# Don't know what to do for the best...



## username22 (Jan 7, 2014)

I am 34 years old, married to my husband for 6 years, together for 10. We have a 3 year old child.

I am unhappy in this marriage and have been for some time. My husband is a good man in that he helps around the house (if asked), is a great dad to our child, works hard in his job and he tells me he loves me with a kiss on the cheek, like he would kiss his mother. The trouble is, that's it. There is no passion, affection or sex and I don't feel any connection to him. I am a passionate woman who loves sex, but there is none! If, on a rare occassion we do have sex - probably 5 or 6 times a year - I have to initiate it and it is over in minutes. He would rather watch TV or spend time on Facebook etc than come to bed with me.
I am not overweight and try to take care of myself and spend time on my appearance. He is not having an affair, that I am sure of.
I feel like I'm living with a housemate or another child whom I have to pick up after, clear up after and tell him what needs to be done all the time. I deal with everything financial and run the household, he just contributes money. The one time I tried to give him more control over things, he sent us overdrawn within a day. 

We are friends, and I feel nothing more as it is. The trouble is, I don't know what to do. We don't have close family or friends in our area and have no real support, and so our son is so clingy to both of us. He will be devastated if we part. I am scared of how I'll cope on as I do get lonely, but then I figured I've been so lonely in this relationship for years anyway.

We've been talking about all this for the past month as things have finally come to a head. He is devastated and says he does love me 'like that' etc, and wants to show me, but the fact it is now forced makes me feel like nothing is real. i know it would go back to the way it has been after a while.

We have decided, if we part, we would have to live close by to each other to parent our son. We would have enough money to survive once our house is sold, but the prospect of living in a place alone with virtually no friends and no family makes me weep. On the other hand, I wouldn't move away and move my son away from his Dad either.

The double catch is that my parents love my husband, my mother is very ill and cannot have any stress put on her at the moment, so I have been hiding everything from them. They will be devastated if we split.

I'm so mixed up, I don't know what's for the best. Do I stay in this marriage, 'exist' in life, feeling numb for the rest of my life and not hurt everybody, or do I follow my heart and try and make a fresh start of things, alone?

Any thoughts or advice would be most welcome, no matter how truthful.

Thanks in advance.


----------



## blackdog (Dec 18, 2013)

Do you work outside the home? You say that you do not have close friends that live nearby. Is there at least a group of mothers that get together in your area that socialize? Building your character may spark something. Just a thought.


----------



## Married but Happy (Aug 13, 2013)

When did things change, or did he always lack passion? Perhaps there is a medical/hormonal issue, if things have changed. Before you make any irrevocable decisions, explore potential causes with his GP and a hormone specialist.


----------



## username22 (Jan 7, 2014)

Thanks for your replies.

I do work outside the home and, whilst I have colleagues, I don't really have close friends that socialise outside of work. They're not a very social bunch! As we moved recently too, within the last year, we don't know many people of our age around here. Whilst they're lovely, they're all retirement age which really doesn't help me feel any better!

I guess with everyone and every relationship, my husband and I were very passionate to start with but things tailed off within the first couple of years. I was always much more 'into it' than him and made the effort though. I thought it would get better, but he just isn't interested, although I did find out - and have known for years - that he was kissing other women when I wasn't around and when he was out drunk and on nights out. I believe him when he says that all that happened as I just don't think he had it in him to go any further with them! He was also chatting to a woman online and flirting which stopped when I found out. This was years ago before we were married, but I should've run then... I know he also used to look at porn ocassionally but don't think he has for a long time. I think he has just got very comfortable and is happy with this.


----------



## happy as a clam (Jan 5, 2014)

Hi User. I would suggest you go over to the Sex in Marriage forum on this site and read my recent post titled "For those in low sex marriage considering leaving." Your story completely mirrors mine in terms of how your husband relates to you and treats you. There were some incredibly supportive responses (along with a few snarky ones!) that I think you will find helpful as you make your decision.

I ultimately left after 20 years in a very lonely, unfulfilling relationship. I am currently in a 4-year relationship (will probably never get married again) with the love of my life who fulfills me in every way. I also had children to think about, though mine were much older than yours. Getting out was the best thing I ever did for myself.


----------



## LongWalk (Apr 4, 2013)

You're lucky to have faced this now, rather than waiting.

_Posted via *Topify* using iPhone/iPad_


----------



## cdbaker (Nov 5, 2010)

Ok, first things first... We see a lot of really, really bad situations here on TAM, and thankfully yours is pretty darn tame and therefore likely much more resolvable. I don't want to imply that your marriage is all roses and sunshine either, but it sounds like you are married to a good man, a good father, a good provider, etc., but one who just has some intimacy issues.

So right off the bat, that sounds like the sort of thing that can be helped by independent counseling first and foremost. Given everything you've described, including your desire to protect your son and give him the best upbringing possible, I would think it would be worthwhile to you to give him that chance.



username22 said:


> He is devastated and says he does love me 'like that' etc, and wants to show me, but the fact it is now forced makes me feel like nothing is real. i know it would go back to the way it has been after a while.


