Looking forward to the new year

[Zues126]

Fo, hijack away. Many of our situations are very similar so conversation is helpful to us all. I was actually going to ask Zues the same question.

Was there anything your wife could have done or said to you that would have helped. Was it her leaving that made you examine your role and perhaps desire to fix things in a new way?

I felt pretty easy. Had XW just told me she loved me, given herself to me, and told me that she would find ways to do this more often because she loved me and understood how important that connection was to me...well, that would have been it.

This isn't just speculation. There were a few times in those periods where she did exactly this. In fact, there was a time when I truly felt like the luckiest husband in the world. It was obvious that she was letting me take the lead in the sexual arena, and I never felt more loved or connected.

Then it stopped almost immediately and she was extremely angry with me. She had been in her own pain, and giving herself to me when she was hurt, felt unsafe, and was feeling resentment, well, she just didn't want to do it. She felt used, forced, uncared for. So she stopped.

The problem was that she was much tougher to crack than I was. Shoot, I just gave you the formula for keeping me a happy animal. But a resentful W that is on the verge of being wayward? Shoot, I had no clue how to fix that. I still don't. She was so crazy angry at me it was borderline insanity. I did try a few things to reach out to her, but it wasn't good enough, and I was too needy for her which made her angrier.

Again, I felt like I was easy. If telling your H that you love him and will do anything for him and then backing it up with some physical affection doesn't make him yours forever, then I have no clue. That said...my XW was ***********CRYSTAL********** clear on what I desired from her. I know this because one night I had lost my temper with her. After 1,082,305 attempts of various nature (conversations, begging, pleading, threatening, explaining, emailing, emailing links with articles of men's needs, etc, etc) to explain that I needed more physical affection from her...one day she asked me 'what was wrong'. We hadn't been intimate for over a month. I LOST it. I went over to the calendar and circled a day on the calendar from 36 days ago or whatever, and reminded her that was the last day we had sex. I told her for the rest of our lives I never wanted her to ask me that question again if we hadn't had sex in a week or more, because I had answered it a million times and it wouldn't change. This convinced me that she didn't love me, because either she didn't even know who I was (and understand how essential this need was to me), or she didn't care enough to fulfill it. Needless to say this was another reason she D'd me. I was angry. I raised my voice. She felt threatened. She didn't like the look in my eye, and told me she had PTSD from her angry father. So this didn't lead to her apologizing and us making love. It ended up on her list of reasons she was divorcing me that I was emailed a bit down the road.

As for me wanting to fix things in a new way...I NEVER wanted to be divorced. I don't care how bad the M was. Even if I never had sex again, even if we never SPOKE to each other again, I wouldn't have gotten divorced. I always figured that we were just silently brainstorming for new ways to reconnect without hurting each other. When she asked me to move out it did blow up my universe. At that point I was totally confused, couldn't understand what was happening. I came to DB and was ready to do anything and everything to make the M possible. That said, I still don't know if it could've worked because backburnering my needs wasn't going to work long term for me. I wouldn't have left, but could I have been a good husband to her when I felt perpetual rejection and frustration? Not sure. I don't even know if I could make ANY relationship work. Yes, I'm easy to make happy, but I have struggled to make my women happy, and as a result it hasn't worked out. But yes, I would've given it a try, and I was open to counseling, new approaches, and all about trying to change the dynamic.

This is fascinating to read, because I think my H could have written something very similar, and I think I have shared your XW's feelings. In our case, H developed resentment and got involved with OW, but he says he tried for years. I expressed unhappiness to H for years, and spelled out what I needed from him to give him what he needed from me, but nothing changed - but I wasn't leaving or cheating on him, that's not my way.

Zues, I wonder about what exactly you tried? If she reacted like me, the anger was frustration over what she saw as unwillingness from your side to give her what she needed.

I think very few women work silently, by themselves on resolving relationship issues. Silence from a woman is rarely a good thing...

I think many men feel that they courted a woman, then married her, and that should prove their love once and for all. My H will say he is simple to please, but he expects me to want to fulfill his needs without doing anything to fulfill mine. He feels that because he is attracted to me on sight, I should be to him. I feel that he puts the cart before the horse in how things should happen. And I feel that he can get what he wants so easily, if he would only invest a little effort in courting me on an ongoing basis. I don't think he feels he should have to. That is frustrating, because I see his pride and ego get in the way of his and our happiness.

And from everything I read, this is exceedingly common. Which is so sad!

Do you believe he understand what you really wanted and withhold it deliberately? If so, what makes you think so?

My experience with XW was that it was much harder to live up to her expectations that you are describing. And her communications seemed to be coming in both infrequently and in some strange code.

On my end it was literally "I want to have sex 3-4 times per week if possible. There are some things we have done together that I really enjoyed, like x or y, if we could do more of that it would be amazing because I never feel more loved." That's why I say men are easy. It's literally like asking to have a button pushed regularly to keep them happy.

