touch him as often as he would like. She thought she had improved in those things, but he isn't acknowledging any improvement. So she talked to him and asked him to show her specifically some things she could do that would help him feel appreciated, but he won't. Instead he tells her she should just know.

Here's the problem with that: If she knew she would be doing those things already. She's not doing those things, so obviously she doesn't just know, because that kind of affection doesn't come naturally to her.

My husband has one of those stereotypical tenancies you read about in the relationship help books. If I complain about something he immediately goes into fix it mode and starts throwing out solutions. However, most of the time I don't want solutions, and many times there isn't even anything that can be done. I usually just want to vent a bit and get a hug.

Just listening and then giving me a hug is not my husband's natural reaction to a complaining woman. So he doesn't just know to do that for me. It would be unfair of me to expect him to just know that, because it's not the way he deals with things.

So I try hard to remember when I just need to vent and get a hug to tell him exactly that. Then we all get what we need. I get a to vent and then get a hug, without any of the "Did you try this. You should do that." that I don't want. And my husband gets to fix the real problem (which was never the thing I was complaining about anyway, it was that I was stressed) and everyone is happy!

Don't ever be afraid to tell your partner what you need. "You should just know" is an unfair expectation because your partner is not you. If they were they would already just know and be doing the thing you want them to do.

Hugs!
Judi

Long term love

This week marks the 9th anniversary of my marriage to Mitch. So I thought I'd take a break from writing advice specific to relationship problems, and try to write something about what makes a long term relationship so wonderful. Too often those who give advice focus on the bad things that go on in relationships and how to get past them....today I'd like to focus on the good things about relationships and how wonderful they can be!

There are a lot of people out there who can't even fathom being with one person for a few years, let alone decades or a lifetime. I used to wonder myself if human beings were really cut out for long term monogamy. Over the years I've come to believe that some people really are not made for the monogamous lifestyle. However, there are those of us who are. And I gotta tell ya, I think it's a beautiful thing.

What's so beautiful about sharing your life with only one person? My husband and I have discussed this many times.

One of the first things that comes to mind is that we don't have to deal with the discomfort of learning all about a new person and teaching them about ourselves. When you date someone new, you really don't know anything about them and they don't know anything about you. That can be very exciting, but it can also be stressful and a lot of hard work. Mitch and I are far past that. It's actually surprising when we learn something new about one another, because we've been together long enough that we think we know everything there is to know.

There's a comfort in that, in knowing that this other person knows everything there is to know about you and they accept you and love you for everything that you are. I don't have to worry what Mitch will think when he learns that I was a nerd in school....he already knows. Mitch doesn't have to worry what I will think when I learn he has an extensive comic book collection....I already know. If we were to find ourselves suddenly single again I think it would stress both of us out just knowing we'd have to reveal ourselves to a whole new person and then worry about what their reaction would be.

I think this knowing each other is at the core of everything that is beautiful about long term relationships. I feel safe with Mitch because he knows everything about me. I know that a lot of people have trouble trusting another person enough to really put it all out there, but there is no better feeling than doing so and having that person embrace you completely. It's taken time, for both of us, to get to this point, to truly trust each other enough to reveal our complete selves....but we are now closer than ever and that feels so good.

Another side of knowing someone for this long, and letting yourself be truly known, is not having to figure out what makes them tick in the bedroom. Mitch is an expert at how to get me going and get me off, and I'm an expert at getting him going and getting him off. That doesn't mean there's never anything new, there certainly is. It does mean that when there's not enough time for long slow love making, we know how to get it done quick! It also means we know how to make it last all night.

The trust we have built over the years has helped our sexual relationship grow to something far more beautiful than either of us could have imagined. I think we both probably expected it to get boring. I mean, really, how exciting can having sex with the same person for 11 years be? But it is exciting. We trust each other enough to be able to ask for and try new things, things we might not be able to try with someone who we hadn't been with this long, who we didn't trust as much as we trust each other. Our sexual relationship is better now than it's ever been, after almost 11 years together.

It's nice to be so comfortable with someone that you can play games together, watch movies or TV together, solve puzzles together, or just have a quite dinner together and be comfortable. It's beautiful to know that this person loves me completely and that we don't have to hide anything from each other.

It feels like home.

I wish each and every one of you that very feeling.

I love you Mitch. Thank you for sharing in this life with me.

All my love,
Judi

The selection process

A woman came into the forums I post in complaining that her boyfriend of 4 months didn't want sex nearly as much as she did, and any time she brought it up he got upset. In every other way he was perfect. She wanted to know what to do, whether she should just get over it and deal with less sex than she wanted because he was so great in every other way, whether he should see a doctor because his sex drive was so much lower than hers, whether she should leave him.

Here are the facts:

• She wants sex more than he does
• He doesn't want to discuss the fact that she wants sex more than he does
• In every other way he's perfect
• She does not want to live the rest of her life with less than enough sex.
  

So, what can she do?

1. She can stay and learn to be happy about it
2. She can stay and be miserable about it and probably make him miserable too
   
3. She can cheat on him and risk losing the relationship altogether, never mind sacrificing her own values
4. She can negotiate an open relationship, if he's game
5. She can move on.
   

The simple fact is that she will not be getting as much sex as she wants from him, so she either has to be OK with that or find it somewhere else.

