Hi everyone. This is my first time post here, but certainly won't be my last. I'm a 38-yr-old male that's married to a 37-yr-old female (just 5 months difference in age), and we have two children who are 3 and 6. I've been married to my wife for just over 10 years, and we've been to marriage counseling on two separate occasions.
Before we had our first child the sex life was awesome. She was wanting sex all the time, couldn't get enough of it. After the first the sex life started going downhill, but wasn't bad enough to raise concern. After our second child was born, her libido went downhill fast. So much so, that I'm a lucky guy to have sex with her maybe once or twice a month, and recently it's happened just one time in two months. I'm sorry, but I need sex and that physical connection at least once a week. Even during our last round of marriage counseling we agreed to having sex once a week, and although it worked for a while it dwindled to almost never happening.
We've been fighting lately, and I've brought up the fact that it seems she doesn't love me much anymore. I feel unwanted, unloved, forgotten, neglected, not appreciated and not a priority in her life. I told her these things but it doesn't seem to sink in with her. I pulled up notes I wrote while doing the two rounds of marriage counseling, and it seems like a lot of the things I was concerned with are still present...
- not feeling loved by her
- lack of sex
- no desire to do things with me
- friends seem to be more important than me
- she's more responsive to everyone else
- I'm not a priority in her life
The problems she had with me were primarily the following...
- anger management issues
- talking down to her
- controlling
She agreed with me the other day that my anger problems have disappeared. But, she said I still talk down to her and I'm controlling. The "talking down to" is questionable, in a list of say 10 times I talked down to her maybe 3 of them could be considered just that. And controlling? I let her do anything she wants. I've never once said "no" to something she wanted to do.
Anyway...
As I mentioned above, my biggest problem with her is that I don't feel loved anymore. She thinks that all I want from her is sex, which is true but it's not just sex. It's the physical & intimate connection between her and I. She never shows interest in sex. If I pursue it she feels like I'm pressuring her, and all that does is turn her off even more (although I'm not sure how that's possible when it's rare for sex to happen). If I don't pursue I know it will definitely not happen, because she's not going after it. She has no idea what "feeling loved" means. Even the marriage counselor had stated that we should be having sex more often than once a month.
She just started going to a psychologist to help take care of herself, because she's obviously in a fragile state. She's been going to one for a long time now, but only goes when she really needs to. She's told me that I should go see someone for me, because of how depressed I've been lately. I don't need someone. I need my wife. The marriage counseling we once had was great stuff, I learned a lot from those visits. I took a lot of great ideas from them, and they've helped make me a better person. She, on the other hand, hasn't changed much at all. Our last round of counseling was a year ago. I asked her if we could go back, and she says she needs to fix herself & then we can maybe go back to counseling.
Other important things I've recently learned:
- she told me she loves me because I'm the father of our kids
- she fears talking to me because of how I may respond
- I still talk down to her
- I'm still controlling over her
- sex is the LAST thing on her mind
- she needs space from me
- she's confused about the marriage, not sure what she wants anymore
The first one made me cry like a baby. I still think about that every day. After saying that and seeing my reaction, she said she just doesn't love me the same way when we were first married... that she isn't "madly in love with me anymore."
I want to make this work, and she claims she wants to make it work as well. If she wants space, what exactly does that mean? She won't give me a good answer about that because she says she doesn't know. Obviously she doesn't want sex, so I cannot even approach her about that without pissing her off. If I give her too much distance, I feel like it'll increase the chances of separation or divorce.
Speaking of which...
I told her that it seems like she has been thinking of separation/divorce already, and she didn't say "yes" to that but did say she's thought about what life may be like without me. Right now she needs to fix herself (whatever that entails), and then figure out what she wants from our marriage. That means I have to play the waiting game to see what she uncovers, because I know 100% what I want from the marriage (I want her and I want us to work things out) but she doesn't.
Right this very second, we want the complete opposite of one another...
me = I want her close to me physically, mentally & spiritually
her = she wants space/distance from me
me = I want to talk about our marriage issues, fix things now
her = she doesn't want to talk, makes her more upset
me = I know what I want
her = she doesn't know what she wants
I feel like I'm not writing everything down that needs to be here, but I'm just so upset about it all. I found this forum by doing a Google search for this type of discussion, read some a few threads, and can immediately tell that there's a great number of truly wonderful people here. Hopefully just getting this out there to people I've never met can help, even if it's just a little bit.
