I don't know, Jenny. The more I listen to her drivel (we had yet another talk on the way home from T-giving), the more I think it is just her latest reason to avoid sex. In other words, she's not really too tired; she's not really too itchy; she's not really mad at me; she's not really a man-hater; she's not really too fat; she's not really believing that sex is evil. She's just afraid to get close to me because of abandonment issues/childhood fears, etc.
I'm starting to put some stuff together. Don't know if I mentioned this earlier or not. Her parents divorced when she was about 8. She lived with her dad, who immediately married a woman and moved her away from her home state of Illinois. The step-mom made her call her "mom." Dad was emotionally abusive - as in "how could you be so stupid." She told her mom she wanted to move back with her, and, at about age 13, she did. Mom then left W with grandparents so she could go to nursing school. So, she was basically, at one time or another, abandoned (either emotionally or practically), by both parents.
Now, here comes Hairdog who has stuck with her for 5 years now, (with most of the last 3.5 with little or no sex) and he hasn't left her. She withholds sex from him, like some sort of test of his patience . . . or of his love for her. It's as if she wants me to get out of here just so she can prove that she's unloveable. It's just sad.
So....during our "talk" this weekend, I told her that I wasn't willing to stick around forever in a sex-less marriage. Although I'm sure I've told her that before, maybe I never actually said the WORDS. Either that, or she finally heard me. She said, "I didn't think you were the kind of person who would leave me over something like sex. If that's the kind of person you are, you might as well leave right now." I said, "I said I didn't know if I would be able to stick around forever if things didn't change. I'm willing to continue to work on this marriage, which, as a whole is good. I just hope you will decide to make an effort, too."
She, of course, said that she has made and continues to make an effort, but can't promise that anything will change in the sex arena.
She said a lot of things on the "evil sex drive of men," too, and I just kept on saying that it really had no relevance to our marriage. I also refused to agree in any way to her ideas. That frustrated the hell out of her.
One thing that kept coming up was her loss of trust in me. She bases this on some things I've mentioned before, a couple of financial problems which I kept from her (nothing like strip club addictions, but rather, keeping our tight financial situation from her in hopes that I could fix it before she found out); a stupid move on my part when I started smoking again and kept it a secret from her, including actually lying to her when she asked me directly; and that's about it. All these "trust issues" happened over a year and a half ago.
Meanwhile, I told her that I had forgiven her for her threat to call 911 and report me as an abuser when I refused to get out of "her" bed one night. She says the difference is that she was drunk and angry when she did this, as opposed to me being cool and sober when I "lied" to her.
She said that until she feels like she can trust me again she doesn't want to ML with me. She doesn't know when that will be.
I think "lack of trust" is yet another reason to throw on to her pile of reasons not to ML. I really think that a year and a half of penance for the relatively minor sins is enough and she's over-doing it.
As I told her, I'm not willing to stick around forever.
