Losing my mind over my sexless state of marriage.

[1hedlite]

May,

Thanks for your reply and advice. Sorry this post turns out to be so lengthy - it's mostly me journaling.

From what you describe of him, he doesn't sound like someone I'd want to be married to or live with. It made my heart hurt to read about the incident prior to you two sleeping together, the two EAs and the gaslighting, the blame, the fights, the badmouthing to friends and family, the christmas card addressed to him and your child but not to you. I am no psychiatrist but he reads like someone with a personality disorder, potentially.

I appreciate that you picked up on the gaslighting. To be honest, I'm concerned that people reading my posts think I'm crazy, because my story is crazy, H tells me to my face that I'm crazy, and he started telling others I'm crazy before we were even married. He specializes in brain-damaged patients, and when I'm really upset with him, he tells me unironically that I have brain damage. He even manages to have a somewhat uninsulting tone while telling me so, though it's very insulting. It has the effect of making me more upset and frustrated, which then seems to prove his point. And then I’m basically shut down, because what can I say? He’s the expert. So I am self-conscious about people thinking I'm crazy.

And no wonder he has no desire for me. Who desires a brain-damaged lunatic?

Yes, I have no doubt that H has a personality disorder of some sort. I don't know if there's a name for it, but in the past several years, I've done a lot of Googling trying to understand experiences I've had with certain people long gone from my life, and NPD comes up a great deal. I always thought H was extremely neurotic, unassertive and people-pleasing, and it only recently occurred to me that it's not just a matter of being neurotic - there's something pathological like the NPD I've heard so much about.

H's siblings, plus two of his nieces, whom I mentioned in my story above, are all a bit off also. That would make sense if there's a genetic component to personality disorders. They all have addictive personalities of sorts, they all get single-minded about odd things, they all blame-shift. They all have grandiosity, but it manifests very differently between them. While BIL2 proclaims to be friends with celebrities, for example, H gets his jollies from being known as The Nicest Humblest Guy Ever, and no one would suspect the h*ll I go through.

I totally get the not wanting to live apart from your child, at all. Absolutely. Can I ask you a really hard question, though? Do you want your son to grow up thinking that it is normal for a man to treat his wife the way he is treating you? I really don't think it is okay, 1hedlite. It feels abusive, to me, as an outsider reading about it. It really is not okay.

No, I don't want my son to grow up thinking that it is normal. The one thing I find saddest and regret the most and hate the most in all this is that S3 has witnessed our terrible fights in his very young life. The last fight we had like that was the one I mentioned in my very first post here, where H said "50/50 custody" and "co-parenting," and I am determined not to let a fight like that happen again. Also, hearing H say those terms jolted me and put things in perspective for me.

"Don't poke the hornet's nest" is the approach I'm trying to take here going forward. When I don't give H any criticisms or complaints about H, we get along relatively well. He has a fragile, fragile, fragile ego. I can't say anything like "When you say or do x, I feel hurt" to him because it doesn't result in any self-reflection and repentance on his part - he gets defensive and turns the tables on me very quickly. I can't try to have a conversation with him about anything he has said or done (or failed to say or do) that hurt me. Of course, that means we will never connect on any deep level. But the hope is that we will at least appear to get along enough for S3 to grow up well-adjusted and happy.

On Christmas Eve, I needed to finish up wrapping gifts for S3, so I had H take him outside while I did that. Afterwards, when they came back, H announced that S3 had been running barefoot all over the property, like it was delightful news. That stunned me because I am very particular about making sure S3 has shoes on outside. Being a toddler, S3 has a tendency to follow H out the door without shoes, which H finds really amusing - I don't know why it's so amusing to him, but it is. Then, if I'm aware that S3 followed H out without shoes, I'll run after them with shoes for S3. This happens over and over again.

A few months ago, a wildfire swept through the property, burning down barns and a farmhouse rental (that's another stressor on our marriage - dealing with the aftermath of that) - there are shards on the ground everywhere, including shards of glass. There is no good reason for S3 or anyone to go barefoot outside, and not even H would ever do so.

So when H told me S3 had been running around barefoot outside, I was stunned. It almost seemed like he let S3 go barefoot outside precisely because he knew I didn't like it. Could that be it? But why? Why on earth would he? I don't know.

S3 appeared fine, at first. Later, he was noticeably limping and crying, complaining about his feet. It turned out that he had abrasions on the soles of his feet and splinters in his right foot, but he wouldn't keep still and let me remove the splinters. I had H clean S3's feet and apply an antibiotic ointment, but I had to wait for S3 to fall asleep at the end of the night before I could remove the splinters.

See, that's the kind of crazy-making I deal with. There had been a couple prior instances of S3 getting hurt in worse ways as a direct result of H being even stupider. Yet he's a very smart man, far more educated than I am, as he likes to point out.

