Unhappy husband needing advice

[FedUpFellaUK]

I’ve been unhappy with a few things in my marriage for many years. I briwng it up and we discuss but nothing ever changes. She doesn’t seem to think there are issues and is happy to carry on as we are which frustrates me.

In the last 12-24 months I’ve been under a huge amount of stress at work (I work for myself). She has been supportive, which is great but I can’t help but think it’s only because she sees me as a cash cow. I earn good money and she quit her career a couple of years ago and works part time in a job that’s a doddle for her and she finds it enjoyable.
We don’t have sex because she never initiates it and I’m fed up of getting rejected so I don’t bother. When we do have sex she’s just going through the motions and doesn’t enjoy it. I’ve gone through an emotional rollercoaster of thinking she’s having an affair but then I found out that she’s using sex toys on her own when I go out. She doesn’t know that I know.
So, in a nutshell, I earn money for our family and that’s all she needs me for.
I decided to have one more conversation with her, telling myself beforehand that if that didn’t work then I’d give up. It didn’t work. So maybe 6 months after that I decided to give her an ultimatum. I told her I’m still not happy and, if nothing changes, I need to end our relationship as we both deserve to be happy. She seemed upset and said things that made me think I’d finally got through to her. That was nearly 2 months ago and guess what? That’s right, nothing has changed and she’s never mentioned it since and I know she won’t bring this up ever.

There’s about 9 months left until my deadline is up. In that time we have 2 holidays booked. Summer holiday with her mother and winter holiday with another family with kids the same age as our kids. During the last conversation whene I gave the deadline to our marriage I told my wife that I would make the most of these two holidays before leaving. However, at night we get in bed, she falls asleep and I lie awake seething that she can just fall asleep without a care in the world whilst I lie there stressing over what this is going to do to our kids, our finances, etc. I don’t know if I can make it through the next 9 months.

I’ve had nights when I just wanted to get in my car with a bag of cash, drive into Europe and disappear. I’m only staying for my kids but we all know how that ends when couples get divorced. When she gets together with another man I won’t be able to stand the thought of seeing my kids every other weekend whilst some stranger gets to spend 13 out of 14 day’s with them. I can’t stand the thought of her being happy with another man when she doesn’t care enough to discuss our marriage and make it work. I can’t stand the thought of working in a stressful job and living in squaller whilst she remains in our family home. The entire thing just seems unfair so it’d be easier to just leave it all behind and start again.

Would love a women’s perspective and advice on this please.

Is she assertive and able to face up to things or is she a bury her head in the sand type person. Is she afraid of confrontation? Does she express her feelings easily? Do you or have you ever got defensive if she criticises your actions?

You're not painting a picture of her at all so she seems very cold and withdrawn. I'm thinking she couldn't always have been like that or you wouldn't have married and or you would have been unhappy a lot sooner than 2 years ago. The only thing you have said that changed was your work stress...

Storm2018 I’m happier in my job now, yes. I’m not overweight. I look approx 10 years younger than my age. I run and lift weights a few times a week. Friends and life outside of the home, yes. I don’t go down the pub or anything but I have several different friend groups that I do different things with e.g. mountain biking, snowboarding, racing cars, wake boarding, etc.

Personal hygiene is a bit of a joke amongst friends due to my use of face creams. I shower morning and night and inbetween if I’ve been active. I dress well or at least I believe I do. I shave and have my hair styled every two weeks.

I have not told my wife to start fucking me or I’ll leave. I’ve told her I need intimacy and if she’d have told me she’s no longer attracted to me then I’d know where I stand. I’ve asked her this and she’s denied it.

You sound like you have a very busy life between work and running and weights and all those hobbies. Who looks after the DC when you're doing that? Do you get much time together as a family? Who does the cooking and bedtime? Does your DW have hobbies?

Apileofballyhoo.
Yes, it’s very hurtful. I’m definitely hurt. Thanks for understanding this.

Yes, I agree we can’t communicate and this is my biggest frustration. She just tells me everything is okay but it clearly isn’t. I wonder if you’re right about her not being in love with me and just not wanting to rock the boat but I’ve asked her this question and couldn’t have made it any easier for her to have just admitted it. She’s just leaving me guessing.

