My h and I have been through a marriage full of neglect. I have been left by him a couple of times and he has come back, he complains about my anger.

When he came back, the first time 9 yrs ago he came back almost emotionless this isn't how he used to be. He had resumed his old habits of watching porn and lying and hadn't acted very interest in a sexual relationship with me. This was crushing me, to the point I said no more lies I'd rather be a part of that rather than being lied to because it was destroying our love. That was 9 yrs ago.

I was also experiencing problems with him wanting me sexually and during that time of frustration I made a comment that I wasn't getting satisfied. He has now since then (9 yrs) has dwindled so much that it's almost non-existent. After a year of reconciliation he left me again, claiming we just weren't working out again he wasn't ready to come back in the first place. So again we're seperated for 3 months only to get back together and try to rebuild what was broken down.

Throughout this he hasn't been very sexual with me at all he turns me down a lot. I've cried and begged him to love me and to show me love, throughout the years he's also let the affection dwindle as well. He says he don't trust me to communicate with me out of feat I'd get mad but he's only tried a few times.

Fastforward...we've now been married 11 yrs and the story has never changed it's always stayed the same. He says he is too tired, he just isn't interested in sex with me because we aren't friends. He says he don't feel close to me because I am so angry all the time. I'm angry all the time because he doesn't respond to me when I am hurting, he is neglecting my needs and our marriage. I can talk to him and be crying about the pain and he makes comments like you can talk for 4 hrs, and end it like that with no hope no caring.

Well now he is complaining that there is no peace. He needs peace in his life and if peace is paying child support then that is what he will do.
I begged him for hope, he told me that I have to accept him the way he is, he doesn't necessarily like how he is but I have to accept him. He will always try, and the told me he has never stopped trying, yet nothing has ever changed in 9 yrs of this. I told him I can't accept it, that he said he was trying for so many years with no change and it is huring me. I told him I didn't think he loved me enough to care about the pain that I am going through. He said then you have a choice then don't you? I said I guess I do...so I given the choice to accept it or to seek divorce.

Is this crazy? Why won't he be willing to change his ways if he don't even agree with them and he knows it is starving our marriage to death. Does any man or woman understand any of this?

Please if you can give me some insight...Thanks.

I'm bumping this because I desperately need some advice. This is the 2nd post I've put here and not one reply, please reply and give me some insight.

Hi Toni, sorry to see you go through this, from a guys point of view, from the beginning of your marriage was a rocky road with his walking out and also the Porn....I would say based on what you said he definitly has a emotional wall up concerning his feelings and emotions....The unfilled sexual experience on your part is natural when your other emotional needs aren't otherwise to a woman its just a sex act and the man walks away fulfilled and the woman unfulfilled and empty....I know he has issues to deal with but I'm curious?? He said you're always angry?? I was just curious if you are angry about anything outside of your husband about any of your past personal issues or is all this anger he talks about toward him for his actions done to you as his loving wife? not trying get in your business just curious.....I don't know all the story...

If anger is what pushes him away, but his neglect push you away....somewhere somebody is going to have to give in....and meet the emotional need..

Thankyou soooo much for posting,
As far as the anger issues I am angry because for years I have gone with almost all of my emotional needs completely neglected. I go through cycles, anger, trying to make it work, then withdraw. I have tried desperately to be loved by this man that I married and not be so hurt and neglected all the time.
As far as the sex...he doesn't want sex from me, he turns me down all the time to the point that I don't or rarely ask for it anymore. Sex has become such a issue of hurt in my life that I have begun to dislike it. I still feel sexual but when I think of it with him it reminds me of years of rejection and pain. It's easier for me not to want it at all. He told me he hates sex because we're not friends, and I told him we're not friends because the marriage or friendship had not been maintained.

I asked him today if he was sexually attracted to me and he told me he couldn't be sexually attracted to anyone. He kept referring to a few months ago as loved, so I asked him if he still loved me and he told me, he doesn't love me enough to keep going through these cycles. Although he hasn't done anything through the years to change it, he's not taken the opportunities to make things better when they were given.

