karen, I’ve been meaning to ask you something. Do you experience this with your H (it’s something I’ve noticed with my bf)? To approach this obliquely… with most people, you feel like the longer you know them and the more positive experiences, or deep experiences you have with them that it… how to put this? It’s not necessarily that it strengthens the bond between you, but it widens it, kwim? You feel like you have some history and you feel that you know they will be supportive of something because they have a deeper knowledge of you than a stranger.
Let’s say you go out on a date with a guy for the first time. You two hardly know each other. You go to a party given my mutual friends. He doesn’t know what you like to drink. He doesn’t know you have a weakness for New York Cheesecake. He doesn’t know that you love to hear football stories, AND a rehash of last night’s episode of Leno. So being with him is like being with a stranger, because he is a stranger. He doesn’t stand with his arm around you or signal you with his eyes that he’s ready to go.
BUT after dating this guy for years, AND possibly marrying him, when you go to a party, he still doesn’t put his arm around you. He stands around talking football and Leno and ignores you. He honestly doesn’t seem to register that Look from you that says you’re ready to go. It’s like you haven’t built up any common ground. Well, that’s too categorical a way of putting it… there’s some common ground, but it’s still a lot like being out with someone you’ve just met, instead of someone who supposedly knows you well.
To relate to your sitch… after TWO children (the second one he REALLY wanted) and much history, one would think you and your H would be drawing closer instead of him drifting away. Where is the bonding, the mortar, the cement.
When I’m out with my bf at the college choir or at the synagogue (which is where we mostly are among others these days), you wouldn’t know to look at the way he relates to me that I’m special to him. He walks into choir late and doesn’t acknowledge me. The other night after the service, several women crowded around him to rave about his carrot cake recipe (it IS the best carrot cake in the world), and I was standing right there. He is so good looking that they were positively drooling over him. That would have been a good time for him to put his arm around me and make some comment about how he made the cake for my last birthday or something. I tried to enter into the convo, but he basically ignored me, so I walked away.
It’s almost like he considers himself very independent, and in your H’s case, considers himself the patriarch, but essentially single and free to do what he wants without much or a nod in your direction.
I didn’t mean to make this so long… I don’t know if I’ve even made my point… that after so much history and so much water over and under the dam, you expect some deeper connection that actually manifests in public… or something…
