hubby

My wife and I have really been trying to break through barriers in our relationship the last six months and we have been pretty successful. We went from a sexless marriage to about 2 times a week. She is becoming more open sexually, has purchased some toys etc.

One thing that has not happened is us actually sleeping together. Ever since the kids were born we have had a "family" bed. We eventually moved out into the living room when we had more than one kid. After years of sleeping on the couch and trying to get my wife back in the bedroom, I decided to go back in the room myself. Now that things are improving in other areas of our relationship I thought it would be nice if we shared a bed together again. I have asked her a few times to join me but have not had luck. We finally had a deep conversation about it. A little background on DW:

-She has always had a difficult time sleeping
-She is a very anxious person
-She is very light/sound sensitive (needs to have the TV and computer on in the background to try and fall asleep)
-She is very temperature sensitive; she can't stand skin to skin contact for very long and does not like to cuddle at night, she gets too hot. She likes that the AC blasts on her in the living room.
-She says she does not feel safe in the house and that she needs to be able to hear the kids if they wake up and are calling her.

I asked her just to make it a goal for both of us to try and figure out a way to sleep together. It could be in a different room, with a TV on, we can change the AC setup, something. I just want to be able to fall asleep at her side, know she is close while I am sleeping and wake up with her by my side. When I really pushed her for a reason she finally said that this is her only time to be alone and have time for herself. She does not mind me sleeping on the other side of the couch, just not close to her.
She says that she would like to go in the bedroom and she would stay in there until she falls asleep, but that she just can’t stay in the room, “she gets too claustrophobic”, her mind wanders and gets too anxious.

I told her that I feel rejected and that I really would love for her to sleep with me. She says that this is the only way she can sleep and that she gets very little sleep as it is. Should I just forget about it and let it go? I can’t help but feel that she fears intimacy with me at some level.

Also, I asked her what she thought of me going to counseling by myself (I know she would not go) so that I could sort out some feelings/needs that I have. I am going through some pretty big changes inside and I am having trouble communicating things with my wife. She said that she would feel as if her trust would be violated if I were to go. She said we just need some down time to just enjoy our time together and see how things go. I really feel that there is something she is not sharing with me and I called her no it point blank. She reassured me that she is not hiding any feelings or anything else, it is just in my head.

NothingMan

I know it's different strokes for different folks, but I would not tolerate sleeping in different rooms. If we're married, we're sleeping together..its just the way it is. Of course, this is partially your fault for the whole "family" bed idea. That has to be the worst idea ever. My sons got 1 month each in the big bed. After that, its strictly mommy and daddy. Unless the older one has a nightmare..then I get kicked in the face all night long. Anyway, it may be that she is using her toys out there in the living room after you go to sleep. Atleast, thats the best reason I can think of to explain it.




John

Gomez

It is not good to sleep with your kids. My wife did that with our last daughter for a year and a half. When kids get used to falling asleep next to thier parent it becomes the only way they can get to sleep, or rather will allow themselves to go to sleep. When they fall asleep with thier parents then wake up without them it builds seperation anxiety about going to sleep. They must go to sleep by themselves and wake up by themselves. My youngest screamed like her leg was being cut off with a rusty spoon for about 3 nights, then she was just fine with it. She tries the getting out of bed and wandering into our room crap, but I have taken to going ballistic and yelling so she runs back into her room. The being nice crap only makes them think they get positive attention for getting out of bed.

The whole wife not sleeping with you is the wierdest thing I have ever heard. I can see getting some alone time after you go to bed for a while, an hour or two, but the not sleeping at least within arms length of you is bizzar. My wife flat out refuses to let me sleep anywhere but next to her. Aside from the 3 nights she spent in the hospital after giving birth to our two kids we have never spent a night apart. I'd bet $20 there is a childhood trauma she doesn't want to talk about behind that one, but there is no way to find that out until she is ready to tell you, or tell herself. If you have put up with it this long I guess just keep towing the line.

hubby

Thanks guys. This is very strange and I can't wrap my head arround it. When we were dating we slept together every night. I loved it. It only started a few months after our first was born. She says she has always been weird about sleeping.

