Quote: In a relationship the sum is greater than the parts, but how much greater? In a fully functioning relationship, the intimacy, desire, touching, wanting, needing, sexually causes a closeness that to me turns into an overall feeling of ‘wellness’. Call it happiness, call it love, call it what you want, all I know is I WANT THAT, I want to feel it, and I want to think of it during the day and cant wait to be with my W, to feel it some more.
Don’t tell me that you can feel fully satisfied and happy knowing that this is possible but not being able to achieve it.
I would never say you can feel fully satisfied under these conditions. AND if it is important to have this, and if, after exhausting all possibilities, you establish that you cannot have this in your R, then you must leave the R.
It's true that happiness, feeling loved, etc., comes from inside oneself. For example, if someone cannot let themselves feel loved, then no matter how much you love them and show your love, they will always feel unloved. Just like there are some people who give and receive love easily. We say those people are "easy to love." I think that means they easily let themselves feel loved.
This "you are the only one who can make you happy" stuff is true, but it must not be mistaken for "you SHOULD tolerate and be happy under ANY conditions." Yeah, Victor Frankl showed that people could even find moments of contentment and meaning while in Nazi death camps, but that's not to say that when the liberators came, those prisoners were supposed to say, "No, thanks, we can be happy ANYWHERE, so we'll just stay here."
Being responsible for your own happiness sometimes means you have to move on. Would we tell an abused spouse just to suck it up and be happy while being assaulted physically or verbally?
If your spouse refuses to work on the marriage with you, you do have the choice to learn to do without those elements you described above, and there might be conditions under which you would decide to stick around-- if your partner were chronically ill, for example, and you feared for her safety and well-being if you left.
But if you want to be happy and experience the marriage in all its fullness and possibilities, leaving might have to be the choice you make. Bear in mind that if you don't resolve the part of the issues that are yours (the part of your happiness/unhappiness that only YOU are responsible for), you will likely attract them in your next partner.
