First, thanks for all the birthday wishes. Honey, we ended up staying home and having a very nice real steak dinner. It was more, ahem, frugal than going out, and I actually enjoyed it much more than I would have liked going out. As your kids get older you’ll realize how nice it was just to have a nice dinner with W, my mother, and all of the kids actually there at the same time. It was nice being surrounded with the people I love most in the world – even if I did have to do the dishes afterward. It was the best thing they could have done for me.
Now back to work…
LFL, you asked if I am willing to live like this - with none of my needs being met. Yes, I am. It’s certainly not my preference, and I’ll continue to struggle to change the sitch. But when all is said and done, for reasons I’ve given several times, I am willing to accept it. As I’ve said several times over this past month, I’m just having a hard time with the NPD diagnosis.
I spent way too long doing nothing and hoping that things would get better. But we all know how well that works. Then I had the A and after that, finally got serious about fixing my M. I struggled mightily for several years and saw some major improvements in a couple of areas, but W just flat out refused to address others. I worked off and on, but really got seriously down to business about three years ago. I do think that I’ve changed myself for the better, but no real improvement in the M. I know he didn’t mean for it to affect me that way, but the NPD revelation was like a punch in the stomach. It’s just taken all of the wind out of my sails. I’m trying to drag myself up the path from feeling that the sitch is hopeless to feeling that knowing what I’m up against actually improves my chances of making progress. I’m not there yet, but I have a good grip on the scruff of my neck and I’m dragging for all I’m worth.
Heatherg, you said that I need to allow myself to have needs. You also said that it’s not just about sex, but about respect and kindness. You are absolutely right. I just don’t know how to change anything. I have needs and I consider them to be legitimate and just as important as W’s needs. What I don’t know is how I can do anything about it. As you said yourself, I can’t change W’s mind or her behavior. So what can I do?
I also admit to having a problem with this whole needs thing. Maybe I’m not placing enough value on myself, but I don’t see that I “need” much of anything, and that seriously weakens my position in trying to defend those “needs”. I can tell W that I need sex, but we both know that isn’t true. We didn’t have sex for the first eleven years of our M. Some people (like priests) are celibate for life. I don’t “need” sex. I know it and W knows it. Likewise, I can say that I need W to respect my wishes that she not bring any more dogs into our house. But she’s ignored that for at least twenty of our thirty years together. Twenty years makes it a little difficult to defend that as a “need”.
And NOP, I don’t mean to be obtuse, but I don’t see that the ‘how’ is clear at all. So much of the advice and so many of the suggestions I see on this board are just too non-specific to help someone as obtuse as I obviously am. I see things like, “set boundaries”, “enforce consequences”, and things like that, but I don’t know how to apply those things to real life. It’s easy to say, “Don’t let her treat you with disrespect” but it’s a whole different thing to try to do that. How do I stop her? She’s not confrontational, she simply ignores me. So how do I stop that? Going back to the dogs in the house, how do I stop her? I’ve already told you that I don’t have it in me to take them back to certain death at the pound. I like dogs too much to do that. I just don’t want to be overrun with them. So I tell her, “No more dogs” and she brings in another one – short of tossing it out, which we’ve already established that I can’t/won’t do, what can I do? The C tells me to take it to the pound. When I say that I can’t do that, he just shrugs and says that I’ll just have to live with it then. Is that really my only choice?
What about the talking issue? I’ve told you that she refuses to discuss issues that are important to me. I can’t make her talk, so how do I change that? Even if I was willing, I can’t take not talking to the pound. How about sex, the reason we’re all here? I’ve made it abundantly clear for many years that I consider sex to be a necessary and valuable part of M and that I consider our M an empty shell and a farce without it, but W still completely ignores that. I’ve told her that I don’t feel married or even emotionally connected, but that doesn’t spur her to any actions. And soliloquy is my only option since we’ve already established that there isn’t going to be any conversation about it. So what can I do?
I hope this doesn’t come off as argumentative. One of the problems with written communication is that it’s sometimes difficult to determine the tone in which things are presented. I’m not trying to argue here; just to point out that I really don’t know what to do. I’m sincerely and humbly asking for help. I don’t know how to get off of the train. It may be obvious to someone sitting in the station, but to a person who has spent his entire adult life on the train, it’s not so clear. Please help me.