H did not acknowledge any connection between the injury to S3's feet and the many times I harped on the necessity of S3 wearing shoes outside. Normally, I would have had it out with H, he would have deflected, somehow he would have blamed me (reasoned that the splinters resulted from me taking the time to wrap gifts, probably, knowing him), there would have been a big fight, and Christmas would have been ruined.

Instead, I did not criticize H or complain because I wanted to have a pleasant Christmas. Other than S3 crying on and off all day long over the discomfort in his feet on Christmas Eve, the poor little guy, it was overall a pleasant Christmas.

On Christmas Day, H casually mentioned to me that he had spoken to his brother (BIL1) over the phone, telling him he had let S3 run around barefoot outside, and that his brother replied that it was "a stupid idea." In telling me this, H did not seem to have any awareness of how it might rub me the wrong way. He did not seem to make any connection between BIL1 saying it was a stupid idea, and me basically saying the same thing many times before. He needed BIL1 to confirm what I've been telling him all along. It's this kind of buffoonery that makes it difficult for me to respect H. Normally, it would have set me off. Instead, I didn't react.

And also, why do you want to have sex with your H when he acts so horribly towards you? I understand the physical release part, but the part about wanting an H who desires, protects and cherishes you, and thinking about ML as an expression of that love... I'm so, so sorry, 1hedlite. But from what you describe of your H and your relationship with him, it seems like the love between you two doesn't really exist, and so you're looking for something that really cannot happen. I do not know, from what you describe of him, that he is even capable of truly loving another human being. (If you're looking for the physical side, they make some really nice vibrators these days. Just saying. ;))

To answer your question, it's a combination of things. Yes, the physical release. When sex was decent, I enjoyed it a lot, and I miss decent sex. I never had any interest at all in sex toys for some reason. But I like sexy movies and TV shows and books, and I see sex in those things, and I want to experience it for myself, without stepping outside of my marriage.

Sex forges a bond, regardless of whether the bond is right or wrong - "love hormones" and oxytocin and all that. In the absence of sex for almost two years now, H and I are just feuding roommates trying to be civil today. If we had sex, we would be more like a couple than roommates. Back when we were at least having sex infrequently, sex had a way of smoothing things over. It is normal for a married couple to have sex, and I am desperate for some semblance of normal.

Very early on, when we were newly dating, H instilled in me the notion that I owed him sex. So, by his own standard, now that we are married, there is something very wrong about him not having sex with me, especially considering that he masturbates in his shed (I caught him six months ago). It weighs heavy on me. I guess what I'm trying to say is it strikes me as hypocritical of him not to have sex with me, and I would feel better if he did, and if the sex was decent.

But yes, I get what you're saying.

I know there will come a point when I have no desire for sex with H either. I have already started pulling away from him emotionally - it's defensive and unintentional. Kind of like how, just out of self-preservation, one starts to lose interest in an unrequited crush. He still wants to go through the motions of kissing and hugging, and I should be grateful, but it has become jarring to me the way being kissed and hugged by a roommate who dislikes me would be jarring. Even the way he smells is jarring.

Since I still desire sex with H, though, foreseeing the point when I no longer do makes me very sad still. It's like my heart is kicking and screaming against a future where each of us has no desire for the other. Once that future arrives, my heart will stop kicking and screaming against it, but I'm not there yet - I still desire sex and love from my husband.

In my story above, I talked about how the property we live on, which belongs to H's family estate, and the characters surrounding it have factored into destroying our marriage. I talked about how H loves the property more than he loves me. Since MIL passed away, H's siblings are trying to force the sale of the property, whereas H is obsessed with trying to keep it. I want that family to sell off the d*mn place.

H has occasional moments where he admits to himself that he may very well lose the property, and he looks at property listings online. He'll show me a listing of some lovely house far away from where we are now (far away from certain people who have plagued our relationship) and ask, "How would you like to live there?" He asks me like a husband asking his wife, and it's so novel and exciting. The idea of starting all over somewhere far away and having a home that belongs to me and H, as opposed to H and my in-laws. Maybe then we'd have a chance at something resembling normal. That's the hope.

I do not know, from what you describe of him, that he is even capable of truly loving another human being.

Interesting you mention that because he tells me I'm the one who is incapable of truly loving another human being, and he's always told me I don't know how to be a wife. The last time he told me so was when we had that last fight. "I've been trying to tell you how to be a wife for years," he said. That's why I don't get any sex from him now, he said. Because I still don't have what it takes to be a wife, whatever that is. When I was just his girlfriend, it was that I didn't know how to be a girlfriend. Then he married me.

I look at the posts I've made here so far, and it's like a list of the pros and cons of staying with H, except it's just a long, long list of cons. And then I think, "My God, it's far worse than I thought." Well, H has a long, long list of cons on me too.