What I was trying to say is that I think you two need to be radically honest with each other, to understand where your true anxieties come from, which in turn trigger the behaviors in each of your that keep you distant. You have mentioned in the past some of his FOO stuff, that he is a people pleaser, that he always tries to please his parent, that his dad was verbally abusive and intimidating…. He seems to want to emulate both his parents in a way, being the macho navy seal on one hand, but on the other trying to be empathic (as he saw modeled by his mother) and please you and everyone else.
Those two characteristics seem diametrically opposed and keep pulling him back and forth so much that sometimes I get the impression he is running around in a fog, just going through the motions of what everyone expects him to do, but not really knowing himself why he is doing them. His world is focused on everyone else but him. He is a product of a narcissistic family environment (not meaning that any family members are narcissistic.)
That would drive anyone nuts. He seems to depend on you for his emotional support, just as I bet he depended on his mom as a child. Your emotional state tells him how safe his emotional state can be. Before the kids came along, pleasing you fit right in with what he had always known, pleasing his dad. It was familiar. I don’t remember your past, but something causes you to need continual validation from your H. Possibly the HD you had some time back was a way of confirming his connection to you. That is why I once asked if you could have a sex addiction. I don’t think that is the case now, but in a way, could you have looked to sex and the connection not for any addictive reasons, but more as a way to fight off some anxiety of abandonment? (I don’t know this and am only asking.)
You have wondered why your drive is now fallen off. A though flashed through my mind today that maybe you are finding stronger attachment to your kids, now that they are getting a little older and can better interact with you. I thought this because you mentioned to Corri how much more difficult it is to receive than give (though you have changed that statement now). My thought was that maybe you have a certain amount of avoidance in you too, and like my wife, are finding it easier and safer to bond with the kids that with your H. (Again, just guessing.) This would not be a good thing to develop.
With this hypothesis, which is in a way a repeat of my own marriage, the thing to focus on is getting to the root of your issues (both you and your H), identifying what are your fears, and agreeing that any soothing given each other is to address those fears and tame the dragon. But accepting that soothing is difficult if you do not believe you have any fears in the first place. I think your H cannot or will not face his vulnerabilities, so when you try to comfort him, he reacts. It is like you are sticking it in his face. As you slowly turn more toward your kids, his reactions could begin to pull the two of you apart. It’s been known to happen before. Does that make sense?
