Nothing.
Or, more precisely, less than nothing. She became unhappier.
The husband bent over backwards to fulfill his wife’s every demand, and the result is tragicomically predictable: gina tingles extinguished.
For the past year or so, my husband has ceased to be able to turn me on, to the point where I am almost repulsed by our lovemaking. Recently, I broke down and told him everything. Since then, he has done everything in his power to get us back on track. The problem is now me! Even though this is all I’ve wanted, I can’t bear to be touched in certain areas.
Never mind the couples therapist answer. As per usual for the quality of output typical of this field of inquiry, it’s garbage. A commenter’s sarcastic jab gets it more right: “I love you, but I’m not in love with you.”
Ok, just to torture the CH reading audience, here’s a sample of the couples therapist’s answer (a woman, natch):
This “hot potato” syndrome is not uncommon: one partner has an issue, but once he throws it off, the other catches something too hot to handle. In many ways, it is a good thing that your husband is responding so energetically to your plea for change, and you did an excellent job of moving beyond what had become a long-term impasse.
Yes, clearly what the husband needs to do is more of what didn’t work at all.
For example, you say you don’t like to be touched in certain places, so the exact details of this must be gently communicated to him, and he needs to be shown exactly what you would prefer.
As the feminist sages tell us, women are really turned on by having to read an instruction manual to their men on the proper use of their bodies during lovemaking.
You have done very well so far – be brave enough to address the next steps, which are largely about better communication.
“Better communication” to solve all your relationship problems! Empty platitude, the stock in trade of marriage counselors everywhere. The unhappy wife wrote to the worse-than-useless psychotherapist shell entity informing her STRAIGHT UP that she told her husband everything, and he did everything he could to meet her demands. What part of that suggests this relationship needs to be addressed with “better communication”? Sounds like they were communicating their marriage to an early bed death!
I shouldn’t be surprised anymore, but the alacrity with which marriage and couples counselors and creeeeeeedentialed “psychotherapists” resort to droning bromides devoid of any explicit advice that might prove useful to saving relationships but carries the baggage of gently disturbing the gentle egos of gentle wives with gently feminist views about the moral supremacy of the female prerogative and the assumption of the male’s automatic fault in any scenario stuns even experienced observers of the junk therapist scene such as yours truly.
This couple deserve better advice than what a one Pamela Stephenson Connolly can offer them. CH to the rescue…
To the wife: First, make sure it isn’t some serious physiological issue, like CVD or something that could affect your sexual response. For that, see a medical doctor, i.e. a real doctor. But, odds are it isn’t a medical problem.
The way to bet is that your husband is a beta male — that is, dependable, reliable, generous, deferential… and utterly unsexy — and that his beta maleness got worse the longer your marriage went on. It’s not uncommon for men to get soft in body and attitude once they’ve settled into the marital comfort zone.
If this is the cause of your turtling sexuality, I’m afraid anything you do could only make matters worse. This is because there is a natural disconnect in your female brain between what actually turns you on and what you think SHOULD turn you on. You will, therefore, be unable to give your husband any advice that would work.
To the husband: STOP doing what you’re doing, and do the opposite. Instead of appeasing your wife, ask her to do things for you. No, DEMAND of her those things. Stop supplicating, and instead assume that you are God’s gift to womankind and can do no wrong. Apologize for nothing, make no excuses for her. Be unpredictable. Leave her for a spell, preferably unannounced. Tease her, poke fun at her, squeeze her hip fat with a disapproving glare, flirt with other women as she watches. In sum, initialize the first sequences of Dread Game.
After a few weeks of this wifely romantic reprogramming, grab her when the mood hits you, and start tearing off her clothes, oblivious to her mewls of protest. If your psychological preparations have been successful, she will relent and shake off an orgasm like a dog shitting a peach pit.
If not, consider cutting her loose and saving your newfound self-confidence for another woman who will submit to your love in the way every man secretly desires a woman to do. Even the effete hipster manlets.
