# want it to work but can't be the only one making the effort. very long post!



## littlemoon (Oct 26, 2010)

hi everyone.... i'm new here so perhaps a little introduction is needed.
i'm 25 and my husband is 32, we have been married just over 18 months but have been together 8 years in total and lived together for 7 of those.
i've always loved my husband and thank him for saving me from misery when my life took a difficult turn shortly after we first met. he's supported me through my education and many a difficult family situation. i'd always felt that he was my soul mate and that we'd be together forever. i would like to add here that i'm realistic and don't expect everything to be happily ever after and understand that relationships take work and required comittment and compromise.

what's led me to post here is that i'm desperately seeking advice and hopefully some understanding and support.

6 months ago as we were approaching our 1st anniversary was when the problems really began. we'd arranged to go away for the weekend and stay in the hotel we married in, which i thought was a super romantic way to celebrate. i was really looking forward to it and went to a lot of effort to arrange a couple of small but meaningful surprises for my husband but unfortunately due to mis communication and finances the weekend had to be cancelled.

i was quite upset about the matter but my husband didn't seem the slightest bit bothered. i asked him about it and he said it didn't matter to him, but that our wedding day had been the more important day of his life and that was what mattered the most. he got me a card but nothing else in the way of a gift or token of affection. this seemed to answer a questions i'd been asking myself for some time.... perhaps before we ever got married??

what i mean by the last remark is that i almost left him twice prior to us getting married. once after the first year of our relationship just before we moved in together. and secondly 8 months before we married after i found out he'd been sending texts to a previous 'friends with benefits' of his from before we met telling her that he missed her. he claims she insighted the texts by contacting him after hearing we were getting married and that it was harmless fun.
both these times i tried to leave he told me he was sorry, that he loved me, cried, begged me to stay, and told me he would be forever trying to make it up to me. because i loved him i stayed.

the thing is i feel we're stuck in a rut. i would like to believe my husband loves me but i certainly don't feel that he loves me. to be honest i feel like his keeper and housemaid. and it's made me question whether he does really love me or if our relationship is something of convenience for him?

i do all the household chores; washing, ironing, cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, walking and feeding the dog. i even look after the household bills, fetch after his newspaper, cigarettes etc. we both work, however while i only work a standard full time job he works in excess of 50-60 hours every week in a physically demanding job. however, this is a point i feel is important - if we worked the same hours i would be the breadwinner in the relationship. this is a fact i believe he finds hard to accept.

at first i felt our relationship balance worked for us.... i would fulfil the traditionally female roles as detailed and he would do the more traditionally masculine roles. all my friends and colleagues would comment but at the time i was happy as we were. but over time he seems to do less and less and i seem to do more, but he never seems to appreciate any of it. if i comment his response is always how i work less than he does and have more time to do the chores. my response is that i don't have to work so many hours because i earn a higher hourly rate and if he's not happy working so many hours perhaps he could look to find a higher paid job.

i've tried talking to my husband about how i feel and how i'd like us to spend more quality time together, do more things together and also how i'd like him to be more affectionate towards me. i also talk about our future and securing ourselves finacially by savings etc. he always says he'll try but that he's not a romantic person by nature and that i shouldn't always be looking to the future and enjoy the here and now. this is something i don't agree with as he surprised me with a wonderful 21st and also stunned me when he proposed. so i know he can do romantic when he wants to. bottom line nothing changes and the cycle continues..... sitting in, watching the tv, ignoring each other.

but if he wants sex that seems to be another matter entirely, i feel like i should have to because i'm his wife. but i tell him that unless he's more romantic and affctionate then i'm not likely to want to get down to the business with him and that it's not just a switch you can flick on and off. he often remarks on how he doesn't get enough and it makes me feel degraded.

most days i feel like we're two seperate being living in the same house and sleeping in the same bed. i don't feel like we're a couple anymore, and that i may as well be flat sharing with a friend.

i've recently had a 10 week bout of councelling which i was ashamed to tell my husband about at first, as i thought he'd consider my weak or silly. but when i did pluck up the courage i realised i was wrong to tell him. he didn't offer a single shred of support but instead mocked me...... i found this upsetting as he knows depression runs in my family so i thought he would be happy i'd sought out help (even if it was the wedding anniversary that triggered my self referral).

to be honest i'm at the point where i'd happily leave because i feel i deserve better than this but i do truly love my husband. he's not the man i fell in love with anymore - he was fun, witty and perhaps not a romantic but certainly very loving and affectionate.

i wonder if that i'm a stronger more independent person now than i was when we first met and perhaps this is why i feel i deserve more? maybe me expectations are higher now? surely that's not his fault if that's the case.

i really don't want to loose my marriage but i also don't want to waste my time on something that may never change. short of leaving him how do i make him realise that i really mean what i say about wanting us to change and move on together to make our marriage work for both of us?

i'm so desperately in need to guidance on how to move this situation we've found ourselves in forward.

please help, all feedback greatly received.


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## ThinkTooMuch (Aug 6, 2010)

Littlemoon,

My heart goes out to you.

You are both young, you were 17 when you met, he was 24, very young by today's standards to start life together. I think you recognized this when you wrote you thought about leaving the relationship in your first year. You might have been wiser than you are now, I know a lot of us find love in our teens overwhelming, the desire to be with "the one", our soulmate, so intense it seems to be the only possible path.

