Divorcebusting.com Forums Open Forums THE SEX-STARVED MARRIAGE Need encouragement/stage 1 advice

I can understand what you are feeling, as the comments by the Montana wife in the story indicate, she was also angry at times, but decided not to show her husband how badly his words had hurt her.

During my five months without my wife touching me, without any sex, I felt extremely frustrated. One of the most frustrating things was that each day I "worked hard" at doing things that would make my wife feel loved in her primary languages of love, and yet she was the equivalent of a brick wall or worse.

Sometimes, when she started to feel affections toward me she would try to pick a fight with me, insult me, or do something to create emotional distance. It was extemely hard to not get pulled into such things and continue to exhibit calm steady love toward her, to not be defensive, but to show her my unconditional love for her.

Ultimately, after testing me and knowing that I had told her I was going to divorce her in a year unless I experienced certain things (and why those things were important to me), she began to resolve her anger toward me. She said that it was mostly because of how I had made her feel and how I had changed that allowed her to open up to me emotionally, verbally, and sexually.

My suggestion is that you carefully examine your anger toward your husband and see if you can forgive him and yourself and move forward as others have suggested. If you can't then you can't.

If you look at your post you clearly are exhibiting anger and you used the words like "spiteful distance," "doesn't deserve" "stopped initiating affection." My experience and that of the Montana wife was to exhibit love toward our spouse and affection, but not force it upon them, but to have it there if and when they wanted to accept it at their choosing.

Your husband probably knows you well enough to read your body language, the slammed doors etc. At times it drove my wife nuts when she would try to pick a fight with me to create distance and I would not take the bait.

You are certainly free to remain angry with your husband or you can try to address that anger. You may want to work to find out more about your anger and why you feel so strongly about it. The reason that I say that is that whether you and your husband remain together or you move on to another relationship, there is a good chance that you will need to deal with the root causes of that anger before you can have a truly meaningful relationship with another human being.

Let me try another line of argument with you. Read up on 180's. Giving unconditional love to your husband (like the Montana wife) not allowing yourself to be emotionally manipulated (like the Montana wife kept from lashing back at her husbands hurtful statements) are examples of a 180. The purpose of a 180 is to realize that what you are doing now is now working and to change course and do something else to see if that will start to produce positive interpersonal relationship results. You need to give 180's sufficient time so that the results are observable.

I wish you luck in whatever course of action you choose.

I think most of the things I'm angry about are valid:
1. Driving my car without a license
2. Paying rent on a rehearsal space he does not use, while not helping me with shared bills (utilities, rent)
3. Smoking in the house and in my car

Given, a lot of my anger and resentment also comes from relationship stuff, which I usually try to vent here.

I understand what you're saying and, more importantly why I should keep my cool, but how do I address these non-relationship problems? I've never been dependent on anyone, worked hard to send myself through school, never borrowed money, etc. and it just seems a little backwards to me to sit here and play doormat when he is obviously taking advantage of me.

There has to be a line, a boundary. My line is the blatant disrespect he is showing by smoking in the house and skipping out on bills.

I have a problem with truely, purely unconditional love because it's like saying "you can treat me as poorly as you want and I'll still love you." That kind of love, imho, is reserved for a parent-child relationship.

As for 180s, mine have been to not constantly seek affection and attention as I had in the past, let him pursue me, not bring up relationship talk, not expect him to entertain me when I'm bored.

He doesn't say hurtful things or pick fights ever, never has. He is just a brick wall. He ignores me. It's like I don't even exist and if I told him I was leaving, he would just say ok.

I know it doesn't sound like it, but I really do hear, and agree with what you're saying. I guess what I'm having trouble with is putting boundaries on it. You told your wife you would divorce after a year of no change, and you changed yourself as well.

How do I create a situation where I keep up with my 180s and learn how to love him in his way, and at the same time make a boundary where I'm not being put in danger of losing my car, my apartment or my health?

As to boundaries.....setting boundaries is a whole set of topics on itself. One that others are better skilled in advising you on.

Personally, if it were me, I would rather than setting boundaries, first figure out how to heal myself (by forgiving him or controlling your anger) and creating a situation to support the healing of my spouse, then later set boundaries.

I have been working hard every day to make my wife feel loved in her primary languages of love. I have told her (and myself) that I can not change her, only she can change herself and that I wasn't going to try to change her, that was up to her. I was going to change myself and she could change with me (and I would support her in her changes) or we could drift apart. I explained my goals for changing myself and demonstrated to her over several months that I was going to achieve my change goals.

