She is currently unwilling to focus on anything other than money. I am currently unwilling to focus on anything other than sex. It is possible one or both of us may choose to change our focus in the future. Focusing on the good things would require me to forgive myself. And forgive her. Even if I were willing to do the latter (unlikely). I know I will never be willing to do the former. I enjoy beating myself up far to much to give that up. Not even for happiness.

And you are correct about the income. I doubled my income between 1996 and 2001. Mrs. Hold was no more interested in meeting my needs at $200,000 per year than she had been at $100,000 per year. In fact, our longest "drought" not associated with pregnancy was fall 2001 into spring of 2002. Right after I got this job and the last big bump in my income. So I am probably fooling myself to think that she would be any more interest at $400,000 than she is at $200,000.

Still more reason not to bother trying to get to $400,000.

HOLD, you are starting to sound like a ONE TRICK PONY.

Why not learn about 20 new tricks of how you are going to act and react and run your life?

Then you will not be limited to the same two bad coping devices and can creatively develop a good life for yourself.

Here is your one trick:

I am bad, my wife is bad and I cant change anything and nothing will change.

Okay, Mr Hold, now that you have figured out, "I am probably fooling myself to think that she would be any more interest at $400,000 than she is at $200,000", don't you think Mrs Hold could figure that out just as quickly?

Maybe you can't be romantically in love. Maybe you will have to settle for something less. But it doesn't have to be as much less as the two of you are making it by pretending it is about what it isn't. Setting up these extremes of high money are low sex are just a phony construction, and not just all of it by Mrs Hold.

Yes, it is sort of not making any logical sense anymore to reduce your marital problems to;

1. She wont give me sex because I dont make enough money for her to blow on junk.

2. I wont make more money due to her out of control spending habits , withholding sex, and verbal abuse.

Life and marriages are way more complex than simple issues of sex and money.

HOLD, If you got way down to the roots of things, you may feel better.

1. what is life for?
2. what is our purpose in life?
3. How do we love others?
4. Which people are we to love and which should we avoid?
5. How to best conduct a marriage?
6. What is a marriage for?
7. When is the purpose of marriage wrong?
8

There are 100 other things to look at in order to look deeply at the truths of your situation. Labeling your marriage a certain way without going deeper traps you in a bad situation and eliminates creative improvements you can and should make in your life and your marriage.

If you have given up on your wife and marriage, you may want to talk to yourself and find out why this is. You can encourage yourself not to give up on yourself or your marriage.

I have been diagnosed with ADHD. Some people lately have begun to see this condition as an inability to set goals and implements steps to achieve them. AHDH people can't sit still and can't concentrate because they cannot convince themselves that sitting still or concentrating will get them anything worth making the effort to curb their inclinations. Even when an objective observer would say the goal is more than worthwhile.

That seems to fit me. I have read that cognitive behavioral therapy can help with this condition. I have tried that before and it made no difference. Perhaps I should try again. Then again, maybe I should screw my courage to the sticking place and finally get ECT.

Time to call Behavioral Health Services.

I can certainly see why a man would not feel like working hard to provide financial support, and even be too depressed and unable to concentrate to do a good job of it, due to a wife who has no interest in affection, sexual relations, and probably comes up short in the Respect & Admiration departments, as well.

But, as several of us have said, there is more to this problem than just sex and money. It seems to me that both of you are comfortable with using this simplistic explanation in order to avoid facing the other, deeper sources of conflict.

Hi Hold,

You keep mentioning this magical 5 year mark with your wife. Have you considered that the way things are today (economically) your children may not move out right after high school graduation?

Its getting increasingly common for children to stay living with their parents until 23-25 (due to education costs, etc), so you may be in for a much longer ride than you imagine.

But the legal landscape is different. The custody and child support standards are different. Today if we divorce, she gets most of the custody and a hefty child support payment on top of spousal support. When both kids are legal adults, custody and support rules are different. I will still support my kids. But out of my pocket. Not with the sheriff requiring me to give the money to my ex-wife.

