Another divorce or stick it out plea for advice
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Anonymous
Did you even read the thread? She's already seen a sex therapist, individual counselor and relationship counseler, been checked out medically and a whole lot of other things. Now is the time to put into practice what she's learned through all this. |
Anonymous
Did you read it? she's had 6 months of counseling, after admitting to basically spending the last decade having sex with a man she has to numb herself to be with. I was getting to the trauma/abuse which is likely there. People don't tend to find themselves in these scenarios otherwise. Maybe she is just not going into it the thread, but we don't have the full story. |
Anonymous
Did you read this part, sounds like she is not really learning much through therapy.Her problem is not that they aren't "sexually compatible" (that explanation works if you date a few months, don't feel a spark and move on), but that she forced herself to have sex, didn't want to ever really have sex with him, etc. Honestly, she has been digging that deep and is still blaming her husband. I would probably consider divorce too, but I would get to the bottom of my issues with sex and intimacy. "We didn't plan for DC and never, ever had spark - I just closed my eyes or drank too much to get through sex. That's what my mom and sisters did. I actively avoided sex on wedding night and honeymoon and in general. I only was intimate with him because I didn't want to deny him and was blaming myself for being sexually dysfunctional. Therapists are telling me we're just sexually incompatible and it's only now I'm realizing they're right and I should have factored this into the major freaking life decision of marriage and parenthood." She is blaming him and saying she thought she was sexually dysfunctional. She was/is. And that is fine, there is a way out of that. Her sexual dysfunction isn't from not enjoying sex with him, it is from forcing herself to do for many years. That is not his fault. I think OP sounds awesome. She has a lot of insight about herself and she is doing all the right things. But her issues are her issues and have little to do with "compatibility." |
Anonymous
Good god! Did you not read the part where she had great sex with two previous boyfriends? You may think she's blaming her DH but that's not what I'm reading. She's repeatedly stated what a nice guy he is (despite his lying, etc.). Acknowledging sex is awful because you're not attracted to someone doesn't mean you're blaming that person! |
Anonymous
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Thanks. No abuse, but I agree I have intimacy issues which are partially due to my mom hating her body and recoiling from most physical contact with my dad. I was wrong about level of disgust during sex with H. It was never good, but there was a time I could get through it without cringing. I even sought it out at times but always fantasized I was with someone else. It deteriorated as other stresses in relationship grew - I shouldered more financial burdens of his bad credit, low wages, tuition (at school I have trouble respecting. I do try, but recognize I'm a snob here). As I lost respect for him, I no longer saw him as a viable partner and got increasingly grossed out when thinking of him sexually. He's also a bit awkward in bed and my early pleas for him to do things I liked were not successful.
I do take the blame for not addressing this sooner, but it had to reach a boiling point. It did. Now I'm figuring out what to do and searching hard for evidence I can build respect for and attraction to him. Thanks again to everyone. I don't feel that continuing this thread with more details of my particular situation would help other readers looking for advice, so I'll stop here to let other threads move on up the list. |
Anonymous
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Wow, OP, I am living the exact same thing. It is uncanny how similar our marriages are. I too never felt a spark with my husband but he was good on paper and I thought the sex would get better over time as we got to know each other. I thought he was a good person and that if were both committed and trying, how could it not work? I also didn't want to hurt his feelings and he was so madly in love with me. Turns out he also twists the truth and has always spent more than he makes.
He quit his job the month our twins were born and has been unemployed/ underemployed ever since. He has run up $22K in credit card debt in the past year, on top of mounds of other debt. We live with my parents now, he hates my mom and is rude to her constantly. He blames all this bad behavior on my lack of sexual desire, because he feels unloved by me. I have been trying for 8 years to build this marriage, support his ego, be affectionate, fake it through sex, but it just won't work. We are now getting divorced. OP, I would reccommend considering divorce before things really go downhill and you are both more bitter. |
Anonymous
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20:17 again- we cross-posted, OP. Your posts are helping me! I can relate to everything you say about trying to make the sex better, losing respect for him and becoming physically repulsed, asking for behavior that I can respect and trust to try to rebuild love, feeling guilty that he will be alone if I leave him, etc.
I have come to the conclusion that it can't work. We are in marriage counseling and things are getting worse, because as I say he blames everything on me and how I never loved him. And he has a point- it's hard to feel rejected, even nicely, all the time. He clearly had sexual dysfunction, spending beyond his means, and truthfulness problems his whole life, way before we met, but our dynamic made his issues much worse. It made my issues worse too- guilt over hurting someone's feelings, accepting unacceptable behavior, not believing I am worthy of a truly good man and of real love and happiness, etc. My turning point came when I was holding my daughter one day and looked at her beautiful, trusting, innocent face and thought about her grown up and in a marriage just like mine, and I burst into tears. She deserves so much more, deserves to be adored and sexually fulfilled and respected and able to express her love, and I am modeling the opposite for her to grow up with. I knew then that I had to divorce, even though it will be a nightmare for a while. Good luck OP and I wish you strength. Keep up your individual counseling. |
Anonymous
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OP here following up to end the story, esp for the poster who said it was helping her. I'll try to keep this brief.