He told me he didn't want to talk to me anymore, he told me we need a break from it all. I have been left by him before and that hit a cord in me that he said that. We've been in a withdrawal state for so long and going through these stages for so long that I think we've spent plenty time apart. I went through a bad depression over all of this for a year past and I did give up on us but I didn't leave I was very withdrawn and when I finally woke up he was like this and telling me he didn't love me. That hardest thing to take is I am the one who has always fought for us and now he is unwilling to take me when I am open and willing to be in the marriage. I fought for him for 9 yrs with no change. Go figure.

Is this familiar? Yeah, a lot of it sounds familiar. Can I give you helpful insights? I don't know. The information you have provided so far can be interpreted a lot of different ways, and I can't get inside your husband's head.

This much is clear: your relationship is suffering from a negative feedback loop. Each of you have so many memories and expectations of hurt that you cannot just be in the moment with each other. Personally, I incline to the belief that a separation is a useful tool in such situations - but only if you retain limited interaction in controlled circumstances that allow each of you to be protected. The assistance of a counselor can be enormously beneficial in this kind of situation, since the counselor can provide communication exercises and guide the dialog while serving as a neutral interpreter and buffer.

Toni, it's difficult to tell (since the chronology is unclear), but it sounds to me as if your husband may not really be saying that he is unwilling to "be in" your marriage. You say he claims (claimed?) that he never stopped trying, that he always will try, and that "he doesn't necessarily like how he is". That's not the message of a man who doesn't care; it's the message of a man who is at his wit's end and sees no cause for hope.

Well, as I told you before, if you keep trying and nothing changes, than you're trying the wrong thing(s). That principle would seem to apply to your husband here. Unfortunately, there is more than one reason why he might have tried the wrong thing. Maybe he just doesn't know the right thing to do, and someone needs to show him. Maybe he does know the right thing to do, but he is either too selfish or too scared to do it, and so he is just holding onto the illusion that he has really tried to make the marriage work. Or maybe he already has tried to do the right thing, but it didn't work because you didn't respond appropriately. (For whatever reason. Sometimes we react - or don't react - to something because we are too caught up in unrelated issues of our own.) In that case he might have given up on the right thing prematurely.

It's impossible for me to say.

I can say this: the specific things you have reported yourself as saying during your conversations with your husband about your marriage were destructive rather than helpful. I suspect that you did not hear what he was really trying to say. And I suspect that he knew it.

Of course, I am seeing a lot of this through the eyes of my own experience, with all the risk of distortion that that entails. I loved my wife. Nothing tore me up inside more than the knowledge (or belief) that something I did had caused her pain; and as time went on, it eventually seemed to me that my mere presence - even my very existence - was causing her pain. When I tried to talk with her, she ended up hurt and I ended up bewildered, since somehow she even heard my attempts to say something encouraging as some kind of attack or rejection or...I don't know what she thought I was trying to say.

A recipe for withdrawal and depression? You bet. I begged her to tell me what specifically she wanted from me. She couldn't. I figured out later - too late, as it turned out - that she couldn't tell me what she wanted because she didn't really know what she wanted (other than to feel loved and accepted), and that most of what was going on inside her wasn't about me at all!

As you might be able to tell from this brief description of where I'm coming from, I have a tendency to switch roles back and forth when comparing your history with mine. Sometimes I can relate more with to your husband (as you have described him), and sometimes I can relate more to you.

But I can sure as he** relate to the pain.

I think your husband is right when he says you need to accept him the way he is. I don't think that means you should accept the idea that he is incapable of change. But as long as you demand more of him right now than he can give right now, there's not much reason for hope.

I think if you want to see some progress, you might benefit from turning your focus away from your unmet needs and instead investigating what you can do to help your husband get where he needs to be. (And I'm not talking about you trying to meet his needs. At this point, he is not likely to want that, because he doesn't think he can trust you enough.) He has no peace, he says. OK, what does he think will give him peace? He isn't happy with the way he is, he says. OK, what kind of a man does he want to be?

