Piecing Myself and Not My Marriage

[unchien]

Alison ~

I confess I haven't followed your situation much lately, so take what I say with a grain of salt. I jumped in and read your last few posts.

First, I'm sorry to hear you are struggling and feeling sad. But I'd like to offer an alternative interpretation and see what you think. I could be way off-base, I hope you don't take offense.

You and your H have not established good communication. At some point, if and when you both are invested in working on the MR and piecing, you would benefit greatly from a really good MC to work on this.

H woke up and asked me what was the matter. I ended up telling him how sad it made me that he was so cold, distant, unaffectionate, focussed on practical things but never really interested in spending time with me, talking with me about anything other than the house and kids, never interested in initiating sex.

2x4: You initiated a middle-of-the-night R talk. When your H asked "what is the matter?" he did not mean "tell me everything that bothers you about us and me".

He wasn't mean or cruel or abusive, but he did just make it all about him, and how criticised he felt. I did try to emphasise I wasn't asking him for anything, wasn't criticising him, wasn't blaming him, but that I was unhappy and I was telling him the reason why I was unhappy. But it didn't make any difference and even at the time I didn't think that it would. It didn't really spark any care or empathy from him - he didn't touch me or comfort me or speak gently with me. I just got the usual list of reasons why it isn't his fault, or why what I want is unreasonable.

It doesn't matter what your intent was. He experienced it as criticism. Maybe your MR won't work out. Or maybe you just need a different method of communicating. This method doesn't work.

Back when my MR was better, my W would periodically open up in this way. I would start off with open ears and an open heart. But soon I would be hearing 4 or 5 things all at once that were problems. Men tend to be problem-solvers and not empathizers. It was overwhelming. What I heard was "here is a huge list of problems, and not only are they problems, but rather than solve the problems I just want you to hear me talk about them." Eventually it did just feel like criticism. I had no clue what her "request" was. I would often feel stunned into silence and the last thing I thought was "she is asking for warmth". So I'm sure I came across as a passive, cold listener when my real intent was to try to figure out how to work through our issues. It was frustrating for me, and I'm sure it was frustrating for her.

He has no interest in me or a shared life in any real way and at the moment I need to work on accepting that, and working out why I am tolerating it.

Mind-reading. You could be right, you could be wrong.