H and I are divorcing. The actual conversation went insanely well and this is a very amicable split, but still painful. I'm also discovering it's a minefield of chances to get pissed at him. Trying my best to keep aware of this. I told him I wanted to separate two Saturdays ago. He said sure. We only needed a week of this to realize we weren't getting back together. I totally disagree with the decisions he's made (or not made) during the split and it made me realize how fundamentally incompatible we are. He's staying in a friend's apartment and not rushing to find his own place, said he's fine with me just putting together the separation agreement...he's just lackadaisical about the whole thing. On one hand, it's great. I am good at planning and executing and getting stuff done. On the other hand, it's really sad. On the Saturday following our split he came over for time with DD and asked if we were getting back together. I didn't want to have convo in front of her but he persisted so I said I couldn't imagine it working. He said fine, but that he also would have agreed to stay together if that's what I had decided. This right here is a major reason for the split - I am exhausted after carrying 100% of decision making power in relationship, regardless of how amicable we are. H said he's confident we're such good friends and so dedicated to DD that we'll be great co-parents. I believe this too. It's sad that we were so completely on the same page about major things but that our communication had broken down to the point where neither of us knew we were in agreement. Anyway, forging ahead. We told our families, both got tearful declarations of love from both sides, and I am dedicated to making this work. I am realizing this means taking a breath before reacting when I'm pissed at him, but also communicating when I feel he's shirking responsibility. We're staying in counseling because a healthy post-marriage relationship is important for DD. Thanks for reading and thanks for advice. Good luck to people in similar situations. My advice is to do your best to communicate (kindly!) and not try to figure everything out on your own. Remember that there are two people in relationship. |
Anonymous
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Divorce before your daughter is 3.
You will be able to force this relationship forward for some number of years but NOT forever and while your daughter's needs come first, all she needs is both loving parents in her life - she doesn't need you to sacrifice your (one, extremely short) life for her. If you can separate amicably and sort out your co parenting expectations while she is young you will be on track to giving her a happy and healthy upbringing. |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
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Sounds like you've made the right decision.
And it's good you're doing it now while your DD is so small that she won't remember anything different. My parents divorced when I was shy of three and I have no recollection of them together. |
Anonymous
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OP, I have (kind of) been you. My ex and I had a very passionate early relationship, but in retrospect, I should've said no when he proposed. On our wedding night, we didn't have any sex, much less the kind of passionate madly-in-love sex that many people say they had on their wedding night. Our honeymoon was relaxing, but basically passion-less. We were moving for his job. He wanted to buy a house in the suburbs ("because buying is better than renting") and so we did that. We moved. We settled into DC. I loved him very much, but it just was kind of spark-less. We had sex less often than he wanted, and I tried to make him happy in that arena. Sometimes I psyched myself up for sex when I'd really rather just read and go to sleep. He wanted to have a baby, and while I was initially ambivalent to the idea, when I got pregnant, I was actually excited about it. I think that honestly, my pregnancy and the approximately 6 months after DD was born were the closest we have ever been. Never had I felt so supported, so loved as I did then.
We had practical issues like you have, though they were different issues. For someone who had been pushing for 5 years to have this picture perfect family life, where he was really engaged in that family life, where we did things together, etc., he wasn't particularly engaged with home life. I made most of those decisions. He worked a lot. He's always been professionally successful and really intense about it, but since he'd been just as intense about getting married/buying a house/having a baby, I assumed that he would find some balance. He never did. The practical issues may not be the root of the problem, but they certainly exacerbate the other things, in my experience. I spent a year in therapy, trying everything I could thing of and everything my therapist recommended to get my head back in the marriage. My therapist initially tried to figure out what I wanted. I think that if I had given her indications that I wanted to divorce, and needed help figuring out how to do that, she would have provided that help. But since what I'd asked for was help fixing my marriage, she tried to give that help. The only thing I really learned in therapy was that our family life, our relationship as a couple and everything associated with it was completely broken. We performed well in public. We had a wonderful child. But that was it. When DD went to bed and the dinner party was over or whatever, we literally had nothing to say to each other. I told him that I wanted to separate, and he surprised me by being completely devastated. He did NOT want to separate and he REALLY did not want to divorce. The mean parts of me thought that this was at least partially because without me around, he would have to make decisions about the house, take care of the middle of night wake ups that occasionally still happened at that point (DD was just 2). But over the course of those conversations, it became clear to me that he was just really, really bad at demonstrating how much I (and the family) meant to him. I think a lot of men have this problem. At the end of the day, though, it was too little too late. My feelings had already completely changed. After a couple weeks of intense talks about our marriage and our future, we agreed that the separation was permanent, and drew up a separation agreement. It was not contentious at all. We have had maybe 3 or 4 major differences of opinion in the 18 months since that separation agreement was finalized, and they've all been resolved pretty quickly. We've both moved on to new relationships and have been able to take lessons learned in our first marriage and apply them to our new relationships. I've watched him become a better father as a result of increased responsibility. He is more involved and engaged than many married fathers I know. He and DD have an amazing relationship, and she doesn't really remember what it was like when we lived together. She gets really excited when we do things together - like come to her holiday party at school or whatever - but she is basically a happy well adjusted child whose parents both love her very much and prioritize her needs. I have a new, more exciting job, and hobbies that I actually get to be involved in. I feel 100% better about myself and my life and my future now than I did 2 years ago. All of this is a very long winded example of how you can divorce and have that be actually better for everyone involved, including the child, who gets to have two parents who are actually happy with life. |