I’m a newcomer here, but early on in my browsing I stumbled across this section, and I feel this is where I belong. I’ve been reading here for about a month now, getting to the point where I almost feel I know some of you, so thought it was about time I posted a little about myself. I haven’t read SSM or PM yet, and it will probably be a little while before I get a chance to, so I hope you’ll bear with me.
H and I are both 40, together 16 yrs, married almost 10. Children: D8, D6, and twin 4yr old boys.
The last time we ML? The boys were born in April 00, a month early...you can do the math if you want.
Things had been steadily going downhill from the time we moved in together about 2 yrs before we got married, but I did love my H, so figured it was just ’normal’. When I was pregnant with D8, about 3 mos into the pregnancy, things stopped. I definately did not have LD problems during pregnancy, just the opposite, but I finally got tired of being pushed away, so I stopped asking.
Same cycle with D6, then due to lots of stress in H’s life, things really dried up, emotionally as well. The boys were a result of a new start to our life, and I had ’pushed’ a lot to start an emotional and physical connection again, which resulted in our ML once...
I’ll admit that having 4 children under 5 was a little much for me, and all my energy in the first couple years was focused on them. With all of my kids, I was not a pleasant person to be with due to sleep deprevation, etc. and I’m sure I didn’t make things easy on my H, but I had been pushed away, even when just trying to kiss or be near him so many times, that I pulled away emotionally myself. There are cultural issues as well, H’s culture is a lot less demonstrative about, well anything, than Americans tend to be, and we live in his country.
About a year ago, as I wasn’t so tied to the kids any more, I started to look at our R again, and realized how bad things were. I thought about leaving, I had thrown the D word out in blow-ups before, but there is no way I could leave, and of course I know it doesn’t really solve anything, and probably makes things worse for the kids.
I tried to talk with H, tried to make him understand that I was unhappy, and wanted to work on our M and try to ’find each other’ again, suggested C, but that made him very defensive, and he pulled away more, and we went through a year of yelling, and he tends to take it out on the kids (verbally).
So I tried just accepting things, which makes him happy, but doesn’t do anything for me. At this point, I’m not so sure any more how to approach him. I did write a letter a little over a week ago, after a big blow-up, and if nothing else, he’s been a little more friendly, meaning he doesn’t completely ignore me. So I guess I’m searching for a better way of dealing with this.