The reason most people date is to find out if the person they are dating is someone they can and want to spend a much longer period of time with. This woman in particular is trying to decide if her boyfriend is someone she wants to marry and spend the rest of her life with. Dating is part of our selection process. Even earlier in the selection process we decide, sometimes subconsciously, if we are at all interested in someone, interested enough to even go on a date with them. We are constantly evaluating people based on ever changing criteria to see if they are a good fit to share our lives with.

If, during the dating period, we find that there is something about a person that we do not want to live with for the rest of our lives, then we need to have the strength to admit that and end the relationship. Not doing so generally ends in an unhappy marriage and, sometimes, divorce.

This is just part of the selection process. To go through all of that and then say "Well, I don't want to live this way for the rest of my life, but I've already invested however many months, I don't want those to have been a waste, and I like all these other things about this person" negates the whole process. So then what if you stay and it never changes, and then you find you've "wasted" 10 years?

Let's face it, you can't change people. If he's happy with sex twice a month it's not likely that you'll coerce him into having it 8 times a month. So it's time to have the self respect to say "I'm not willing to sacrifice a satisfying sex life for these other wonderful things, I need to move on."

It's much easier to have a happy marriage if you use the selection process beforehand to find someone who fulfills you in every way that you feel is necessary. Otherwise what's the point?

Love Yourselves!
Judi

Abusive relationships

On the relationship forums that I participate in we get a lot of people coming in wondering if they should end their abusive relationship. They give us tales of verbal abuse, sometimes physical abuse, certainly a lack of anything resembling loving behavior, and wonder if they can make their partner treat them better. They make excuses for why they can't leave.....they don't have any money, he/she would be destroyed, they don't want their kids to lose access to their "great father" or "great mother," he/she used to be great.....and most of all, "I still love him/her."

I'd like to discuss some of these excuses, as well as some others I've read, and why they are not a valid excuse for staying, especially if you have children.

1. He/she used to be great - OK, that's fantastic, really, but all that proves is that you weren't stupid enough to fall in love with an asshole. That doesn't mean you have to tolerate him/her acting like an asshole now and for the rest of your life. You can't make him/her be the person you fell in love with, that's in the past. You can only deal with now.
   
2. He/She would be destroyed/Our families would be devastated - Umm, no, they won't. Everyone will live. You parents will survive, his/her parents will survive, the kids will survive, you and he/she will survive. But consider this - if you stay in an abusive relationship and it turns physically abusive, how devastated will your parents and children be at your funeral?
3. I have no money - If you are in physical danger, get out anyway, there are shelters you can go to. If you are not in physical danger, then start planning your escape. Start setting aside money, get your own bank account, start gathering copies of records, speak to an attorney if you are married and/or have shared assets. There's nothing wrong with taking your time in leaving. Just be careful....the most dangerous time for a victim of abuse is when they are planning their escape and just after they've left.
   
4. I don't want my kids to lose their great dad/mom - OK, first of all, as long as their dad/mom is still alive, they don't have to lose them. Second, how great a parent are they really if they are treating their child's other parent like garbage? How great a parent are they if they treat their child's other parent like a punching bag?

Here I'd like to stop and make a special point about children. Children are born with absolutely no knowledge of what a marriage/romantic relationship is supposed to be like. They start learning very early. They learn from the adults in their home first, usually their parents. If dad abuses mom boys learn it's OK to abuse and girls learn it's OK to tolerate abuse. If mom abuses dad boys learn it's OK to tolerate abuse and girls learn it's OK to abuse.

Make no mistake, your children are watching you. They are little sponges and they absorb everything, even the things they don't consciously recognize. Their definition of what is correct and acceptable in a relationship is being formed from day one. As they grow that definition will start to look exactly like the parental relationship they see in their own home.

If you don't want your children to grow up believing that abuse is OK, that's it's acceptable for them to abuse or be abused, then do not be in an abusive relationship. Consider your own relationship very carefully and then think about how you would feel if your own child were in your shoes, or were behaving like your abusive spouse. If you would not be happy with that, then you need to change your circumstances so that your child starts to learn different criteria for relationships.

And if you don't have children, please get into a healthier relationship before you do. Children will absolutely not force your abusive spouse to treat you better. In fact, having a child may make it worse.

Everyone deserves to be treated with love and respect. We all teach people how to treat us, and if we tolerate abuse then we've taught our abuser that it's OK. It's possible to stop it, but you have to be willing to end the relationship. You can't make someone treat you right, it's just not possible. Instead you need to get out of the relationship, and figure out why you allowed yourself to be abused so that you don't fall into the same type of relationship next time.

You can get out. Millions of people do it every year, most likely people in much harder situations than you. Please seek help, don't let yourself be abused anymore!

Resources for abused women: http://www.abusedwomen.org/
Resources for abused men: http://www.batteredmen.com/

Take care of yourselves and be safe!
Judi

Fulfilling desires vs. respect and love

I have recently been involved in a discussion about the balance between fulfilling desires and respect. A gentleman who I'll call Doug was wondering how important women find it to fulfill their man's desires even if they may find the particular activity that he's requesting uncomfortable and/or dirty.

In reality, however, what Doug really wanted to know was why his wife kept saying she would give a specific not-so-ordinary sexual activity a shot and then kept refusing when he asked for it. There were other lets-spice-things-up type things that he didn't give specifics on, that Doug had asked for and was refused. Doug was feeling as though their sex life was not really their sex life, but her's alone, that she held all the power because she did not do every single thing he desired.