Moreover, I am somewhat less concerned about some jerk boyfriend of Mrs. Hold's molesting my daughter if she is 21 compared to if she is 15. At 21, either the kid can handle herself or she is just as much at risk from some jerk she meets on her own.

Not to sound rude, Hold, but why would your wife have a boyfriend if she has so little interest in SF? Instead of fantasizing all these scenarios, why not sit down with her and have a polite RH talk?

She would have the bf for his money. If she needed to have sex with him to keep him around, she would. After all, she had plenty of sex with me before we got married. I am not intending that as a character slur. I am no better. I would have a gf for the sex. If I had to buy her jewelry to get her to keep having sex with me, and I could afford it, I would buy the jewelry. I bought my wife a very expensive set of custom made earrings for our first anniversary. I stopped buying her jewlery after she pretty much stopped having sex with me. I am no better than her. We are the same.

Look, this is who I am and this is why I am married to my wife. It is not an accident that we are together. We both thought we married "above our heads". We were both tragically mistaken.

I couldn't believe she was willing to marry me. I figured she had low self esteem because she has bad skin (acne) and because she was a nice Jewish girl from New York who didn't quite fit in when her parents moved to South Carolina when she was in high school and she never recovered from being such an outsider. Of course, I did not know about the rapes back then.

She figured I had low self esteem because I was short and also had bad skin. She thought I was low libido because I had such limited sexual experience. She figured I "talked a big game", but if I really cared about sex as much as I claimed verbally, then I would have found a way to get some. She never realized that those traits which led to my failure at attracting women would carry over and produce failure in my career.

We thought we were 2 zit faces who would each overlook the other's flaws and build a wonderful life together. We did not realize that we were 2 deeply scarred human beings unable to break free of our past hurts, whose needs and shortcomings were perfectly aligned to produce heartbreak.

RH talk is not going to help here. We have had RH talk. She won't even try to overcome her anxieties regarding sex. I won't even try to overcome my anxieties regarding work. There is no "deal" available under which we each work on our weaknesses in order to motivate the other to work on theirs. The problem is not that each of us wants the other to "go first". The problem is that neither of us is willing to address our own problems at all. Even if our partner does "go first".

We are far past the point where Dr. H would say it is time to Call It Quits. Neither of us will do that. As you (Retread) pointed out on another thread, neither of us is willing to do the work to make any other relationship successful. So no point in getting out of this one.

I'm not buying your logic:

Then why doesn't she have sex with her husband to keep him around?
Because she needs more money to do that?

Why doesn't she look for a new man with more money?
Because "..neither of us is willing to do the work to make any other relationship successful"???

Like I said before, it isn't about money and sex.

Here's another mind game for the two of you. Have a RH discussion about your problems other than $$ and SF. Those are off limits. Pretend they don't exist. After all, both of you say they are insignificant amounts anyway. See what other issues you come up with.

Because he is staying whether she provides sex or not.


No, EACH of us says the other person's issue is insignficant. We both say our own issue is paramount.

Well, actually, I agree her issue is a biggie, I am just not willing to do anything to address it. She thinks mine is trivial, so she doesn't feel any need to address it.

The key question is "hey Hold, is there ANYTHING you are willing to do to improve the situation?" No. Which is why I expect the current situation to continue. Maybe some day I will feel differently. But given that I stopped trying 5 years ago, absent catastrophe I don't see any reason to believe I will change any time soon. I am very comfortable in my misery, and I intend to stay here. (Hold puts thumbs in ears and wiggles fingers while sticking his tongue out)

Anyone still think Mrs. Hold is wrong to call me immature?

You are creeping up on the truth;

Money is as big of an ego issue with you as it is with your wife. It's something you, and more importantly others, can measure. You want to believe there is some magic number which will make you feel adequate around...who? Other lawyers? Your family? Neighbors? Wife?

You don't know what that number is. It's different for every one of them. So why try, you tell yourself. But you are trying, doing pretty well, but blaming someone else for not trying harder. It's believable, because there is a germ of truth to it.

