to try to find a male view on this?

[jbcbj]

I am posting here because I know this gets more traffic than anywhere else, and also because I know I will get genuine points of view - which is what I want right now. I have support at home, but of course they are all on my side and I really want some impartial comments (if possible, from any male MNers as well?)

I will try to be as factual and accurate as I can rather than biased in my own direction. Tricky though...

I always believed that DH and I were meant to be together, but about 6 weeks ago he told me that he was no longer sure that he loved me any more. He likes me, cares for me and fancies me but it's "the love thing" (I quote him). He felt that our marriage has been cold for the last 18 months - for me, this was a total shock as it was the first I knew of it.

As background, we have been married for 3 1/2 years, together for 5, have a 2.2 year old dd and a 3 month old ds. He felt that my style of parenting was too child-centred (I carry them in slings, keep them in our room - although not full-time co-sleep - and full-term breastfeed). He felt that I no longer loved him and this chipped away at his love for me until he realised that it had gone. I have tried to reassure him that I love him more than anything, and that I was struggling with a young child, return to work, difficulties and chronic pain breastfeeding and then a second - not easy - pregnancy and birth.

He felt that intimacy had gone (we had had sex a few times but he has a very high sex drive) - from my pov we couldn't be physical without the pressure to have sex, so I think subconsciously I avoided it. We have always done a lot of cuddling etc though, and I have always told him I loved him every day.

Since he told me, we have been going to Relate and trying to be more physical but he says that "the love thing" is not coming back - I am worried that he is expecting to wake up one morning to find it suddenly reappeared, or that he is not allowing himself to feel it. I don't know - which is why I would like other viewpoints.

I am aware that it is difficult to know the whole story (even I don't!) and therefore difficult to pass judgment, but is it common to assume that a wife in a fug of exhaustion and discomfort no longer loves you? And for it to then stop you loving her? Has anyone else been through this and did they get the feelings back - how?

My DH is a lovely, warm, funny man but seems very angry - it's like treading on eggshells. He can't tell me that he wants our marriage to continue, or that he doesn't. His actions say one thing and his words another - we still get on very very well and he treats me really well, but calls me cold. I am also a nice person, and also warm....I just tend to retreat when things get hard and put effort into not letting it show. We know that communication is an issue, and are working on that, but "the love thing" is the real sticking point - apparently this has happened in two previous relationships and they did not last. I feel very much that he blames me, though.

If anyone can shed light on where he is coming from to help me understand and try to fix this I would be so grateful.

i have said that if this marriage ends (god forbid; i just can't contemplate that) it has to be his decision - so if he's setting up a fail so be it. i can only do as much as i can to stop that happening - for me it's not an option. he hasn't left yet, and home-life is not horrible so there's hope.

techlovingdad - any suggestions as to how he can get over it?!!! i am so frustrated - i just want to do something to help him!

freudianslipper - that's a lovely thing to say, thank you.

Man here.

It is really easy to feel shut out and, therefore, childish and selfish in the first few months - woman is exhausted, man less so (cue 9pm to bed for her, 2am to bed for me because why bother going earlier?); breastfeeding (and, of course, labour) = something we can't do or play a part in, so can get jealous of child-mother bond; obviously a young baby and the recovery from birth cramps one's style in the sex department; and it's also easy to feel as if one's wife is a bit condescending and "I know best" when it comes to the care of the child, even though this is theoretically bollocks.

Having said all that ... Childish man, selfish man, resentful man, tick, tick, tick. Relate? Not in love any more? Fucking hell!

any help?

It just worries me that he's telling you all these things wrong with the relationship but not making any suggestions as to how it can be remedied, or what part he feels he can play in getting things back on track.

Essentially he's just saying it's rubbish and it's your fault because you spend too much time with the kids.

I mean, WTF? What are you supposed to do with that information? Pay less attention to the DCs? Suddenly 'be less tired' without any additional support from him? This is what I mean when I say he is setting you up to fail.

If he's not having an affair (and I would strongly urge you to verify that he isn't - check phone bills, etc), then he is being a massively, selfish, entitled, twunt.

Mostly, when a man says 'I love you but I'm not in love with you' what he means is 'I want you to carry on cooking, cleaning and looking after the children but I intend to have sex with other women and I expect you to put up with it. After all, I've told you that I love you, haven't I?'
Just as abusive men show their true colours after the woman becomes pregnant, selfish men show theirs when the DC arrive. Before you had a baby, you didn't actually realise that your relationship was based around the man getting his needs met first and foremost. You know, it just didn';t seem worth the effort to argue over what to eat, what film to see, whatever - and women are after all still under some pressure to see themselves as appendages to men and men as gods who must be worshipped or at least the 'senior' partner in the relationship.

