To be so jealous of people who just see their own side?

[Haemagoblin]

Argh I feel like my head will explode.

Partner and I are in another of our periodic stalemates in our difficult relationship. There's a lot of background to this it would take forever to go into. I have two small children who we co-parent effectively and am not inclined to break up if it can be avoided until they've launched. basically our fundamental issue is the classic male-female ouroboros - I want more love/connection, he wants more sex. I am doing my best on my side of the equation, I don't feel he is doing his on the other. This blew up this week on holiday as I felt he was a snappy twat to me twice, never apologised, and pretty well ignored me the rest of the time unless with the children. As such I have felt no inclination to initiate the sex I don't particularly want but keep going because I know it is important to him. Has now been a week since we had sex, whereas usually try to initiate every 2-3 days. So much for the current state of play.

BUT, while he no doubt is feeling wounded and sorry for himself, I am:

• looking at it from my side, from his side, trying to imagine what it might look like to an objective third party;
• feeling uncomfortable with how things are, resentful of feeling I have to be the one to initiate 'sorting them out', dreading doing so, angry that he never will in a million years;
• running through about 4 alternative scenarios on how this could go from here, from just keep on ignoring it and see if he EVER cracks and brings it up through sheer sex starvation, to just forget about it and resume business as usual with another little rock of resentment in my spiritual shoe, to a long tedious debate (of which I have played out both sides in my head), to just breaking up with him because none of this is ever going to change;
• Conducting endless Google searches along the lines of 'Anxious/Avoidant attachment styles', 'rejection sensitive dysphoria', 'borderline personality disorder', 'am I a narcissist', 'is HE a narcissist'... etc etc

all of the above basically just desperately looking for a formula to crack this bloody endless cycle of rupture and (tenuous) repair to try and achieve some sort of liveable stability in this relationship, or achieve an 'aha!' moment where I feel like I know WHY it is so impossible and if it's his fault, my fault, six of one and half a dozen of the other, and ending up none the wiser and more sure than ever that there's no viable way forward that will get either of our needs met.

And all of this whilst trying to parent my children, do my work, be a thoughtful friend, etc etc etc... my head feels like it's going to explode with all the thoughts. Whereas if I'm honest I don't think he'll have thought about it once all day, or much at all except a grumpiness when I turn my back in bed at the end of the day instead of launching into sex.

It's a beautiful sunny afternoon; I have two beautiful children; I am intelligent, imaginative, creative; this is NOT how I want to be using my brain. I so so wish I could just be angry as fuck with him for talking to me like shit, give him a bollocking and not care if it upset him because I feel JUSTIFIED; not sleep with him because I don't want to and not care if that makes him unhappy or worry if it's fair; to just be on my own bloody side, like he is on his, instead of seeing it 400 different ways. I wish I could stop overthinking.

Why is it so hard for me to just be on my own side? To see things from MY perspective only? To not go down this bloody rabbit hole?

The more this goes on the more I feel like, whoever's fault it is/whoever is being unreasonable, this relationship doesn't serve me in any way whatever. But I don't feel like I can say that to him, because I don't want to hurt his fucking feelings. WHY? He doesn't give a monkey's about mine.

He's always been a good lover - knows where everything is etc, takes time on foreplay, generous with his focus on my pleasure.

Unfortunately as I say my libido has gone and my desire has changed post children - I used to be very easy to arouse and very enthusiastic, could climax multiple times - now I need a very different type of stimulation, and if he has a fault it's that he isn't very "tuned in" to that - he's carrying on doing what always used to work, even though I feel like it should be obvious it's not working any more. I have tried to subtly "show" him what I'd like instead, and he just doesn't pick up what I'm indicating - then I thought, well I'm being to subtle, so I just told him directly "that's too x for me, I need y" and he was so demoralised/embarrassed it killed the mood completely and he stopped the sex, which (to my shame) caused an argument, because I was so upset that I was going out of my comfort zone to give him what he wants already and I felt he had reacted in quite a rejecting way to me trying to get it to work for me.