As for the sex thing, I'm not sure what EverlastingCompassion was trying to say, but I can tell you that I don't think I would be "fulfilled" by a sex act without an intimate connection. Given a choice between "empty" sex and masturbating to porn, I would choose the latter. So again, I can't tell you what's going on in your husband's head. Maybe his sexual withdrawal is about him asserting control over your relationship. Or maybe it's about a deep-seated fear of intimacy possibly going back even before your relationship ever began. But maybe it's just about him having the attitude that's usually attributed to women, of not wanting to feel like he's being used for sex.

I don't know, Toni. The two of you have got to break the cycle. But I think it would be a real shame if you broke everything else - including yourselves - in the process.

It sounds like he's pretty walled in almost like he's in a cave......For a guy to turn down sex continually, his mind is pretty occupied with something, I wouldn't take his behavior as the norm because its not...Just because he turned you down don't mean you're ugly or unattractive....don't be so hard on yourself through his rejection, the rejection may not not have anything to do with you other than his complaint of your anger in which you will have to resolve no matter what.....

Have you guys ever sat down and you asked him what was he seeking in a relationship and what would make him happy in the marriage?.....I know what you would like to make you happy, but has he said what would make him happy??

He said you guys are not friends, what does he think a frend is, I would have him describe it...

Toni_29again,

You say that your H complains about your anger, but you don't elaborate.

You want to fix your marriage. LISTEN TO YOUR H. (sorry to shout). He says that your anger is a problem. Hold off for a little while on fixing your H and fix yourself. There are a number of books on anger management. There are psychologists who specialize in it. There are plenty of resources out there - and I think it is one of the areas in which people have the most success.

I'm guessing that you had a pretty rough childhood, but that may not be the case - just a guess on my part.

Have you talked to your H about how he feels when you are angry? Listen to him.

-AD

<small>[ March 24, 2003, 05:48 PM: Message edited by: AD ]</small>

My H complained about my anger too. I learned thru counseling that my anger was just hiding my frustration and hurt in the marriage. I also learned that he was projecting his anger onto me, that way he "wouldn't be angry". He projected many of his own emotions onto me, and it severely damaged our relationship.

My anger level has subsided 90% since he moved out. His seems to be building. He no longer can blame me for things. I feel so relieved. I've read many of the books on anger management and now work on keeping it in check. But anger covers for many emotions you are probably not willing to accept. Good Luck. I suggest counseling. Work on yourself, you are the only one you can change. It may just take a change in the way you approach your H. The MB concepts are extremely helpful here. Start with avoiding LB's.

My h doesn't say I am an angry person but he says I am often angry with him which is true. He has't been in much of the marriage, I know for a fact that the marriage is not in his top priorities because he always has an excuse to not participate.

I think it may be over at this point anyway. He told me that he doesn't love me enough to deal with the cycles anymore. I asked him if he was sexually attracted to me and he said no, he doesn't think he can be sexually attracted to anyone.

I told him that all the damage he's done to our marriage concerning sex, and I didn't know how I could be with that way anymore...he shrugged his shoulders like "oh, well".

I went into a withdraw for about a year and no it wasn't pleasant to live with me but in that time he found out he could be very ill and I looked into myself and found that I did love him and stood beside him at every doctor appt. and 10 hrs the day he had surgery. This is the thanks I get for one month ago looking into my heart, after so much pain and hearing him tell me he doesn't love me enough to go through this anymore. It's almost funny because he didn't go through it the first time and that was the problem.

I'm not angry with my children, as a matter of fact I probably dicipline them too little, so I know the anger is hurt and rejection from the man that I continued to be in love with for years without feeling that he loved me back. I always felt he didn't love me but man it sure hurt to hear that come out of his mouth. Finally his actions toward him being happy in the marriage, being attracted to me, and loving me are finally matching his actions. It's almost a relief to not feel crazy for once in the relationship, but it hurts.