I’m not asking anything of her other than to be honest with me about what’s going on. I don’t ask her for sex anymore so we don’t have it. I certainly didn’t give her an ultimatum about sex or anything else.

GreatStuffWorks

Work is not as stressful now. Giving up what I do is not an option as I’d/we’d be giving up a lot of money for retirement and helping the kids when they need cars, houses, etc. I couldn’t get a job that would bring in anywhere near what I get. It would just be giving up too much.

Apileofballyhoo

She is assertive. Friends joke that she’s strict and wears the trousers and that she’s scary. In reality we are very 50/50 and have always complimented each other well. For instance, I’m more loose with money/she’s not. We discuss purchases. Meet in the middle. It’s always worked. I mean for big things like houses and businesses.

Without being silly, yes, she does express her feelings easily when somethings wrong. Less so with compliments. Yes, I do get defensive when she critiseses me but reasonably so. And she will do the same.

She’s not cold and withdrawn. She’s just not intimate and obviously she’s not being honest with me about this or her reasons why.

It comes across strongly that you feel you've done everything right - good financial provider, changed nappies, do the school run, keep yourself fit and attractive etc...

I'd be very curious as to how your DW ses it all, but so are you. How do arguments work between you?

Fella, several people have commented on how unhappy you seem and have picked up on the work stress. While marriage issues absolutely are upsetting, your thoughts about suicide and faking your own death are quite extreme.

From your wife's side of things she has been dealing with a stressed husband for two years who wants to leave. I would not be intimate with my husband at all if he told me he wanted to leave. I wouldn't be in the same bed as him.

You do sound very unhappy. Your wife is not responsible for your overall happiness, only you are. I do wonder also if you are using porn to deal with the lack of intimacy. If you are, that will have a serious detrimental effect on how you perceive the intimacy you do have.

Do you sit around chatting easily? Do you laugh together? Do you hug and kiss and touch and hold hands?

Do you notice if she is wearing something new? Do you notice if she looks tired? If she looks happy?

Apileofballyhoo

I do have a busy life but I work from home 4 out of 5 days so no commute. Even the day I work away from home I’m back before the kids (they stay at grandparents). My weights and running machine is at home. If I do run outside my son runs with me. When I run or lift weights inside it’s because wife is out at dance class which she does twice a week. The kids are home with me.

My hobbies include the kids i.e. snowboarding, mountain biking (with daughter this is a bike ride using the tag along and a picnic). I go on two weekends away each year with a friend. Wife has a few nights away with her friends going to concerts. Most of our time is spent together as a family. Once a month we get somebody to babysit and go out with friends.

She does the shopping and cooking. I cook every once in a while but I’m usually working while she’s cooking. Or we’re at a restaurant.

Bedtime is mainly me. Son doesn’t take much anyway. Tonight, for example, wife was out dancing so I got both kids showered which includes shampooing daughters hair (she has lots) and drying with hair dryer. But I love doing this stuff. I really don’t understand men that complain about this.

Okay, thanks for all replies here. It does help me to get my own thoughts in order. It’s 04:00 here in UK so I really I need to sleep but will respond to other posts when I’m up. Goodnight.

So is the lack of intimacy just sex? In all other ways are you close and warm and chatty and affectionate?

Used you feel at one time that she was your best friend but you don't feel like that now?

Hope you sleep well.

BUT we both share kids duties. I drop off at school every morning and she collects. We share taking them to their various activities. That’s been for the past 9 years and because I wanted to be involved in school runs

She can't win then, can she? You seem to disagree with her reduced job then point out that you both do school drop off/pick up as if to prove she does the same amount of child care as you. When you drop off, but she picks up so spends the ready of the afternoon interacting with them/making dinner etc. This is just as important as your paid position, and contributes just as much to family cohesion and well being. Which your OP didn't seem to appreciate. Not sure what your most recent posts are on about when you say kids stay at grandparents on one of the days you work?? Has DW not picked them up from school? Have they all gone visiting?

