Ok - well...H finally responded to the email and his response was interesting. He agreed wholeheartedly with everything I said. He agreed that he had been checked out. He also agreed that he has been angry and frustrated with me because I didn't seem into the family vacation he planned for next week (which will be two hours from my hospital) but that he understood I was "right" about it technically.
The words he kept using involve being "stupid", failing, on the verge of "crashing" into oblivion. Then he said, "Is it any wonder that it is hard to hold you close when I feel this way?" The sources of his feelings of failure are nothing unusual - too many family disasters, $$ worries, being out of shape etc... He says that he too wants to get on the same page and that he doesn't really know how to get there.
My response (Be forewarned it is pretty blunt):
You don't have to be perfect to be loved and made love to. You don't ask me to be perfect in order to love me. All I know is that you hiding behind anger, frustration, self loathing and creating distance won't solve anything and that me compensating by working, reading and talking to a bunch of preggos on the internet all the while hating myself won't solve anything.
The only solution is to muddle through crisis, disaster, happy times etc ... hand-in-hand. We need to each start closing our personal exits (you know - work, computers, masturbation instead of sex, busyness etc...) and face each other. I have been pretty blunt here. The bottom line is that I love you and I am putting myself waaaaaaaaaay out on a limb to say - please, let's try (however imperfectly) to be each other's soft place to land. I love you and I assume that you have shared these things because you love me too. Closing the exits, forgiving and accepting each other and moving forward is the only place I know to start.
I realize that this is a far cry from an actual action plan but at least he isn't arguing everything based on extenuating circumstances. At least he isn't trying the "Gee, we would be having sex except our lives are so busy and we're so tired line of bullcrap that he usually feeds me." At least I've actually brought up the fact that with his behavior I suspected him of having an affair, an addiction or wanting to leave. That he uses busyness and mb as a way to ward off closeness. I'm not going to get into analyzing or looking at FOO issues as to why this might be. I don't care. At least I feel that we are starting to call a spade a spade.
