@ Gg

I hear you.

But it's tricky, that's all.

You say focus on my art, she gets upset I'm spending too much time on it. She WANTS me around more, I listened, and adapted. And I like it! I still paint, I could paing more but, like her, I LIKE spending more time with her and I'm glad I moved my studio home.

All I really want to do is talk to her about this or ANY situation that might come up like this----it's not simply about not having sex, it's the inability to talk about it that really bugs and why I keep coming back, only it feels "selfish" to people because the issue happens to be intimacy.


So I've tried to talk, but it didn't work. K, so the next suggestion is to try a note instead, or try talking again, or say it in a text, even an email.

But the caveat there is I'm afraid of the consequences. She tends to immediately shut down no matter how the information is presented. If she gets shut down enough times, it's gone for good. It's scary. I don't want it to be a negative experience because she holds onto those for so long.

So wait until counseling, right? Well, it's not that she's deliberately putting it off, it's more like she forgets, or has other things to do, or she's waiting to hear back from a facebook message about who to contact (she doesn't want me to set up the counseling she said, plus her insurance covers some of it and mine doesn't)-------but now it seems more like the fact that I'm in my own counseling has given her reason to stop, to not consider marriage counseling. It's not that she wouldn't think we could benefit, it's that she simply stopped thinking about it.

And that's the rub-------I can't come out and say it again without it being pressured (no matter what the issue is, from sex to dirty laundry on the floor to puppy training) and she isn't internally motivated to change, perhaps BECAUSE I continue to be nice, be attentive, clean, not argue, etc.

I saw my therapist again yesterday before the AS thing came up so we'll have to wait again until next week---right now we're just working on stress managmenet----I'm not outright stressful or stressed, but I'm handling stress better. She says my wife can come any time, but my wife pretty much said "it's your thing."