And your wife doesn't think her lack of interest in/withholding SF is trivial. She knows what a weapon it is, because you permit her and enable her. The core problem is that you both see sex as something she gives and you receive, a 0/100 relationship. She has attacked your masculinity, neutered you, and in the process, given up her own sexual persona.

When she realizes what she is doing to herself, and the two of you only think of giving love to each other, this problem will be gone. Both of you need to stop having any other kind of sexual relationship. If you can't do it the right way but once in the next year, that's a start, and better than you are doing now.

I know money is a big ego issue with me. Not denying it.

My son turns 16 in the fall. Not only can't I afford to get him a car, I can't afford to add him to our insurance so he can drive our cars. I can't afford to send my kids to camp, where many of their peers go. I won't be able to pay the tuition for my kids to go to college (as both mine and Mrs. Hold's parents paid for ours).

I am living the failure of the American Dream. I have a lower standard of living than my parents. And because they have made many poor investments in recent years, I do not receive current help or have an expectation of a substantial inheritance. Downward mobility is NOT fun. I know I have not been laid off (yet) or lost my house or had to declare bankruptcy, but living less well than your parents is not that far psychologically from living less well than you yourself were once able to do.

My parents provided me with a solid foundation for career success. And I squandered it through laziness and poor choices. I deserve whatever punishment I choose to mete out to myself for those errors. And I choose to punish myself in full measure.

Hold,there might not be a point to my post. However, I think I read that you make somewhere in the 200K area. I'm not quite sure how you're doing so badly when my wife and I make less than half of that together and we do just fine. No we don't have a fancy house, we drive middle-of-the-road cars, etc. But I suppose that for the most part, material objects don't interest me greatly.

My grandfather was a petroleum geologist that made a ton of money. He did not buy me a car or pay for my college tuition. He did purchase a car for my mom when she graduated college. I'm not sure why your kids can't get a job and earn money to purchase a car like most of the kids in the US. My grandfather even owned his own petroleum company and we lived in a trailor house most of the time on 5 acres. We did have a house in the city for a bit but my mom wanted horses so back out to the acres we went.

Wait! You make good money. Sell your house, downsize, pay off bills.

Did you ever read my post about the friend who made way more than you make, lost his CEO job, went to work as a cook, bought the restaurant, moved back up to $100,000, $50,000 + commission = $150,000, $125,000, now $300,000?

I have clients who lost $70,000,000 businesses in this downturn, went from making $2,000,000 a year to selling their Mercedes 500 for a used Accord, and still happy. Starting over at age 70, already making six figures in real estate in this economy.

Go to Texas. Find me a millionaire over 50 who isn't on his second time around.

When I see someone limping around with a cramp, I think of Bo Jackson, playing with a hip replacement, or Lance Armstrong. Get back on your bike, Hold.

BTDT. Don't have any equity in this house. Used the equity in the last house to pay off Mrs. Hold's earlier excess. Already live in the least expensive house in my town. No way to trade down from where I am without leaving the school district. Not doing that to my kids while they are in high school. Not much chance I will be happier. Guaranteed they will be less happy.

Attic fan in our house died. I will be going to Home Depot to buy a replacement tonight. Tomorrow I will be climbing a ladder to the roof to replace the dead fan. S15 will be helping me, so that rules out jumping off. Wish us luck finding the correct circuit breaker to turn off before we start cutting wires!


No thanks. I'll just sit her moping.

I think its a huge mistake to buy cars for boys. I gave my son a Ford Explorer when he turned 16 and he destroyed it by driving it through sand dunes and ditches. I just ended up paying mechanics for stupid things like "sand in the brakes" and a broken axle. When he snuck out when he was 17 and got picked up for drinking, that was the end of that. I took his car away and nailed his bedroom window shut.

Fast forward to age 21 and he asked me if I would co-sign a car loan for him, which I did. He is now 28 and has paid off 3 car loans [same bank] and has perfect credit. If I had let him keep that Ford Explorer, he would have never been motivated to learn to pay for his own car.

Your son can get a part time job and save up for his car if he really wants one. And he can also pay for the car insurance. That will be good for him, hold.

Why doesn't Mrs. Hold get a job and help pay down this debt faster?