Now to you SOB - I said I would come back with more, and here I am.
Please feel free to go to my screen name and read my first post "new here" for my entire situation, in case it helps you. It may not, because there are many MANY things in my marriage which were different than yours...but to one thing that is the same and is relevant I want to direct this post to you...
The number one thing my ex-husband could have done that would have prompted me into changing and fixing my LD problem was if he took a stand on it and refused FOR HIMSELF to be married in a sexless marriage.
You see, my ex-h, like you, would have remained married to me forever because he valued/values committment so highly.
He valued committment higher than his own happiness!
He valued committment to the extent that he would have remained married to me long after he fell out of love with me!
I know this now, in hindsight.
I was the one who finally left him. He would have NEVER left me, even though he was unhappy and didn't love me anymore. I found that out after I left him. He would have never stood up for his own happiness and forced me to take responsibility for my part of the HD/LD sick dance we were doing.
I tried many times on my own to raise my desire. He tried nothing. I tried many times to bring him into my mind and world so he could understand better how to seduce me. He tried for 5 minutes and then gave up, because I "should have just wanted sex like a normal person".
I am hoping you see a point here - it makes me ANGRY that he would have stayed married to me forever, even though he was unhappy and didn't love me anymore. For all my mistakes, I always loved him and always wanted things to improve with him and I kept trying and trying. But he valued committment much higher than he valued me as his wife, or even his own happiness.
This is skewed! His happiness should have been his own first priority, as it should be to everyone. What he wanted was simple love and physical love from me, but he didnt have the skills and tools necessary to deal with all of my emotional baggage. OK - that is totally understandable - no one is born a mental health professional and can just "fix" a person like me with love. But what happened? Well, as he became more and more unhappy and finally fell out of love with me, suddenly I was now to blame for all of his unhappiness. It was MY FAULT because I didn't want to have sex with him.
Where was his own responsibility to himself for his own happiness? Why was it all on my shoulders? Why would he have put us both through misery for the rest of our lives, by remaining married to me in a loveless, sexless marriage? Why was that "ok" with him?
I hope you see what I am getting at.
If my husband had really made it very VERY clear to me (as in telling me that divorce was an option he would consider) that he would not remain in a sexless marriage forever, it would have prompted me into action, for sure. I was already trying, but I would have tried hard. I really did NEED TO KNOW that he would have put his own happiness above the committment of our marriage.
In the end, it was me who put my happiness above the committment and I left. He didnt' fight for me or pursue me. He already hated me by that point - and in his mind, the whole thing was and still is my fault 100%. I "ruined" his life, in his mind.
Please do really think about my ex-h and his thought process and see if you don't see yourself in there, at least a little bit. It is NOT honorable to remain married just for the sake of committment alone. It IS honorable to remain committed to your wife HERSELF - her, not the marriage.
My husband was never truly committed to me, now I realize this in hindsight. He was never truly in love with me. Now I see this was half the problem. He married me to satisfy his guilt for impregnating me, and he stayed married to me out of committment. But he was never happy, and blamed me for it every day of our lives together.
I see now that I could have made him truly be in love with me, in hindsight. I did everything wrong, too (please read my "new here" post for all the things I did wrong). I could have saved the thing and made us both be truly in love.
But I am a flawed and emotionally baggaged woman. I didn't have any tools and was pregnant at age 20. I remained an emotional teenager for the next 15 years.
He on the other hand, didn't have that excuse. He was and is an emotional mature person. The problem is, he doesn't really fully understand what LOVE is.
I do, I have love now, I have HD now, I have the man of my dreams now....if only my husband could have loved ME and not committment to a piece of paper (marriage certificate) we may have made it.
