Withholding the marital gift

[HeartofMyHome]

You might want to read up on Narcissistic Personality Disorder and see if the diagnostic criteria might match your husband’s behaviors. You will find lots of info by googling it.

I’m surprised your counselor didn’t ask about checking into the possibility of a mental disorder. As others have said, his behavior is not normal.

In my estimation, that would be a good reason for not performing the marital duty. The duty is supposed to be a gift of love from one to the other. You have just as much a right to receive the gift as you have an obligation to give it. God does not ask us to submit to abuse and submitting to someone who is emotionally and mentally abusive is not right for you. God asks us to submit, in love, to each other. Both components need to be met. However, I would check with a priest to be sure.

One word of warning though. If you read up on this and believe your husband may have this disorder, it would be very, very difficult for him to agree to seek counseling due to the nature of the disorder. My mother-in-law has this disorder. When you told of some of the things he has done to you, it immediately reminded me of my MIL.

 

[GraceDK]

You might want to read up on Narcissistic Personality Disorder and see if the diagnostic criteria might match your husband’s behaviors. You will find lots of info by googling it.

I’m surprised your counselor didn’t ask about checking into the possibility of a mental disorder. As others have said, his behavior is not normal.

In my estimation, that would be a good reason for not performing the marital duty. The duty is supposed to be a gift of love from one to the other. You have just as much a right to receive the gift as you have an obligation to give it. God does not ask us to submit to abuse and submitting to someone who is emotionally and mentally abusive is not right for you. God asks us to submit, in love, to each other. Both components need to be met. However, I would check with a priest to be sure.

One word of warning though. If you read up on this and believe your husband may have this disorder, it would be very, very difficult for him to agree to seek counseling due to the nature of the disorder. My mother-in-law has this disorder. When you told of some of the things he has done to you, it immediately reminded me of my MIL.

As far as I can see this thread is very old and the OP wont see your advice…

 

[HeartofMyHome]

oops! Thanks for pointing that out. I saw the date and being February, it didn’t register that it said '11 not '12.

Well, maybe it will still kick out a reply to her email if she has that feature turned on and still has the same address.

 

[Debora123]

(First, please forgive any typos as the keyboard I’m using is crummy and the keys stick, and I’m not of a mind to gp back and fix every mis-spelled word!)

Okay, so my husband has been very self-centered lately, and has even been mocking Catholicism and the Sacraments. He’s not practicing, and has been falling away despite my prayers and wishes for him. He’s been saying things that also hurt me, and when I gently tell him how I feel about the way he’s acting, he pretty much dismisses me and tells me to “grow up”, or something else along those lines.

For instance, I was a little later than usual getting home yesterday evening and he asked why I was “so late” (it was only about 90 minutes, and a reasonable time as far as supper was concerned. I said that I had gone to Confession, and Adoration afterwards while I performed my penance-- since I was there anyway. That brought about a series of remarks regarding “buying my way to Heaven”, crude remarks about priests and young boys in the Confessional (to put it tactfully), etc. I boldly told him to STOP. Well, he had gone ahead and cooked dinner while I was at church… FOR HIMSELF. I made some pasta for my own dinner, but had cooked a bit more than my bowl would hold so there was still a small amount in the pot. I went back for the extra, and he had dumped it without asking me, though I had plainly said that I was going back for “seconds”. I reminded him that I was planning to eat the remainder, but he said, “Well, there was so little left in the pot that I just threw it away”. First, I had SAID that I was going to eat it. Second, it was wasteful. So then he went up into the freezer and pulled out a dessert that he had bought for himself (one of 3 puddings that he bought for himself, with no intention to share… just like the 3 oranges he bought for himself and plainly stated were HIS and that I wasn’t to eat them). This has been typical for him lately. He has also been withholding “general” affection as in hugs, kind words, etc.

Okay, background aside-- last night he crudely asked me for the marital gift. This, after I had laid beside him and tried to chat a bit, only to have him basically lay there in silence even after I asked a question… followed by, “Um, hello? Did you hear what I said?” Then-- he rolled over, only to crudely make his request some minutes later.

I said, “I really don’t feel like I’m in a very giving mood right now, especially since you have, for the past few days, basically ignored me and mocked or cut down the very things that I hold dear to my heart. Perhaps if WE can work out THOSE issues first, then perhaps I’ll be more inclined to WANT to give you ‘the gift’. But if I did so now, it would be ‘grudgingly’, and that’s not the right way to give a gift-- especialy one so precious.”

