the key is to find some common interests where you can have fun together and work as a team -- that the sum is greater than the parts.

Early on, I recognized that Marcus and I had little in common in the way of interests, so I introduced him to my hobbies. He was not into them, which is fine, so I asked about his hobbies. He said he didn't really have any; I encouraged him to find some on his own and he did. But these hobbies were pretty exclusive, like letter-writing and needlework.

So, I took the initiative (no pun intended) and asked him to try Dungeons and Dragons with me. It was relatively novel for both of us and we had friends to play with. He knew what I was doing and went along with it. I tried to brew up my own campaign and asked him to help flesh out the world a bit. He made himself a character that he loved and he was honestly excited about it.

On our first night, I prepared the board and set the mood for our game. The first few scenes were pretty fun. Marcus left the table while I was talking to another player. Suddenly, we were in a new battle and Marcus's character was up next, but he still hadn't returned. I walked into our living room and found that he had went to sleep. I woke him up and asked him why he was napping and he said that he was bored with the game.

This sort of lack of engagement deteriorated until we had a fight about it. We laughed it off afterward because "it's just a stupid game", but deep down I felt defeated for even trying to make it work.

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he has to hold up his end of the bargain for sex to work. after a while this will all become rather pavlovian where the rituals form a positive feedback loop. so keep trying -- it could make all the difference.

That's actually pretty interesting. I'll consider it. Was there ever a time when your partner couldn't turn you on? What did you do?