To answer MattMann's question, we both kind of agreed that I was the one who was having more of a problem with this than he was. Now I see it as somewhat unfortunate that we labeled "my" problems as we did. I was the one who had low self esteem, lacked confidence, had a moral dilema with swinging, couldn't separate sex & love, had feelings of inadequecy, etc. Although all those things are true, those aren't the things that I wanted to resolve. Yes..I do want to feel better about myself, but I had my husband's lust and desire for someone else tied up to my physical appearance, and my ok'ness. I began to think if only I looked better, he'd want me more than he wanted the others, all kinds of self defeating thoughts. I was beginning to think that if he really did love me, he wouldn't want them as much as he did. What I really needed to find out was that I had value to ME maybe actually those other women WERE as important to him as I thought. There wasn't a thing that I can or could do about that, except learn about my value as a human being aside from his considerations about me BUT I could feel better about ME!
So we thought that regardless, we could both benefit from my going first, and then I could bring the things I gained to the relationship and issues between us. He also was reluctant about going, I think from exposing himself to being judged about some of the things that were going on with him.
The biggest thing I wanted to do was to better communicate with him so that we could stop arguing about swinging. I am happy to say that I am learning more effective skills at communicating, which is always a real bonus.
I hope that I have made this clear, it's very early in the morning!
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