What I've tried to explain to Doug is that a sexual relationship has to be based on respect. Doug shows his wife no respect or love when he expects her to do things she is uncomfortable with. He has decided that his desire is more important than her comfort, and I can't seem to convince him how disrespectful and unloving that attitude is.

Instead Doug has essentially stomped his feet like a spoiled child and repeated "but she said she would consider it." He's mad that she won't do what he wants, he believes that giving the idea fair consideration means that she should acquiesce, he feels unfulfilled because she hasn't, and he has implied that her refusal to satisfy his every desire would excuse him if he were to try to fulfill that desire outside of their marriage.

Does this seem loving to any of you? It sure doesn't to me. One of the things I've asked Doug is why he doesn't respect his wife enough to do what she wants to do? I mean, he expects her to love him enough to do what he wants her to do, but at the same time refuses to do the one thing she wants him to do, which is to stop asking for something that she is clearly not comfortable with, as evidenced by her repeated refusals.

Let's take this out of the bedroom for Doug. What if my husband loved sky diving and I was terrified of heights? Would it be respectful and loving of him to constantly request that I go sky diving with him, even after I've repeatedly said I didn't want to, that I didn't feel safe, that it scared me? No, of course not, that would be mean and insensitive. So my husband would go sky diving and I wouldn't and we would both be happy.

Unfortunately, unlike sky diving, I seriously doubt that Doug's wife would be OK with him seeking to fulfill his desires with other women.

Lets face it, sometimes we give up desires to make a commitment to the one we love. I'm sure my husband would have loved to have married a super model, or someone who wanted to share him with her sexy girlfriend, but he gave up those desires when he married me. There are things we both might like to do that the other is not comfortable with, and we gave up those desires when we married. Some people are lucky enough to find someone who wants absolutely everything they do, and therefore they can have their every desire fulfilled, but I think that is pretty rare. Instead I think most of us give up a few desires in return for a loving respectful relationship, and most of us don't have a problem with that. My husband will likely never get to have the threesome that so many men dream of, but he's OK with that because he's got me instead. I will likely never be married to a millionaire, but I'm OK with that because I got Mitch instead.

Besides, what fun are sexual activities that you partner really isn't into? I mean, if Doug's wife gave in, gave him what he wants, she's not going to be into it. They've tried it before and if she liked it she'd probably have tried it again by now, but she's consistently refused, so I have to conclude that she didn't really dig it. So how enjoyable is it really going to be for Doug if his wife is just laying there putting up with it until he's done just to shut him up about it? And then she may resent him for getting so much enjoyment out of something she was so uncomfortable with, treating her like an object who's only purpose is to fulfill her partner's desires. It just sounds like a road to marital disaster to me.

My final advice to Doug is to stop harassing his wife for things she obviously isn't comfortable with. If those things are so important to him that he just can't live without them, then he should respect his wife enough to leave her and go fulfill those desires elsewhere, allowing them both to find partners who's sexual desires are closer to there own so that they can both have fulfilling sexual relationships.

Remember lovelies, you can't have a healthy relationship without respect!

Hugs!
Judi

Who wants some?

My friend Lily is back with another issue she is having some trouble with.

Often I am the one initiating sex, about 90% of the time (my husband disagrees). I actually asked him last night if I didn't initiate sex, how long would we go without having it. He said "maybe a couple of days" I laughed and I said "Well, it's been a couple of days"...and I mentioned that we've gone long amounts of time without it. He said it was because he thought I was too tired for it... I told him I would never be too tired for it. Then we started intermittently kissing and then he started falling asleep so I just thought "fuck it" and went to sleep.

I hate being the initiator... I wouldn't mind if it was 50% of the time, but it seems like 90%. Add that to the problem I WAS having with him looking at porn and that really does a lot of bad shit to a self-esteem. So any advice and wisdom you can impart I would greatly appreciate :)

There are so many things that can cause an imbalance in who's initiating sex. He could have a lower libido than you, which may or may not be a medical issue. He could be uncomfortable initiating for any number of reasons. He could be suffering from some depression because of his current employment situation. There are too many things that could cause this imbalance for me to come close to covering them all.

I have gone through times when my libido is in the dumps and I never initiate. I've been through times when I initiate almost all the time. It's another one of those things that comes and goes. What I've come to realize is that it doesn't really matter who initiates, as long as we are both happy with the frequency of the sex we are having. And let me tell you, letting go of that, no longer worrying about who initiates as long as someone does, makes life a lot easier.

My advice to you would be to let go of it, stop keeping track in your head of when you last had sex and who's been initiating what percentage of the time. If you're horny, go get him. And make sure he knows that if he's horny he should feel free to go for it.

The flip side is that you both need to understand that there are going to be times when it's not going to happen for whatever reason, and that it's not necessarily something you should be hurt by. We all have days when it doesn't matter who's offering, we just aren't in the mood.

Another approach would be to tell him that sometimes you need him to initiate, and ask if it would be OK for you to just tell him that. Say you’re feeling like it’s been too long since he made the effort, and you’re feeling up for it, so you tell him, maybe early in the day, “I think you should try to get some tonight.” That way he knows you’re up for it, so he doesn’t have to worry about being rejected, but it’s him that really makes the effort. However, one important aspect to this scenario is if he’s really not in the mood he would need to tell you that early, so you aren’t spending all day waiting for him to start pushing your buttons just to be hurt at the end of the day because he didn’t. It’s not very spontaneous, but I think sometimes spontaneity is overrated. In real life sometimes you have to be more practical to get what you want.

