Lost, it is quite alright to be short and resentful...I've been posting with several people in your position (being HD with a LD spouse) here and on other forums for quite a while now, and so I do understand that. The resentment is normal. (Also, being that you haven't had sex since January, well, yeah, that's gonna create some tension, isn't it?)
YES the sex and intimacy does matter, of course. I was just trying to get a gauge on your situation and what your wife may be feeling or thinking.
So I will just cut to the chase...basicall your wife is not going to just wake up one day and want sex again. I know most HD spouses are just wishing for that day to come, but I'm going to tell you to stop waiting for that day. You need to make a choice, can I live like this or not? How much longer? Do I need to make an exit plan, or am I willing to "try" if she is willing to agree to a full-fledged effort?
Have you asked yourself these questions yet?
I know you are probably just now beginning to see that it might actually go down that road. Many HD spouses don't really believe this could end up being their lives, and they ignore it for many years before really trying to tackle the problem. By then, it is many times too late. But not always. Sometimes it is not too late. If you hope it is not too late for you, there are many things for you to try...
But the biggest thing you are going to have to realize is this: if you are willing to put in the effort to do this (save your marriage and change it from being sex starved to being satisfying) then it is going to take more time, courage, growth and strength than you have ever put into anything before. Is your marriage and your wife worth more to you than you have put into college? More to you than you have put into your career? More to you than you have put into any exercise program, etc? This is the real bottom line, the one that most people don't like to find out about. The fact is, it will not be an easy "oh gee, we have lots of sex now" type of venture. It will be a long, difficult, and painful venture. But the rewards, if you are successful, will be MORE rewarding than you can possibly imagine.
Are you willing to put in more work than you've ever thought you would have to do?
At this point, I would say yes. I still have enough love for her to want this to work out. The thing is, everything I have done to date...not only has it not worked, but it's not even been recognized or acknowledged by her. It's like she is in a fog and our marriage is just oh so lovely.
I don't know what more I can do to try and change things, but if you've got ideas...go for it, I'm in.
OK Lost, that is honest. I'm happy for your marriage that you are willing to give it one last shot, knowing how hard it will be.
I just want to say this: I am now finally in a really great relationship. We are engaged, to be married in February 2008. We've been together going on 5 years now. We have a great, frequent and wild sex life, as well as a very intimate (on all other levels) relationship.
Why am I telling you this?
Because before being in this relationship, I was like most other people in that, I thought that relationships and marriages were supposed to be easy and just naturally, the spouses would be happy.
I WAS A FOOL!
Thus, the reason I am divorced.
In my current, happy and intimate relationship, I finally found out the real deal: That relationships take constant effort and work to maintain. And if you don't feel enough love and admiration for your spouse, if you feel like "meh" about your spouse on any level, your relationship will ultimately fail. If you aren't willing to put in constant work from here on forward, making sure you are drawing out the best from one another, working at keeping on your top game....the same way we do when we parent...the same way we do when we are career driven...nothing less than a total effort will keep your relationship at a top notch level. I finally understand this truth now, and I happily put 100% effort toward maintaining my happy relationship. It is the most rewarding effort I have ever given.
Now in hindsight, I wonder why I never saw this during my marriage? I didn't work at my marriage. I sure did work at being a parent thought! Why didn't I see, that if my children were that important to me, that my marriage had better be that important to me as well? And that if it takes hard work and patience to parent, that a marriage would take at least as much hard work and patience? Instead I just believed that since my ex-h and I couldn't figure out how to be happy, we must not be right for each other. I was wrong about that!
So I suspect that both you and your wife have not put in 100% effort for a long long time, if ever. Even while you have tried to make some changes after reading the books...please understand that those changes are *essentially* being made by you because you want to "fix" whatever you think is "broken" in your wife and causes her not to want to have sex. This is a big difference between really being willing to put in all of your effort because you want to have a happy marriage, and just making changes because you want to fix your broken wife somehow.
(Please don't take any of this personally or try to defend yourself. I really am not trying to be offensive and I apologize in advance if I sound offensive. I am trying to stick to the facts).
So yes I do have ideas, and you are not going to like it, but here it is:
You are going to have to tell her you will not live in a sexless marriage any longer, that you both need to find a marriage counselor that you will both agree to (ie: don't go back to the one who she felt was attacking her), and that she is going to have to agree to put in 100% effort into fixing this (and that you will put in 100% as well), or else you are going to ask for a separation. You have to be willing to walk out the door, so don't do this until you really are willing to do that.
From there, if she agrees, you will have to begin the long road of hard work ahead of you. She may agree initially and then immediately go back to old habits, in which case, you will have to make your stand and separate.
If you do not show your resolve to actually leave the marriage, she will never have the fuel she will need to get into the game along with you.
On the other hand, you might find, after delivering the ultimatum, that she will not agree to do the work. If that is the case, then you will have your answer. You feel right now that she is willing to live in a semi-happy sexless marraige forever. And yet, until you give her an ultimatum, you won't really know. It could be that she will be glad you brought up separation first! You won't really know until you go there.
Now, I know with kids involved, this is a difficult decision to make and to stick to. But ... I want to caution you, as I have cautioned others in your shoes, if you wait around for the kids to grow older before you make your move, you will be living in pain and unhappiness until then....and that is not "good" for the kids. Don't fool yourself into thinking that showing your kids an unhappy, sexless marriage is "good" for them. I am not advocating divorce. I just hate it when people think that their kids don't know what is going on. They do. Kids know it when their father doesn't love their mother or the other way around. Right now, I would take a guess that your kids realize more than your wife realizes how your feelings are quickly fading for their mom. As much as you want to protect your kids, just sticking around "for them" is likely going to lead you to divorce anyway, because just sticking around "for them" shows you will not be willing to do any hard work.