With XW it simply wasn't. Look, I am a smart guy. I am a professional level pool player. I have good communication skills. I work hard and don't understand the idea of giving up. But I never really understood what she wanted from me. She certainly wasn't as direct and explicit as I was! The things she seemed to repeat the most were either things she didn't like that I had said, or rather vague. She was SO timid and quiet, never voiced her needs, sometimes it felt like she was a silent martyr, someone that wanted me to get it wrong so she could play the role of the good wife that was neglected/misunderstood/abused.

Vague would be "I need us to be a team and spend time together". OK. I tried to set things up so we could pay bills together bi-monthly which would mean that we improved communication about our budget and we both were involved planning our finances, making decisions, and being on the same page. I found things for us to do together like puzzles, or board games, or shows she enjoyed. I loved giving her back rubs or foot rubs. But in the end she would say "we were never a team, we had nothing in common, we lived different lives". I guess I couldn't get it right.

The other part were things she didn't like. She did not like when I made things sexual (when we would flirt I'd make sexual or suggestive jokes, she hated this). She did not like the pressure she felt to have sex, like if she didn't want to she would be in trouble. Or that if I loved her I wouldn't want her to do anything when she didn't want to. She told me I had high expectations, that I was impossible to please, that she felt like she was unappreciated, that nothing she did was good enough.

I have learned a lot since then. I think her love language was acts of service, whereas I focused on mine which were quality time and physical affection. Yes, I couldn't understand how she could not desire me. I have learned a lot about the sexual dynamic, and a point of view that represent's my W's (before I only read stuff online that validated my own point of view, although there is a lot of differing opinions on this). I have learned how she felt cheapened by some of the sexual things I'd asked her to try with me (she told me she never had a problem with my porn, I had been open about it, she said she didn't care but just didn't want to be involved, but I can see the impact it made).

Due to this love language I also reached out by email a number of times. I sent her a number of long emails over the years (my posts should tell you I'm not afraid of sharing my feelings). Anywhere from a few paragraphs, to one that was seven pages. This was a DB fail of continuing to do something that didn't work. The most violated I ever felt in my life was when I found that she had forwarded this email (7 pages of me being more open and vulnerable than I had ever been) to her mother and her friends with the subject "How am I supposed to respond to this?" I told her it felt like I had asked her to do something really sexually vulnerable for her, only to record it without her permission, then watch it with co-workers and drink beer and cheer. I was horrified. She never acknowledged that she was out of line to do this, and seemed to think she was being responsible for 'working on our relationship' by getting the 'support she needed'. Needless to say after this I never opened up like that again.

So yes, this lead to a vicious circle. It may have been as simple as me feeling like "If you loved me you'd have sex with me", and her feeling "If you loved me you'd love me for who I am regardless of sex".

The reason I asked my opening question is that for the majority of the M I didn't deny anything to my XW intentionally. I couldn't win either because I simply didn't know how, or I kept clung to things that got in the way of intimacy. Then, towards the end it changed. I will admit that in the end when we weren't speaking there was some resentment at work, I was resentful of giving so much to her to get nothing in return. This, however, was after I couldn't figure out how to win. But the point is this is the same idea I highlighted in black up above. This idea that she doesn't deserve love or affection from me because she's not giving it to me the way I want.

So some of my distancing WAS abusive in deliberately denying her affection because she didn't 'deserve' it, and I was trying to control her behavior by 'sending her a message'. I firmly believe this attitude doesn't work at all in a marriage. I think the idea of "you do this, you get this" is a horrible model for loving each other. And THIS is what I think is too common. Love has to be a daily priority that is placed ahead of resentment, you must meet each other's needs even when you're bankrupted and resentful, otherwise the cycle doesn't get better, it gets worse. Again I'll mention Andy Stanley's "marriage expectations" series 1-3 on youtube.

As I said, I did have high expectations. We were a long ways apart on the sexual topics. I have learned how much it destroys intimacy when I put my desires in front of her feelings. I also know how it felt to me to not receive the affection I wanted from her. I STILL don't know how to bridge the difference on this one.

These are the two reasons I don't think I'm a DB role model as how a man should be. I don't know I could be a good H at this time. I still would be very tested by the idea of serving my spouse while learning to live with the pain that came from feeling misunderstood and unfulfilled sexually. Yes, I could hope that somehow my next partner and I are more 'compatible', but that's wishful thinking, and I'd wager there is something else that feels the same. How will I do it better? Am I ready for this test? In some ways yes, but in many ways I don't know.

Long rant as always. My summary is that I did try what I could to make her happy and to figure out what that meant, and tried that for a long time...but then I did pull away, partly to punish and control, but also quite a bit just out of defeat and to get some escape from the pain. I have learned a lot about the differences between most men and women on the sexuality front, but instead of having answers, I only feel further from answers than ever. I have learned that a marriage can't be tit for tat, but having experienced the pain of many years of neglect I know how tough that challenge is and don't know if I can manage it.

Typing all of this I don't envy those of you that are still married and in the worst of it. It is so hard. I'm not grateful to be divorced, and I'm not confident I'll ever be in a functional relationship...but I am glad that at least for now the struggle is over and I can be on my own in peace. Julie, I understand the desire to reach that place. But in the end if you were single you'd be wrestling with the same questions. No better time to figure out how to be married than when you're married. They are not replaceable.