You are working through such a lot, May. And it doesn't all have to be worked through in one go, or this week.
This really jumped out at me from one of your previous posts:
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My H has said this to me a number of times throughout all of this. Not the "because I really, really love you"... those words haven't fallen from his lips... but that he can't stand seeing me unhappy, he calls it his "Kryptonite" and it is impossible for him to think or behave rationally when he sees me upset. He'll either jump to the fix-it mode or has that exact same train of thought, that he's done something wrong and gets defensive. (As an aside, this feels like a mommy complex thing, and I don't like it.)
This dynamic I am talking about that went between me and H was set in place LONG before his EA and our really really terrible time, but when he had actually done something that wasn't okay, and I had every right to be angry, he had no ability at all to hear that, to be with me, to comfort me and accept me being angry. This is on him - and I have also wondered if it's a mummy issue (he tells me his mother was critical and cold and often angry and impossible to please - that's his perception of his childhood and his primary relationship with a woman...)
I think I had to just let H feel all that and get out of the way when his feelings about that resulted in some pretty unpleasant behaviour. It is all on him. And it might be one of his flaws and weaknesses that we have to build our marriage around: I've got my own childhood wounds, and we are who we are, and marriage (I hope) can work well even if the two people in it are human and imperfect.
With the freezing around physical touch - maybe that is something that you need to work on privately. I have had that experience myself, even as the HD partner. When H came back and he was initiating more, I really struggled to respond, but felt I couldn't NOT respond, or he'd never ask again, and I felt scared and angry and resentful and a bit of 'who do you think you are?' thrown in. And I blamed him for a lot of those feelings. I did feel sexually broken for a while, and that is was his fault. Now I think I was scared, and not ready to be vulnerable, and he was doing his best but he was scared too, and that resulted in some quite awkward attempts to initiate.
Do you believe your husband is actually asleep when he initiates? I think you're pretending to be asleep so you don't have to say yes or no, and he's pretending to be asleep so he doesn't actually have to initiate. I could be wrong, but that strikes me as two people who are terrified, but who also really want to get close.
