improvements w H but still no closeness. Now what?

[Accuray]

Bestgal,

Over the course of a marriage it is normal for people to fall in and out of love with each other. How you feel, however, is less important than what you do. If we hit a patch when we don't feel "in love", we are still responsible for supporting and working with our spouse, and often if we act loving, then loving feelings will follow. I'm not aiming that at you, I'm giving you that as background.

I say this because you are now in a cycle where your H is not "in love" with you. He may still love you, but he is not "in love", and the lack of those feelings mean that he is not motivated to give you what you need. Over the recent course of your marriage, his "love bank" was depleted, and he eventually got to the point where he couldn't take it anymore. He took that hurt and rather than trying to work through it with you, he went outside the marriage. Since then, he's been willing to "co-habitate" with you, but has established some inflexible boundaries that he will not tolerate the things that used to bother him anymore. He is blocking you from refilling his "love tank", because he does not trust that you have changed, and is afraid that if he goes there again, he'll get re-invested, things will go back to how they were, and he will once again be hurt. Better to keep you at arm's length than to go through that emotionally exhausting exercise.

At the same time, you are operating from the perspective of a "married person", where our spouse owes us some common courtesies, *should* act loving toward us, *should* be willing to share their feelings, *should* be willing to explain their actions. The boundaries he has established have intruded upon your needs, so you are no longer able to get them met and feel miserable. Your hurt and longing in this regard are causing you to do things that "look like" old behaviors to him, and that is triggering him to run.

He is willing to live with you as a roommate and a friend -- but that's all he's going to give you right now. When you ask for more than that, he's going to get angry and withdraw. You've been pushing him lately -- pushing him for R talks, pushing him for intimacy, pushing him to discuss his feelings, and you're getting backlash as a result.

So here's where you are -- you have to treat him as a person who owes you *nothing*, and you may have to live that way for a long time. Can you do that? Often being in these situations takes so much from us that it prevents us from moving forward. I agree with what Sandi says, the path out of this is drop the rope and GAL.

There are generally 2 positions in a relationship, the "one up" position, and the "one down" position. The one up person calls the shots and the one down person copes with it. Over a relationship those roles can switch back and forth multiple times, but when you are "one down", like you are now, you cannot guilt/beg/plead/reason/nag your way back to the power position. You can only do that by at least appearing to want it less.

Can you do that?

Accuray