The Montana wife worked hard at not fighting with her husband and giving him space to work out his life crisis issues. Are you sure that you husband is just lazy and using you as a doormat; or could he have some spiritual/emotional life crisis, like the Montana husband? Are you really sure you know what is happening in his mind? If he doesn't know what is going on, how can you?

As to your 180's, are they working? Are they critical to regaining your self-image and happiness? ....Or is it time to try something else that might work? This is the ultimate sociological lab experiment and you must have a degree of detachment to be able to perform the experiments and note what works and what doesn't work.

From re-reading several of your posts, it sounds like what you would really like is for someone to tell you that you are right to be angry, that you are being used and you should leave him to wallow in his own self pity and laziness. I am sorry, but that isn't going to be the advise, I will give.

Good luck to you, may I suggest that you really tell him what is bothering you, once you figure out the real source of your anger. Make sure he understands you. Also give him a chance to change with you to where you "need" to be.

Part of unconditional love is being able to say "what is there" and important for you, what hopes and aspirations you have and wish to share, what is missing, what consitutes failure and disappointment, and what the meaningful consequences are for both success and failure.

It is not just being a doormat.

So, the gripes you have with the driver's license, smoking, and the lack of sensible shared responsibilities for costs (rent, etc.) are legitimate and more importantly are concrete. In other words, there are very specific measures and actions to be taken to address these gripes.

Do not (and I haven't seen anything in what you've written that suggests this) use the ploy, "if you realy loved me then....you'd renew your drivers license, or quite smoking, or share in rent (or give up that space you don't use, or any other number of situations that you might not like.

It is fair to say that they are so important to you that you are not willing to allow yourself to be "used" this way AND that if he wants to live that way, then he needs a different life situation (but you need to know that you are willing to go through with that before you suggest it out of anger).

When I released my first wife, even though I loved her beyond all reason, it was because I was willing to go through with a divorce even though the outcome I desired was altogether different.

It is one thing to be clueless, altogether different to intentionally choose to ignore or intentionallychoose to act as a direct afront to something that you know and have acknowledged as being important to your partner.

The questions to be asked are these:

1) "Why would you intentionally choose to violate the law and ignore my request for you to renew your driver's license? What are getting from doing that? "

[I would go further and say the days of the "free ride" are over. Tell him to walk, ride a bus, ride a bike, or take a cab, but until he gets his license renewed...no more driving. If he is involved in an accident, even if it is not his fault, not only is he criminally vulnerable, you could be liable for civil and criminal penalties because you knowingly let him drive your car without a license. I would leave it at that.]

2) While smoking is a really bad habit and a drug addiction, you might ask why you have to be subject to a cancer delivery device, in addition to all the other detrimental aspects of it?

You can ask similar thing about rent, but hopefully you get the picture. At your age, you don't want to go 25-30 years and wish you had drwn the line in the sand decades earlier.

The Captain
Kobayashi Maru

If you have access to the book Passages, what you've descibed sounds a lot like the "Catch-30."

The Captain
Kobayashi Maru

Yes, EarlGrey, we are very much in that situation. He has placed me in the mommy role. I feel held back from the things I want to do because I have to pick up my little boy from school. I have been asking him for more than a year if he's still attracted to me sexually and he says yes, but he's a bad liar.

I got in the shower with him this morning and he gave me a no-contact granny kiss and couldn't get out fast enough.

I feel like I want to separate so I can be free to pursue my interests, perhaps get an internship or second job, without him getting in my way.

I have never felt this way before. My priorities have shifted and for the first time in my adult life, my own goals actually seem more important than making some guy comfortable.

I'm not really sure how we are going to get through this passage and stay together as a couple.

One of the things I liked about Sheehy's metaphor was the crustacean shedding it's shell. I've learned to be aware of my own "triggers" but we each have our own and sometimes passing through one phase to the next is neither clean, smooth, nor complete. Nor does it necessarily occur at the same time for a couple.

Sometimes people shed neither their "shell" nor their baggage. And when children arrive, the problems can intensify. Again, in my own expereince from years ago, the contrast between the before and after (our son's birth) could not seem more dramatic (unless my wife had really died).

What you've written sounds so familiar, both in what you write about what you feel you want to do (my ex-expressed much the same thing about being held back...she blamed me for that) and what you feel about being sexually ignored (that was my story then, and now).

