Feels like failure again

[Bunches]

So married 4.5 years. 6 kids (1 mine / 5 hers). My son lived with me his whole life until last April when we had a house fire and he had to move to stay with his mom because hotel living wasn’t conducive to low functioning autism. Of her five boys the oldest isn’t speaking to us for a year after a huge disagreement with his mom. The other four come and go on a rotating 2/2/3 schedule. My wife works nights and I work days.

She has had severe depression for several years for years and has some chronic hip pains. Since last year she’s now also enjoying early menopause. We are both 41. Survived one physical affair and an emotional affair both just after one year of marriage.

She’s been distancing herself more and more this past 6 months but I confronted her recently and said I needed some answers. She wrote a three page letter explaining she’s lost all attraction for me and feels awful about if but is tired of feeling like the bad guy 75% of the time and she’s created avoidance rather than feeling awkward around me. It’s not been easy to be around each other with that problem hanging out there.

I’ve joined a gym, going regularly again and mens small group again at church. She’s confrontational but always manages to act normal when kids are at house. Says I’m an amazing dad and literally tells me there’s a million great things about me but it’s obvious she perceives me as weak. Difficulty is we live far from my friends and family so I hav little to no support network and without my son around I feel so alone now. I’m the kind of husband that actually likes to talk about our relationship and discuss but my wife gets uncomfortable and uses silence until she feels like writing down her feelings.

She wrote in her recent letter than she knows she loves me because she can’t stand telling me things that hurt me. So she had to write this stuff down. She never seems to know what to say to me and says I just fill the air with stating the obvious all the time. We aren’t great at communicating because we are so different. We used to be mad about each other and loved to be around each other all the time but the more time passes we find we have so little in common. I’ve taken in more of what she enjoys for years. We’ve gone camping, hiking, kayaking even though I had always been a more in doors guy.

I realize my explanation is all over the place buts hard to tell the whole story in one pass. I worry about another affair because it’s happened before.