Me (m38) and my wife (f37) have been married for 4 years, together for 13 years. There have been issues in our relationship that have never been resolved and I’m wondering where to go from here. Here comes the trauma dump.
Starting with the cliche, our bedroom is on its last legs. For the first 5-6 years of our relationship, sex was often and passionate. For the past 7-8 years, it’s been on the steady decline to about once every month. After hundreds of rejections, efforts to talk about it, couples and sex-specific therapy, I’m still at a loss. I realized the constant rejection destroyed my self esteem and I find it harder and harder to look at her as an object of my desires (she is and always has been beautiful) rather than someone who represents rejection. I pulled back on trying, and am in this weird place of “I want passion, but I’m still afraid of rejection, and I’ve trained myself to simply not care”. Sex is often awkward. I’ve tried everything she’s asked (as innocuous as coming to bed sooner and complimenting her constantly to as huge as “needing a house and being married to feel safe”), but nothing sticks. Taking her word at face value, she says her self esteem is just too low. I still compliment her often and would never say anything to make her feel bad, but it can be difficult to lay it on as thick as she needs (think pedestal/praise) when she’s come to represent rejection in my mind (and her offhand comments calling us both “fat” or old hurt more than I care to admit – though Covid has added on 15 pounds that I need to lose). I am not one of the deadbeat husbands you read about on Reddit – I overwhelmingly do more for us (trips, dates, etc), our house (chores, cleaning, contractors, projects), our dogs (feeding, walking), and our work lives than her. I buy her occasional gifts, and I non-sexually flirt often. Maybe an important note, but her dad recently cheated on her mom, and this has fed into an already misandrist point of view that men=bad, men=cheaters, wanting sex=bad/shallow which has left discussions around sex making me feel worse like I’m a creep for wanting sex with my wife even after explaining I just want to feel a connection and some passion, and that her recoiling or giving false promises (how about tomorrow instead?) have just left me broken. When we do try to talk about our issues (all issues, not just sex), she tends to break down, stonewall, and say she’s a bad wife and that we should divorce and the conversation goes nowhere. What now makes me even sadder is realizing that the lack of a healthy sex life doesn’t even really phase me anymore now that I’ve largely stopped initiating – like I’ve just become indifferent. Liberating I guess, but sad to realize.
Another topic is money. She is not good with it. We are both decently well paid, but she lives beyond her means due to social media (targeted ads were made for her). We’ve had several large issues over the years (wringing her arm to contribute to her 401k/roth), being unable to contribute to our joint account, and most recently borrowing $10-15k against her 401k which I discovered while doing our taxes. This is such a shitty situation because she says the most important thing to her is her autonomy and feelings of self worth and independence, so forcing her hand in financial matters just mean addressing one problem and creating friction and resentment elsewhere. I don’t want to treat her like a child, but leaving her to her own devices has been ruinous. On that topic, she must have resentment for me, because advice I give is often disregarded until her friends or coworker give her the exact same advice. I joke to her that my opinion doesn’t matter, but it truly does hurt – but this is probably my fault as well for making her feel criticized in this and other matters (I’ll ask her opinion on something, and continue doing research – she has said this makes her feel that I don’t care about her opinion, but I’m an overanalyzer by nature with severe FOMO. By contrast, she’s able to make snap decisions with ease). I was devastated when I learned of her 401k disbursement (like it was a betrayal to our future selves), but our relationship has weathered too many other storms where I just couldn’t bring myself to explain how hurt I was. And the things she buys are the epitome of frivolous ($800 shoes, $600 jackets, $1k purses). I am partially to blame here as an enabler – I’ve routinely paid more into our joint expenses despite making roughly the same $160k/year salaries and I’ve treated her to luxury goods as special gifts as well. We recently sat down and paid off all her credit cards (I forced the issue when I realized she had dipped into interest payment territory and had spent several thousand on interest over the last year) and we set a plan to routinely check in (coming up next month), but I glanced at her CC bills and saw that immediately after we paid off her CC’s, she spent $1.5k on luxury goods. I can already hear her excuse that she was stress/angry shopping about the situation and wanted to feel some control. Note that we have separate accounts and jointly contribute monthly to an account because she wanted to feel autonomous and not beholden to a man/marriage.
Another point is family and children. My family adores her and treats her well. Her mother has treated me awfully. Her mom has straight up said I’m not a fit husband and am a poor excuse for a man. I have never spoken a bad word to her once. We may have “made up”, but I will never have a relationship with her like I always envisioned I would with my MIL as a child (I had an idealistic view of gaining a second loving family). Her mother is difficult to deal with and her family in general are a huge reason for her self esteem issues.
We’re now at a point where we’re discussing kids, and I’m worried. She never wanted kids, but said she’d have them with me since she knows it’s what I want. To this day, I don’t think she “wants” kids, but it’s still an open topic we’re navigating. I have not said so to her, but I’m worried about the type of mother she’ll be. She always joked she’d be an awful mom, but I laughed it off. Thinking more critically – I am concerned. For one thing, I’ve never felt I was my wife’s highest priority. If we had kids, I know the feeling would be worse (I already feel lower than her job, her family, and the dogs). She would be a helicopter mom and my wants would become even more irrelevant. I do not believe being a helicopter parent is healthy for anyone (child, mother, husband/wife). On top of that, she often lacks patience. When dealing with the dogs, she is often irritated and “hates” them when they don’t do what she wants them to do (working on mild reactivity with one dog). She internalizes them not doing what she wants as them spiting her. Her frustration often boils over (never physical, but she’ll simply shut down or become verbally extremely dramatic). With kids, i imagine it’ll be worse. I do not believe it would get to the level of her mother’s verbal abuse (calling her fat, making her feel worthless, constant judging/comparing), but it’s something I’ve thought about. Important to note, we do not plan on having children in the immediate future.
These are some of the largest issues, but there are other problems as well (I often feel unheard, she feels a lack of autonomy, I want to go out, she wants to stay in, etc). Laying it all out here, these problems often feel insurmountable, but the thought of being without her is devastating. I go through depressive spells where my thoughts spiral to the worst, and this is one of them. She has suggested divorce before in the past, and maybe she was right. The first time she said it, it broke me. But she knows herself better than me – maybe I’ve been clinging to a relationship that was DOA (she said she never thought she’d get married). We often have an amazing time together, and she is without question my best friend and favorite person in the world. She’s smart, funny, charming, and beautiful. That’s probably why these issues hurt so much. She doesn’t want to do therapy (too much work, feels like a job, makes her feel like she’s broken, past efforts were not successful). I’m already afraid of the friction during our next financial chat that I prescheduled on the calendar long ago to lessen the confrontational nature.
Maybe I’m just looking to vent – I don’t know. What advice/thoughts/encouragement/success stories does everyone have from an outsiders perspective? My story here is already naturally biased towards me and my perspective, so keep that in mind