Why should she then get the kids, the house and half my income? That’s rhetorical of course.
Not really. She gets the kids because she's the primary caregiver. She gets the house because the kids need continuity and somewhere to live (it's not as if you'd be giving it to her free for the rest of her life), she gets half your income (not quite accurate, esp as she's working) because she would be looking after the upkeep of herself and kids, having given up a no doubt better paid career to bring up the kids as the primary carer in a team. Bullshit opinions like that show exactly how self centered and dismissive ppl are wrt the work the primary carer puts into the family.

You still haven't really said what you've asked her to change. More intimacy? Have you given specific examples? Do you do the same for her?

And just because she doesn't give you answers you like doesn't mean she's not being honest with you. You keep asking her what's going on. Maybe you're just growing apart. You sound pretty full on with activities which include other ppl/stressful work etc. Where's the time spent as a couple? Maybe make this more of a priority and you might get closer again.

I really think you’re missing a trick by discounting the possibility of couples therapy. You have a very narrow view about who it would be and how it would go. There are plenty of male therapists around, for a start.

I think two important things would come out of therapy (whatever the result). It would show how serious you are. Your DW presumably knows how anti therapy you are, so it would show strength of character to suggest it, research it and set it up for the two of you.

Secondly, you would be able to face your kids in the future and show them that you did all you could before breaking up their family. That is sooo important. If you leave without even trying therapy, it sends a pretty clear message that you chose your life and potential happiness over theirs, in my view. Don’t be that guy.

You can’t presume and predict the outcomes of therapy, so don’t discount it. There’s even a chance you’ll learn something new and transformative. About your wife, yourself or both.

Good luck.

Does you wife work in the part time job she is in so she can collect your 7 year old from school and be there for the 11 year old?

Do you love her?

Apoligies for putting this so bluntly but is it possible that you might be just not that good in bed? Maybe when she was younger she was keen to make you happy and chose to "fake it till you make it" but as she matured she has found the inner strength to stop being a "people pleaser" and consider her own needs and no longer feels the need to put your sexual pleasure ahead of her own? She clearly does still have a sex drive given her use of toys. Another possibility is that she has come to realise that you can never fulfil her sexual needs no matter how good in bed you are if she has discovered that she is actually more attracted to women than men now. This isn't unheard of - though obviously not hugely common but it can happen for a young woman to go with the flow of social pressure into marriage and children when they are too young to fully understand themselves and buy in to the fantasy that this is the path to happiness. What age was she when you married?

I'm in Europe and frankly don't think it's possible to "disappear" over here, and cash isn't used as much as it used to be, mostly credit cards. That said, maybe you two need to spend more holiday time and free time together (without the mother around) just so as to be able to find each other again. Seems you're both (?) stuck in a treadwheel. Anyway, instead of "faking your death" (as you wrote) that is just a terrible idea; it might be better to read this guide, one of many alternate opportunities to explore first: britishexpatguide.co.uk/guides/moving-to-sweden-from-uk/ You mentioned your hobbies were snowboarding and mountain biking. What are your wifes hobbies? I can't see so clearly from your posts what the root cause to your common problems are, except having somehow become stuck in a rut, seems circumstantial, that you're both stuck in a difficult work situation with for some reason quite locked positions, with you the breadwinner and she perhaps the stay at home mum. It doesn't seem to me, from reading your posts, you both genuinely don't like each other anymore. You said in your first post that "...she’s never mentioned it since..." but this fact could just as well be a sign of hoping the nightmare to just go away and things magically becoming as they were before. Anyway, what is there to say? What words would you have liked to hear that genuinely would make a difference? About the holidays (seems the calendar is crammed already): Why don't you plan for a bit of an extended holiday where you go and explore other places and circumstances where you both could be more happy, for example airbnb? Maybe the answer is to take a sabbatical and go away and do something completely different for a while (though it might not fit with your job at first glance, you didn't mention what your job was, for good reasons). It doesn't sound that you are too happy in the circumstances where you are now, but there are more things to explore than the ones you've posted so far, and perhaps then think outside the box, as it is called. Sorry for a lengthy post.

My DH and I both have different attitudes to sex.