Try talking about it over dinner or something, when it's not a moment that one of you would be trying to get things going. It's always best to discuss sex at a non-threatening time, so that you can both be completely open without feeling any pressure. My husband and I used to occasionally set aside an entire evening to have a few drinks and talk about sex and it was clearly understood from the outset that having sex was not the goal....not that it never happened on those nights, lol, but there was no pressure.

I also think some of what you are going through is just the growing pains of a new marriage. You two did the long distance thing for so long, and now you are kind of getting to know each other in a way that wasn’t possible before. It might just take time to find your groove. Hell, my husband and I lived together for a year and a half before we got married, and it still took us a number of years to find our groove. In some ways we’re still adjusting to each other. It’s a continuous process, you just have to be open to it and communicate about it.

I hope you two are able to figure this out. It’s one of the most frequently talked about topics on the relationship forums that I participate in.

As for the porn and the boredom, I think you are probably right, that it might have to do with boredom since Rick isn't working. Also I’m sure it’s not the best thing for his ego that he can’t work and contribute financially right now…..I have always been and will always be the bread winner in our home, but it still really gets my husband down when there isn’t a lot of work and he isn’t contributing. And being down about something can cause someone to search for anything to brighten their day, and porn can certainly fill that need.

All in all I wouldn’t be too quick to judge the state of your marriage right now. You've just started really having an in-person relationship, and you are currently living with family. I’d wait until he’s working and you two have your own place and can really figure out your life together. Then hopefully you can find your own groove and really start enjoying married life!

Good luck to you!

Judi

Looking for marriage

Hi
Little introduction. I have completed my MSc intelligent software systems from Blekinge Institute of Technology Sweden. Currently I'm in United Kingdom and working in a British Airways Company as a Audit Executive. I have little plan, in which marriage is also very important for me. We can find many girls or boys in normal routine at different location like pubs clubs, but how can I find true love in my life. Main thing is I really feel shy sometimes, hard to find friendship, but looking for a true and sincere partner. Basically I'm stuck. I need to find a true partner, I have everything in my life but now needs a good female partner who like to spend her life with me as a true friend and marriage partner. I'm 25 years old but for me marriage (find a partner) is becoming a great issue for me. Might be some guys thinks its fake no true, but it's true and honest. Thanks
Masam

Oh, Masam, if only there were some secret formula I could reveal to help you find the true love of your life. Believe me, if anyone had that secret formula they'd be the wealthiest person on the planet!

The best advice I can offer you is to be yourself. The easiest way to have a successful marriage is to be yourself and find someone who loves you exactly as you are, and who you love exactly as they are. This way neither of you are trying to mold the other into the person you want them to be.

Think of it like this: If you want a cheeseburger, don't order a chicken sandwich. You'll never be able to change the chicken sandwich into a cheeseburger, so it will never be what you want, and you will never be fully satisfied with it. If you actually order the cheeseburger then you get exactly what you want without wasting energy trying to change something that can't be changed.

However, this requires the strength to end relationships that don't fit what you want. For example, if you need to stay active, with a full social calendar, Don't marry a homebody. You aren't likely to change eachother, you won't be happy sitting at home every night, she won't be happy going out all the time, and your marriage will eventually fall apart. Instead, if having a full social live is important to you, you need to marry someone who feels the same way.

OK, so that's some good advice on how to not end up in a bad marriage, but you want to know how to find Miss Right. Sorry, I got a bit off track there.

Again, being yourself is critical. It might help to spend time doing the things that you enjoy. This will put you in touch with women who have similar interests. If you enjoy mountain biking, join a mountain biking club. If you like movies, go to the movies a lot. If you enjoy books, spend time in books stores, libraries, join book clubs. Go do the things that you enjoy with other people, and you'll be more likely to meet a woman who also enjoys those things. If religion is important to you, don't just go to church/synagogue/mosque and sit there quietly soaking in the faith, join in activities at your house of worship, get involved in different groups there, so that you can meet other people who place a high value on religion.

And here is one of the most important things: relax. You are not likely to find true love while you are stressing out, constantly evaluating every woman you come in contact with to figure out if she is "the one." Try to relax and let life happen naturally. You sound like you want to get married soon, but you don't want to rush into getting married just to be married. If you really want to find true love you need to be OK with the idea that it might take a while to find it.

But when you do find it, wow, it's so worth the wait!

Hang in there Masam!

Judi

To tell or not to tell

One of my readers wrote in and presented a scenario for discussion. Names have been changed to protect the innocent. ;-)

Sally and her husband, Mike, have a friend, Chris, who has been smoking behind his wife, Jane's, back. Sally doesn't understand how Jane doesn't know, how she doesn't smell it, but according to Mike Chris has smoked up to 7 cigarettes on a short trip to the store just to get a bit of a nicotine fix.

Sally and Mike don't know if they should tell Jane or continue to keep Chris's secret. Sally doesn't want to be made a liar, and is concerned that if a conversation turns to "when Chris used to smoke" that she will be forced to either reveal Chris's secret or lie for him.

