She's gained weight, lost her sexy?

Seems the 3 or so guys who read this site (tell your friends, boys) prefer to email me than leave comments. If you have a Blogger account and want to leave a comment without it pointing back to your Blogger account, just use the Anonymous feature or Name/URL. It works fine and you stay anonymous.

One regular reader emailed me yesterday regarding my post about keeping a woman's sex drive high by doing unsexy things. His email said:

I love my wife and want to have more sex, but she's gained weight. How do I keep thinking about her rather than other women?

Honesty is good and this is a problem a lot of men face, married or not.  As I've said in previous posts, the first thing to work hard to do is get rid of the porn.  Porn is a great part of my life, but I'm single.  When you don't have a woman's body to release into (or on, in my case), porn is a very distant second place.  If you do have a woman in your life, porn should hit the road.  Increasing your own sexual desire can have an effect on her, if you focus that desire properly.

But what do you do when your size 4 princess became a size 12 queen?  The first thing to do is look at your own body: did you gain weight, too?  The pot calling the kettle black is a problem we guys face that is hard to realize.  When I gained weight many years ago (in a long term relationship), I didn't even notice it until I hit 30# over my ideal weight.  It took seeing a photo of me to say "Wow, I'm fat!"  She had gained a lot of weight, too, but I didn't bring it up.  Instead, I curbed my starches and sugars, picked up a set of cheap weights at Target ($20 maybe), and spent 10 minutes a day on my upper body.  Not a lot of work, but enough to get some definition going under my layers of fat.

I burned off those 30# in about 12 weeks, and I added enough definition that she noticed.  She was touching me more, and whenever I was working with my shirt off, she noticed definition in my back.  Many women will find a man's back muscles more attractive than arm, pec, or ab muscles.  It's an odd internal glitch in our ladies.

Once you've tackled the porn situation and focused on your own weight gain, you can work on the next step: make her sexy in your mind.  Porn can be a great burden on finding real women attractive.  All models are airbrushed, even the so-called amateur teens (most likely 25 year olds with makeup and good lighting).  Once the porn is out of your system, how about using HER pictures for the times you're alone in the bathroom or the bedroom and need to take care of your own needs?  I'm not talking about raunchy photos or nudes, just photos of her when you found her most sexy: that smile, working in the garden, or the candid shots taken from when you were dating.  Even if she's gained 50#, she's still the same sexpot you knew years ago.  Use it to your advantage.

There's a funny side effect of using your own lady to jerk off to: if she catches you, she'll get really mad and then when she finds the source of your passion, she may be out of her clothes in 5 minutes flat.  That'll solve your problem then and there.

I still believe that masturbation when you're sexually frustrated in a relationship is a bad idea for men.  It does reduce our sex drive quite a bit.  Fighting the urges give you a little more drive to find a solution to your predicament.   So far, I have had 2 long term relationships where the sex drive dried up because we were both so busy.  I put that to an end by working discretely to find a way to make time.  The best thing I had ever done was remove the TV from the bedroom and living room.  Grab some books or magazines to replace it.

If you don't waste 3 hours a night watching Friends and Will & Grace re-runs, you might be surprised that both your bodies respond to the boredom with a desire for sex.  Instead of watching TV, grab those books or magazines.  Give her short glances and watch her read (it's very very sexy).  She'll catch you and might take the hint that you do find her sexy.  It might not be great sex (that's your doing, fellas), but it's sex.  Getting your foot in the door (or something else) is a good way to getting your future sex life comfortable.

Her weight gain should not be a problem for sex.  The biggest turn-off is not weight, but how she dresses and carries herself.  If you can approach her body, in clothes, without seeming horny or gross, she'll still melt for you.  Don't be afraid to hug her regularly in thanks.  Don't be afraid to take a photo of her today for your wallet and one for your desk at work.  If she complains about being overweight, tell her that she's lovely and you're just as into her now as you were then.  If you dumped the porn, started jerking to her photos, and are working on your own weight problem, you'll mean it.  She'll believe you.

