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Husband doesn't understand how acts of service makes me desire him

Like most husbands my husband is always in the mood, we are not in our twenties anymore but his libido never got that memo. We have read the five love languages and my husband doesn't buy into that fact, that one of my love languages (acts of service) makes me want to be that much more intimate with him. Of course men are visual so maybe that's why he can't comprehend it. Sometimes I feel like I put a lot into our marriage,ie planning date night, having the house in order, bills paid, dealing with our kids etc. sometimes I feel like his only responsibility is to go to work. So when I've worked pretty much sun up to sun down and he wants it at the drop of a hat, he doesn't understand why I'm not as eager as he is. He said there's no way that by him doing something around the house can make him more attractive. It's not about attraction it's an emotional tie. When I tell him these things he says it's a bunch of liberal psycho babble.

Anything I can say to make the lightbulb go off?

Pin up some images like this in your corner of the house
53a048c06b1c5_-_cos-01-hot-guy-cleaning-de.jpg

Tell your hubby how sexy you think men are when they are doing house work. :D

Oh well I guess that's not working. (But at least you'd have something nice to look at :lol)

More seriously, you need some serious honest communication.
Marriage counselling?
 
Wait till he does some act of service, and then go wild demonstrating your desire, and tell him how much what he did made you desire him.

"Oh" [kiss kiss kiss] "I love how you hung those curtains for me." [kiss kiss kiss] "It really makes me excited...."

Pick a manly act of service like fixing the car or something you can't do as well as he can. That may make sense to him. If he doesn't do a lot, have him open a jar and then demonstrate your point to him. Even if it doesn't make sense to him, he may go through the cupboard and open up every jar for you throughout the week.
 
No she left back in 2007. We were married for 26 years. But she got materialistic on me. I didn't make enough money for her, lol. She was 40 years old and wanted to go try to marry a millionaire, before she was too old to be marketable. (She actually said this, lol) (Well not the before she isn't marketable part). She dang near did it too, she was dating a millionaire lawyer for awhile. But when she demanded that he marry her, he showed her the door. So suddenly she still had a soft spot in her heart for me and called up wanting to come home...if I flew in her friends and threw a big wedding, and if I bought her a BMW (I'm not greedy she said, she'd settle for a 3 series lol). :hysterical

You can't base a marriage on material objects so I wished her good luck and told her no.
Since I never cheated on her or beat her up, that's all she had was the money argument and had to be honest, lol. It's not like we were dirt poor either, we just weren't rich. I've been self employed with an HVAC company since 1994. We were doing ok.
Oh wow. Sounds like she was watching too much housewives of OC. Maybe even a mid life crisis.
 
Mid life crises are weird things. An uncle of mine hit his when he turned 40 and realized he hadn't made his first million, as he had planned when he left high school. He ended up divorcing his wife and not too long a while later married a woman who looked just like his ex-wife, who also had two kids, just like in his previous marriage. He is still married to his second wife (as far as I know) and probably has yet to make his first million.

Nothing generally works the way you want if you don't plan for it.

I know dangit! I should've planned on being a millionaire, lol.
Man has two big areas to leave his mark in life, his marriage/family, and his work. If he puts too much attention to either one, the other suffers. For example, we all know that women will complain on their men if they don't hold a job. But it's almost just as true as much of the time where women will complain, he works too much...Right? I should've put more effort into working and less into my relationship because in the long run, she valued the money more. In a way it's a good thing for me, because she would have it all now anyway, lol.
 
Well to be quite honest he's basically right.
The love languages concept isn't something scientific or so. It's just some individual subjective observation combined with some common sense thinking that were cobbled together in a theoretical construct that gained popularity because it's an important issue and that construct makes sense on an intuitive level, and has probably helped lots of couples and individuals improve their communication. So it's not really a bad concept. It's some of the best stuff the Christian self-help market has to offer. (It's just not really science.) :biggrin
Trying to understand how people communicate friendliness and affection and how different people do it in a different way (and thus may horribly misunderstand each other) is a very important thing to deal with in any meaningful relationship - marriage, friendship, co-workers, whatever, hence the popularity of the Love Languages concept.
But for anyone who is somehow involved in scientific psychology it's obvious that the Five Love Languages concept doesn't suffice to describe and analyse the real complexity of human behaviour communication. There aren't only five distinct ways. And we don't have only one or two of those five. Each of us can probably use a variety of complex and mixed ways to show love, and which we chose depends on situational factors (like who are we showing our love? and in what surroundings are we?) and which would be near imposible to classify in only five subgroups. You might some need some nasty multi-dimensional factor model to describe it... eh I'll spare you the details of that. :lol

Why am I saying that?
Well the Love Languages thing isn't some absolute truth. It's not something that is carved in stone. It's a gross oversimplification - though a somewhat helpful one - of human behaviour. Don't be overly obsessed with feeding it to your husband. Take it for what it is - a crutch to help you understand yourself - but accept that others aren't as convinced of it as you are.

That being said, I think your husband is being a sexist douchebag if he thinks that women only regurgitate things other women say and thus things women say aren't important. And it's even more douche-y if that includes the needs of his own wife.
Leaving the Love Languages aside, you could say you feel disrespected because he's not treating you the way you'd want and he's not telling you any good reasons for why he doesn't do things you'd want him to, but still expects and demands respect and sexual gratification from you?

