jen381 - thank you for your reply. I leave to go out of town after lunch and won't be at a computer until tomorrow night at the earliest so there's no need to rush with your more detailed suggestions. Please take all the time you need - I appreciate any help that I can get but I don't want to derail anyone from dealing with their own problems. I'll look forward to reading what you have to say.
MPT - Thank you again. Your suggestions are always so helpful and I sincerely appreciate your concern. I think your post contains some very good advice which I'm going to print and take with me to think about as I travel over the next couple of days. You asked if there's a difference in the way I communicate here compared to how I communicate with my wife? I always start my communication in a similar manner to how it comes across on here. But I meet so much resistance and hostility right off the bat that everything I wanted to say basically goes out the window. I can always communicate my feelings more eloquently in writing because I have time to think them out. That's the main reason that I think writing a letter may be more effective than trying again to talk to my wife about our relationship. I believe you're right that my wife doesn't fully realize how painful this is for me. If she really understood how badly I'm hurting, I think she'd be more inclined to try and make things better. I tried last night to tell her that I don't blame her for our problems - that I realize she didn't intentionally stop desiring intimacy. But she doesn't believe me when I say that I don't blame her. I think that her pride and the fact that she feels responsible for my pain do keep her from wanting to work with me to fix our problems.
Thank you both so much for caring. I realize there's no magic solution and that there may not be anything new you can say to help me, but last night I didn't know where else to turn. The responses that I get from people on this message board are basically the only thing that keeps me going sometimes.