This was only a few weeks ago and we'd only just fixed things from THAT bust-up before we went away this week and it all starts again with him talking sharply to me sigh So it all accumulates, no argument is just that argument but bears the weight of all the imperfectly resolved arguments before it.

Off to uni/moved out I suppose. No longer dependent.

Put simply, a good relationship does not require this much hard work.

You gravitate towards each other because you want to be in each other's company. You laugh. A lot. You help where you see help is needed. You listen, you plan, you work together as a team to make the boring childcare and housework less tedious. You touch each other in non sexual but loving ways, just to connect. All of this seems missing in your relationship. Sex is natural, not a commodity.

I would not waste more years on this. Staying together for the children just makes everyone miserable.

As others have said, it sounds as if the relationship is dead, and possibly didn't have strong foundations anyway, but you're just maintaining it for the sake of the kids.

A word of warning: just because you are willing to sacrifice happiness by grimly hanging on in there until the kids are older, do you think he will be? Or will he do the classic of announcing that he's met someone else and justify it by the fact that your relationship has been dead for a while?

Perhaps try counselling to explore whether the relationship is worth salvaging, and if not, how to amicably and mutually separate?

I think you need to find a way to get over your fear of telling him how bad things are from your perspective. You have said that he doesn't communicate, but you are also not communicating honestly. It sounds like that has come about because your 'role' in the dynamic is not to damage his ego - you feel bad when he is dejected due to perceived criticism. But you shouldn't have to save him from honest feedback.

Also, I would match him on effort. Don't ask him what he's thinking, don't pander, don't do all the emotional work. Step back, focus on gaining calm and clarity for yourself. Practise shrugging.

If he does he does - I can't control him. But I come from a broken home and I certainly won't be the one to do that to my children unless I'm convinced that it is better than the alternative for them (not me or him). I'm not yet convinced of that. As I say we're a good parenting team most of the time, their needs are met and they don't have to live between two homes or with random adults and their children. People who think that isn't as important as whether their parents are "happy" (in a romantic sense) are people who haven't had to live like that as a child in my experience.

I think this is wise and I will take it on board. Thank you x

Things won't change if you keep the status quo. Why would they?
What do you think would happen if you stopped initiating sex?
Do you think he would just do without or do you think he would actually communicate with you?
It sounds like he doesn't have to do anything to get what he wants. You are allowing him to treat you like this. He probably thinks you are happy with how things are.
If you are not happy then you will have to initiate the change (why would he - he gets everything he wants).
Try waiting him out. What is the worst that can happen? It can't be any worse than the way you are living now.

It sounds like the relationship is over. I’ve had periods of raising my teens where they acted like they were doing me a big fat favour if they said more than yes and no to me but luckily that was only temporary. I understand what you mean by the connection - my young adult sons don’t really understand but it makes me really happy when we get to have a chat and they share what they are thinking about. It makes me feel close and connected even if it’s practical stuff like something they saw on TikTok that would interest me. It’s been hard work raising them alone and having gone through the teen years but it makes me proud that they have time to think of little ol’ me during their busy lives.

Im sorry but i had to comment here... Children are actually more damaged living in an awful home than having a "broken" seperate home. You think as your children grow they won't feel the atmosphere around them? They won't question the fact that your staying in a miserable relationship for 18 years simply for them? Children aren't blind nor stupid and they also can feel a world of emotions aswell as guilt in these situations. Since its "for the children" What example are you setting for them about healthy relationships when their core foundation for learning this is so broken? Is that really better than having to spend half the week at dad's and half the week at mums?

When I was a teenager, a friend came on holiday with my family. Her parents had had an acrimonious divorce. I remember her saying to me at one point that what she'd never seen before and which she loved about our holiday, was the casual way in which my parents expressed affection and happiness to be together - the laughing and jokes, a hand hold or a small kiss etc. I had never thought about it before, but I really did notice after that.

