"I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out what it is that is broken and what I wanted, then it became crystal clear to me. "Want" is the key I was looking for, not need. I might "need" to eat, but I "want" to share it as often as possible with you.
Here is a short list of some of the things I have realized.
- I want the woman I married back. - I want our individual and mutual complaints with the marriage not only addressed, but fixed. - I want our kids to have a stable family from here until they are having our grandchildren. - I want my partner in life back. - I want to love and be loved again. - I want us to face the world as a team again."
I couldn't agree more. This is the key to the whole thing - men have wants and desires of women, not needs. The "time alone in the wild thing" I suggested might be called "hokey" by some, but men have not been doing this very same thing in centuries gone by for no good reason. Collective guilt over wars, modern society, political correctness, the perceived requirement to always be sensitive around women, technology and sedentary, paper-based jobs have all combined to make men ashamed of, and to deny, their inherent ability to be, think and act as men.
Hence many men now really believe that having sex with their wives is the very definition of being a man, without which they are somehow not whole or complete. Such men have therefore handed their wives the power to make them strong and content and happy - a power their wives never even asked for, and are probably nervous to even hold - no wonder they then put it under the kitchen sink!
Some serious time alone would be a way for Tiredofpain to reset the "needs v wants" software that has held him back since his honeymoon, and approach his wife from the position of "I don't need you, but I still want you".
For her to "get" that difference of approach he really has to know it and believe it within himself, and I don't think he does right now.
Tiredofpain, I know I've gone on at some length - my own "reset" was a tough and hard one - but once I had, it was like waking up and seeing the world in colour, compared to dreary grey. There is not a single aspect of my life that has not changed for the better. No-one I know has failed to notice a difference in me, and it would be wrong of me to not now pay it forward.
Best of luck.
"A man can be destroyed but not defeated" - from The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway.
Which I take to mean that every man has within him a spirit of relentlessness and optimism. Its already there; he just has to cultivate it.
