Hi witnessorange,

I really appreciated your comments to me on my thread. I think I am a little older than you. I've lived through something related, in that my wife deals with anxiety, depression, and health issues. All of those things effect our sex life.

I know..... You love your spouse, you see the illness and anxiety as separate from who they are as a person. But those things play a huge role in your lives.

My thinking is changing in recent years. Mental illness is real, and our partners and family who deal with mental illness need support, but that doesn't mean we can't also have some higher expectations of how we are treated.

Some years back I bought a book. It was really quite helpful for us at the time, but then my wife's physical health really went over a cliff and depression became quite a prominent thing to deal with.

The book was 101 Nights of Great Romance. It really is a couples book. There are date ideas that you literally rip out of the book with a complete outline of how to plan the romantic date night. They are levelled based on how much time and money you have to spend, and whether you are going out or staying in. In return, there are activities for your wife to do for you. There are things you can each initiate, and there are things you are each expected to do to reciprocate for your partner's efforts when they plan a date for you.

It sounds too simplistic, but the truth is, if you don't use it you lose it. If you DO use it, it will grow as part of your life. How simple is it if you pull a date night idea out of the book, plan everything, and her role is to wear something really sexy that you like, maybe something underneath her clothes that is private, with no expectation of it progressing to sex.

Progressively acting sexually and romantically leads to more sex and romance.

When my wife and I tried this 10 years ago, I made the offer: I'll go 3 to 1 for you. I'll plan 3 romantic date nights from the book before I expect you to plan a date night in return. It becomes a tangible thing.... "See, I really did put the time into this, and lots of it. I'd like a turn in return, and not even an equal turn."

If you get the book, I'll tell you how to do the fortune cookie date night. It's really easy and was a huge hit. I was much appreciated that night :-)

I have good memories of this book and what it did for us. That was a good year in our marriage.

I really believe talk and therapy is good, but there has to be a roadmap and an expectation for behavior too. This really is a connect the dots behavior book.

And if you end up 12 dates deep into the book with nothing changing you might have a new insight or an answer.

RDM