If it's really some men-women issue he has then maybe another man he respects could show him how poorly he treats you (like, some church elder or some male friend of his and yours?) That's a poor solution because he *should* be respecting you regardless of gender, so asking another male to talk to him shouldn't be necessary. But maybe he needs someone else that has some role model authority to tell him that he's doing you wrong.
Another way to deal with his sexism would be to remove him from the sole provider role. So unless you have little kids that need your attention all day you could find a job yourself. That'd give you more independence and would even out the inequality. You would then have to understand that you're not his house maid.


Now that sentence doesn't make sense to me.... your feelings are real, aren't they. Feelings may be irrational or even inappropriate, but they are real because you feel them?

Whoa, you should write a book Claudya. I only disagree with one thing you wrote. I wont go into it because it's off topic from the OP, but...you go girl! :nod
 
Oh wow. Sounds like she was watching too much housewives of OC. Maybe even a mid life crisis.

Yessiree, I think so. Actually the warning signs were there for awhile, but I didn't recognize them. (or refused to out of ego, lol). In retrospect, I was able to learn a lot from the split. My mistakes mostly of course. It's the best thing one can do when their hearts ripped out of their chest is to at least make it a learning experience instead of pout.
 
Wait till he does some act of service, and then go wild demonstrating your desire, and tell him how much what he did made you desire him.

"Oh" [kiss kiss kiss] "I love how you hung those curtains for me." [kiss kiss kiss] "It really makes me excited...."

Pick a manly act of service like fixing the car or something you can't do as well as he can. That may make sense to him. If he doesn't do a lot, have him open a jar and then demonstrate your point to him. Even if it doesn't make sense to him, he may go through the cupboard and open up every jar for you throughout the week.

Not bad brother! A little bit of reverse psychology never hurts, lol. :)
 
Why would someone need a BMW?What is the point?

Materialism. Better than the Jone's. Praide, vanity. All sorts of stupid reasons.

I thought of buying my new wife a BMW just because she didn't ask for it. It's probably the wrong reason, lol. I wanted her to be very very clear about my financial situation before she moved over here for good, and not give her any false impressions that I am rich or even very well off...and she looked me in the eye and said, this is ok, we can always get by, we can eat cornflakes if we have to, as long as we have love, we will be ok and be happy.

Wow. This was a great answer and made me feel very good and just stirred my heart up very much. God bless her. :)
 
Yep. Exactly brother. The wife works all day too at home, cleaning, children and all that stuff, and it's not so easy, I found that out after she left. And the thing is, when daddy gets home and his day is done...hers gets even harder because she's waiting on him and picking up his dirty socks and stuff that he dropped in the floor and all that. i didn't understand it when I was married and would ask her...why don't you ever stop and sit down? Geez, she worked all the way up until bedtime.

I get it now. My next wife, I'll cook dinner sometimes, and help her always cook or clean when I come home. it's only fair. Most guys may cook their girl breakfast in bed once a year on her birthday if she's lucky. i think I'll cook breakfast in bed for her once a week. This will touch her. :) She needs a break too and to be pampered.

Yeah. Treat her the way I want to be treated. For real. And go to church together every Sunday. Be her spiritual example and leader. that's a responsibility. A might scary in a way but it will keep me on my spiritual toes. In order to be the spiritual leader, one must himself have a good relationship with God in order to be able to do it, and with confidence, no fear. everything is Spirit led.

God will honor that marriage, and bless it. Praise the Lord for God being there and being who he is, especially longsuffering.

You will make a WONDERFUL husband. Now if only I could get MY husband to understand all of this. I feel like I do EVERYTHING while all he does is go to a job he enjoys, comes home and his day is done. I only work part time but my work never ends. Then at night when he wants to be intimate, I honestly want to punch him in the face. Intimacy is the LAST thing on my mind!
 
You will make a WONDERFUL husband. Now if only I could get MY husband to understand all of this. I feel like I do EVERYTHING while all he does is go to a job he enjoys, comes home and his day is done. I only work part time but my work never ends. Then at night when he wants to be intimate, I honestly want to punch him in the face. Intimacy is the LAST thing on my mind!

Thanks you very much sister. I learned it after the fact. I had to make our divorce a positive in some sort of way so as not to become depressed or something, so I looked for mistakes I made so as to at least make it a learning experience. We was married 26 years so it sort of took me by surprise. I thought we would be together forever.

That's the thing about divorces (bad situations in general), it may be a bad thing to happen in ones life, but we must strive to learn from it so that we do not make the same mistakes again.
 
You will make a WONDERFUL husband. Now if only I could get MY husband to understand all of this. I feel like I do EVERYTHING while all he does is go to a job he enjoys, comes home and his day is done. I only work part time but my work never ends. Then at night when he wants to be intimate, I honestly want to punch him in the face. Intimacy is the LAST thing on my mind!
Will your husband ever sit down and talk with you?Just ask you how your day went or ask you if anything is frustrating you?How is your communication?Are you happy working part-time?Would he ever be for just holding you at night instead of having sex?Sometimes that is what a woman needs and sometimes if a man loves his wife he will put her above himself and give her what she needs first.
 
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