Thanks you all for posting...Take Care, Toni

Tony,

If your anger is driving your H away, then it doesn't matter why you are angry - as long as you manage that anger in a way which does not destroy your H's love for you. There's nothing wrong with being angry - the issue is how you handle it.

If you say that you will stop being angry (and driving your H away with anger) when your H treats you the way you want to be treated, then you will certainly drive him away. I wouldn't blame him from withdrawing from you. Likewise, I wouldn't blame him for answering honestly when you ask him what he feels about you. If you don't know how he feels, you can't make adjustments. He doesn't have a duty to feel love for you, only to treat you in a loving way even if he doesn't feel like it - which is hard to do.

-AD

Hi Toni29
Many things you describe are very familiar, so I thought I'd chime in here. If I were to choose one word to describe my H, it would be "non-participant." He withholds intimacy, as yours seems to also. My H also insists that I accept him just the way he is. I freely admit that I did try to change him. Face it, a marriage without sex and intimacy isn't normal. Feeling a need for SF and having the spouse withhold it... it is the single most painful aspect of my marriage. For a long time, I thought I could accept his preference. Part of me went into a coma. I thought it was the right way to deal with the pain of his rejection. The problem with that route was other aspects of me were also sinking into decline. Things like self esteem, self confidence, sense of self worth.

I can tell you what books I read that ultimately gave me the courage to separate. Books on verbal abuse by Patricia Evans, and Living with the Passive Agressive Man by Wetzler. Both these authors speak to the topic of withholding. It is a particularly cruel and painful form of abuse. Do not underestimate its power to cause damage to your soul. If I wanted to be celibate, I never would have married! I wanted a safe harbor in this world. Instead, I find it necessary to protect myself from my H emotionally. Boundaries by Townsend and Cloud also ranks in my top 5 most helpful books.

My H is an extraordinary man in many ways. I knew from day 1 that he had issues from Vietnam. As he approached 50, things seemed to get worse. As the downward spiral progressed, I found MB, drirene.com (verbal abuse site), verbalabuse.com, a site on passive aggressive behavior, plus one year of counselling. At first, I thought his untreated ptsd was the root cause of problems. After learning about passive aggression, well, perhaps he has a personality disorder too. I think maybe the final straw in me saying "ok, I give up" was numerous messages on the PA board describing H's who would refuse (or very reluctantly) come to the W's aid in times of medical emergencies. I could just see myself with a injury or illness that rendered me bedridden. Truly, I believe my H would be in the garden, running up a $200 water bill while I'm inside suffering from dehydration. There is something seriously wrong with this man, which I'm willing to accept. What I can't accept is blame for everything that isn't right while he denies his own contributions to the failure of this marriage. He could get counselling at the veteran center, and to date he refuses. They're dangerous and evil people there, doncha know. He seems bent on self destruction. I can't stop him, and I can't keep both of us afloat.

I know the recipe for peace when I am with my H. We get along fine as long as I have no expectations, no requests, and no complaints. I want something more. I tried settling for less. My lifeforce nearly drained dry.

t29, it is my sincere hope that your H is reachable. At the minimum, it sounds like he's depressed. More than likely, he has some kind of physiological reason underlying his behavior. If he's willing to be evaluated, diagnosed and treated, he'll be light years ahead of my H. For me, this was my bottom line: I expect my H to exercise self care. His adamant refusal to seek the treatment he needs created conditions I could no longer tolerate. According to a counsellor at the veteran center, things get worse as the guys hit their 50s. Military trauma typically occurs in the early 20s. They develop coping mechanisms to sort of keep things underground, to keep the bad things out. That may work to some degree in their 30s and 40s, but come 50, that mechanism starts to break down. To keep out the bad things, the good things need to be kept out too. I find this to be true with my H. I see him living in the middle of a briarpatch, not letting anyone near. I can't imagine that he's a happy camper in there, but there's no apparent way in. Only he can choose to climb his way out. I was in a dark place of my own. Still am sometimes. I choose to follow the light. I hoped he would follow suit. Didn't work out that way and there's not one dern thing I can do about HIS choices. Life is good and getting better all the time. Dont' settle for less than you deserve t29.

