My spouse doesn’t desire to understand me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Man here, my wife says the same thing about me, although not so much the disrespect part but more that I don't listen and don't understand her on a deep level. That I am too superficial and wouldn't care if she left. It's heartbreaking to hear, it's not true of course but it puts a huge hole in our relationship and our intimate life is horrible and has been for years. I check a lot of boxes on paper for sure, but if she doesn't feel loved it's hard to turn that around.

My recommendation is to try therapy before it's too late which it probably is for us although we are trying to stay together for the kids.

One other thought - someone wrote a very good reply in another thread about blaming a spouse for being unhappy. Could that be your situation? My wife is very unhappy where she is professionally and doesn't have a lot of friends and I do think she takes her position out on me.

NP... IMO, I think it's a bit of both. Yes, some people are unhappy with their own lives, and they take it out on their spouse and/or kids, but sometimes, the spouse is part of the reason why they are unhappy. Also, sometimes, the spouse really does dismiss the feelings and thoughts of the other spouse. This is the "I'm always right" spouse.

Often, a wife just wants the husband to listen and acknowledge her feelings rather than solve the problem or place blame.

In another thread about "what men want", some man stated that he wanted his wife to be nurturing, and I asked if he was nurturing to his spouse, and he said he was. Obviously, I take that at face value since this is an anonymous forum, but I would ask you.. "are you nurturing to your spouse"? When she shares her feelings with you do you dismiss them or do you actually listen and try to nurture her?

NP, you've definitely described my marriage. My DH always wants to solve a problem or place blame. He thinks that by me raising awareness to an issue of how I felt about something, that I'm blaming him. I've said several times, there doesn't need to be a right or wrong person, it doesn't have to be so black and white. But he just doesn't get it! I just want him to listen. I just want to be heard. I want to feel like I matter/my feelings matter in this marriage. Doesn't mean he has to take blame for anything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Straight up what some of y’all need to realize is that the changes you wanna see happen ain’t gonna happen overnight. Dude ain’t gonna go from routinely saying, “Oh that’s not true” and shifting the conversation elsewhere to all the sudden saying, “I understand how you feel honey” and being all Super Empathetic Man in 24hours. Takes time. Have some patience after you bring this shit to dudes attention.

DP. I think many of us in this situation acknowledge that, and some of us in a similar situation have been dealing with these patterns -- and bringing these issues to our spouse's attention -- for years. At that point, our options become more and more limited.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I could have written this post, OP. I have felt this way about DH often and especially recently. He has historically taken little interest in my goings-on and feelings, and its worse in recent months. I am trying to pursue couples therapy with him but multiple times he has expressed that we don't need it (which feels like another minimization of my feelings so there you go). Have you tried or ever even discussed therapy?

OP here. I'm sorry you're going through this as well. We have discussed therapy, but have never gotten anywhere. I can take blame for that...I haven't taken the steps to get it set up. But, in my mind, I'm like, why am I always the one who has to take the leap? Why am I always the one who's trying to fix the wrong? Why am I always the one crying and upset? Meanwhile my husband just sits back and lives his life like it's all good. It hurts that he won't take the initiative himself to get us started in therapy, but, I know it's immature of me to think this way. I think I will finally take the step and stop making excuses.

I understand this feeling. I finally got DH to agree to "consider" therapy if I went and did the work of finding out the details and cost. I had to keep pressing to get to that point and I do wonder if he just wanted me to stop bothering him. But, that was more than I had gotten out of him before so I am willing to get that information. Then the ball will be in his court and how he handles it will really give me a sense of whether he's committed to seeing this marriage work and us to stay together.

I think its normal to feel annoyed/frustrated that this too has become your burden to initiate, but if you don't its clear it wont happen. Keep trying to remember that this is bigger than that for now and that your legwork and his response could provide you a lot of information to make your next decisions.

OP here. Thank you for understanding and for your advice. It's really helpful!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I could have written this post, OP. I have felt this way about DH often and especially recently. He has historically taken little interest in my goings-on and feelings, and its worse in recent months. I am trying to pursue couples therapy with him but multiple times he has expressed that we don't need it (which feels like another minimization of my feelings so there you go). Have you tried or ever even discussed therapy?

