Reply to Stay in a blah marriage for the kid?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My spouse and I have a 7 year old daughter who we both adore.  He's a great parent and a nice guy, but we have absolutely nothing in common anymore.  I've gotten more confident and extroverted over the years and he's become more of a homebody. He's wonderful with our daughter, but the second she's asleep, he plays video games or reads alone downstairs. On weekends, we do things as a family, but we're both more excited about the activity and spending time with our kid, than we are about spending time with one another.  [b]When we fight, it's just about our relationship--I want more emotional connection, I want him to ask me questions, I want him to care about my thoughts and ideas....and he finds all of that tiresome.  If I don't complain about our relationship, we don't fight, but we almost never have sx and we rarely have conversations besides discussions about our kid, logistics, the basics of work, etc.  He never asks me questions and it's just clear that he doesn't particularly like me.[/b] We do have fun as a family when we travel, go to friends' houses, etc., but for our day to day, we're roommates and co-parents only.  Our ideal lives are very different at this point.  He'd love to move to the country and I like living around other people.  We don't fantasize together about retirement because our ideals are so different--I would love to go somewhere warm, and he wants to move somewhere like Vermont.

We both make about the same amount of money and I'm not too worried about our finances.  I do worry about our kid.  She's really attached to both of us, and the idea of her spending all of her time shuttling back and forth between houses sounds terrible. I definitely think my husband and I would be happier apart than we are together--I think we'd both enjoy being single and maybe we'd each find more suitable partners.  I have no concerns about splitting custody because he's truly a great dad.  But I struggle with one big thing (messing up my daughter's childhood) and one small thing (feeling ashamed that this would be my second divorce, as I had a short marriage in my 20s when I was young and dumb).

Our relationship is relatively low conflict now that I've stopped pestering my husband to be more affectionate to me, so from my kid's perspective, we have a peaceful house.  Would you get divorced in this situation?  Will it totally screw up my kid's life?  [/quote]

In your situation, I'd either 1) work on the marriage, if you can put your heart into it or 2) lower expectations and enjoy the partner and roommate you have.

The bolded is key either way. It's pretty clear that your behavior here is getting you towards neither of those two paths. If you want to go with option two, drop the fighting about your relationship and instead, work internally on coming to acceptance with the current state of your marriage. Find other (platonic) ways to get some closer emotional bonds (close friends, extended family, etc), get a good vibrator, and enjoy the good things you do have, like your family time together.

If you want to work on the marriage, nagging is not the path to emotional intimacy. Marriage counseling could be an option. Some level of acceptance of his desired level of emotional connection is going to be important in this case, as well. He's never going to ask you questions. Accept that. Instead, can you try a weekly date night? Just get out of the house, do something together, and enjoy each other's company? If there is stuff going on with you that you want him to know, just take the initiative to tell him yourself. Talk to him about the lack of sex. How does he feel about it? A weekly (or every other week, your call) scheduled night of sex might bring you closer. Have you ever asked him how he wishes your relationship was different? See what he says, try and do it.

Either way, to me is a solid option. And honestly, so is divorcing if that's what you want, though under these circumstances, I wouldn't.

The worst path is the one you're on now - trying to get him to change who he is. It's never going to get you what you want, and over time, it will move your relationship to a worse place and a tougher divorce (rather than just deciding now to go your separate ways). [/quote]

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