Married 12 years and my husband has become more and more completely indifferent in every single aspect of our lives together. I plan all of our family outings and he just goes along on auto pilot or doesn’t go at all. If I ask to have a date night- I have to find the sitter, plan the evening, and I’m expected to put out in some way afterwards. He doesn’t really have any friends or hobbies. I feel like he goes through bouts of depression but he disagrees.
He turns everything into a sex joke or comment about sex. If I laugh (or even feign laughter to avoid a conflict) then later he expects sex since I was “flirting” and if I don’t want to, somehow I’m just being a tease. If I ignore his sexual comments he gets pissy. If I turn him down for sex, he withholds any physical contact with me or attention. When I initiate sex, he will sometimes turn me down just to be spiteful and “show me how it feels”. I have a history of childhood abuse so I have to really feel safe and cared for in order to have any sexual desire.
He shows me no attention or intimacy. I’ve told him my love language is a nice conversation, a back rub, run me a hot bath or have dinner ready for me after a long day of work. It never happens. Sometimes when I’m talking to him, I just stop mid sentence because I realize he isn’t actually listening anyway.
He does nothing around the house to help out. I’m responsible for 100% of dishes, laundry, cleaning up, grocery shopping, feeding everyone. It’s gotten to the point that I hired a cleaning crew to come every other week (that I pay for) because I can’t get any help from him and it was making me lose my mind.
I do the entire morning routine alone and take our kids to school 5 days a week. I work late 2 nights a week and come home to a messy house, nothing to eat for dinner, and an indifferent husband. And then he gets angry at me for being grumpy! I’ve begged him to please just those two nights a week cook dinner and straighten the house up and he did it ONCE after I threatened to leave. He told me I should just eat dinner at work then, even though I already eat breakfast and lunch there since I work such a long shift.
I moved all of my stuff into our spare bedroom and he cried and screamed and said he hates himself and how he is. He promised he would get help and do better. That lasted not even a week, and were right back to square one. And then somehow after that week he has completely forgotten admitting he is so wrong to me.
I have put myself through therapy. We tried marriage counseling briefly during the pandemic but our therapist was only focused on our parenting and not our relationship, so now he is hesitant to try therapy again.
I’m living in our spare room and feel so peaceful in there alone. I’m scared of the next steps as I don’t want to tear our family apart. In writing all of this out, as I have written to him in dozens of letters over the years, I guess I just need some validation and I just needed to get it all out of me. I feel like I’m living with a ghost. How can I get through to him?
13 comments
The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.
I don’t think you can get through to him. It’s time to show him you mean business and leave for real if he is not willing to be an equal partner to you. It’s all great for him when he gets a clean house, dinner on the table, happy and cared for kids, and sex but what about you? What do you get from this relationship?
I’m sorry, I know this is not what you want to hear. But you absolutely deserve better and you will be happier and more peaceful without him than you are with him. My mom felt and did like you now and when she finally divorced my dad and kicked him out of the house, I can really say we finally all could breathe and she was a lot happier.
Think hard what you need and what your goal is and then do what it takes to achieve that. Your kids will be better off too despite you thinking that they need both mommy and daddy around. Trust me, happy and calm parents are better than bickering, resentful spouses who can become useless parents.
Wishing you all the best!
You aren’t tearing your family apart, you are acknowledging the cumulative effect of years of deep loneliness and lack of a partner. Look at what your children see, would you want your daughter to live your life. Imagine her as an adult picking the same partner as your husband because it’s the dynamic she’s familiar with. Do you want more for her? Then you can show her a different life, please, please do so. You’re far better off alone than spending another day with this anchor.
It sounds like you’ve already started handling the situation. And pretty well I might add. He doesn’t want to help you clean? You hired help. He doesn’t want to be romantic and just wants sex? You removed yourself from the martial bed. It’s pretty impressive. You’ve made sure his actions have had consequences. The next step is separation if he doesn’t wake tf up.
I feel for you. It sucks to not have a partner who cares about your feelings and isn’t even trying to fill your cup. But it sounds like you’ve been trying and he hasn’t. There’s only so much you can do before you lose all emotions for him and decide to leave.
