Thanks for the additional details.
Have you searched Love and Respect? There are some DVD's, or a CD set, that are less expensive than a Marriage Builders weekend.
My mind returns to Foreplay
There are a whole range of activfities that can serve as foreplay.
A woman is often not attracted to a man, until furhter in the stages of foreplay.
I searched Foreplay.
http://www.fundiscoveries.com/sex-advic ... -woman.htm
There are more hits. Flowers or just doing something nice, but simple, for her or the kids.
Foreplay for women starts a day or two before sex.
Chapter 9 of the Men's Secrets book.
For me, touching my wife's breast for 3 seconds, or her rump roast, just out of the blue. With kids around, it could be massaging her back, or neck for 3 seconds. An overlooked part of the neck is the connection of the neck muscles to the skull, 2 inches form the neck, at the bottom of the skull.
Just create 3 seconds of pressure, then release.
Do you know about the alluvial canal? Down the middle of the back is the spine. You can feel the rounded points of the vertebrae bones. Down the middle, outside the two inch middle of the back, maybe about 2 inch strip on each side of the vertebrea, is a muscle area, called the Alluvial canal. You can press quite hard, and deep in this area, You can use a thumb on one side, and your fingers reaching across to the Alluvial canal on the other side of the back. You can go up and down the back.
I have a trigger massage wheel, if I am lazy.
Find earlier stages of foreplay, like massage, like giving her a compliment. "You are so smart."
Compressing a large muscle for a few seconds, and releasing, releases Endorphins, which create arounsal.
THERAPY:
You can use therapy for discussing her problems. Sounds like she has a lot of past issues to go over.
You can look for times when she felt mistaken, or surprised, and let her talk about that experience.
You can lead the threapy by asking questions to let your wife release her feelings.
what would yuou like to have, what would yo like to do, what kind of a future would youlik for hte children?
You can use thrapy as a take-charge approach. The therapist my ask you what you want. I have recommended that you create alist of what you want. But I wold not use that list in therapy. You might avoid doing anything the therapist asks, or agreeing to anything in the therapy session. "Well I will give that some thought, but what occurs to me now is that there may have been some unexpected situations in the past, that surprised my wife, and may be interfering with her feeling of appreciation for me."
If you feel you need therapy, I would get that separately. Make your marriage therapy about your wife.
Make a note of any suggestions the threapist makes, for you. Any suggestions so far?
You have not mentioned rejections of your foreplay.
What are the earliest stages of forfeplay that you can recognize?
How can you attempt to impliment any of these early stages?
How does your foreplay get rejected? How can you modify your approach?
You say you CAN'T initiate foreplay. Are you comfortable with repeated rejections of early stages of foreplay? How can you handle these rejctions more gracefully? Do you have the image, that each three second squeeze of a large muscle releases more endorphins, so a rejection of 1, 3 or 5 presses, is irrelevant? Arousal is occuring regardless of any verbal rejection or push away? Are you making your squeeze sufficinetly short to avoid a verbal rejection? What is your wife's re-approach period? My wife is 3 minutes. Some women are 7 minutes. Do you know that women wipe their slate clean, much faster than men?
Tim Downs said on the radio, Focus on the Family, that a husband may think he has 50 or a thousand points in his wife's account, for past good behavior. Tim said the reality is that your account balance gets zeroed out at least everyday. It is what have you done for me lately? or Today. or this afternoon?
You may be thinking that you have earned an emotional reserve, and your wife has recently wiped your slate clean, and you have to start over, with a few little things, all over again.
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