If you share nothing with your H outside of co-parenting, your DC will be aware of that on some level, even if there are not arguments. And they will be learning that this is normal in a relationship, when it isn't.

DH and I do not have th ekind of endless loving, cuddling on the sofa relationship. But I do know that our children love and appreciate that we enjoy each other's company, have a good laugh etc.

So he is a grumpy arse who is putting zero effort into the relationship while you are offering yourself up giving him sex that you don’t even want, for the sake of the kids. Your life is as valuable as theirs. Your children would not want you to do this (if they knew about it and were old enough to understand) so it is not fair on them to say it is for their sake.

If you don't want to separate then you have to accept that this is what your life is going to be like for the next 10-15 years. You will be fretting and he will just withdraw until he wants sex again. You'll oblige because you'll just be so grateful that he's talking to you again and you won't want to rock the boat. And so it goes on...

So you'd rather you kids grow up in a home with parents who don't really want to be in their relationship and can't talk to each other about it?

Even if by some miracle you make it to the point that they leave home without one of you snapping, kids aren't stupid; they will notice and it will have an effect on them.

Give the surrendered wife a read. Nothing to lose. It opened my eyes on so many levels.

But you see we won't be magically giving them this ideal healthy relationship to model. We'll be separated. Two single parent homes. I wouldn't have another man live with my daughter's (stats on stepfather abuse are too risky for me). I can't make that decision for my ex partner - what if he gets another partner with whom he also has a dysfunctional relationship (my father and mother both did). What if their stepmother finds them an inconvenience (we see it all the time on this board)? The absence of one problem (poor parental relationship) does not inoculate them against all the other potential problems, not to mention less money and less time with each of us as a consequence.

Anyway I've had this s debate on MN in previous threads so I'm going to respectfully ignore any further posts telling me I'm harming my kids by staying - as I say I've made that assessment myself , I've thought about it a lot and I think currently the balance favours staying in terms of what's good for them. I will keep it under review but as the only person with first hand experience of our family life, and the experience both of experiencing separated parents and living in a home with a bad parental dynamic subsequently (my father and stepmother), i think i'm best placed to judge the best of a bunch of imperfect options available.

They are both bad relationship models.

Only one is actually happening though.

He sounds incredibly boring.

Is this how you want to spend the rest of your life? 💐

I know it's an annoying question but whenever I've asked him "what are you thinking about?", instead of just saying "when to plant potatoes at the allotment" or "why the plural of papyrus isn't papyri" or "if I should move the car now next door have left the space outside" (literally WHATEVER the hell he was thinking), he'll just say "this and that" or "nothing much" - it's like he would literally prefer NOT to share with me at all. Like he resents the intrusion

I fear that I might be the female equivalent of your husband in many ways. I would respond in exactly the same way if someone asked me 'What are you thinking about?' I would absolutely say 'Nothing much' or 'Oh, you know, just stuff, nothing of interest to anyone else'. In reality, I am always thinking about a lot. Like, really, a lot. I am someone whose thoughts are constantly racing; there is never a shortage of stuff going on in my head. But do I want to pick those things out of my head and share them? No. I don't like to feel like I'm performing on command. I can't be bothered to share whatever inane nonsense/disturbing weirdness is happening in my head, partly because I prefer to keep most of my thoughts private and partly because my thoughts are often too complicated to even explain without a fuck-ton of effort.

I'm not un-talkative in general, but mostly, I'll share my thoughts if I feel like sharing them and if I don't, I'd rather not be questioned about them. That's just how I am.

You say yourself that you know it's an annoying question. So why ask it, then? He resents the intrusion because to him it really does feel like an intrusion. He just wants to think his private thoughts without having to share or explain them. I appreciate that it doesn't feel that way to you and that this probably seems like a really odd, cold way to be - but people are what they are.