I hope all of this makes sense. No one is going to tell you that you "should" do this...but I will tell you that if you don't do this, your wife will not ever snap out of her fog. And yes, it really is like a fog. I could go on and on about her side of the equation because I lived in that fog, too. But for now, I doubt that will be all that helpful to you. First you have to grow a pair and decide your fate. THEN you can head toward that fate.
Not that it matters, I just want to give you as much information as I can when it comes to mind. I'm not 'new' to these boards. I'm newly posting, but I've followed alond off and on for well over a year now. I know that in theory, I cannot 'fix' my wife and can only fix myself and I've worked at doing most of those things...the GAL, the this, the that. It's not worked, but I've never delivered the ultimatum.
I've been thinking and I don't think I was clear, in fact I know I wasn't. My kids mean everything to me and wanting them to grow up in a loving family with both a mom and a dad present is only one of the keys as to why I have not delivered the ultimatum. The other is fear. I love my girls and the thought of not being around each night to spend time with them, to read to them, to tuck them in...it's hard for me to imagine not having that. But at the same time, I don't want them grwoing up thinking that this is the way a marriage should be.
The ultimatum...delivered in person? Or in a letter? In person, I feel that I might not be able to get everything across to her without being able to fully express myself. A letter, I can take time to express everything I want but I lose in the delivery. Thoughts?
I personally think a well thought out letter, delivered personally, is fine. I would not send a letter by email (it would not be worth as much and could easily be ignored for a while). So writing the letter, telling her you have something important to discuss, make a date and a time and sit down together (no kids, in fact, sending them to grandma's for the weekend would be a good thing), hand her the letter, then be prepared for either a long talk or for her to say "I need to absorb this" in which case, you can agree to come back together at another pre-arranged meeting.
I really do understand your fears about being around your kids everyday and the thought that divorce would disrupt that. That is (essentially) the same reason I didn't leave my husband until our kids were 14 and 18. But what I didn't realize during that time was that I was showing my kids a very poor example. From what you said above, you do realize the dangers in showing your girls a bad example so I won't harp on that point any longer....it is just something to really keep in mind. Because after another year or two, if you and your wife still have not had sex, your resentment for her is going to be oozing out of all of your pores and your poor girls - no matter how you try to shield them from it - they will internalize that resentment and they will feel all the emotions you and your wife are not saying out loud. The white elephant in the room can be ignored by the adults, but the kids will see it and trip over it every day.
Anyway....your case is not hopeless! You definitely need encouragement and you will both need counselors, probably individual as well as marriage counselors, to get through this. But you can make it if you are both willing to give it a try.
I wish I had found this community or at least the books when my marriage was finally at the breaking point. Or I wish my ex-h had found them and initiated the ultimatum to me, as you are probably about to do. Because I really think we could have fixed it, and we were worse off than your marriage is (long story, full of pain and nightmares). So do try to have hope.
The one thing that will help you more than anything else, is to forget the notion that your wife "knows" she is doing this to you. I said that before, and I know this is very difficult for the HD spouse to understand, but she really doesn't know. She would not do this to you if she did know. Please just try to change your thinking on that one point and adopt the idea "she just doesn't know". This will help you with the resentment if you can really absorb it. Plus it is true! So I hope you will be at least a teensy bit happy to know that she doesn't know, versus that she is so mean and vindictive that she would purposefully hurt you, reject you, and manipulate you. Be happy that the truth is NOT what you believe, please!
I was a LD spouse and I have had many women friends who were or are LD, and not one of them EVER has said "yeah my idiot husband, I can jerk him around soooo easily, and I just love rejecting him for my own sick pleasure". OK? Trust me, she doesn't know what she is doing to you.
If and when she does realize it, it will break her down.
During my marriage, I never realized it. But after my divorce, after the healing and the pain and all the bad things that go on, splitting the assets, telling the kids, on and on until you dont' think you can handle one more day of it...and then finally you heal just a little tiny bit, and then after that - - THE TRUTH hits you in the face like a baseball bat. When I finally saw the TRUTH of how much pain I had put upon my ex-h with my rejection, how it made him feel worthless and ugly....I think I actually threw up that day. I had no idea. And even though we are divorced and I do not love him anymore, I would go back and do it over if I could, because that was NEVER the message I had wanted him to receive from me.
I hope to help convince you that your wife doesn't want that message to go to you either...although, I know that you won't believe it today. Maybe if you stick around and keep getting helpful tips and advice you will see the truth of that matter.
Thank you DQ, you've been a big help on my first 'posting' day on the boards.
I've got an idea of what I want to say, I'll organize and put them ideas into writing. When I'm done, would you be so kind as to read it and give me honest feedback?
Again, I appreciate you taking the time with your well thought out posts...thank you.
Lost, hang in there man. I only have one bit of advice to add to what DQ has said already. Don't wait to fix this in your marriage. Don't wait like I did, I'm 47 now and I wish I had known what a sex-starved marriage meant 17 years ago... or even 7 years ago.
I'm having a littl trouble getting this ultimatum letter going. Here is what I have so far...
See what I mean?
Please give me a little kick in the azz jump start that would have grabbed your attention had your ex-husband wrote one to you. Everything that I have come up with so far as seemed cold and uncaring.
Hi Lost...if you haven't already, read Cinco and Near The End's threads on this forum...they have both posted similar letters this morning for review by peers...they have both been at this a bit longer than you and therefore, I think the words come easier for them because they have been contemplating "how" to deliver an ultimatum for a long time now.
If you don't know which threads I mean let me know and I will link them, but Cinco's is "Its all I can do" and NTE's is "We are on a flat spiral"....
And I will be back later to reply on their threads, too.