Lastly, kiss her more in the morning before she's fully awake.  No, not tongue-down-the-throat kisses; just smooch her forehead (or her hair even), stroke her hair, run your fingernails on her shoulders and arms and hands.  Non-sexual touches for men can be discrete sexual advances in the woman's heart and loins.  Morning sex is always a fun side project, which can satisfy both of you for the turbulent day of responsibilities ahead.

The best nights end in being flustered

Saturday night was uneventful.  I dressed up, as every man should do for a Saturday.  It doesn't take long, just a few minutes of thought, an ironing board, some shoe shine (even on new shoes, yes), and a shower, floss and nail clip.

I love Chicago.  I'm pretty sick of Chicago guys and the women that love them.  Don't get me wrong, at least once a week I run into a woman who actually makes me look twice.  But the ratty, haggard, age-d looking folk I've been seeing is just hard to navigate for me.  Either they're faking it up on the outside, or their ruined inside is showing through completely.  Where are the ladies and the gentlemen?  Where are the smiles and the laughter, other than those who are completely drunk on the whitey-boy equivalent to Mad Dog (PBR)?

So I ended the night early, glad to be home.  I had fun, don't get me wrong.  I laughed and smiled and made people laugh and smile, but I'm hungry for a Saturday where I can actually blink my eyes in surprise.  I want to be speechless.

My friend Rachel called me this morning to wish me a Happy Mother's Day.  I guess I'm a mom: I clean my house, I cook, I kiss my daughter (the cat) goodbye every morning and hello every evening before feeding her, I walk my neighbor's dog and I do my own basic laundry (plus drop off dry-cleaning).  Rachel is the one person in the world who knows how to pull my heart strings about life.  And no, I never slept with her.

She asked me how dating is going, and I told her that there are many interesting girls in Chicago, sexy ones, fun ones, hot ones and cute ones.  There are a few pretty ones (which is a hard bar to cross in my mind because it has nothing to do with outside appearance.  Where are the stunners, inside and out?  Where are the most lovely of lovelies?

Don't get me wrong: I'm not looking for one.  You can't if you're a man.  The minute a woman smells desperation, she'll hit the road because desperate men are scary.  I was only desperate twice in my life for companionship and both led to codependent and hurtful relationships.  I don't do that again.  I told Rachel that I'd honestly be just fine with a sugar-baby: when she's with me, she'll be a woman in nice clothes, her hair done, her nails clean and painted, her belly full with good food, her head only slightly buzzed with good wine in small amounts.  

There's something fun about that relationship: holding hands and laughing at the world, casting hilarious glances at the rest of the world, wandering through life for a short while together only when we want to be together rather than being forced together because of a lease or a debt or a loneliness.  She asked if I had any prospects.  Not really.  She asked if I pitched it lately.  I didn't.  She's right: I need to pitch it to those who aren't perfect to see their reaction.

When I date, actively date, it's a numbers game only.  I will ask for the phone number of every cute, pretty, sexy, hot, beautiful, lovely or amazing woman I meet.  I once had a day where I was so busy I ran into 10 women who fit in one of those categories and ended up with zero numbers.  2 days later, I ran into 5 women of the same types and got all 5.  5 out of 15 is a pretty good percentage for me, usually hovering in the 10% mark.

I really love dating.  Not the conquest, not fucking, not making huge plans for the future, but just dating.  There's something great about taking a cute gal or a beautiful woman out for dinner and getting her home by 11 and waiting a week to call again.  Yes, a week.  I'm busy, and if she's not busy, it won't work out.  I don't mean CRAZY busy even: just have friends or other guys they're dating or a book they're reading or a quilt they're quilting.  Something.

This isn't a rant or a complaint.  I was flustered last night because I wanted to see one woman I found attractive, and I don't mean on the outside.  A woman for me is a woman who beams beauty from the inside.  She smiles.  She blushes.  Her baggage of her past is neatly opened and organized and stored away rather than worn on her sleeve.  I didn't see this woman last night, and it was a Saturday: the night of nights to present yourself to society.

Even those I have casual sex with have this quality.  It's not just a girlfriend thing, or a sugar-baby thing, or a casual fuck buddy thing.  It's a woman thing, and I fear greatly for the field of possibilities.  I live in a city where us guys are outnumbered by women, so the odds should be pretty good.  The odds yesterday were terrible, and that's not a night worth discussing much.