For him it’s a way of being intimate, for me it’s as a result of being a close and intimate couple. If I don’t feel close to him then I don’t want to have sex with him.

Masturbation isn’t sex and doesn’t replace it. It gives a guaranteed and effortless orgasm but isn’t about intimacy like sex is and I wouldn’t choose to masturbate over having a fulfilling and intimate sex life. The 2 aren’t comparable.

@Imchlibob

Then maybe she should have told him that?

I get it this is a (very risky!) step forward to post on an anonymous forum. So, great you've done that. Why you would do that is a mystery tbh - you've been lucky so far in that most have been sympathetic. But most internet forums can be very nasty, particularly a site that is populated predominantly by women. It's not unknown on here for posters to take against a poster just because they're male..

You'd be much better off, and infinitely safer, to talk to a bloody therapist. Whose job it is to carefully and with great respect sift through the evidence with you. It is impossible for us to know what's really going on between you as there's only one of you giving your side. The one thing that stood out to me is you're together an awful lot - you work from home 4 days a week, she's at home. That's all I can glean from what you've written - it's not possible to see the whole story.

What does come across is that you're desperately unhappy. Please, just book with a therapist - look at BACP to get a list of therapists in your area. Your strong antipathy to facing a therapist is small fry up to the longstanding agony for your kids of you either killing yourself or disappearing, which seems to be your only solution so far because you are absolutely desperate.

Come on, start digging with someone who is qualified to dig with you to work out what's going on with you. Go on your own for now

I believe in going back to the beginning. Reminding each other of why you both fell in love and decided to get married. Watch the wedding video again, revisit a special place or your honeymoon. You both need time together, alone from the children, routines and work stress.

It could also be that your wife is lacking in confidence or even low in mood. Seeking your gp or sex therapy may also help.
Sometimes if I Am stressed, depressed or not so happy about how I look o will also stay away from sex. Mainly because I wouldn't feel attractive even though my husband is very supportive and understanding.

But speak to her again. Go away alone, do more of the romance it was done in the beginning. Send her flowers, tell her how beautiful she looks and how much you love her. Remind her of memories you both made together.

Children do keep you busy and at times too busy to only be parents and not lovers.

Do less of the complaining, demanding and criticising. Invest on love and if that does not work, try again.
Send her a letter, write down reasons why you love her. Remind yourself of that!

It looks like you both need tlc.

I feel deep sympathy for you as you are clearly in a place of extreme anguish.

But I totally agree with previous posters who say you ought to see a therapist - alone if she refuses couples therapy.

You sound to have a wonderful family and a fulfilled life other than the lack of intimacy. You cannot every imagine how much damage you would do your children if you dropped out of their lives completely after being such an engaged and loving father. That really cannot be an option. Whatever happens, please do stay near and continue being involved heavily in your children’s lives.

The impact of having a husband who is always tired, always stressed is that it begins to wear you out with guilt and a feeling that you can never help him. Do you listen to her suggestions? Does she offer ideas about how to make life less stressful for you? Or do you do lots of complaining but block any ideas she may have to ease pressure, preferring to be slightly self indulgent in your busy-ness. I have no reason to think this is the case so please don’t be offended - just trying to draw from experience about the things which can turn people off their partners.

Your fear of living in a small flat and your wife having another partner, your children another parent figure is understandable but gives the impression that this jealousy is what keeps you in the marriage rather than your fear of not being with your wife. Do you love her?

Her use of masturbation suggests that she is finding sex and intimacy with you as undesirable. She hasn’t got the power to change that feeling at will. Her detached couplings with you which are so unsatisfactory are the best she can do right now, and I agree, they must be a horrible experience for you both. She can’t mend this alone. You can’t go on expecting her to doo this.

Please push for therapy, painful though it is. It is really the only way you will get to the bottom of what is going on. But you may still have to resign yourself to the fact that it could bring about the end of the relationship rather than mend it. Either way, you can’t live the rest of your life like this.

And another thing - if your holidays and lifestyle are coming at the price of your marriage and happiness in terms of the stress paying for them brings, them they’re not worth it.