# Lost in a complicated marriage.



## ultramint (Mar 20, 2012)

Hey everyone, I have been doing a ton of reading here lately. A lot has been very helpful, but I have a hard time applying some of what I am reading. I'm a super 'nice guy', and far too beta at times.

My wife and I are both in our mid 20's, and we have a one year old daughter. We have been married nine months. When we met, sex was amazing, and very frequent. Over the past year, it has gotten progressively worse and worse. We've had sex maybe 5-8 times since Christmas. It's great sex when we do have it, but she never initiates, and is never in the mood. It takes a lot to get her there.

We have a generally good life. It has been filled with lots of hardship however - a week after my daughter was born I told my wife I was a heroin addict. We made an agreement to stay together on the condition that I would not use again. I went to rehab, and have attended AA/NA/SMART meetings weekly or more since then. I celebrated a year clean a couple weeks ago. This addiction caused huge amounts of pain and distrust, and I am fully understanding that this probably had a huge impact on our sex life and intimacy in general.

When I got clean, I realized that I did not want that type of life for myself. I love my partner and my daughter, and want to be productive and healthy. I have been working super hard ever since then, improving myself in all ways I can. I can truly say that I am a different man now. I have a job at a major corporation and I make more than enough to get by. I don't work too much, however (45-50 hours a week). I work constantly on communication, and understanding my partner, and trying to help her understand me.

I am highly active around the house. I cook most nights, do 95% of all kitchen related duties. I am in charge of washing clothes, and the garbage. I am also highly active with my daughter when I get home from work, making her and my wife top priorities. I do not watch TV or play video games more than 3 or 4 hours per week (and only when wife and I agree on personal time).

I kiss, hug, touch, laugh, joke and talk with my wife. I tell her she is beautiful. I try to be as supportive as possible of her wants and needs. I urge her to get out of the house, because I know being home with the baby all the time is so draining. In fact, we got her a room at a bed and breakfast this weekend, and she's going out for the first weekend since the baby was born.

Whenever there is anything at all that my wife needs, I do everything in my power to give it to her. Even when it is "I don't feel sexual, let's not have sex for a month" - Yes, I said ok to that one. It has only gotten worse, however.

She rarely initiates anything with me. Kisses, touches, sex obviously, cuddles... I feel so empty and alone. We talk about all of this very often. We are aware of the issues. One reason she says she has so much strife with sex and intimacy is because she was abused physically and sexually as a child. I know this is true and it isn't an excuse. She is seeing a counselor weekly, and has been for months now.

We make great strides in communication, and emotion management, in compromise. We're a very different couple than we were a year ago, or when we met. We play lots of board games and such together, we watch movies together, and soon we're going to be taking a dance class together. We have good mutual friends we see regularly.

Even after all that said, we can have a "perfect" day; laughing, fun experiences, good food and fulfillment and all seems well; but when nighttime rolls around, she would much rather play The Sims or watch CSI than get frisky with me. I have tried everything from not making any sexual advances, to being dominant and pushy. Nothing works.

She keeps breaking down, telling me that she feels broken. She fears I am going to leave her, and she doesn't know if she is ever going to get better. She says she never thinks about sex with me, or with anyone for that matter. She masturbates maybe every couple weeks or so.

Sorry for the rambling and disjointed post. I guess I just need to get it off my chest.

I am not happy. It is strange saying that when everything else seems so wonderful. But I feel alone and empty. I want to be touched. I want to be loved. I want to feel her body, her warmth and smell. I want to feel wanted and loved, but right now I just feel like a friend who is giving everything, giving 110%.


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## Toffer (Jan 31, 2012)

First, sounds like she needs IC bad to get to the bottom of this issue. Was she like this about sex while you were dating?

Second, it seems that you're doing most of thw oek around the house when you're home and SHE needs a weekend away?

Don't get me wrong you should be helping out alot but what about her? How can she have no time or energy for sex if you walk in the door after a full day of work and grab the reins?


