I don’t know if maybe something is going around right now or what, but I’m in much the same place the two of you are. I’m not as bad off as HP, but I feel myself sliding that direction.
I don’t want to rehash my entire history yet again, but hitting the highlights seems important to my current state of mind. If you remember, I had twenty eight and a half years of SSM. We had little or no sex during that entire time. We had “the talk” many times and W promised to try harder, but it never happened. We spent more time and money than I care to think about on MC, which netted some, but not much improvement. Then somewhere around fifteen months ago, out of the blue, we went from having IC once or twice a year, to just about every week. We talked. I told W how important it was to me. I told her how much better I felt about her, about the M, and about myself. I still would have preferred two or three times a week, but in all honesty, I was so thrilled with once a week that I didn’t feel any desire to push for more.
Then two or three months ago, just as suddenly as things changed for the better, they changed back. I’ve tried initiating every way I know how. I’ve asked. And although I didn’t bring up JJ’s biker bar (which wouldn’t work for me anyway), I have said in a very unambiguous way that I wanted to ML. It’s all fallen on deaf ears.
There are a number of things bothering me about all of this, and surprisingly enough, lackanookie is the least of them. The biggest thing is that I simply don’t understand. It started just like switching on a light switch, and after ruminating on it on this board, I decided not to look a gift horse in the mouth. It still bothered me that there was no explanation forthcoming as to why we went from once every five or six months to once a week, but as long as it kept up, I wasn’t going to complain. Well now, it’s stopped just like someone shut off that same light switch. And although it wasn’t intentional when I started with the light switch metaphor, it was obviously appropriate, because my number one complaint right now is that I’m in the dark – again. I’ve also had an entire thread discussing W’s unwillingness to respond to me in discussions about anything of importance, so this isn’t a new problem either. Everything’s changed again, and W won’t talk about it again.
Dogs (and cats) are another issue. I like animals. I really do. But animals (primarily dogs) and animal rescue have completely taken over W’s life. It’s all she does and all she thinks about. Her day starts out with her waking up and springing out of bed to take the dogs out. It stays devoted to the dogs until she finally can’t keep her eyes open and has to tear herself away from the rescue group website and email, take the dogs out, and crawl into bed. Her days are spent dropping some dog, cat, or multiples or mixes thereof off at the low-cost vaccination/spay/neuter clinic (where she also volunteers), picking up same, visiting one or more pounds, delivering donated food to various animal shelters, looking for foster homes for animals she takes from the pound(s), taking foster animals to visit potential families, chatting with her compatriots in the rescue group, and so on, and so on, and so on.
None of those activities are a problem in and of themselves, but the way they have taken over her life is a problem. Everyone else in the family is increasingly resenting the animals. We know it’s not their fault, but we can’t help ourselves. Just a couple of weeks ago, D17 told me that she had always liked dogs, “But Momma’s got me to where, when I get out of here, I don’t ever want another dog.” Last week, I heard D14 telling one of her friends that she hates the dogs. D17 had the tread separate on one of her tires Friday afternoon. There was a strip of tire tread hanging loose and slapping the underside of the car as she came limping into the driveway at barely over walking speed. I took the car and got new tires yesterday. And guess what? W got mad at me for “running around and messing with the car” when I knew that there were more dogs coming today and the new kennels aren’t finished yet. I’m telling you: it’s out of control.
But the problem for me is the old thing about not feeling that I’m important to her. I come well after the animals, and since she never seems to get caught up on what she needs to do for them, she never gets to me. And every time it starts to look like she might get caught up on the animal stuff, she takes on more. We had placed enough animals that two weeks ago, we were down to only six dogs and three cats. Four hurricane cats, two pound cats, two hurricane dogs, and another dog from the rescue group, and a placement dog that was returned, and now we’re back up to nine cats and ten dogs. And if I ever get the new kennels finished, there are more on the way.
So I know this is a rant, and I apologize for that. I just want to say that I’m feeling pretty down and detached myself. The sex has stopped. W won’t talk about it. And W has occupied herself with some other obsession that has alienated the entire family. The truth is, I’m just tired. I don’t want to work on the M any more. After having the year-of-good-sex rug yanked out from under me, after having my attempts to talk about it ignored, and after having yet another confirmation that I’m not a priority for W, I’m just tired of making the effort.
And the sad thing is that I really don’t care. Like HP, I’ve kind of gone LD myself. W, in spite of her disinterest in sex, has always been affectionate. She likes hugging and snuggling. She’s always holding hands and things like that. Lately, I’ve been feeling something close to revulsion when she tries to do any of that. It’s not revulsion really, but more like complete disinterest. I just think, “Why?” It seems so pointless. I guess what I’m talking around is that I just feel apathetic. Apathetic toward W and apathetic about the R.