If I really forced the issue and tell her it was a deal breaker she would sleep with me. She would really resent me though and think I was being selfish, especially since she is trying to improve things in our sex life and her OCD. Am I being greedy? Should I tell her that it is just that important to me and not compromise on this one?

What about the whole therapist thing? She would see me going as a violation of trust? I tried to get her to go with me about 6 yrs ago and she only made it through one session. Said she thought the therapist and I were attacking her.

FoundLove

For a second, I thought you were my husband writing this!

I am exactly like this and I have found it difficult to sleep with other people in the room.

My theory is that certain incidents in my life have been accompanied by a sense of surprise and vulnerability...something that doesn't sit well when I am asleep. I have to be on guard, even while sleeping.

If she has been a sensitive/light sleeper before adolescence, I would assume some type of trauma happened to her (not simply because she is a light sleeper but also sounds like she has fears of intimacy).

Your wife sounds very much like me and I have fears of intimacy.

Sometimes, I can feel very comfortable/happy being close to my husband. I find great enjoyment in it. Other times, I do not want closeness and I feel uncomfortable being close...physically and mentally.

It's all part of my intimacy issues that will die down with progress and time but will always be there.

I would venture to say that she has fears of intimacy and having children reawakens these fears ("If I get too close, I will mourn the death or separation of my child and that would be so painful).

MEM11363

I have been reading your posts. These are my general observations:
- Your wife has made huge steps forward in pleasing you sexually. She is really making an effort to be more loving to you.
- I would let this go for now. I think you are right that you could pressure her, and also right that she would feel resentful.
- As for the therapist - I think she is truly afraid that the therapist is going to pressure YOU to pressure her in areas where you two are not in agreement. LOL she is likely correct.

I think the smartest move to make at this point is to say - I don't like this however I appreciate how much effort you are putting into making the bed a loving place for us, so I won't try to pressure you to also make it a sleeping place for you and I will just accept this. And then leave it alone as long as your other recent progress does not "backslide"

For what it is worth, I think you are a very strong man emotionally and your wife is fortunate that you have such a high level of commitment to the relationship and to her happiness. She is unusually difficult in some important areas.

hubby

Thanks for the encouragement. So you think I should just let this go for now and see how things progress. What about down the line? I really feel that there is something deeper preventing her from wanting to be close to me throughout the night. I have decided to back off a little for now, but we will revisit it sometime later.


I am really interested to hear from your perspective and experience, if you would like to share. I don't feel that I have gotten to the root of the reason she wants to be alone and cannot be close to me at night. I do know that she did have a traumatic event when she was a child. She only shared this with me once after we were dating for about a year. We never got into the details but it was sexual in nature. We have not discussed it sense. This could be the root of a lot of her issues.

Have you been able to find out why you feel the way you do about intimacy with your husband?

MEM11363

I think the single most important thing for you to make sure you keep in mind is that your wife - like many wives - puts every issue that is bothering YOU into one of two buckets:
- Those that effect or might effect her and
- Those that do NOT effect her

So all those years she was denying you sex. She knew you wanted it and she knew you REALLY wanted it. But your unhappiness was not really effecting her that much - which is sad - but it is true. When you Man'd up - and worked out/flirted and then directly told her that it was either intimacy or divorce suddenly she "understood" how important it was to you. LOL - She understood all along. The ONLY part she didn't understand was the part about you leaving if it didn't improve. As soon as she believed that she worked hard to fix the problem. This is common behavior in marriage. Men tend to be more physically abusive, women tend to be more emotionally abusive. And yes it IS abuse to deny a healthy male sex for almost a decade. I only mention this because the more she perceives you as powerful, and willing to do what you need for YOU to be happy, the more effort she will make to please you. If she ever gets the impression that you have lost the strength to do that, you will likely quickly find yourself celibate again.

I am not suggesting that you be a jerk - jerky behavior is not powerful, just jerky. I am simply saying that the stuff that will help you going forward is a combination of the working out, the fitness stuff and the showing of love without seeming needy/dependent.

sisters359

And forcing sex on someone who has no desire for you is ...? Oh, yeah. Rape.

If there is no mutual desire, quit blaming the woman alone. There is a REASON she has no desire, and it takes BOTH of them to solve it. But never ever have sex when a woman doesn't desire you. It is the beginning of the road to disaster and divorce.

