New Thread: Help! What Just Happened?

[toughlover]

Yeah, that feeling comes and goes...mostly when I go out of my way and do something nice for her that I know she likes. Man I don't want to have to be dealing with that the rest of my life. Makes me want to avoid doing anything extra for her...confusing.

Oh, man, if I'm an inspiration then we're all in trouble. I feel like despite the difficulty I've had this too easy since she's handled this so well. Makes me kinda suspicious...either that she hasn't handled it as well as I thought, she's just an even BETTER liar, or she's trying to control this somehow in a way I don't see yet.

Or maybe I'm just making this more difficult than it needs to be. I'm telling you, when you have a step-through-the-lookinglass experience, it makes it really hard to believe what you see...doubly for me, since I'm analytical and question everything anyway.

We have actually talked about a renewal of our vows ceremony at our church for our anniversary next summer, but I can't commit to that until I believe everything is like it should be. She's still too passive when it comes to affection and there still seems to be little desire on her part to be close physically, although she does do it anyway, and is more relaxed during it than she was a few months back.

But, there's still something not quite right there so I can't go through with something like that until we've got the passion and desire going again. To be honest, I don't see that happening at any time in the near or distant future.

I'm concerned that she may be a little warped in the sense that she can't seem to get really jazzed over someone unless there's an element of risk, danger, being bad.

I don't know if I've mentioned this or not before, but she ran off with a married man when she was 15 (he was mid-twenties), then when she came home, still 15-16, she started sleeping with another married man in her neighborhood (who must've been in his late 30s, early 40s at the time).

She went to counseling, got pregnant, got married, then divorced, ex-husband died. I met and married her later, adopted her child with XH, we had one, and life went on from there, and now I'm here. So, there's issues there.

So, I don't know if she's resolved everything or not. I've talked with her several times about whether she's got a thing about only being attracted to what is forbidden or something spooky like that, if she's capable of having a normal, mature, real relationship that isn't under the pressure cooker of something illicit. She says there's nothing to work out, she just has made poor choices. But I'm not convinced.

Not much I can really do about it, though.

She recently made the statement to me that, "If things never get any better than they are right now, would that be so bad?"

My answer was, "Yes, it would. It wouldn't be a dealbreaker for me, but it would mean our relationship hadn't fully matured and become everything it should be."

So, until something happens in terms of her attraction/passion/desire issues, I don't see things getting better than they are now. Maybe I'm dense.