What you do with this cock is stay calm and polite while you do the necessary research about what would happen if you separate (you are likely to be the one to keep the family home because it's the DC's home). Then you sit him down and say, you have (eg) a month to dfecide if you want to remain in this marriage or not. If you don't then off you go, and this is how much you will be paying me a month.
DO NOT let him jerk you around indefinitely. Do NOT try to change yourself into the 'perfect wifey' especially if that means letting him fuck on your body more often than you want; this will make you hate him even more than he deserves.
People do fall out of love and wnat to end their relationships. That isn't necessarily a bad thing to do. However,telling a partner that you are 'not sure' how you feel is a very nasty, selfish thing to do. It suggests that the onus is on the partner to scurry round frantically trying to please you.

if the kids are always in your room, in slings and whatnot, when do you get time to have a little bit of relationship time?

he sounds like he has gotten fed up of coming last in the pecking order tbh - he probably feels like all he is is a paypacket :(

miflaw - definitely helpful to get a male pov. possibly i was a bit condescending about childcare, i don't know - i have many younger siblings so i kind of felt ok with it all from the start whereas he didn't (and i didn't intend that to sound condescending either ). but wouldn't most men who felt like that have said something rather than let it fester for 18 months?

madonnawhore - i really don't get answers to the questions i ask him, such as "what can i do?", "what do you want?", "if you don't love me, why the fuck are you still here?" (i am not a great swearer but by 'eck i am at the moment!). but i also know that he is struggling with this too and i suspect blaming me is avoiding guilt himself at not having said anything earlier. blame doesn't help and he is doing a lot of dwelling in the problems rather than looking at how to resolve this.

Ooh youareawful, she sounds like she's last in the pecking order actually.

The first thing that strikes me is that he doesn't like not being the centre of your world anymore. Your eldest is just 2, and he says he has felt like this for 18 months? I don't know where you go from here, but he does need to accept you are a family now, it will never be just the two of you ever again.

I agree with SGB. He can't just drop something like that on you and then leave you dangling while he makes up his mind and you tie yourself in knots trying to make him love you again.

It's cruel.

If that's the way he feels, then he needs to take ownership of that and make a decision that either he will move out, or you will both give counselling a go for 6 months, or whatever it is.

Instead he's putting the onus on you to fix it when he's the one with problem.

I think if he wanted to go, he would just go? It seems he is unhappy and is possibly just saying this stuff to get your attention, though it is the wrong way to go about it.

Relationship time? They've just made a baby, what more is there? I think OP that you should give him more one to one time with the children, get him involved. Tell him that this isn;t forever and perhaps plan a date that you might realistically reach to go for a quick glass of something, like three months!!

I think he's being an idiot, but that's not going to help you. I would like to think if I became a selfish shit that my dH would be inventive enough to make me not.

MIFLAW echoes my thoughts.

OP, YOU can't really get him out of that mindset, he needs to grow up and do it himself. Why should it be up to you to do that anyway, you have enough on your plate.

Meant to say, you have to think about what you want too. Do you want to live with and sleep next to a man who says he no longer loves you? I can imagine you don't want to have sex with him now he's told you how he feels and I don't blame you.

If that's not good enough for you, you do have the right to say, "You know what, I'm not going to look after our children and do all the shit work while you sulk and decide whether you want to be with me or not. How about I make the decision for you and you fuck off for a while and call me when you've figured it out?"

springchicken - harsh but you speak a load of sense! i am by no means a doormat but do find myself doing things for him. and you are totally right about sex - i realised that last week in one fairly disasterous attempt. my body basically had more sense then the rest of me and essentially said "not on your life"! ouch... so that's not happening...and i'm not trying again until i'm comfortable with it. i do need to think about what you have written; the equality of our relationship has been skewed i think.

oyaabily - they are not always in our room; dd was there until about 7 or 8 months, then she would start the night in her cot and come into our room when she woke in the wee hours. it was a good compromise because we would have evenings. ds is in ours at the moment, in the basket by our bed. dd takes a while to sleep in the evening, but the one thing i always refused to compromise on was the fact that I would not leave her crying - he was always ok with that. they are not permanently in the slings, esp when they are awake. so we did have time together (and do so now in the evenings, although not for long). equally though, this is not a long stage in the life of a child, surely?

madlizzy - you are right but to say it sounded a bit self-indulgent.... i did tell him that though.

headfirstforhalos - i take the fact that he is still here as a positive, and he does still seem to like me!!! he does get one-on-one time with the babes; he puts dd to bed and reads her LOADS of stories (they are there for ages!), and plays with ds although he is a greedy boy so he is mostly eating.... this also makes date night tricky; i did suggest getting a babysitter for dd and going out for a meal - not perfect, i know - but he preferred the idea of going out with dd as well. i rather liked that....

i do get angry and in those times consider kicking him out to decide what he wants, but just don't know if i would ever do it, ultimatums sound dangerous to me.

