It's not just the sex, it's all the other things that we are missing in our marriages that drive us to despair, too. The lack of touch, desire, need, intimacy, emotional involvement with us, communication, hugging, playing flirting, teasing, laughter, comroderie, attention, how many other adjectives could be added to this partial list?
We die spiritually each day bit by bit hoping, just hoping that our spouses will open their eyes and see what they are doing to destroy their own marriage. We are optimistic for years that this situation can be turned around and love can become full once more. Optimisum grows more distant each day that we are treated so shabbily. Our hope that our spouses will love us again dies.
The lack of all these things and the refusal of our spouses to try to help us reach any sort of livable compromise kills us interanlly. Refusal and rejection, with dashed hopes that the situation can change, the denial that anything is wrong in the realtionship, dooms us to a miserable existance. I am tired of trying to make this sham of a marriage work. I have forced myself to be happy, optimistic, praying that the H would roll over towards me one night. That he woul kiss me with passion, that he would have desire for me, and treat me like i am his wife, not just as a roommate. I fulfilled his needs, filling up his love tank. He needed to fill up mine. He took a vow to love me, to cherish me, to honor me, and HE broke those vows.
What is there to be happy about with situations like this? Nothing. A forced smile cannot undo all of the pain and anguish I have been put through by his rejection of me as a woman. This was not a LD marriage, it was a ND marriage and to me, that is no marriage. I cannot change him, force him to love me, make him see that pain that he has caused me.
You can only hope so much, stay positive so much before your strength gives out and you collapse from the strain. Smiling won't do it. Your spouse has to be willing to invest themselves in the marriage, not just participate on the sidelines. I want and need and deserve to have my needs, or love tank, filled, not having to go around on empty all the time. An optimist has turned into a pessimist in this relationship. I will not be a door mat and have the man I loved and cared for refuse and reject me again.
