[Bouledoux]

Thanks, EvilEvilKitten,

That's an intriguing perspective. It's more or less what I've half thought for ages. It certainly puts a lot of slightly odd behaviour my wife has exhibited recently into context.

Two things stand out. One is her increasing impatience with sexual foreplay. With non sexual kissing, cuddling, etc, there's no limit to her receptiveness; but as soon as things become sexual, her one desire is to get my penis in, or in proximity to, her vagina. It doesn't seem to matter if she's aroused or not; as long as my penis is there, she's happy.

I've not been very keen on this, and we've evolved a strategy of making dates and saying beforehand what we would like to do. Often, I ask for no penetration at all, so we can really concentrate on foreplay (still no oral, of course!). The trouble is, although my wife goes along with what we've agreed, I can tell her heart's not in it. She seems detached, almost bored.

In conversations, she's often called oral sex 'pointless', superfluous', 'unnecessary', etc; but now she's beginning to apply these sentiments to everything except actual intercourse. It doesn't seem to matter to her that although I become aroused very quickly, she doesn't, so often my erect penis is at the entrance to her vagina well before there is any possibility of penetration.

That suggests to me very strongly she subscribes to the notion that "sex is only for reproduction", even if she can't reproduce any more, and that all the other stuff - sexually arousing kissing, caressing, touching, breast fondling, etc, - is more or less irrelevant frippery.

Another strange thing is her abhorrence of French kissing. I can't remember with certainty, but I suspect she introduced this into our lives. She was infinitely more tactile than me, in the early days, and taught me a lot about taking time for kissing. My recollection is we both found French kissing particularly arousing. Now, she squirms and recoils at much more than a normal, non sexual kiss, says it's ticklish, and if it does go on for any length of time, has to hold her breath, because she says she can't breath through her nose while kissing. She screws her mouth up and turns away if even the tip of my tongue ventures between her lips. She agrees she can breath through her nose okay doing any number of other things, but even a static kiss, where our lips are simply joined together, doing nothing, means she has to hold her breath, which is somewhat limiting.

An associated peculiarity is when she gets within a certain distance of orgasm. She can only orgasm in the missionary position; and when she gets to a certain point of excitement, then her mouth opens, and French kissing is on the cards again. So is nibbling of lips and all manner of salivating contact, which is great; but the odd thing is her mouth opens in a very distinctive way, as an almost perfectly formed penis shaped receptacle, and stays like that. This is too far open for tongue kissing, or tongue sucking, especially as she maintains the wide openness, and she often ends up sucking my nose or chin or cheek. If my penis was on my face, I'm sure it would be a perfect fit. I've often wondered about the association of this tendency in conjunction with her hovering close to orgasm.

I hope this doesn't sound like wife bashing. I have loads of peculiarities she has noticed and wondered about - not least, my propensity for oral sex. And nuzzling her breasts, which I don't find 'peculiar' at all, but she certainly does. My wife is certain I was orally deprived as an infant, which I probably was.

We were both seriously disappointed with the therapist we saw; but how to find a "GOOD" one? If I need a good plumber, a good dentist, a good doctor, I can ask around. Everyone knows one, or knows someone who knows one. I can't imagine asking the people I'm acquainted with for recommendations for sex therapists. And searching online isn't very revealing. They all have letters after their names but from what I can see the training is fairly standard. The therapist we had could have been reading from a book, she seemed so rote.

I'm not even sure my wife would agree to go a second time. She didn't enjoy discussing our intimate behaviour with a stranger, one bit.