OP here. I'm sorry you're going through this as well. We have discussed therapy, but have never gotten anywhere. I can take blame for that...I haven't taken the steps to get it set up. But, in my mind, I'm like, why am I always the one who has to take the leap? Why am I always the one who's trying to fix the wrong? Why am I always the one crying and upset? Meanwhile my husband just sits back and lives his life like it's all good. It hurts that he won't take the initiative himself to get us started in therapy, but, I know it's immature of me to think this way. I think I will finally take the step and stop making excuses.

IMO.... it seems that men rarely take the initiative to fix a marriage. I find they'd rather ignore it, and then cheat and blame the spouse for the reason why he cheated.

From the posts on this board that seems to be mostly true. However I do think a more common pattern is that the emotional connection wanes from the woman's perspective, so she wants sex less often, man wants to disconnect more because there is less sex, and so on, until perhaps someone steps out looking for either an emotional connection or sex.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I could have written this post, OP. I have felt this way about DH often and especially recently. He has historically taken little interest in my goings-on and feelings, and its worse in recent months. I am trying to pursue couples therapy with him but multiple times he has expressed that we don't need it (which feels like another minimization of my feelings so there you go). Have you tried or ever even discussed therapy?

OP here. I'm sorry you're going through this as well. We have discussed therapy, but have never gotten anywhere. I can take blame for that...I haven't taken the steps to get it set up. But, in my mind, I'm like, why am I always the one who has to take the leap? Why am I always the one who's trying to fix the wrong? Why am I always the one crying and upset? Meanwhile my husband just sits back and lives his life like it's all good. It hurts that he won't take the initiative himself to get us started in therapy, but, I know it's immature of me to think this way. I think I will finally take the step and stop making excuses.

IMO.... it seems that men rarely take the initiative to fix a marriage. I find they'd rather ignore it, and then cheat and blame the spouse for the reason why he cheated.

It seems women rarely leave a broken marriage to a man who "just doesn't understand me..." so they grow to despise him while cutting off the sex .... yet stay married to this "self centered jerk". Then when he eventually goes elsewhere (duh!) they call him a "cheater".

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Man here, my wife says the same thing about me, although not so much the disrespect part but more that I don't listen and don't understand her on a deep level. That I am too superficial and wouldn't care if she left. It's heartbreaking to hear, it's not true of course but it puts a huge hole in our relationship and our intimate life is horrible and has been for years. I check a lot of boxes on paper for sure, but if she doesn't feel loved it's hard to turn that around.

My recommendation is to try therapy before it's too late which it probably is for us although we are trying to stay together for the kids.

One other thought - someone wrote a very good reply in another thread about blaming a spouse for being unhappy. Could that be your situation? My wife is very unhappy where she is professionally and doesn't have a lot of friends and I do think she takes her position out on me.

Is it your fault that she is unhappy professionally and doesn’t have a lot of friends?

If she is a trailing spouse and moved away from friends and a job, or if you are extremely demanding of her time and energy leaving her with very few resources to put into her job and her friends, then you SHOULD be a little more empathetic and helpful in terms of working with her to find solutions.

Even if this isn’t your fault, why don’t you care that your wife is unhappy? I am not saying that it is your job to fix it, but it just seems bizarre to me to not care at all about the interior life of the person you are spending your life with.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I could have written this post, OP. I have felt this way about DH often and especially recently. He has historically taken little interest in my goings-on and feelings, and its worse in recent months. I am trying to pursue couples therapy with him but multiple times he has expressed that we don't need it (which feels like another minimization of my feelings so there you go). Have you tried or ever even discussed therapy?

OP here. I'm sorry you're going through this as well. We have discussed therapy, but have never gotten anywhere. I can take blame for that...I haven't taken the steps to get it set up. But, in my mind, I'm like, why am I always the one who has to take the leap? Why am I always the one who's trying to fix the wrong? Why am I always the one crying and upset? Meanwhile my husband just sits back and lives his life like it's all good. It hurts that he won't take the initiative himself to get us started in therapy, but, I know it's immature of me to think this way. I think I will finally take the step and stop making excuses.

IMO.... it seems that men rarely take the initiative to fix a marriage. I find they'd rather ignore it, and then cheat and blame the spouse for the reason why he cheated.

It seems women rarely leave a broken marriage to a man who "just doesn't understand me..." so they grow to despise him while cutting off the sex .... yet stay married to this "self centered jerk". Then when he eventually goes elsewhere (duh!) they call him a "cheater".

