It's time for Round 2 of the Big Talk. Round 1 was 3 years ago, with lots lots of little talks here and there since. What's driving this is the new avoidance technique my wife is practicing. This time it's extended bed time stories for both kids, age 5 and 8. I notice that as soon as I say " g'nite hon, I'm going to go to bed now" she will do the same shortly after. If I am up, she will stay up with D8 for over an hour so that it's too late for anything to happen.
This is in addition to the 9:30 dog walk (she can do this anytime) and a host of other chores that seem to get deferred until the wee hours. She also periodically says she is depressed, and has no sex drive. But, the same woman takes on additional tasks with no hesistation.
I sent her a two sentence email this morning, which said verbatim "I love you and I think we have a great relationship, but I am unhappy with our sex life. I'm not angry, and I don't expect any instant results, but I need to let you know this."
This was after me telling her over the last few days that we were getting in disconnect mode and we needed to talk about it. I have been very patient since the first time this became a big issue, waiting until the kids started school so she could have the personal time she said she needed. However, this has not changed anything, in fact it's as bad as it was when they kids were tiny.
I've told her point blank there's a problem, and what it is. Now we will see what the response is. It's not as if she doesn't know this already, but I did this just in case there is any confusion. I have a process in mind this time, I couldn't do much before since the kids were at home and fairly needy and I didn't want to be an unreasonable dickhead about it. After all, it was understandable that little ones drain the life out of you and you don't feel much like more togetherness. Now, we are going to figure out what is causing the evasive behaviour and work to get things back to some acceptable point.
Pretty sure this will require counselling, I doubt any progress will occur without an objective person weighing in. I would like to hear what a good, experienced marriage counseller says about all this.