I have had other women (leaving their husbands) tell me how they wanted to vomit when their husbands made love to them. Always it was women who tried to express their lack of desire and, instead of a husband taking it seriously, he just pushed ahead, not really caring. The women gave in, thinking it wouldn't matter--until they reached the point where they started wanting to vomit. Then they KNEW it was important.

If a woman sometimes wants you bad (and initiates), then the difference may just be in sex drives. But if she never initiates? Good chance she just doesn't want you. And that needs to be explored. sometimes it can be fixed; other times it can't. In those other times, get divorced and don't blame each other. Lack of physical attraction simply cannot be overcome. And yeah, women marry men they aren't physically attracted to b/c they love the guy--but their love has no sexual component and they think it won't matter. It does.

MEM11363

I NEVER suggest force. I agree that is wrong/criminal to do that. The ONLY things I want to add / clarify:
- In many sexless marriages the rejecting spouse will not honestly share with the requesting spouse, the REASONS for why they are consistently/unanimously rejecting them. And the rejecting spouse often has a desire to prolong the relationship for other reasons - financial stability, etc. And to me that is abuse. One is taking and benefiting from the marriage, and the other is slowly having their self esteem destroyed by someone who "claims" to love them. You cannot truly love someone and at the same time deny them a core form of love knowing that the denial causes them great pain. That is not true love.
- I simply believe that the demand of - you will tell me WHY we are not having sex, and you will be honest about it or we will divorce, is a totally reasonable request. Once you get the answer and really know where you stand, that is ok.

As for wanting to vomit having sex with someone you are not that into. I would guess about once a month my lovely wife gives me mercy sex - the other 10 or so times are not mercy, but that one time is. She simply looks at it as a kind act. I don't force it on her. I don't even pressure her for it with guilt. I simply let her know I would like to connect and let her decide what to do.

FoundLove

Sure, I do not mind.

I believe there were certain events in my life that made me feel so vulnerable, helpless, and afraid that it overwhelmed me. And I believe the incident that occurred (my father coming to my house unexpected and drunk) was linked to sleeping.

I am not 100% sure but I believe my need to be alert has to do with that particular incident or for my own self-protection.

When one is asleep, they are totally vulnerable, helpless and open to harm. For people like me, this is scary because of the abuse of my past. My thinking tends to go like this:

" If I am caught off guard (like I was back then), I may be harmed or taken advantage of. I have to stay alert in order to feel in control."

My intimacy issues are a result of poor parenting and ridicule from peers. When you are rejected by many, there is a natural tendency to detach and ward off potential encounters of intimacy.

Through therapy and self-awareness, I have been able to overcome...although I still have a long way to go.

Recently, because of this thread, I have tried to help myself more with sleeping. I will actually say to myself,

"The sounds you may hear while sleeping cannot harm you. Movements are movements, they will come and go, they do not harm."

It has been pretty effective.

I really hope there is a breakthrough for you and your wife.

Let her know there are others like her and that there are ways to change.

Not Me Oh

WOW, you couldn't have more accurate described my situation. My wife came from an abusive fiancee before me and really needed someone sensitive and supportive like me....but I think over the years she started to lose respect for me because I care about emotions and try to do anything to make my wife's life easier. It wasn't until I gave my wife an ultimatum (stop this particular bad behavior that is intolerable or head down the road to divorce) that she did the "right thing." The problem is I really don't want to leave (or hurt) her, and I don't want to have use this nuclear option whenever things get intractable. Fortunately I think I may have found a book that will help us strengthen our marriage (called Passionate Marriage) because it makes fixing things both of our jobs.

Another parallel is that my wife avoids intimacy with me by going to bed after me a lot of the time. I think it started as a way to maintain control and avoid situations where I'd ask for sex in bed. The question is how do I get what I want (her going to bed at the same time like a normal couple) without me controlling her? I think she knows that if she throws out the controlling word that I'll be afraid of the label and back away...who knows

hubby

So I see a few options here. I am going to at least wait until things have settled down and she has some "peace" to really absorb everything we have talked about. Then:

1. Just let her know from time to time that sleeping with me is very important and wait for her to come around. Try not to push the issue that much.
2. Have a more serious conversation and see if I can get her to open up about the root causes, what are real reasons behind either her fears to sleep or fear of intimacy. This gets difficult as it links in a lot with her OCD.
3. I decide to go to see a counselor and get advice on what to do there. She will most likely not support my decision to go and see it as us taking a major step backwards in the relationship.
4. Try to encourage her to see a counselor as well, either with me or alone. Not likely to happen unless I REALLY pushed the issue.