I suspect the problem started when you told him you needed certain things to be willing to have sex, such as “nice conversation, a back rub, run me a hot bath or have dinner ready for me after a long day of work”
He’s one of those “spoing, ready in 2 seconds” guys who doesn’t need any of that to be ready.
I would have loved for my wife to have given me specific things to do for her to be willing to have sex during our Dark Years. She never would. Instead I just got the usual “if you appreciated me more I -might- be more willing” Never any explanation about what appreciating her more meant.
Anyway, you told him what you needed, he didn’t supply it, thus he didn’t get sex from you. Common dynamic. It is NOT by any means all of the DeadBedrooms out there but it’s a sizable percentage.
Now, he’s sex-deprived so he feels very rejected and very resentful. Because he’s very resentful he’s not willing to work on anything. And since you are the lower libido spouse you can tolerate the lack of sex better and he knows it which increases his frustration.
Yes absolutely he is depressed and yes he does likely hate himself. Most of this probably is due to the sex deprivation but a lot is also because he is just plain depressed.
He need intensive individual counseling with a psychiatrist along with medication for the depression or he is not going to go anywhere or do anything to fix this. If you want to help him you could tell him to see a psychiatrist for depression and when he comes home from the appointment he will get a nice BJ as a reward. That might get him motivated to go. Otherwise you are going to have to make the appointment for him and drag him there by the hair. It is common for depressed people to not take steps to help themselves because after all they are depressed!
Once he gets a handle on his depression than you will need to get going on marriage counseling. And tell the MC in the beginning what happened with the last MC and that if he breathes a word about your kids you are both standing up and walking out of the office and he can stick his bill where the sun don’t shine. You cannot solve kid problems until both parents are on the same page only an incompetent MC would assume otherwise. Where did your last MC get his degree from a correspondence school?
>How can I get through to him?
Based on what you’ve laid out here it doesn’t seem you can’t. Either accept or continue to separate yourself from him as he sounds exhausting to deal with.
You can’t change who he is. You’re not going to “get through to him”.
And who he is has made this a very dysfunctional and unhealthy marriage. Life is short and it’s up to you to decide if this is the life you want all the way to death or not. Once you make that decision either way, then plan accordingly. Life is so very short.
*He* can change who he is, but despite his crying, he’s not interested in really doing that so far. Sometimes people have to hit rock bottom to truly change and you’ve delivered a flavor of that by separating yourself from him. And yet he still doesn’t change and basically hopes you’ll cave and come right back one of these days.
This is what men do when they’ve been ignored and or encapsulated. It’s likely that everything he ever suggests is shot down. I’d bet he hasn’t always been this way. He’s simply tired of trying because he feels his opinions thoughts concerns and feelings don’t matter and he simply isn’t respected. Doesn’t make it it right or wrong, this is just what a lot of men do in that situation.
I started writing something out but deleted it all. I think you know what the issue is and it looks like you’ve exhausted your resources. I don’t have much advice other than to say that it seems like he doesn’t care about other people, which is why he neglects everyone else’s needs and has no friends. His emotional immaturity and behavior around sex and he gives the bare minimum if you talk about leaving. Promised to get help but then has excuses to not get help. Seems like a manipulationship and that he loves you like he loves his phone- it does things for him. You only plug your phone in the charger every so often so it can keep doing things. Otherwise it’s just a object that can go unnoticed when it’s not serving us.
You are better off married to a rock.
I recently read a couple of good books from Lundy Bandcroft called Why does he do that and Should I stay or should I go. I would highly recommend them if you are a reader. My therapist recommended it to me. Sounds familiar in my marriage. I feel taken for granted and unappreciated when I do 90 % of cooking/ grocery shopping/ parenting 3 kids/ cleaning. Your feelings are valid!
“Sometimes when I’m talking to him, I just stop mid sentence because I realize he isn’t actually listening anyways”
Geez. I’ve been there. That’s a horrible feeling when you know someone isn’t even listening to you
Sounds like he makes your life worse, not better. You only get one life, do you want to spend it with this jerk?