Sally also wonders at what point a secret should be revealed, if ever.

I gotta tell ya, Sally, this is a difficult question to answer. There are so many different answers, and they all make sense to me.

I'm a big believer in honesty. But I also believe that some things are just not my business. If I were in your shoes I would tell Chris that you will not lie for him, and that you hope he will man up and be honest with his wife. He has no right to expect you to lie for him, but I probably wouldn't go running to Jane to tell her, that just feels too much like tattling. If she asked me straight up I would be honest and hope that she wasn't mad at me about it.....but even if she was that's her problem not mine. If that were the case I would remind her that it's not my job to keep tabs on her husband and report back to her about it.

I would advise him to tell his wife, to stop lying to her, and to stop putting his friends in a position where they have to choose between lying for him or revealing his secret. It's an unfair position for someone to put their friends in.

As to when it becomes something you should tell about, I really don't know. This is a conversation that goes on almost continuously online, and I'm really on the fence about it. Some people believe that if you see a friend's spouse cheating you should always tell. Some believe you should never tell. Some believe it depends on which person in the couple you are closer to....if you are closer to the cheater, then you keep their secret, but if you are closer to the person being cheated on you should tell them.

In my own life I would hope that if my friends saw my husband having an affair, they would tell me. But I would not be angry at them if they didn't, because I understand that they might not feel as though it's their place.

However, there is also a convincing argument for never telling, and that is that you really don't know what their situation is. Maybe the wife has a really low libido and told her husband he could go find gratification elsewhere.....going to the wife to inform her that her husband is having an affair would only embarrass her and force her to have a conversation with you that she doesn't want to have (because if she did want to she would have already). Maybe they have an open marriage. Or maybe not, but the spouse being cheated on just doesn't really want to know, because knowing means they have to do something about it.

I guess what it really comes down to is that you just never really know what's going on in someone's relationship.....and that makes it damn near impossible to decide whether or not to reveal a secret. I do know that my first step would be to talk to the person doing the supposed bad thing and ask them about it. If you are sure that they are lying to their spouse, encourage them to get honest, and inform them that you will not lie for them.....you might not reveal their secret, but if the person they are lying to asks, you aren't going to sacrifice your own morals for them.

So, readers, what say you? Would you want to know if your spouse was smoking behind your back? Gambling? Sleeping around? Eating apples? Would you tell if you saw a friend doing these things behind their spouses back? Speak up!

Take care!

Judi

The question of porn

Recently my dear friend Lily discovered that her new husband, Rick, was surfing porn, and it upset her a great deal. Here is the gist of the issue:

Basically the specifics are that Rick left his inbox on the desktop and when I went to minimize it, I saw an address for the sex and fun forum. Curiosity got the best of me, so I looked at it and was just shocked I guess. The forum offers links to free porn and pictures as well as discusses peoples' favorite porn and porn stars. He actually sent the e-mail to himself from his other e-mail account - I never opened it though...I just noticed it was sent from his other account and it included the name of the site so I checked it out.

I haven't told him I found it because I don't want him to think I was reading his e-mail (I don't do that). But it made me wonder how much he is watching and why and the whole "Am I not enough??" thought constantly went through my mind. Just kinda looked at him differently since a long while ago he eluded to the fact he USED to watch porn.

And here is my response:

In our society we are taught, all of us, that our sexual urges are wrong, dirty, and to be hidden away, especially those urges that aren't of the purest form for our significant other. If we desire anything outside of loving missionary sex with our spouse then we shouldn't tell other people about it. So if a guy is turned on by something other than that, he can't tell anyone about it, he should be ashamed....this makes it a natural reaction to hide it. Porn is generally considered dirty, something to hide and be ashamed of.

I would guess that he hid it because he didn't want to hurt you.

I've had men hide their porn habit from me, and not because I gave any indication that they should, but they'd been programmed by society, their mothers, and every ex-girlfriend to hide anything having to do with their own sexual desires. Eventually I would discover it, and let him know that I really don't care. I consider a person's porn habit a private thing....if he wants to share it with me I'm open to that, frankly I actually enjoy porn (shh, don't tell anyone, lol). But it can take someone a long time to overcome the programming they've been subjected to their whole life and trust that their partner really doesn't mind.

That's how I feel about it in general. Specifically I know it can be a blow to your self esteem. We, as women, are also programmed....we are told to expect that when a man loves us he will think only of us, fantasize only about us, want only us. So when we find out that that isn't true, it hurts. And when he's hiding it from us to boot, that hurts our trust in the relationship. The thing to remember is that his looking at porn doesn't mean he doesn't love, respect, and want you. It just means you aren't the only thing that turns him on. And really, isn't it unrealistic to expect that all the things that turned him on before you came along would simply cease to turn him on after he met you? But being turned on by those things doesn't mean he isn't turned on by you, and it doesn't make them a threat to your relationship with him. Remember, they are just pictures/videos, you actually touch him, love him, interact with him, you are real.

And maybe there are things that do turn him on that he doesn't feel comfortable asking you for because he loves and respects you, and porn is an easy way to fulfill those desires without doing something that disrespects you. I've gone through that before too, things a guy was interested in and didn't want to ask for because he felt they were disrespectful or he was afraid I would think he was a freak. Most of them I had to laugh at, because I didn't find them disrespectful at all and was more than willing to at least try them.