Now he says that he’s entitled to it. But am I not entitled to a respectful partnership? I’m not permanently denying him, but this can get serious if not reined in NOW. And NO, he will NOT go for counseling! Period, no way, no how.

Advice?

In Christ,

~Spoken4

Oh wow… What a jerk!

I’m not sure what advice to give you, though I do admire you for your patience and gentleness towards him after he treated you so badly. If my husband treated me that way I would start crying on the spot and be very hurt and upset.

 

[Debora123]

First, my DH knows that I go to Confession on Thursdays, I go every Thursday. He knows that I also go to Adoration afterwards. He knows that I go to choir practice on Wednesday evenings-- every Wednesday, same time. Well, except for ~2 weeks ago when we moved it to Tuesday, in anticipation of some severe winter weather that was to hit us (and it did!).

The self-centeredness is something that we’ve dealt with off and on throughout the marriage. He has had issues with this for a while now, sometimes very severely so, like when he basically didn’t want to give up his lunch “meeting” with a co-worker to pick me up from the hospital after I’d had major female surgery-- I’d had a hysto and a large benign tumor removed, and it was a bigger surgery than we first anticipated. But, praise God, I was having a fast recovery and was released a few days earlier than estimated. That threw him for a loop.

Oh, did I mention that the co-worker was his EX-GIRLFRIEND?? Yup, she worked at the same place he did.

He finally did pick me up, but was so resentful that he didn’t want to stop at the pharmacy on the way home so that I could have my medicines filled (pain meds and necessary antibiotics). I had to drive myself to the store, even though I wasn’t supposed to drive for 2 weeks-- but I needed those medicines. I wasn’t supposed to lift anything but I had to move a basket of dirty clothes off the bed so I could lie down. I had to pick junk up out of the living room so I could walk through-- he wouldn’t do it.

Oh, and he had moved his lunch “meeting” to a dinner “meeting”. His rationale? He thought I’d want to be alone so I could rest. Yup, he went out for dinner with his ex-GF the evening that I came home from a hysterectomy.

I cooked my own supper that night. And then he had the bal… er, gumption to ask for “the gift”. Sorry, that was a no-no for 6 weeks post-op. Doctor’s orders! So, could he have… er, a “blue jay” instead, to put it delicately, if you get my drift. He had some nerve asking for that after going out with his EX-GIRLFRIEND when I had just came home from the hospital! “Sorry, dear–I’m not feeling up to it. I just got out of the hospital after major surgery, yanno?” I doubt sincerely that I would have been so snarky had he not “had a date” with his ex-- at a nicer restaurant than WE had ever gone to as a married couple, to boot. Yeah, he told me where they went.

These are typical examples of what I’d had to put up with from him over the years. What do I want him to do? I want him to treat me like a WIFE and a HUMAN BEING, not his personal maid and “hooker”.

I did start into counseling, BTW. When I related that incident, and a few others, to my counselor, he was incredulous that someone could be so callous.

The self-centeredness has cotinued, BTW. And I’ve spent less time at church so as to spend more time working on things at home. But the mocking and near-blasphemy (or outright blasphemy) continues. So do the demands for the gift. I have given it to him, but it’s not pleasant. I try not to be resentful, but I get the feeling thathe’s using me as a masturbation device instead of sharing an intimate and tender act with a loving wife. He finishes, then basically rolls over and goes to sleep. I feel like I gave him a gift, an embrace that is/ was just tossed back into the box and thrown aside until the next itch hits. I literally try to hug him and he just stands there, arms at his sides, not hugging in return. Honestly, I get more response when I hug my cats.

sigh

But, as someone else said here… it’s his right and my duty. I guess I just have to put up with it. I thought intimacy was supposed to be mutual, but I guess I was mistaken. This relationship is all about give-and-take: I give, he takes. Apparently, romance is something that is only for others, and this is my lot, my cross to bear. So be it. I guess I can “spread my legs” once a week, on schedule, and lie there like a dead fish in the same way that he stands there like a scarecrow when I try to hug him. Perhaps then he’ll understand how it feels when he does it to me. I don’t know how else to show or explain why it feels hurtful to me, and how a lack of real intimacy and caring kind of saps the pleasure out of the marital act.

TheRealJuliane, you said it… I try to be a good, Catholic woman. I feel more than a little stuck in marriage with no way out. And counseling is a vent, but no real solution so far. I do have lots of hobbies, but little time to invest in them-- I’m spending a lot of time trying to make some façade of a loving and interactive marriage… with little success

~Spoken4

Is this for REAL??

Spoken, this is SEVERE emotional abuse, and completely unacceptable!