In my experience, there is no "one", we are more than capable of loving and being loved my an enormous number of potential mates - browse plentyofFish.com if you doubt me. Our bodies more than our minds shape our romantic decisions.

There is a very common statement you may have heard -
Men want a lady in the living room, a cook in the kitchen and a ***** in the bedroom. It is slightly outdated - what's a cook? I think it contains the germ of accuracy.

I understand you want and need romance before making love, I think if you want this marriage to last, get better, and be filled with love, withholding sex is not the way to go. Were I you and wanting to stay together I'd initiate sex on a regular basis until he runs out of the house when he sees a sparkle in your eye, when he comes home, tell him how much you want him and jump his bones - I still remember my GF wrapped up like a Xmas present in a negligee sitting on the living room couch, unwrapping her was fun, one of her most enjoyable gifts. 

If an old GF can light him up with a text, just imagine his response to seeing your texts during the day, how he feels when you are dressed like the best of Victoria's Secrets. 

Most men are easy, we listen all too well to our little head, we're very sensitive to possible rejection even when our spouses are loving us, they are thinking about laundry, cooking, jobs, we think they don't love us.

Most straight males I know of, especially those your h's age (and some older than me at 61), see sex as the glue that says my wife loves me, my wife wants me, and results in us thinking "I want to be with her". Look at this page
Oxytocin, chemical addiction and the science of love 
I found by googling oxytocin and love

(However if they prefer golf and drinking with their buddies to making love to their wife it is a very different story. Baseball and beer are the way to go!)

If you continue to feel "most days i feel like we're two seperate being living in the same house and sleeping in the same bed. i don't feel like we're a couple anymore, and that i may as well be flat sharing with a friend." and unable to want and act on igniting passion, be glad you are young - at 25 you have a full life ahead of you.

I hope you aren't offended by my blunt words, hope you find this helpful.

Mark


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## littlemoon (Oct 26, 2010)

thank you ThinkTooMuch for your kind and honest response, and no i don't find your words blunt or rude. 

yes, i would have to agree with you that we were both young when we got together. i myself had been in a couple of short lived relationships - one of 6 months with someone aged 18 and another of 14 months with someone aged 25, both ended with me getting cheated on and left for someone else. i won't lie this damaged my self esteem greatly and did very little for my confidence. as for my husband, he had been engaged previously when he was 21/22, again he was cheated on and left by his partner for someone else. i was only single for 4 months before meeting my husband - so yes perhaps we rushed in too quick but of course at the time it felt right. we seemed to fit together and i felt he understood me i ways others didn't as we have such similar childhoods and up bringing. i felt we had the same values and ideals in life.

the only reason i tried to leave him in the first year of our relationship was because my own parents seperated and divorced after many years together. i feel i was angry, hurt and confused, i probably tried to run away from the problem and with it everything else. i felt everything i'd ever been brought up to value and believe about relationships, life and marriage were now in question. but my husband fought for me and convinced me to stay and that he would see me through the challenging time. this he did and has always continued to do whenever either of us is faced with something difficult.

to be honest though i still find it hard to accept my parents marriage failing, but i've asked all the right questions in the past and only ever got ambiguous and even more confusing answers. neither is willing to provide an answer behind the break up and neither is willing to take responsibility. so i've given up trying to understand what went wrong between them, my counselling has helped me to understand it's not my problem and that i have to accept circumstances for what they are but i do still find myself asking 'if they couldn't make it work and seemed so happy - how can i stop my own marriage from failing too?'

to address your points regarding our sex life - yes i do realise that i should make more of an effort in the bedroom department, but i do find it hard to initiate when i don't feel special, loved or wanted day to day. i know it sounds silly but if i felt my husband loved and apreciated me and that i was truly the most important thing is his life i would naturally want to be more intimate with him. unfortunately at the moment we're on a never ending merri-go-round. if i tell him what i need from him he feels i'm criticising him and gets angry. that leads to silence between us or an almighty argument. he tells me he doesn't understand what i expect from him and that our life will never be some soppy romantic film or book. but what's so wrong with wanting to be and feel loved by the person you love the most?
i guess the old 'men are from mars and women are from venus' is true - we clearly have different needs and desires from our relationship. he clearly seems more focused on the physical and i'm more about the mental connection.

it's not want grand gestures or daily declarations of his undying love and devotion, far from it. all i want is a cuddle and kiss, or for him to hold my hand when we're out. to laugh and joke like we used to. but as i say if i try telling him how i feel, he takes it as criticism and gets angry with me. we don't seem to be able to discuss the problem rationally and he admits he struggles to discuss his emotions because that's not how he was brought up (his family are particularly closed to discussing feelings etc) i can't seem to get my point over and i feel like i'm banging my head against a brick wall.

otherwise life is nearly perfect. we have a home that we've invested time into making our own, it's full of lovely things, we have a nice reliable car, we don't struggle finacially and we have a yearly holiday abroad. for this i'm thankful as i'm all too aware from looking at our friends that we could be in worse circumstances given the current economical climate. so i feel bad for complaining but we just don't seem to connect on the most basic of levels anymore i really don't want to give up on us because we've been together too long and been through too much to throw it away without trying. but as i said in my previous post how can i make him want to fight as hard as much as i do to save our marriage. this is the man i thought would be the father of my children, but right now having a baby is the very last thing on my mind because it would a terribly cruel thing to bring a baby into this mess that our marriage has become.

i just feel it's got to make or break time now.


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