Thanks nik – Unfortunately my wife is a lot different than you - I think she hates me for trying to be open with her about how I feel. There is no such thing as a heart-to-heart with her - I've tried so many times to approach her in a gentle, loving way, and no matter what I do or say she sees it as an attack. She starts by being indifferent (every answer is "I don't know"), then she becomes sarcastic (things like "yeah, I guess it's all my fault"), then she finally becomes outright mean. It hurts to have her respond like that when I just want to be closer to her, and I eventually turn into a complete jerk out of frustration. I absolutely hate it when I get to that point.
Thank you for your comments also lowrob. I had already written the rest of this post when I read your reply, and your comments don’t give me much hope that the following will do any good. But I’ll put it out there anyway in hopes of getting more opinions.
In follow up to my previous questions I thought of one more thing to ask. In the spirit of being completely open with my wife, I could come right out and tell her that I'm fed up with the whole situation and that I don’t want to go on pretending to be lovers if she won’t make an effort to resolve our problems. I love her with all of my heart and I want to be able to tell her and show her that I do, but until she cares enough about me to show me that she loves me, I don’t want to continue saying it. Also, I’m sick of being the only one to initiate anything even remotely romantic and either being rejected or feeling like she wishes I would just leave her alone. So until she’s ready to make our relationship better, I will make no effort to touch her, hold hands with her, kiss her, spend time together alone, or have sex. All of that is meaningless if she’s not in love with me. This leaves the ball in her court and if she decides that she wants me I’ll gladly start doing those things again. If she decides that she doesn’t, nothing will be much different anyway – except that I’ll stop holding onto the hope that she’ll suddenly fall in love with me again.
What do you think? Is this too harsh? Should I tell her what I’m doing or just let her figure it out? Will it help or hurt? Any comments would be appreciated.