thankyou lonely...I needed to see this post and know that I am not the only one going through this. My h is just now hitting 33, this has beena persistent problem for 8 yrs. It all started with a job loss and then he didn't find a job as quickly as he'd hoped with a baby and wife in tow he fell apart and had a nervous breakdown or something. He then left me but he never truly came back only in body but he's been almost emotionless since...again 8 or 9 yrs ago.

I know exactly what you're saying about the health issues. I hurt my back pretty dramatically my pain was worse then labor. I couldn't sit, lay or walk, and nothing I did ever made me more comfortable. I was medicating with pain killers that only a short time later the pain would become greater than. I was in the emergency room 6 times in one year, and to doctor after doctor getting ct scans, and ultrasounds. My h was not there for me, I didn't know what was wrong with me and he didn't hold me when I cried for fear of dying, the pain wrapped around my side as well and at one point they thought it was my liver. He took me to the E.R. but he would sit there comfortable in chair and read sports mags instead of helping me with some form or conversation to get my mind off of things. I cleaned the house what little I could in that year, he didn't cook, either I did or he'd bring home fast food. It was horrible. I would lay in one spot at times and he would leave the room and not come back to check on me for hours. So I do know what I am in store for if I end up paralyzed to bed ridden. It's sad.

I have been very depressed in the last couple of years. I thought I could beat it again but this time it's gone on too long I plan to go to the doctors and get help. My h told me that he isn't even sexually attracted to me and that hurt me badly although I already felt it it did hurt to hear. I've been at my moms these past few days and when we talk on the phone I'm not sure what to say or how to act when I return. I can't be flirty or playful...I don't know how to be anymore. I've grown used to being his roomate, and until things get better and fall into place that is all I can hope for right now.

As far as me being told that I can't and shouldn't accept my h to love me...I appreciate all advice but I also would like to add that there are many many times that I am very good to him. As I said I don't feel I am an angry person, but I am angry with the way I have been living these past several years and rightly so. Yes you are correct I do need to learn to express it in better ways, but all this has 2 sides, I have gotten better only to live like roomates or it be short lived because my marriage is not on his top priority list. It hurts, it is horrible feeling to love so much and not feel loved back or like you've carried the whole relationship on your back. So..for me to expect him to love me, hell yes I do I married for love and "I" am the one who tried hard as hell to carry it on my back ALONE.

I love my h that is why I am here, do I want to feel angry toward him? No, but at the same time I have no outlet for any of the emotions that I have because I am not being responded to. He's finally agreed to some counseling and I am grateful for that but I am very skeptic that number one he'll do it and number two that he'll want to make our marriage work enough to face his problems, but I am here and I will give it another shot.

Thanks again...Take Care Toni

Your H is very young to be having such lack of interest in SF. I benefitted tremendously from a year of counselling. My H typically deals with problems by pretending they don't exist, so counselling didn't have as much impact on him as it could have. I think it was here in this forum, someone said "if only one person is participating in a marriage, then one of you is unnecessary." I wish you the very best in counselling. I would encourage you, however, to keep an eagle eye on your H's motivation for going. If he wants to acknowledge his issues and work on them, a good counsellor can get him unstuck, so to speak. OTOH, if he's just trying to placate you with attendance at counselling, it will just be a waste of time, money, and part of your heart if he has no intention of trying to improve his own life and your marriage.

Your description of how he responded during your time of medical emergencies is alarming. Here's a link to the site on passive aggressive personality disorder (PAPD)
http://www.passiveaggressive.homestead.com/
I'll cross my fingers and hope that your H isn't PA.