Consider this: if he was really trying to hide it, would he leave such a message in his inbox (as opposed to deleting it or moving it to another folder) and leave his inbox open?

Geez, I really sound like I'm trying to minimize it into nothing.....I know it's not nothing....but frankly I don't think it's as big a deal as a lot of women make it out to be.

Talk to him. Discuss your attitudes about porn, try to come to an understanding....both of you.....of the other person's position.

When you guys are alone, maybe at the end of the day, just sit down with him and say "There's something that's been bugging me and I figured I should talk to you about it before it grows any bigger in my head.....you left your e-mail open the other day, and you know me, I'm not a snoop, but there was an e-mail that worried me so I checked it out....I'm sorry, I know I shouldn't have done that, but I got scared." Own the fact that you did something you aren't proud of (I know how you feel, I'm the same way) and let him know that you have no intention of becoming "that person" but that it worried you and you'd like to talk about it.

It's not easy, I know, but I've found over the years that I always make things bigger in my head than they are in real life, and I always feel better after talking to my husband about them, because he tells me the truth of it, which is always way less dramariffic than I've made it out to be. It's taken us a long time to get to where we are now, but it's just so much easier being open and honest with each other, then there's no shame, no trying to hide something, and a lot less worry.

Lily expressed that she often has trouble talking about things like this without getting over emotional. So here was my suggestion:

I know it might seem callous on the surface, but e-mail can be a good tool....letter writing in general can be a good way to express what you want to express, have a chance to go over it to make sure you got it all out the way you wanted to, without any emotional outbursts in the middle, and the recipient has to read it all before they get the chance to react....so it's good both for making sure you get your point out without crying, and making sure he "hears" your whole point without interrupting. And it can be a way to discuss sensitive subjects without as much discomfort. I think I would ask him how he feels about that first though, make sure he wouldn't be offended by getting an e-mail like that, but keep it in mind as an option.

A few days later I asked Lily if she and Rick had talked about it yet. Here was her response:

I did indeed talk to Rick last night. I e-mailed him to sort of prepare him that something has been bothering me and we really need to have a serious talk about it. He said that he could tell something was bugging me yet I wouldn't talk about it. So I waited until I was settled in and until after we had dinner but I couldn't formulate the words in my head :-/ So I asked him if I could write it down and let him read it and then we could talk about it and he said that was fine. So I wrote everything down and took your advice on how to put things (which really helped!!) - I told him that he'd left his e-mail up and when I went to minimize it, I glanced and saw that Sex and Fun Forums thing and looked into what it was. I also told him I have never and will never be 'that girl' and then I referred back to when we had talked about the fact we used to watch porn but didn't do it anymore and it really caught me off guard. I mentioned how I really started over-thinking things and that it made me feel like that wasn't why we were having that much sex, etc. I also said that I understand that in general, men watch porn but this made me feel like there was this whole secret life he had that I wasn't or couldn't be a part of and that wasn't cool. I asked if there was anything he'd like me to be doing and I wanted to know what really turned him on. I sort of closed it with "I love you and I want to grow old with you."

It actually went better than I thought it would. He wasn't mad at all and then we started talking about what he'd like (lol more blowjobs...soooo typical :P ) and then he asked me what i'd like and then we starting thinking about ideas to try and spice things up and talked about going to Lover's Lane sometime soon and even looked through The Joy of Sex together. So I guess this really turned into a good thing :) Without your help, I probably would have just let it fester in my head and things might have blown up out of nowhere which would have most likely created massive problems. You are a life saver!!! :D Thank you! :)

I'm so glad Lily and Rick were able to talk to each other. If I've learned anything in 9 years of marriage it's that communication is the key to a happy relationship. Congratulations to Lily and Rick for opening that door, I hope it never closes!

Hugs Darlings!

Judi

Sexual compatibility

In response to my advice to "Jim" I've received an e-mail from "Steve." I'm going to respond to Steve's e-mail one part at a time, because he makes several different points.

Ok here is a question...Why does it always have to be the man who initiates?

First of all Steve, it doesn't. And frankly it's pretty insulting to both men and women to use such stereotypes. It also doesn't help you in your own relationship at all....you are a unique individual, as is your wife. It's much more helpful to treat each other as unique individuals than to try to cram each other into stereotypes.

The wife and I have this issue. I am not afraid to admit..I don't get sex near as much as I would like.....I can also admit it is partially my fault.

The problem comes from trying to initiate and being told no so many times, that I eventually rationalize it like this.....I can either read a book/watch a movie or try and "fight" to get some loving.

Then after we have been told no we start to feel shunned and then that leads to marital problems. I.E. our wives begin to feel unloved because there is the undertone of animosity from us guys.

Men are absolutely NOT the only folks in this boat. I can't tell you how many women show up in the forums I post in wanting to know what's wrong with them because their husband won't even give them a hug let alone have sex with them....some of those women haven't had sex in YEARS, despite all possible efforts including outright begging. So, again, let's try to stay away from the stereotypes, they are often inaccurate and absolutely don't help anyone's unique situation.

No matter their gender, a rejected partner will always have trouble overcoming the rejection. It's natural to stop trying something that just gets us shot down. Unfortunately there's no way to get over that then to just get over it. You have to decide if it's worth the risk.