Here is the part that I also seem to see on TAM all the time and have experienced myself first hand as well. A woman faces concerns/problems in her marriage, spends a length of time trying to effect change via any number of ways. Chief among them usually being attempts to communicate with her husband but forgetting that men and women communicate in dramatically different ways, so she struggles to figure out why he is not "getting the message" or how he can "ignore her needs" and eventually leading to, "He must not really love me, or else he wouldn't be this way."

After months (or likely years) of trying the same things over and over and seeing no results, lots of suffering, feeling unloved, etc. she reaches a point where she stops trying to save the marriage and is instead dead set on ending it. Like a light switch, from one direction to the other, and the very act of finally revealing that decision to her husband is often times the very first time she communicates the problem to her husband in a way that a man can understand. So to him, he is blindsided, this came "out of the blue" and he never saw it coming. Since most husbands usually really do love their wives, he becomes desperate to try to save it, to convince her that he really does love her, that he really is willing to correct the issues she has finally made clear to him, and that these feelings are GENUINE, etc. 

The "defeated" wife doesn't understand this. She can't believe that he was really that clueless, that this is that much of a surprise to him. She *thinks* that she has been making it clear for years. Therefore she believes that his now somewhat desperate reactions to try to change her mind and save the marriage are just attempts to fool her, to trick her in to giving him another chance so that he can be nice for a few months until she calms down and then quickly settle into "same old, same old." She even becomes angry at the thought that he waited until she decided that she was quitting before "finally" deciding to do something for her. 

Of course that usually isn't the case at all! Her assumptions preclude the possibility that her attempts to communicate with him in completely ineffective ways were, shocker, ineffective. More often than not I think, the husband does genuinely love his wife, wants to save the marriage, and IS willing to go to great lengths to do so, including effecting long term changes as well. Unfortunately, by that point, the wife has already turned the other direction, can't believe anything he says or does because she can't accept that her efforts thus far hadn't gotten through to alert him of the severity of the problem and thus suspects every move he makes. It's like she puts blinders on and puts her fingers in her ear saying, "la la la la la, I can't hear you!"

I think this is the situation with you because of a lot of things you've said above, namely how you can't trust anything he does because you believe he is *only* doing it because he's being "forced" to (not maybe because he had no idea that you were this unhappy, or that the marriage was this bad) but also because of this statement below:



username22 said:


> Do I stay in this marriage, 'exist' in life, feeling numb for the rest of my life and not hurt everybody, or do I follow my heart and try and make a fresh start of things, alone?


Because so often I see the wives saying things like this. They perceive that they only have two choices:

A. Stay and miserable, unloved, unappreciated, numb. (Again, not even acknowledgement of a mere *possibility* that her husband can change now that he's finally been made to understand that there is a problem)
or 
B. Get the divorce, move on and find happiness with another man.


I implore you, now that you've given your husband his "wake up call" a term we use here on TAM when a spouse finally "gets it" and realizes what is at stake and wants to understand what it will take to save his/her family, to consider the possibility that his efforts and words might be genuine. You can call him a block-head or whatever if you like for not having received that message way, way sooner than this, and that's fine. I think most guys will readily accept that they aren't very good at speaking or interpreting "female". But please consider the possibility carefully and maybe give him that opportunity to prove to you whether he has really gotten it or not.

Most everything I described above I experienced myself, and see it repeated all the time here on TAM. In my case, it wasn't my wife telling me one day that she was unhappy and ready for divorce, it was my catching her in an affair and then telling me. I was completely clueless and had no idea that she had been unhappy for a long time, or at least that she felt that I was responsible for much of her unhappiness. (I thought it was other factors, not me) She just couldn't believe me because she couldn't believe I could possibly be that "dumb" to have no understood her.

One last reason that I really, REALLY think that your husbands response is genuine? Because I believe that if he really knew all along that the marriage was this close to failure, that he didn't love you enough or care enough about his family to change anything, that he would not be responding the way he is to your finally telling him that you are ready to throw in the towel. He wouldn't panic, he wouldn't be shocked, he wouldn't be desperate to change your mind, etc. Why would he, if he really didn't care?


----------



## cdbaker (Nov 5, 2010)

One more thing, I promise I really really am not trying to judge you, berate you, make you feel bad, etc. In fact I couldn't remotely blame you for feeling or acting the way you have at all. I just thought it would be worth showing you a different point of view, one that I really feel strongly about and could probably list a lot of examples of here.

I genuinely wish you the best!


----------



## CafeRed (Mar 26, 2012)

I'm so sorry that you're going through this. Sometimes marriage can feel very lonely when you aren't connecting on an emotional level. 

Have you ever considered talking to a counselor? There could be deeper issues here that you don't even know about. I'd hate to see you give up without really working hard at restoration, especially when you say that your husband loves you very much and doesn't want to split up. I would encourage you see a counselor and work through this together. It might bring you closer than you think, but you'll never know unless you try.

Hang in there! God bless!


----------

