“Silent marriage crisis” advice needed

  • Thread starter Thread starter Dolores
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
I understand Vicki, I was raised in an abusive marriage that’s why I didn’t go into one myself and had such high expectations of my own. Abuse is not a standard, I’m deeply sorry that you experienced that!

I realize that from that perspective, these are the equivalent of “1st world problems” in a marriage. But for me, a standard marriage is a solid, loving one. And seeing as both of us are practicing Catholics with a strong faith, I would dare to expect it to be even an exceptional one…which it was, at times, and I continue to hope that it will be once again.
 
Last edited:
To those who have addressed the extensive work hours issue. Honestly, that is not what bothers me. I know that his career is taxing, I also know it is more than a career, it is a calling, for him. When all the children were small, it wreaked havoc in our family, now that they’re older, we have a nice groove and I do my best to work our schedule around dad’s home-time,

I am MUCH more bothered and put-off by his time at home than his time away. I can’t stand to see how not invested he is in the family, though he claims the opposite. According to him , he sacrificed his career for us I.e he could’ve been much further along if he had travelled and spent more time developing his network, I am not contesting that. But the time he spends at home, a lot of it, is still about his career, ideas, issues.

But, as I was saying, my issue is not him working long hours, being away, needing work advice. My issue is that I am completely disconnected emotionally. Due to this, I cannot stand the thought of being intimate. So my original question leads back to that. Do I just pretend and go along in this aspect of our marriage hoping eventually everything will look up again or do I keep thanking the Lord for the many long nights he has to put in for work that spare me the dilemma (usually)?
 
Last edited:
Your first train of thought is on the right tracks :). He is honestly not deliberate enough about our relationship to create the second scenario,

He is very resistant to change when it comes to personal relationships and he generally isn’t invested in them. He has friends and relatives whose single line of communication is me. We’ve talked about this, he acknowledges it. The next day he makes a round of calls or sends messages and then he’s good for another half the year.
He is not ill intending, his mind is just constantly elsewhere. I try to learn how to live with that reality but inside I can feel the frustration and numbness taking over and of course, it ends up manifesting itself very often.
 
Thank you for sharing your experience Bluemantle.
I can’t even bear the thought of this lasting a few months, let alone years.

I am blessed in that, as you say, I have hobbies and passions and community involvement and my husband is very involved in our community projects so that really gives us something to keep us together. More than just the kids, at home, I really think that our common projects have saved us from the worst and it is what gives me hope that all of this will be surmounted in due time.

Having a mission together is wonderful and gets us out of our lull, at least temporarily.
Even for you, I would recommend picking up something online, if your community doesn’t offer much, would moving be an option? To me, anything is worth it for the marriage, moving, changing jobs, readjusting life.

It hurts when our husbands are dismissive of our feelings but I guess that pushes us to do things, good hopefully, that we wouldn’t do otherwise.

Have you read Matthew Kelly’s : 9 steps to happiness? That book might give you some ideas. But ultimately, your husband, just like mine, has to realize that this is also a about him. They’re not just personal issues that you need to figure out on your own. Our emotional well-being is closely tied to the state of our marriage. Perhaps his problem as well as DHs is that they don’t necessarily understand what role they play in it…

Let’s pray for each other and hold on to the hope that it’s never too late for a resolve. God bless!
 
Yes, “fake it until you make it” with regard to intimacy. It’s difficult to see how you can achieve emotional closeness if you’re pushing your husband away. Try not to approach it as a tiresome duty, but as a great bonding opportunity.
 
Have you tried praying together? I think that expressing what you are thankful for and worried about on a nightly basis would certainly improve your emotional intimacy. Anyway, that’s what the people on Catholic radio are always suggesting.
 
When we were going though a very bad point, a good priest who was counseling us said that one thing that amazes him as a celibate priest is how two people can intimately share their bodies with each other and never pray together aside from a rushed “blessusolordandthesethygifts…” before meals. He gave us the homework of praying Nightprayer from LOTH every night before bed.
 
Last edited:
It’s really hard. In our over-sexualized society, we have sexual intimacy thrown in our faces from a very young age, but very few people see an example of how to be emotionally intimate with someone.
 
I’m not really sure “fake it til you make it” is a very good long term strategy. I think it can be decent advice if things are generally good but you have times where you’re not in the mood but you do this for the sake of your partner.

It seems that otherwise though, rather than feeling bonded to your husband, one would come away feeling even more empty and emotionally disconnected because you are going through the motions without any emotional connection. If you make it a long-term pattern, it could even be the start of developing an aversion to it.

We’ve all heard that men feel more emotionally bonded by sex but women need that bond first to make sex enjoyable. Sometimes, for women, just having sex isn’t enough to create that bond and "fake it’ never really leads to “make it” in the emotional realm. Maybe they can muster a physical response but that doesn’t always translate to the emotional. It also lends to the husband thinking everything is A-OK when things are very, very wrong.
 