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## ultramint (Mar 20, 2012)

Toffer said:


> First, sounds like she needs IC bad to get to the bottom of this issue. Was she like this about sex while you were dating?
> 
> Second, it seems that you're doing most of thw oek around the house when you're home and SHE needs a weekend away?
> 
> Don't get me wrong you should be helping out alot but what about her? How can she have no time or energy for sex if you walk in the door after a full day of work and grab the reins?


What is IC? Sorry, not too familiar with some of the terms here. If you're referring to counseling, she is going once a week and has been since last fall.

I am certainly not doing most of the work around the house, but I have taken on a large share. I feel fine about what I do though. She works very hard with our child, doing activities and learning and getting out of the house, playdates etc. If there's something she can do to make our daughter's life better, but that puts off a chore or two, I am all for it. However, that said, I know that she does occasionally spend large amounts of time during the day watching Hulu or just surfing on the computer. She doesn't like that she does this, and has even asked me to look at the internet history and tell her if she's doing it too much. First time I looked, she had spent several hours online during the day. I didn't bring it up because I did not want to start a fight.

I don't know how she doesn't have the time or energy. There's always an excuse. Always something. And if there's no excuse she just says she isn't in the mood. She spends so much time telling me she knows how much this hurts me, how much it means to me. But when it comes to being intimate, she takes no action.


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## Enchantment (May 11, 2011)

Hi ultra ~

Well, first off ... congratulations on getting clean and beating your heroin addiction!

Next... if your wife has childhood sexual abuse in her past ... she may just not be emotionally healthy enough yet to be able to give you what you would desire. The fact that she is in IC and working through the issue is very good...we have some men here who have been married decades and their wives wouldn't or couldn't work on the issues that childhood sexual abuse causes in a survivor of such. Hopefully one of them will post with their experiences.

I do know that I have seen the following as recommended reading. If you haven't read this, you may want to see about doing so:

Amazon.com: Haunted Marriage: Overcoming the Ghosts of Your Spouse's Childhood Abuse (9780830816460): Clark E. Barshinger, Lojan E. LA Rowe, Andres T. Tapia: Books

Best wishes.


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## Uptown (Mar 27, 2010)

Ultra, welcome to the TAM forum and congratulations on breaking free of the heroine addiction! I'm so sorry, however, to hear about your troubles occurring at such a young age for you and your W.


ultramint said:


> When we met, sex was amazing, and very frequent. Over the past year, it has gotten progressively worse and worse.


I agree with Enchantment that your W may have a serious mental disorder that originated with the childhood abuse. My exW, for example, has strong traits of BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder). It is common for BPDers (those with moderate to strong traits) to be very sexually passionate during the honeymoon period and then rarely want to have sex after they are married. 

My exW behaved that way too, with the intensely passionate sex dwindling to nearly nothing immediately following our marriage. The reason for this is that BPDers have a great fear of engulfment, a suffocating feeling that overcomes them during intimate moments.


> She was abused physically and sexually as a child.


A recent study of nearly 35,000 American adults found that 70% of the diagnosed BPDers reported having been abused or abandoned in childhood. Of course, being abused in childhood does not imply a person has BPD because most abused children do not develop BPD. Such abuse, however, GREATLY raises the risk of doing so. And that is especially true when the abuse is sexual in nature.


> She keeps breaking down, telling me that she feels broken. She fears I am going to leave her.


In addition to the fear of engulfment, BPDers have a second great fear: that of abandonment. They therefore are inclined to see a threat of abandonment occurring even when no threat exists.


> She is seeing a counselor weekly, and has been for months now.


Ultra, if your W has strong BPD traits or traits of another PD, there is little chance that her counselor will tell her the name of the disorder -- much less tell you. As I've explained in other threads, therapists are loath to tell a high-functioning client that she has a PD even when that disorder is full blown. (The reasons have to do with PDs not being covered by insurance, the near-certainty of the client quitting on hearing the diagnosis, and the chance of making her behavior worse rather than better.) 

I therefore suggest that you see a clinical psychologist -- for a visit or two _on your own_ -- to obtain a candid professional opinion as to what it is you are dealing with. Only a professional can determine whether your W's dysfunctional behaviors are so severe as to constitute a full-blown PD. This does not imply, however, that you cannot spot the red flags for those disorders. I therefore encourage you to read about the various PD traits so you know what red flags to look for. 