To me, you give the impression of being quite full-on and extroverted (that's not a criticism at all, by the way) and it sounds to me as if your husband might be the exact opposite of that. I suspect he maybe does see your side, but maybe just isn't necessarily someone who can deliver what you need.

While I can completely understand why you feel that an evening spent in silence isn't a natural precursor to sex... again, I think I might be more like your husband. I'm totally happy to spend an evening barely exchanging a word with my partner (assuming the silence is a companionable one and not because we've had a row) and I would be more than happy to go straight from that to sex.

However, I wouldn't ever want to feel obliged to have sex when I didn't feel like it, and I can completely see why that's bothering you. I also think your husband needs to get the hell over his sensitivity around you communicating what you want in bed because Christ alive, that's not exactly conducive to enjoyable, intimate sex.

Honestly, I don't think either of you is right or wrong here. You are, however, very, very different people. You sound very extroverted and quite emotional and he sounds like me much more introverted and less intense. I think you do need to consider whether you are compatible on a fundamental level.

You can't have sex you don't want until your children leave home. And it seems a bit mad to do this knowing that you're going to leave. You have a similar life to me when I was 36...I'd spent half my life with my exH at that point and I knew I couldn't sacrifice the next fifteen or more years of my life. Also, you won't magically feel able to leave when the kids leave home

It's normal to feel terrible when someone close to you is sulking and creating an atmosphere. He's showing very clear contempt for you too, with the short conversations and making you feel like you're talking too much. That's one of the things I noticed after I left...I was so used to the short answers and the eye rolls that I thought it was normal.

But @ItGhoul she's only asking that in desperation because he's so closed off. It's perfectly clear that he doesn't care about her.

It isn't perfectly clear at all. 'Closed off' doesn't mean he doesn't care. It might simply mean that he can't show her that he cares in the way she wants him to. She isn't in the wrong to want something different, but he also isn't in the wrong to be the kind of person that he apparently is.

As I said - I suspect they're simply not compatible.

The least you should do is tell him everything you've told us, regardless of whether it upsets him. You've been clear and direct telling us what the issue(s) are - it's good analysis and I don't think it tips into over-thinking at all. He needs to hear it. He probably should be upset, because he's at least partly (and it sounds mostly) responsible for an unhappy situation.

If you don't tell him then it can't be fixed and you just have another decade of quietly seething misery ahead of you (and you don't want to believe this, but growing up in that environment fucks kids up more than an amicable separation).

There's a chance that telling him honestly everything that's wrong results in a blow-up beyond repair but that is also better than the decade of quietly seething misery.

Okay, that's fine. If you are makign this decision. But then you can't keep complaining about him no being your partner or showing any care for you.

And I'm very sorry but I think you're being naive. If he's this indifferent to you now, and you're still giving him sex, the reality is that as you have sex less and less, he'll feel more and more entiteld to distane himself and probably to have an affair and/or go off with someone else.

I completely understand wht you're saying about the risk you live with vs the risk you can't account for, but I think you're undestimating the risk you're living with and overestimating the risk if you split up.

I think I'm thinking "why not?" to all your questions! Women have always had sex they don't want to keep the peace, since time immemorial. It's only recently the idea of choosing not to do so was even thought of in western culture. Not that I don't think that's an improvement, but if, for reasons of my own, I decide to do that I don't see why there's any reason I can't do it for a specific length of time.

Also, why won't I feel able to leave when the kids leave home? Right now providing them with a stable home and protecting them from a blended family is my only motivation for remaining; with that removed I don't see why I wouldn't want to leave and be quite content to do so (though I do feel a bit mean on him not giving him fair notice of this, but it seems a bit dramatic and provocative to tell him tbh if I don't intend to act on it right now).

I know it's not the choice everyone would make but not everyone is as invested as I am in avoiding the outcome I had for my children. It is in no small part the feelings of abandonment and displacement I felt in my childhood that led to me being willing to knit my lot to someone so woefully unsuitable for me in the name of 'love' in the first place.