My husband (45) and I (44f) have been together over 20 years. He has never been overly affectionate, but was enough so my needs were being met. My love language is definitely affection where his is more along the lines of affirmation. We went through a very stressful time period with one of our children and were definitely not prioritizing our marriage at that time. The result of that was he does not want to be affectionate with me unless we are drinking with the result being sex. I have discussed this with him on multiple occasions with his response always being the same – "It doesn't feel natural for me to be affectionate towards you; it feels fake to me. I don't know why it's like that now, but I don't really want to be affectionate with you". I'm talking about simple things like a quick hug during the day, he used to hold my hand when we were driving, etc., After one of our discussions around this, he said he would start making more of an effort. That resulted in him walking up to me each morning, kissing my head and saying "Check!" (as in, he completed something on his "to-do" list for the day. That was humiliating and it stopped after a few days. I tried being the one to initiate physical touch outside of sex and he is receptive to a agree. I get the feeling he is just waiting for it to be over, which makes me feel stupid. At this point, the only physical touch we have with each other is once a week when we are drinking and have sex. Other than that he feels like he needs to hold my hand if we are crossing a street, but he promptly drops my hand as soon as we hit the sidewalk. I feel so incredibly sad and lonely, but I don't know how to fix this. He is a wonderful father and provider, but he's not the least bit interested in working on our marriage. This past weekend it came up again and he told me "I will not be putting in anymore effort than I already am". He is a child of divorce and at one point was adamant that divorce was not an option as it would "mess up the kids". I countered that with if you were unhappy and we couldn't fix it, we would get a divorce, even if I have to be the one to initiate it. His response was "You will not know if I'm unhappy – I will hide it". That comment has traumatized me and I no longer no what to believe with him. That coupled with his unwillingness to even try to meet my needs has my head all over the place. Thanks for listening. I'm just so sad about this.


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