Quoting lostlove: what really pisses me off is that before h left...we were going out weekly! and h was requesting that we play cards and we were hanging out and enjoying eachothers company.
I'm pretty certain of your response, but I gotta ask, "Have told him how much you enjoyed being with hime when you were doing these things. Do you tell him how much you miss it as it relates to these very activities? Have asked him why he stopped doing them? What were the reasons?
Quote: I will be told..."I don't go anywhere, I don't do anything...this is all I do"
... then my W adds how bored she is with her life! You could point out in a pleasant manner that he is is choosing this is all he does and ask "Down the road, will you be happy or regret this is all that you have done?" You may not hear the answer that you want, but at least know where he stands, then make the choice to lead a life closer to what you want and hope or share in his and wait and hope he wises up enough to change his ways.
Quoting lostlove: ..we've simply returned to the same old mundane, do nothing, go nowhere, let's sit and fall asleep on the couch life....
I do relate on how you feel. Every day, when I get home ... we have diner ... we wash the dishes, after which she goes to the bedroom ... sits on the bed and either reads a novel or watches TV. Two, three times a week, I would call her and ask her to meet me for diner out, but money been tight the last couple of months so we have to do that a lot less and she been declining when I ask. So there she sits. When I ask what she wants to do or make a suggestion, I get, "I don't feel like doing anything." LL, what I've been doing lately is getting out of the house with D9 more often. Play in the yard, take her to a movie, to the playground, the mall, etc... Then we come home and D9 tells Mom what a grand time she had. Just "dancing" on my own...
Does it suck that I'm doing these things without W. You bet! Would I rather be doing these things with her. Hell yea! but you know what, I'm not going to give them up because she wants to sit in bed and now with D9 saying what a good time she has do this or that with Dad, she starting to feel left out and has been sharing more in doing these things. Now that doesn't mean we're doing much as a couple these days (like the day we went to the fair and afterwards.), but the more we do as a family will lead to doing more as a couple. This weekend we saw a commercial for a movie coming out with Kevin Costner & Tommy Lee Jones (I think?) in a western. She said, "That looked interesting." I raised an eyebrow and said, "You don't like westerns." She replied that she likes those actors and would be interest in going to see the movie. So that could be the first of more oppurtunities...
You said it yourself, its better than it was for the last two years and yes, it is a lot of hard work to get there, but as the song goes ... Nobody guarantied you a rose garden ... you have to work at it to have the one you are happy about. So now, its time to make M better than it was three years ago ... then four ... five ...
It slow ... it frustrating ... to keep being the one to find ways to get you closer to your goals, when they don't even realize there are goals to be had out there (or in my case, her goals pull her away from me) ... but hopefully one day, we and our spouses can discover we do have goals we share and that it will be easier to obtain if we join in the effort.
LL, your posts are not futile. You have discovered some more of what worked for a while. Your H has made some efforts to change ... but for some of us, its not easy to find what keeps it going ... the solutions are not always easy to find, but I do believe they are out there ... even if its doing your own thing and let spouse figure it out on their own. The question then becomes, do you have the endurance to wait it out and to be the one to put forth the effort to break the cycles that don't work?
... but I guess that's exactly the question you are asking ... and only you can answer that one.
You could point out in a pleasant manner that he is is choosing this is all he does and ask "Down the road, will you be happy or regret this is all that you have done?" You may not hear the answer that you want, but at least know where he stands, then make the choice to lead a life closer to what you want and hope or share in his and wait and hope he wises up enough to change his ways.