  1. I think it’s untrue and doing a disservice to women to suggest that sex doesn’t help them to bond, especially when (as here) the husband doesn’t seem to be a vicious brute. Women can go from “not in the mood” to enjoying sex, and they do have sexual desire (although of course tiredness, illness, stress, the reproductive cycle, and medications can affect libido).
  2. It’s easier to bring up points of dissatisfaction when you’re both in a good mood, or at least not on edge and cranky. If the OP wants to have a chat with her husband about her dissatisfaction with him, behaving lovingly toward him is going to help him listen better than giving him the ol’ cold shoulder. And I do think that sex will help her relaxation, as well as his, allowing her to frame her issues in a more positive manner.
  3. The OP has mentioned that sex in her marriage has been good. I don’t believe that this will be a 20-years-of-thinking-of-England thing.
I stand by my advice–keep the bedroom warm.
 
  • I never said sex doesn’t help women bond. If things are good outside the bedroom, sex can certainly strengthen and solidify that bond, but if there’s a problem where she is feeling little or nothing to begin with, she can come away feeling just as empty or even more empty than before. It can feel like a lie to do something so personal and intimate when you feel disconnected outside the bedroom.
  • It’s true that women can go from not in the mood to enjoying sex. Even when the emotional bond isn’t there, she can often muster a physical response and experience but when the sex is over, the feeling of the emotional bond is still not there or dissipates quickly as you return to the day to day.
  • It’s true that it’s easier to bring up points of dissatisfaction when you’re both in a good mood…if having sex has put you in a good mood. If you’ve just had mechanical duty sex, with or without “O” or you’ve found that despite faking it you didn’t make it (emotionally), it’s still going to be difficult to have that conversation.
  • I never said she should give him the cold shoulder. I said “fake it til you make it” is not a good long term strategy." I do think that if the couple is talking and working on resolving the issue outside the bedroom, then “fake it til you make it,” can be a good way to keep the momentum of good will going in working out the problem. If the OP can’t even broach the subject that there is something wrong because her husband gets exasperated, points out that she should be grateful because “xyz boxes are checked off” and that ends the conversation, then over the long haul “faking it til you make it” can begin to be emotionally damaging to her, even if he’s kept from sexual frustration and crankiness.
  • If she finds getting intimate very difficult, she could use the next request as a way to ask for a rain check and then tell her husband how she is feeling emotionally numb or disconnected and that he needs to hear her and stop telling her why she shouldn’t feel the way she does. It could lead to a more productive conversation. Sometimes that might be better than bringing it up afterwards because at that time, it could make it easier for him to blow it off as not such a big deal because “How bad could it be if we just had sex?”
 
Last edited:
Dolores said:
I’m so detached emotionally I just can’t bring myself to be physically interested, though that part of the marriage used to be strong until the past few months.
Click to expand...
I think you ought to rule ought medical issues on your side.

Get to your primary doctor and explain your feelings and ask for a full work up. There might be something biological going on with you–for example, some kind of nutritional deficiency. My middle child, for example, felt SAD and normal things gave him no pleasure, and it turned out that he was Vitamin D deficient. There are a number of deficiencies that produce emotional results.
 
How long has it been since you and your husband took a relaxing trip with just the two of you? I am talking about a trip with no kids, no work obligations, no crowded/noisy hotels, no busy sight-seeing schedules, and no stressful travel arrangements. My wife and I have found that trips like this are a good way to reset and refresh our relationship, including our physical relationship. Do you live within half a day’s drive of a mountainous or scenic region, where you can rent a nice cabin that is a bit off the beaten path?

If you haven’t done anything like this in a while, then I would recommend planning a trip like this soon. Don’t plan lots of sight-seeing or other boxes to check. And don’t worry about whether you go to any great restaurants. Just rent a cabin, a chalet, or perhaps even a fancy hotel room (if the hotel is quiet and relaxing and has a nice view), and stay there most of the day, each day of your trip. You can build a fire in the fireplace, watch a movie, read, sit in the hot tub or jacuzzi, sit on the deck and enjoy the view, have a massage therapist come and give you both massages – basically just relax and be with each other. It doesn’t have to be a long trip – two to three nights is great. I can’t promise that a trip like this will solve your problems, but my wife and I find trips like this helpful, because they give us a time with no distractions when we can just focus on being together and relaxing together.
 
Last edited:
Thank you everyone. Your responses have given me a lot to think about in this past little while.
My husband is back and the dryness is still suffocating me.
We go on vacations alone, biologically, there is no issue, it is just that it feels like everything else matters except me.

I’ve started reading the Seven Levels of Intimacy and it really answered a lot of my questions. Ultimately, my husband thinks he knows me and therefore never bothers to “rediscover” me.

There have been so many transitions in my life in these past months but he doesn’t see or enquirer or even seem interested to hear about them.

I hope we will get to read the book together and solve our issues in due time. Thank you once again for all the sound advice.
In the meantime , I realized I can’t fake it till I make it. It wouldn’t help anything and I simply can’t lie to myself or to him to that extent. So this will hopefully push us into seeking a solution sooner rather than later.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top