Thanks Blu. I've come a long way since I first started posting here! I wonder how much I'm feeling now is due to some deep rooted anger and resentment and hurt over how I've been treated, and some disappointment that he just does not have the skills to communicate affection and empathy and care in ways that I understand. I know him - he isn't doing this to spite me or to hurt me - he just genuinely isn't a talker, doesn't articulate his feelings or thoughts, isn't really that affectionate. We have talked about love languages but doesn't really understand the concept that the trick is to GIVE love in the other person's language, rather than for me to just accept that when he - for example - goes out at night to buy milk - I SHOULD just feel loved as that it how he means it. I know he's like this in all of his relationships - which is why he's alone all the time - and I did know this when I married him so he can't be blamed for ill treating me when he is just being who he is. I guess I've just changed a lot.
And I can look at things from his point of view. He has many of his own resentments. He sees my 180s and he's said before me having changed makes him feel angry as if it was so easy, why didn't I do it earlier? I can validate that whole-heartedly because I get it. But he can either be angry, or accept I've changed, or not - it's his work to do, not mine. He's also living with a wife who claimed to want more fun, more affection, more meaningful conversation, more quality time, but who is cold and unresponsive when he attempts, awkwardly, to do those things. It must be frustrating for him. He does try now and again to do what I want, and because I know it isn't really heartfelt (I am talking about the bedroom here specifically, but other things too) him doing it doesn't count for much for me. He must find me demanding and picky and impossible to please. I also know that all of my special qualities, my humour and empathy and clear thinking and creativity and loyalty and emotional sensitivity and curiosity and energy and interest in the world - are basically more or less invisible in my marriage: I leave all the good parts of me at the front door of my home and he never sees them. I can say I feel unappreciated but I also know I don't let him see any of my special qualities so I have a hand in that too.
I also know that we have very different day to day lives. We both work in the same sector (we don't share a workplace or employer) but I'm senior in a more creative, people focussed role and he's a little more junior in a more technical role. We play to our strengths and he's good at his job and works hard, but my work is much better paid, more flexible, has better conditions and is, to the outside world, more impressive. I believe he's always carried some resentment about that. It comes out now and again in some barbed remarks. I know he feels he hasn't done as well in life as he could have done. I don't accept responsibility for that, but he hasn't ever had much in the way of empathy or sympathy from me because - well - I don't mind being the breadwinner and would rather be independent than rely on a man - and because I find whining without making a plan to change the situation very unattractive. (Though I do plenty of that myself with my friends!). I guess he hasn't had the gentleness and sense of someone in his corner in our marriage that he'd have wanted. He's brought some of that on himself with his repellent behaviour, but not all of it.
Blu - if you have felt in the past like I have felt - what actions did you take that changed the situation for the better? Whether I stay in my marriage or not, I don't want to be bitter and mean and contemptuous of another human being - it's beneath me and I don't want to be that sort of person. I just don't seem to be able to shift it.
