Hi all
It's my first time on this site and looking for a real good advice.
I am married with children. We are financially stable, a nice house, life is comfortable, we are very lucky people... maybe.
We dont have a wife-husband relationship anymore. It's more roomate than anything else. We do our things on our own side. What i do does not interest him. What he does is boring me even though i did force myself to get into his hobbies so we could at least share something but no. In the end i could not stand to be the only one again to make an effort. Slowly we are drifting apart. Weird thing is that i am the only one to realise it. Since we have had kids we have been out 3 times together without them. He says that is normal... is it really? The worse that last time we went out we hardly said anything to each other. I really struggled to make conversation and laugh. Something was not there anymore. It was not fun.
My husband is really turning into a kid himself. I dont look up to him anymore and i count a lot on myself for the daily routine with the kids especially. They do as well. I wish also he was a better father that he would teach them how to ride a bicycle or take them for walks and building houses in trees rather than spending almost his entire free time on the xbox. I dont find he is a good role model for the children.
Year after year it is getting worse. When i was ready to follow him anywhere i am now slowly taking control of my own life with my kids in mind.
I have tried to adress the problem with him but he does not listen. The routine is in place and he loves it as it is.
I make an effort to have sex with him once a month at least.... yes.... it has come to that stage but i trully dont enjoy it. Most of the time anyway he sleeps away from me at night because he is more comfortable on his own. I have almost to beg him for him to get into our bed. He is not acting like a husband. He is not acting like a grown up man either. At the beginning he was my best friend and my confident but as this has been going on for quite a few years now, he is nothing anymore. I feel very sad and alone and actually i feel now i would rather be on my own and take control of my own life fully.
Is it the right thing to do? Why has he become so childish? Thanks for your support and advice.

Hi sasie, welcome to MArriage Builders. Your problem is the kind of problem that Marriage Builders successfully turns around every day.

The basic issue is that you and your husband are falling out of love because your marriage has been neglected. You are creating an incompatible marriage by pursuing hobbies that do not the interest the other. That is a win/lose proposition that creates incompatibility.

In order to maintain the romantic love in a marriage, a couple must spend at least 15 hours a week together ALONE, meeting the top 4 intimate emotional needs of affection, conversation, recreational companionship and sexual fulfillment. If a couple don't do that, they fall out of love. It sounds like that is what has happened here.

But you can be in love again if you follow the steps in this program and break the bad marriage habits you have developed.

The program you need to follow can be found in these books:

Lovebusters
His Needs, Her Needs
Five Steps to Romantic Love workbook

If you will follow the program outlined in those books, you will be in love again. Many of us here have been through the program and it really does work.

In the meantime, read through these links:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m3054X2SUOO699/ref=ent_fb_link

How to Create Your Own Plan to Resolve Conflicts and Restore Love to Your Marriage

Caring for Children Means Caring for Each Other

Recreational Companionship

We went through this.

Xbox is gone and we date very frequently. It fixed it. Sometimes a simple solution is actually the best one - is your husband addicted to this video game? It sounds as if he has lost sense of life, glued to that thing.

That is "normal" for marriages where they decided to neglect the marriage; the couple falls out of love. It is the beginning of the end. You are headed to divorce if you stay on this path. And if he thinks it is normal it will happen in his next marriage too. He will fall out of love in that marriage too. And you will fall out of love FASTER in the next marriage because your children will be a huge problem. Step family marriages have an 85% divorce rate for that reason.

A wiser route would be to fall BACK in love with your current spouse because you have children together. IF you have to learn how to fall in love and stay in love you might as well do that with the other parent of your children.

Along with what everyone else has said, you are disrespectful to your husband. Calling him childish and a bad role model is insulting, demeaning, and disrespectful.

It might be a good idea for you to ask if he'd be interested in building a tree house together. If he agrees, set a time. But if he says he doesn't want to then badgering him to do what you want him to do is a selfish demand.

BrainHurts posted this on another thread. Can you listen to it and tell us what you think?

In my marriage, my wife also stopped having sex with me
maybe 3 times a year?
I became very resentful and decided to bury myself in work; I didnt like going to bed with her because she wouldn't have sex.....it was very frustrating.

Your husband may feel the same way