Yes I understand that love can be shown in other ways...snuggling, hugs, flowers, ect...but guys aren't really wired for all that mushy stuff. Yes we will do it on occasions, but for the most part the way we feel needed and loved and wanted is by how much our women "desire" us.

Again, the stereotypes don't help. Everyone feels more loved when they feel that their significant other desires them, it's not just a guy thing. And there absolutely are some guys who are "wired for all that mushy stuff," as well as millions of women who find all that stuff about as lust inducing as a blade of grass.

Unfortunately what I think a lot of people fail to understand is that everyone is different. The way I need you to act so that I feel loved is probably not the same as you would want me to act so that you feel loved. However, most of the time we show love the way we want it shown to us. So you feel loved and valued when your wife shows you that she desires you by having sex with you.....so to show her love you try to get into her pants.....but that's not how she wants to receive love, she'd much rather you watch the kids in the evening for a couple hours so she could take a bath, and because you never do that for you she doesn't feel loved even if you try to have sex with her every day.

The important thing to do is to talk to your significant other and find out what THEY need to feel loved, and then DO that thing. The flip side is accepting their love when they make the effort to give you love the way you want it....we'll get to that more in a bit.

And this bit about "we're not wired that way" is a cop out. If your wife isn't having sex with you 4 times a week then she isn't "wired" that way either, yet you expect her to put out don't you? It's about loving someone enough to do what THEY need in order to feel loved .

The other thing I wonder is...if we are so darn good in the sack...why don't the women in men's collective lives want it more often? I would think that proficiency in the bedroom would almost guarantee at least 3 to 4 times a week.

And you would be wrong. Look, I love a good cheesecake almost more than my husband (I'm just kidding sweetie), but that doesn't mean I crave it constantly. And it certainly doesn't mean I'm going to eat it every day, no matter how good this one or that one is.

Think about it....does a bad sexual encounter make you desire sex less in general? No? Then why would the opposite be true?

Everyone has a different level of libido. Every once in a while two people get together who's libidos match. But, as there are an infinite number of different levels of libido, that is pretty rare. If you happen to be the higher libido person in your relationship then you have to understand that your ability doesn't have anything to do with it. When my libido was really low it wasn't a matter of how good my husband was in bed....the thought just never entered my mind. It wasn't a need that existed in my body. I guess my hormones were out of whack or something.

But this idea that my libido is somehow linked to anyone else's ability in bed is really really mistaken. And it's time for people to stop doing that, linking a physical, hormonal or simply personality aspect of your significant other to your own ability. If it's truly a libido mismatch, then it's not about you. And if that's the case, then there is no reason for the animosity you talked about earlier.

No man really wants the woman they love to be "just going through the motions"

Understand that it's not always "just going through the motions." If I'm not in the mood, then I'm not in the mood, and repeated attempts by my husband to get me in the mood just feel like harassment. I mean think about how you would feel if there was something your wife wanted to do that you just weren't up for, and she just kept asking over and over.

That doesn't mean that I'm necessarily against giving my husband a hand, if you know what I mean ;) He has to understand that while I may not be into it, I'm willing to do for him because I love him. Sometimes that's just the way it's going to be, because we aren't perfectly matched.

Should the woman seek out medical advice as to how to raise their libido?

Maybe. As I said everyone is different. For me, I knew something was wrong because my libido hadn't been that low before. But now I feel better than ever and my libido is still probably a bit lower than my husband's. Them's the breaks.

Let's even make it easier and say there are only 10 possible libido levels, 0 being never need it, and 10 being need it twice a day. So when you date someone you have a 1/10 chance of ending up with someone who matches up with you exactly. That's still a 90% chance that you won't match up and someone is going to be disappointed.

In reality it's 10,000 times worse than that.

What makes it worse still is that we all change with time. So right now you might be the higher libido partner, but one day that might change and your wife might be writing to me wanting to know why you don't want her anymore!

Are men and women forever doomed to be sexually incompatible?

People in general are doomed to have libido mismatches. That doesn't mean it can't work out or that we can't be happy, it just means that it's not always going to be the easiest thing in the world.

Why should the side that desires their partner constantly have to compromise?

Because the alternative is what you've already said you don't want, going through the motions. Or it's rape, and that certainly doesn't show any level of respect for someone you are supposed to love.

The key to any happy sexual relationship is open communication and understanding. If your wife's libido is lower than yours, then there's probably not much you can do about it unless she truly has a medical problem. More likely you two are just mismatched....and it's important for you to not treat each other as though it's someone's fault. And if she's willing to put out or help you out when she isn't in the mood, then it's important for you to not take that as an insult and understand that it's a gesture of love.

But most importantly stop with the stereotypes. They aren't helping you figure out your own marriage at all.

Thank you Steve for your questions and comments. Please feel free to contact me if you have some follow up you'd like me to post on your behalf.

Take care everyone,
Judi

Does she think I'm good enough?

OK, since nobody has written in to ask for advice, I have to get this thing started on my own.

I've mentioned that I participate in online discussion forums about relationships and sex. A few weeks ago I offered advice to a man who was concerned that he wasn't turning his wife on enough. Since I don't have his permission I won't copy his post here, but I'll try to give you a summary of his concerns.

