His Needs, Her Needs: Sex and Affection

Currently, I am reading a book entitled "His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair Proof Marriage"  which I first learned from Maricar and Richard Poon's blog. Every chapter is informative. This thing caught my attention though and I have quoted some lines for you to ponder.

When it comes to sex and affection, you can't have one without the other. Sadly enough, most affairs start because of a lack of affection (for the wife) and lack of sex (for the husband). It's quite a vicious cycle. She doesn't get enough affection, so she shuts him off sexually. He doesn't get enough sex, so the last thing he feels like being is affectionate.

For some couples this is true much more on my side. Because I'm the type of wife who needs affection in order for my husband to have a fulfilled sexual relationship with me. He knows that and sometimes whenever he surprised me with such little efforts, I am the one who starts the flame. I always make sure that he will have his "need" whenever I am ready and really into it. I always make him understand that "sex without love" is absolutely "just faking" or "lust" and he clearly understands the situation.

In the book, a wife enumerated "Affectionate Habits to Create" and "Affectionate Habits to Avoid". And for some instances I can relate with her lists. Some of her habits were simple gestures though so I don't think every husband will have difficulty with those. I passed the list to my husband for him to know that those little things matters to me as well. Here are some of it and my husband do some of this things when we were together or apart:

• Hug and kiss me every morning while we're still in bed. Because we are in a long distance relationship, when he woke up, the first thing he does is send me a message through facebook and ask me how my day was or asking about our daughter. He never fails to kiss me or ask me for a kiss before we went offline.

• Help me with the dishes after dinner. He does this always and also the cooking! Lucky wife right?

• Remember  my birthday, our anniversary, Christmas, Mother's Day, and Valentine's Day. Give me a card and gift that is sentimental, not practical. Sometimes he fails with this thing. Whenever I tease him about certain occassions he is pressured with what to give or do because rarely he surprises me and he's not the type of husband who do so everytime. But when he does, he makes my heart melt. I always tell him he need not buy expensive things for me. Correct me if I'm wrong but some husband tend to not realize that wives don't really want expensive things and just a little effort wins their wives heart. One time he gave me a Valentine's Card made of pad paper and stickers which he asked from her niece. And so I cooked him a merienda that turned into our simple celebration in return.

When I asked him for affection, sometimes he misunderstood it with admiration. According to Willard (author of the book) "affection" is the communication of care, while "admiration" is the communication of appreciation, value, and respect. Whenever I feel like my husband forgets the affection thing, he will bombarded my facebook posts with comments of admiration or appreciation (now you know! haha).

Those are just some of the list and I didn't elaborate that much because I want you to read the book or create your own list as well. Have a talk with your husband about this if you need to. There's nothing wrong with voicing out your opinion about sex and affection. Clearly, there's nothing wrong with having an open communication with your husband as well.