As for your question to him about still being sexually attracted to you: you say his answer is yes. Have you told him to inform his body? (I know that is a bit tongue-in-cheek)?

It seems this passage is a tough one on couples and it does require a huge degree of honesty and trust.

The Captain

The changes I have personally been going through feel really good. I have spent my entire 20s trying to not spend so much time thinking about whatever man was in my life at the time. I'd always put them on a pedestal, and I hated that I couldn't help but do it. It seemed like I could not go on about my life unless I felt secure in a relationship.

Now, without even trying, I feel my attention going to more important things. I kind of miss the old days when I lived alone, no one to compromise with, no one's mess to clean, no distractions.

It's not that I want H gone, I just wish he wasn't here so much.

He's got his own things he's dealing with. He's in this terrible rut of depression, he doesn't want to see his friends or do anything. I try to help him when I can, but we both know there's not much I can do. He has been looking up doctors to go to (which he hasn't done in 10 years) so I just try to be encouraging.

Yesterday I told him we need to talk. Our lease is up in a month and I'm itching to make a change. I wanted to tell him I'm thinking about leaving, I want to leave now, but willing to sign a six month lease if he's willing to work on things and not just be a passenger in this R.

But before I could tell him that, he beat me to it by telling me he knows how I feel (really?) and asking me to "hang in there" a little longer while he sorts out his depression issues.

He even brought up the no-contact shower and how, in hindsight, he can imagine that it was a pretty cold thing to do, even though he didn't mean to do it on purpose. Then proceeded to not touch me for the rest of the night.

That's like "I'm sorry for what I did, please forgive me, I will continue to do it anyway"

I know he's confused about things, and so am I, but again I keep going back to feeling like mommy, between "taking care" of him and him knowing exactly the things to say to make me not get mad or leave him (manipulation?)

I'm not a mommy, don't want any kids.

Starvingartist:

Sorry for not getting back to you sooner.

First, being a "mommy" of an adult can have its challenges when what you seek is adult behavior in an adult relationship.

The point that he apparently misses and maybe you don't emphasize is that there is more to this than "just talking." To him that probably feels like he is doing something about a problem (yeah, you are talking about it but not actually taking any specific, measurable steps and actions to address the problem you are talking about). He wants to avoid doing something that you want...you want him to show that he can make progress now, now later.

And what is "the prize" for hanging in there a little longer? What will it look like (HE needs to describe this in very specific terms so that you and he knows what the prize looks like and by when this will be achieved). Otherwise, you'll be asked and will have to choose to keep hanging in there for an indefinite period.

In an earlier post you noted some objection to placing some sort of minimum requirement (and concern about seeing it as a "chore"). Well, there are a couple of things about that. Chores can be looked at as something that you don't wish to do and do only because of some sense of obligation to keep things running in some semblance of order. If looking at it as something he (or you) does not want to do, then you probably do not have much hope (together).

However, focusing on what is required to make things work is also appropriate. It creates a prioritization and structure. So, if you get an agreement on prioritization and structure, don't set your minimum to the absolute minimum. Whether you know what it is, we each have an absolute minimum we can and will accept. But there is no sense in setting your expectations at the absolute, bare minimum.

Of course, he could turn you down cold, like my wife did to me. Under those conditions, it sounds like you'd be willing to bolt. Although it is possible to be statisfied with many levels of your life and your accomplishments, you'll have to decide if the legal recognition of marriage are worth it to you to have a non-intimate friendship with a room/housemate.

Not wanting them around is a sign that it might not be worth it to you (any longer) if this is the way it is always going to be.

The Captain
Kobayashi Maru

He's depressed. Has been for several months. I've seen him go through this before. At least this time he's talking about seeing a doctor and talking about doing things to make himself better.

He explained that he does not have it in himself to be there for me right now because he is not there for himself. This put things in perspective for me, and I'm not feeling such anger and resentment. All he had to do was acknowledge my feelings (hmmm, that wasn't too hard, now was it)


I know I can't make him do anything, and it's useless to try. I resolved to be supportive (be the strong one for a while) and not bombard him with my needs. I have encouraged him to see a doctor and help make it easier for him to get there by offering to make appointments etc. but without nagging.

He can't be bothered with my needs.

This is a temporary situation. I'm giving it six months. If in that time he has not shown any improvement or effort to take care of himself, I am fully prepared to cut my losses and get on with life.

I'm not expecting everything to be fixed by then, just some progress.

In the meantime, I'll be loving and helpful, while at the same time very clear that I can't and won't stay in this situation status quo.