Our poster, we'll call him Jim, hadn't had much sexual experience. His first marriage was to a woman who was quite frigid, but had had lots of sexual experience before their marriage, and the marriage ended because she decided to start having affairs with ex-boyfriends. She was his first and only sexual experience. During their marriage she would put out, but wasn't really into it, wouldn't tolerate foreplay, and really was just doing it as a "wifely duty" for Jim. All of this combined to give Jim quite a low opinion of his own sexual prowess.

Now he's married to his second wife and, although they do have sex and she appears to be into it and they enjoy a lot of foreplay and she tells him that everything is fine, he's concerned because she never seems to need him. He's read on forums of women who are sometimes quite aggressive toward their men, because they have a desperate need for them. He's worried that the fact that she's never grabbed him as soon as he walks in the door and dragged him off to the bedroom, that that means she's just not that into him.

Jim says she rarely initiates sex (although he admits that she will sometimes surprise him with lingerie, which I think is initiating), but never turns him down, and it seems that foreplay is often a fairly drawn out affair, sometimes meaning that a sexual encounter from start to finish lasts for hours (he mentions an hour of workup before actually getting down to business, and foreplay lasting 30-90 minutes before actual sex). He had gotten the impression from reading on forums that it was "normal" for a woman to at least occasionally be quite aggressive and have an uncontrollable desire to have sex with her man. He concludes that he wants to know that he really rocks her world, and he wants that to bring him confidence in his own abilities.

Here is my response to Jim:

Some people just aren't like a walking porn movie. I've never grabbed my husband as he walked in the door and dragged him off to another room for a quickie. There have been periods of months where I never initiated. We went through some periods where my libido was so low that if he didn't initiate we wouldn't have had sex for more than 2 years. And there have been times when my initiating consisted only of snuggling extra close to him when we went to bed.

None of that has anything to do with my husband's skill as a lover and everything to do with me, my hormones, and my emotional issues. I've never experienced uncontrollable lust, and frankly would find it pretty frightening if I did. I could never be the kind of woman you seem to want your wife to be, and if my husband was so insecure that he needed me to be like that to reassure him of his abilities, I'd promptly find him the name and phone number of a good therapist so that he could work out his own insecurity issues.

Everybody is different.....and over the years even the same person will be different.....I'm very different now from what I was when my husband and I first got together over 10 years ago. Even from one week to the next I'm different....I have days where I might get very aggressive, and other days when I wouldn't feel comfortable even gently suggesting sex.

I think the most important thing for you to understand is that your wife is an individual person, and "normal" doesn't mean anything. She is who she is, not who I am, not who lots of women on the internet are, she's just herself. Therefore it doesn't do you any good to go looking for what's normal, the only thing that will benefit your marriage is for you to get to know your wife better and accept her for who she is. Because face it, if she's not sexually aggressive, then it doesn't matter if every single other woman in the world is...if she isn't that is all that matters.

Jim thanked me for my response and said that I definitely gave him some things to think about, that my comments helped him to understand that there is a much broader range of "normal" when it comes to womens' desires than he had previously thought.

I hope Jim is able to find some confidence within himself, and is able to stop comparing his wife to "a bunch of women on the internet" and treat her as the beautifully unique person she is.

Until next time, keep on lovin' each other!
Judi

Welcome!

Hey everyone! Welcome to Judi's Relationship Advice column!

Let me first tell you how this place came to be:

For years now I've been involved in a number of online discussion forums pertaining to relationships and sex. I've thoroughly enjoyed discussing relationships and offering advice to those who come seeking it. So an advice column is something I've always been interested in.

Recently I had the opportunity to offer advice to two different real life friends. Both times I was told, by the friends and by my wonderful husband, that I should consider writing a column.

So I figured what the hell? And here I am.

Let me give you a bit of an introduction to my take on life in general:

I believe we all make our own happiness. You can't make me happy, I can't make you happy. Similarly, if we are miserable it is of our own doing.

"Wait," you say, "what do you mean we can't make each other happy or miserable, of course we can!"

No, we really can't....not without permission. Nobody can make me miserable unless I LET them. Nobody can help me be happy unless I LET them.

Also, it's much easier for someone else to influence my happiness if I already feel that way anyway. If I'm happy with myself, then it becomes infinitely easier for my husband to add to that happiness....conversely it would be quite difficult for him to make me truly miserable, unless I choose to let him.

The best part about this philosophy of mine? We all have the power WITHIN OURSELVES to find happiness.

But this means choosing to have people in our lives that promote that happiness, and not allowing others to bring us down.

And that's where relationships come into play. So let me introduce you to my philosophy on relationships:

Whatever happens between consenting adults is their own damn business. If you and your partner are happy bed hopping every weekend, so be it. If you are only happy in a strictly monogamous relationship where nobody has sexual relations with anyone but you (not even with themselves) that's fine too. If you want to be with someone who goes mountain biking and rock climbing with you every weekend, that's great. If you just want to sit on the couch all weekend, that's great too. Whatever you want, you can have.

But for goodness sake, please find someone else who shares those values with you.

You can't change other people. Period. They can change themselves if THEY want to, but no amount of wanting them to or begging them to will make a lick of difference if they don't want to.

So, it's absolutely vital to choose people to share your life with who are on the same page as you.

This also means it's vital to communicate about what page you are actually on.

We can all have happy relationships if we choose the people in our lives wisely and communicate openly with those people.

So there you have it, a taste of my view of the world. Now, it wouldn't be a very good advice column without someone seeking advice, would it? So please, ask away!

Take care my darlings!

Judi