Yes. Because most women don’t want to leave their kids to be raised by a self centered jerk 50% of the time.

[Anonymous]

OP, I have re-read your post and I am a bit confused. Can you give a recent example of how your DH dismisses you. Is it something about the kids or the house?

[Anonymous]

I am sorry to hear this, OP. I had a similar realization a few years ago. One thing that helped was that I realized that when I became very emotional, I would start crying. The sight of a tear would instantly send DH into panic mode, andhe really wasn’t able to take in an understand new information. All he could think about was how to get me to stop crying. So, I would feel that we had a very deep conversation where I had explained “y” to him, and he would remember none of it. So the next time “y” happened, I was even more upset than before, and he was completely baffled and twice as defensive.
It really led to this feeling that he didn’t love or care about me at all.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, Hold Me Tight is the book for you. It talks about building emotional connection in a marriage.

This. It is based on emotional focused therapy or EFT. Consider finding a therapist who is certified in EFT. It made a world of difference in my marriage.

[Anonymous]

This is why it’s good to have a friend, sister or mother you can dish your troubles to. Historically, husbands and wives have not been confidants.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I could have written this post, OP. I have felt this way about DH often and especially recently. He has historically taken little interest in my goings-on and feelings, and its worse in recent months. I am trying to pursue couples therapy with him but multiple times he has expressed that we don't need it (which feels like another minimization of my feelings so there you go). Have you tried or ever even discussed therapy?

OP here. I'm sorry you're going through this as well. We have discussed therapy, but have never gotten anywhere. I can take blame for that...I haven't taken the steps to get it set up. But, in my mind, I'm like, why am I always the one who has to take the leap? Why am I always the one who's trying to fix the wrong? Why am I always the one crying and upset? Meanwhile my husband just sits back and lives his life like it's all good. It hurts that he won't take the initiative himself to get us started in therapy, but, I know it's immature of me to think this way. I think I will finally take the step and stop making excuses.

IMO.... it seems that men rarely take the initiative to fix a marriage. I find they'd rather ignore it, and then cheat and blame the spouse for the reason why he cheated.

It seems women rarely leave a broken marriage to a man who "just doesn't understand me..." so they grow to despise him while cutting off the sex .... yet stay married to this "self centered jerk". Then when he eventually goes elsewhere (duh!) they call him a "cheater".

This is a chicken and egg scenario. The woman feels that the man has emotionally abandoned her, doesn't respect her feelings, so yea, she doesn't want to have sex with him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Man here, my wife says the same thing about me, although not so much the disrespect part but more that I don't listen and don't understand her on a deep level. That I am too superficial and wouldn't care if she left. It's heartbreaking to hear, it's not true of course but it puts a huge hole in our relationship and our intimate life is horrible and has been for years. I check a lot of boxes on paper for sure, but if she doesn't feel loved it's hard to turn that around.

My recommendation is to try therapy before it's too late which it probably is for us although we are trying to stay together for the kids.

One other thought - someone wrote a very good reply in another thread about blaming a spouse for being unhappy. Could that be your situation? My wife is very unhappy where she is professionally and doesn't have a lot of friends and I do think she takes her position out on me.

OP here. You sound a bit like my husband. On paper he's this great guy, and I'm not saying he isn't a great guy. I just don't feel loved and I feel so alone. I don't think I blame my DH for being unhappy in other areas of life, but that's definitely something to consider.

You don’t feel that he is loving towards you, but are you loving towards him? You can’t make someone love you or be loving towards you. A better approach is to be loving towards them and in time, they will return the favor. And if not, then you can think about whether the relationship is salvageable.

Things only improved in my marriage when I stopped critiquing DH’s weaknesses and just accepted him. In time he began to work on the things that were bothering me on his own because he felt loved and accepted. You can only improve if you feel secure, loved, and accepted.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is why it’s good to have a friend, sister or mother you can dish your troubles to. Historically, husbands and wives have not been confidants.

Not OP but my husband *does* want and expect me to be his confidant. Tells me about his work problems/concerns, issues with friendships, anxieties, finances, etc. The problem is he will not take on that role for me and I have an issue with that.

[Anonymous]

Try reading https://mustbethistalltoride.com/ together.

Also go to a Gottman Institute weekend. There is one Feb 22-23 in Gaithersburg MD

https://www.gottman.com/events/?tribe_eventcategory=343