Before we had our first child the sex life was awesome. She was wanting sex all the time, couldn't get enough of it. After the first the sex life started going downhill, but wasn't bad enough to raise concern. After our second child was born, her libido went downhill fast. So much so, that I'm a lucky guy to have sex with her maybe once or twice a month, and recently it's happened just one time in two months. I'm sorry, but I need sex and that physical connection at least once a week. Even during our last round of marriage counseling we agreed to having sex once a week, and although it worked for a while it dwindled to almost never happening.
We've been fighting lately, and I've brought up the fact that it seems she doesn't love me much anymore. I feel unwanted, unloved, forgotten, neglected, not appreciated and not a priority in her life. I told her these things but it doesn't seem to sink in with her. I pulled up notes I wrote while doing the two rounds of marriage counseling, and it seems like a lot of the things I was concerned with are still present...
- not feeling loved by her
- lack of sex
- no desire to do things with me
- friends seem to be more important than me
- she's more responsive to everyone else
- I'm not a priority in her life
The problems she had with me were primarily the following...
- anger management issues
- talking down to her
- controlling
She agreed with me the other day that my anger problems have disappeared. But, she said I still talk down to her and I'm controlling. The "talking down to" is questionable, in a list of say 10 times I talked down to her maybe 3 of them could be considered just that. And controlling? I let her do anything she wants. I've never once said "no" to something she wanted to do.
Anyway...
As I mentioned above, my biggest problem with her is that I don't feel loved anymore. She thinks that all I want from her is sex, which is true but it's not just sex. It's the physical & intimate connection between her and I. She never shows interest in sex. If I pursue it she feels like I'm pressuring her, and all that does is turn her off even more (although I'm not sure how that's possible when it's rare for sex to happen). If I don't pursue I know it will definitely not happen, because she's not going after it. She has no idea what "feeling loved" means. Even the marriage counselor had stated that we should be having sex more often than once a month.
She just started going to a psychologist to help take care of herself, because she's obviously in a fragile state. She's been going to one for a long time now, but only goes when she really needs to. She's told me that I should go see someone for me, because of how depressed I've been lately. I don't need someone. I need my wife. The marriage counseling we once had was great stuff, I learned a lot from those visits. I took a lot of great ideas from them, and they've helped make me a better person. She, on the other hand, hasn't changed much at all. Our last round of counseling was a year ago. I asked her if we could go back, and she says she needs to fix herself & then we can maybe go back to counseling.
Other important things I've recently learned:
- she told me she loves me because I'm the father of our kids
- she fears talking to me because of how I may respond
- I still talk down to her
- I'm still controlling over her
- sex is the LAST thing on her mind
- she needs space from me
- she's confused about the marriage, not sure what she wants anymore
The first one made me cry like a baby. I still think about that every day. After saying that and seeing my reaction, she said she just doesn't love me the same way when we were first married... that she isn't "madly in love with me anymore."
I want to make this work, and she claims she wants to make it work as well. If she wants space, what exactly does that mean? She won't give me a good answer about that because she says she doesn't know. Obviously she doesn't want sex, so I cannot even approach her about that without pissing her off. If I give her too much distance, I feel like it'll increase the chances of separation or divorce.
Speaking of which...
I told her that it seems like she has been thinking of separation/divorce already, and she didn't say "yes" to that but did say she's thought about what life may be like without me. Right now she needs to fix herself (whatever that entails), and then figure out what she wants from our marriage. That means I have to play the waiting game to see what she uncovers, because I know 100% what I want from the marriage (I want her and I want us to work things out) but she doesn't.
Right this very second, we want the complete opposite of one another...
me = I want her close to me physically, mentally & spiritually
her = she wants space/distance from me
me = I want to talk about our marriage issues, fix things now
her = she doesn't want to talk, makes her more upset
me = I know what I want
her = she doesn't know what she wants
I feel like I'm not writing everything down that needs to be here, but I'm just so upset about it all. I found this forum by doing a Google search for this type of discussion, read some a few threads, and can immediately tell that there's a great number of truly wonderful people here. Hopefully just getting this out there to people I've never met can help, even if it's just a little bit.