I would really like to be able to have frank discussions and try to get to the root between ourselves. Maybe if she knew that our only other option would be to seek counseling, she would be more motivated to share with me.

FoundLove

Well let us know how things are going. It sounds like you are very self-aware and emotionally intelligent and both of those traits encourage success.

Good luck!

MEM11363

WOW - Now you have caused me to take a stroll down a very, very painful set of memories. OK - so first of all there is the factual truth and then there is the REAL truth which is sometimes quite different. So the factual truth is very simply this. My wife has never starved me of sex in our 20 years marriage because I was so clear about it not being an option. But the REAL truth is this. There was a very tense period of time that probably lasted about 5 years - lets say this was during years 3-8 of our marriage. By year 3 my wife had grown tired of my near daily "NEED" for sex and she began the "War of Fatigue". I may not have mentioned - my wife was a stay at home mom and I had a very demanding consulting job with a Big 5 consultancy. So during that 5 years I had to wake up 1-2 hours earlier then she did. So she would get in bed 1-2 hours later then I wanted leaving me the choice of masturbation and a good nights sleep or very good sex and not enough sleep. We probably had 1-2 blow out fights a week over this. Finally two things happened, I stopped being quite so pushy - yes we dropped down to 3-4 times a week, and she stopped being passive aggressive about when to get in bed. By the way - in hindsight I am ashamed of how pushy I was.

Now - in year 20 - everything is so different. So now we average about twice a week. And that is a true compromise that we are both happy with. At 46, twice a week is not far from my ideal frequency.

But the biggest single difference in our marriage now - vs back then is this: My wife truly loves me way more now. And so her goal is to make me happy. And that includes making sure I am sexually very happy. Her goal back then was to avoid making me angry enough for a divorce. Very different goals very different behavior. Back then I had to fight for what I wanted. Now if I gently ask, I get the "how can I please you" reaction. We are BOTH like that with each other.

We have had a great system for a long, long time now. So typically, a couple nights a week, right after dinner I will say - tonight? and smile. And she will say "sure" almost 90% of the time - at which point I say - lets meet in bed at 10:00. If she is hesitant I always say - or we can just watch tv tonight. See she is so good about going the extra mile fore me sexually that I am always - this is not an exaggeration - always nice about it when something gets in the way. But that is because there is always a good reason. Might be fatigue, or a "real" headache, or anything. In fact some nights she will say - can we connect tomorrow? And I just say "absolutely baby". BUT if I felt like the my wife really didn't care about making me happy - I would have a very different approach to this.

As for "bedtime" in your house.
- Are you happy with HOW you decide when you will connect?
- Who initiates? Do you leave it completely to her? Is she consistently good about it or does she try to minimize frequency using all the tricks that grown women have in their bag?
- If you say, "I NEED you tonight" in a firm voice, what happens? Note the difference between "want" and NEED. See to me it is not so much about the physical act. It is about the fact that I do A LOT of loving stuff for my wife, and I require a certain amount of reciprocity to be happy. It is that simple.

I understand why you don't want to use the "nuclear" option of divorce when she jerks you around.

But you do need to find some way to get her to WANT to keep you happy and yes that certainly includes being happy in bed, without you having to threaten the Big D. For us, if either of us just says "this" is NOT acceptable about anything, the other trys to fix "this" pretty darn quickly. Not to avoid divorce - but to create harmony/happiness.

I think your wife is in the mode of simply trying to make sure she does not antagonize you enough to cause a divorce. Don't get me wrong - I am not saying she does not love you. I am saying that she is WAY, WAY more focused on her desires/needs then yours. She loves herself way more then she loves you.

Otherwise she would say things like "I know this sleeping arrangement really bothers you, how about we put a fan or A/C unit in the bedroom and we start out trying me sleeping in the bedroom on weekends"?