As to the possibility of strong BPD traits, I am not convinced she has most of those traits. Your description of her behavior does not even mention most of them. On the other hand, her problems with intimacy, her fear of abandonment, and the childhood sexual and physical abuse are big red flags. For those reasons, and given what is at stake, I believe it would be well worth your while to spend 15 minutes reading about such traits to see if most sound very familiar.

I therefore suggest you read my brief description of such traits in Maybe's thread at http://talkaboutmarriage.com/general-relationship-discussion/33734-my-list-hell.html#post473522. If that discussion rings a bell, I would be glad to discuss it with you and recommend good online resources. Take care, Ultra.


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## AFEH (May 18, 2010)

ultramint said:


> What is IC? Sorry, not too familiar with some of the terms here. If you're referring to counseling, she is going once a week and has been since last fall.
> 
> I am certainly not doing most of the work around the house, but I have taken on a large share. I feel fine about what I do though. She works very hard with our child, doing activities and learning and getting out of the house, playdates etc. If there's something she can do to make our daughter's life better, but that puts off a chore or two, I am all for it. However, that said, I know that she does occasionally spend large amounts of time during the day watching Hulu or just surfing on the computer. She doesn't like that she does this, and has even asked me to look at the internet history and tell her if she's doing it too much. First time I looked, she had spent several hours online during the day. I didn't bring it up because I did not want to start a fight.
> 
> I don't know how she doesn't have the time or energy. There's always an excuse. Always something. And if there's no excuse she just says she isn't in the mood. She spends so much time telling me she knows how much this hurts me, how much it means to me. But when it comes to being intimate, she takes no action.


Your wife obviously takes some kind of morbid pleasure from hurting you. I very much doubt that it’s you, in that she’d do it to anyone she’s married to. You just happen to be there, in the wrong place at the wrong time.

As for childhood abuse surely she’s just using that as an excuse not to be either physically or emotionally intimate with you because she’s proven beyond doubt that she’s more than capable of doing those things.


So she’s “withholding” from you. And yet even while she withholds from you she’s afraid you’ll leave her! If that’s not crazy I don’t know what is.

It sounds to me that she’s no longer in love with you and that’s the reason why she’s doing the withholding. Thing is why is she no longer in love with you? Is it maybe because there’s someone else in her life that she’s giving her love to? Better snoop and better to be safe than sorry in these things.

Or maybe it’s just that she set out to “trap” you. And now that she has you and an exceedingly good way of life (for her at least as she can be thoroughly lazy, lead a lazy way of life with you paying for it) she’s withdrawn what it is she trapped you with!


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## Po12345 (Apr 28, 2011)

Does your wife work? A lot of what I'm reading sounds familiar to me, I made good money, and my wife stayed home with the kids and over time she says she "lost purpose" and felt like life had lost meaning. 

I am now supporting her, working harder at home, being nicer, cooking cleaning doing laundry, etc, but much the same I don't get much of the intimacy, and when we do have sex it seems as though she's just letting me "get it over with" most of the time. 

What has helped some is that she went back to school now and is working to get her degree. Her self confidence has grown and in turn it has helped our communication. We still have some intimacy issues but we continue to work on it. 

Do you think she is "stuck in a rut"?

It is a hard concept to accept but happiness is a personal feeling and not nearly as much a byproduct of situation, meaning, that a person has to work to find happiness in their current life rather than chasing around to different places, people, etc, to find it.


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## kwillis1 (Mar 28, 2012)

She said something similar to you, as what I've said to my husband. Afraid he is going to leave.. My husband takes medication which almost completely eliminates his sex drive. He is not romantic, cuddly, into kissing, or anything like that. He'll tell me I'm making him "feel claustrophobic".  we have sex once every 1-2 months so I'm missing out on that intimiate connection. Because of this lack of intimacy I wonder what my place is in our marriage. The cook? the maid? His personal assistant?

What it boils down to is her "core fear"(something I learned in pre-marital counseling). She has a fear of abandonment. There are things that you are doing (unintentionally) to tap into her fears of abandonment. Once you figure out what her trigger is, you'll break this cycle you're in.


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