Reddit reviews For Men Only, Revised and Updated Edition: A Straightforward Guide to the Inner Lives of Women

Although no longer a Christian, two books that my gf (now my wife) and I read together that were incredibly helpful were For Men Only and For Women Only. The authors are Christians and were incredibly helpful for helping my wife and I learn to communicate well together.

Why We Love the Church and How Then Shall We Worship have made me a better congregant and helped me better explain the benefits and necessity of the church to others.

Get Real has really helped me be a better evangelist (something i struggle with mightily).

My wife and my marriage have greatly benefited by my reading For Men Only

And there's this book on memory that I've given to a bunch of college students. Most of them use it to get better grades, but my brother is using it to memorize Matthew 5-7. It works quite well.

It sounds like he still has a long way to go, but if he really is getting better, as you say, then I'd say he definitely loves you. If he didn't, there wouldn't be much incentive for him to (try to) give up pornography or masturbation. So that's good.

One thing he definitely needs to work on is thoughtful communication with you. Lying to you, whether about using pornography at all or about the reasons for his ED, is not helping. Does he know about your struggle with an eating disorder? The health of your body image is crucial, and he should be making every effort to respect that.

He needs to be kicking his PMO habit, which--trust me--has nothing at all to do with you. It's not your fault. It never was. It never will be. That's his problem, he needs to own it, and if he ever blames you for it, know that he's either wrong or lying. You never make him sin; that's on him entirely.

One thing that might help your communication (it helped my and my wife's communication a lot, both when we were dating and a few years into our marriage when we felt we needed a refresher) are the books For Men Only and For Women Only (available as a two-volume set here). (Point of order: I haven't read the "revised and updated" version, but the originals were very illuminating when it came to our communication.)

This isn't a problem that goes away overnight, unfortunately. Marriage doesn't fix it (he probably expected it to before you got married). Even if he's trying his damnedest, he'll likely still have struggles. The hard part, for you, is that it means he'll need lots of forgiveness--not leeway, but forgiveness.

If he's not really trying, he needs someone to hold him accountable. That doesn't have to be you, and I understand if you don't think it can be you (for whatever reason). But find a friend of his that will talk to him, or your pastor, or someone, because he needs help (even if he won't admit it).

I think your wife needs a wake up call. It sounds like she's in a funk and letting the stresses of life get to her and she's taking you for granted. Something is bothering her and it likely has nothing to do with you. The fact that she is a different person on vacation without the everyday life is very telling. She may need counseling to uncover what her issues are and make peace with them - I know this is much easier said than done. To me, it seems like she's hurting somehow and taking it out on you which is affecting your marriage.

I read this book and it was eye opening for me. I got married fairly young to my college boyfriend so I didn't have a ton of experience with men and especially mature men. My boyfriends had all been teenagers when I met them. For Women Only. I think your wife needs to be scared you're going to leave (assuming that would crush her) and then read this book. There is a version for men regarding women as well if you both wanted to read them at the same time - For Men Only.

For Men only and For Women only are great for you both to read!

Here is the mobile version of your link

Just wanted to reiterate some of what CritFailingLife said. As a woman, I've also noticed that the less I have sex, the less I feel interested, and sometimes my boyfriend and I have to sort of "restart" my sex drive. We both know that, though, so it's not too contentious to talk about it or to sort of "go through the motions" to get back into it. I didn't realize other women (or people in general) have this issue until I read this thread, but I'm not surprised.

I don't think anyone should feel like they are obligated to have sex, but at the same time I think sex is an important part of a relationship, and it's not right to go on forever (or for a long, long time) without having sex and expect your partner to just suck it up. I absolutely agree with what everyone else here has said--you should not go looking for it somewhere else because that can be the death knell of your relationship.

However I also really agree with what others have said about how you should wait until a neutral time and talk it over with your wife. Communication is everything. It helps my boyfriend and I understand each other and take care of each other, so it's good in itself. As a bonus, I also feel most likely to want to have sex when I feel my boyfriend and I really understand each other, so that's just another reason to talk things through.

Ask her why she thinks she's not very interested in sex. Ask her what role she thinks sex does or should play in any relationship, and in your relationship specifically, especially over the long term. Ask her if there's anything new she'd like to try in bed, anything she'd like you to do differently. She may be shy or reserved about some of these questions (I have no idea--it varies from person to person) but at least it can get her thinking about it.

Finally, awhile back my boyfriend and I read these books (one for men, one for women) together. They are Christian-based, and we are not Christians, but we still found them very interesting. You're supposed to read them separately from each other (hence the titles) but we actually read both together, taking turns reading to each other while we did other things around the house, and it sparked so many great conversations.

We didn't agree with every single thing in the books but they had a lot of good points, and there were some chapters on sex, and how men and women sometimes approach it differently. I thought it was very helpful--I felt like I understood my boyfriend better after reading it. I'm not saying that every man and woman fits the pictures painted in these books, but I expect many do, so maybe that would help too.