Dear parents/friends,
I am in a rather strange position and need some anonymous advise.
I am a very sociable person and I have been struggling to get along with my wife who happens to be a loner. She prefers spending time alone, all by herself and is not bordered about the consequences of that. Rather, she thinks it is the right thing to do because the world is 'evil'.
We have been married for 6 years, together for 8. From the start, she was not comfortable being around my mum and siblings, and I thought things would be better with time but that has just gone worse over the years. Sadly, my mum passed away not knowing why her daughter-in-law avoids her. Immediately after the funeral, she took down all pictures of my mum from our house and that's when I couldn't handle it and decided to ask what actually is the problem. Her excuses were that (1) my mum didn't get excited the first day i officially introduced her as my fiance; (2) I am the only nice person in our house, everyone else is weird. I thought these excuses were too silly and accused her of either not telling the truth about why she hates my family or she is just a trouble maker. This didn't go well.
Likewise, as the years went by, I noticed she withdraws from people, even the ones I thought were her friends, she calls them envious and stupid. Currently, in a city of over 700.000 people, she has no friend, she visits no one and no one visits her.
She doesn't like going out again with me to social gatherings (including other people's kids birthdays whereas we have a 3 year old); she doesn't show up even in my work functions; she stopped going to church. The last time she went to a networking event with me, she complained so much that we had to leave early. I felt like she went there on a fault finding mission, not a networking event.
When I try talking to her, she gets very defensive, accusing me of being too easy. She goes ahead to say she is a loner, she is comfortable with herself, she doesn't fit-in because she is different; and she doesn't need anyone's business in her life. At home, she is comfortable staying in the bedroom all day. If I don't go to chat with her, she won't join me in the lounge. It still feels nice when we get together, we easily get into each other's arms; however, I can't tell if she is being real or not; and I am beginning to loose feelings.
I find this very uncomfortable, because, in as much as I know her as an introvert largely due to growing up in a very controlled environment, it is negatively affecting my relationship with my family and social/networking life. I hardly attend social and networking events anymore because I don't want to be seen as the married man who is always alone. I have missed a few opportunities due to my absence which has been quite costly to me. I now stay away from family gatherings because I am tired of giving excuses for her absence (we are 6 siblings, all married, all come with their spouses).
This is affecting me negatively, i feel i'm being isolated from the world. This is not how I wanted to live my life, especially as this is not how it was at the start. I also think this is not a good experience for my 3-year old daughter (who will likely not be allowed to have friends if things continue like this). I have proposed therapy/counselling and she declined. I don't want my daughter to be a social miss-fit; I don't want difficult or breaking my home either; and I don't want to be isolated (my work is social-science inclined).
Please advise, thank you for reading and apologies for the long write-up.