I think he is probably in the midst of an emotional affair and is probably working towards making it into a physical affair. He is setting you up for failure.

SGB speaks a lot of sense.

thank you all for your responses btw, a lot of food for thought. much appreciated.

"possibly i was a bit condescending about childcare, i don't know - i have many younger siblings so i kind of felt ok with it all from the start whereas he didn't (and i didn't intend that to sound condescending either ). but wouldn't most men who felt like that have said something rather than let it fester for 18 months?"

Absolutely - what I meant to suggest is that, while one day we may all look back and cringe, what you have been like and what I described myself as being like seem fairly par for the course for those of us who are not perfect. Yes, you may have been condescending, but you have the rest of your children's life to stop being condescending; it passes, you know?

But the "i'm not sure i love you" stuff; really NOT normal. especially, as someone else said, actually telling you; such doubts, if sincere, are something I would keep very much to myself until I was sure one way or the other, precisely because the relationship is hard after a birth and everyone can see a clear reason why, so i'd try really hard to see if it passed of its own accord before discussing it with anyone e.g. my wife.

No idea whether he is just even more immature and selfish than normal or whether he is hidding something darker and nastier; but NOT normal and NOT on.

thecrackfox - he has admitted (in our first discussion) that he has been attracted to other women, but has not done anything. he also said that this was just about us, not about anyone else. and i know that his dad would kill him...

We have recently had a second baby, by the way, and I have to say it changes the dynamic, not only of parent-parent relationships, but parent-child relationships. with our eldest daughter, we were, as far as possible, 50;50; now, I spend the bulk of my "child" time with the eldest, wife spends the bulk of her time with the baby, otherwise the eldest makes dealing with the baby too difficult (wanting mum's attention during breast-feeding of her sister etc.). I'm changing a lot fewer nappies this time around ...

All this to say that, if he was emotionally insecure enough to get jealous of a child and stay that way, then the second will probably freak him out far more than the first.

Still maintain his reaction is not normal though.

miflaw - "But the "i'm not sure i love you" stuff; really NOT normal. especially, as someone else said, actually telling you; such doubts, if sincere, are something I would keep very much to myself until I was sure one way or the other, precisely because the relationship is hard after a birth and everyone can see a clear reason why, so i'd try really hard to see if it passed of its own accord before discussing it with anyone e.g. my wife." - it does seem a little harsh to tell me when ds was 7 weeks old....(it actually came up because i asked him if he was happy, something he had admitted to me the evening before suggested that he may not be, but he said that he had been going to tell me anyway after he had talked to his dad). he apparently just wants to be honest; i can see why he might have mentioned it to try to change something, ie my behaviour, but then why not say it before it got to this stage? apparently he has only not loved me for the past couple of months....(so around the time i was going through hell/another difficult birth to give him a son then...)

my mother always said that everyone is much more vulnerable after the birth of a second child than the first. and yes, our dynamics are similar. he and dd are very close.

jbcbj - despite what he has told you I wouldn't rule out the possibility of an affair.

Anyway, it is immaterial as he is actually treating you very cruelly. You have just had his second baby and are in the midst of it all and he comes out with the "I don't love you anymore" crap. What does he actually want from you? A real man would roll up his sleaves and pitch in not throw his toys out of the pram.

It's not your fault, OP. He's jealous and maybe feeling pushed out and instead of talking to you about it or trying to find ways to help himself feel more equal/involved/whatever, he's acting like a spoilt child.

I don't think he's having an affair, FWIW, but what he's saying is classic 'affair-justifying' stuff and I'd wonder if someone had caught his eye - maybe someone who was big-eyed and admiring, like he thinks you should be. Sitting in counselling but not really engaging, being angry with you - it's all about HIM, he's excusing his own failings as a partner and parent.

He should value you for your role as a partner and mother to his children. Presumably he was an active participant in creating your second child, so why did he not bring this stuff up during your DD's babyhood?

You need to be a bit more indignant, I think, for your own sanity.

Some men get more jealous of boy-children than they do of girl-children, by the way. It seems a direct swap in their weirdo stunted brains, especially if you're BFing. Just a thought.