I need to post this to get some things off my chest. Not sure what answer – if any – I want, just a release, to people who aren’t family/friends so don’t have a bias.
For a long time now – we’re talking years – we have had no sex life. A combination of his depression / anxiety, family stresses, did not help trouble he already had in ‘performing’. And his nature has always been of the infuriatingly childish “if it’s difficult, give up”, mentality. So he gave up. (although still uses porn sites; he says he can’t perform with me if he’s not happy…)
Life is, as he says, ‘beige’. There’s no real joy in anything anymore; we have dinner and share film and tv shows and can talk about them to death…. But we don’t go out (except the cinema). He won’t even sit in the garden with me. On the most recent sunny weekends, I sat in the garden by myself for hours with various books and cups of tea, while he stayed inside and watched Netflix. There’s probably an argument that I could equally have sat inside with him, but that’s already how we spend our evenings…… We have a family facebook group, and regular zoom chats. He won’t appear in any of them. On my sister-in-laws birthday, he didn’t even stick his head to wish her a happy birthday. I know he finds it hard, and I’m not belittling his anxiety, but I don’t see any effort from him to improve at all. Becoming a hermit is the easy way out, and he’s taking it. To all intents, we’re two single people living together.
With the lockdown, I’m now working from home, the only one of a team of six where all my other colleagues are furloughed, so it’s very lonely. I’m naturally a bit of an introvert, but since I’ve lost my usual weekend haunts of bookshops and coffee shops, it’s hard, but what has come of this is that when I snap or get grumpy, he looks so hurt and lost because his first assumption is that I’m having a go at him and he asks “what have I done?” with a face as if he’s about to cry, when I told him he hasn’t and I didn’t mean to snap, he'll say something like “I just feel that you’ve been angry with me and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”. He tells me he feels small, and timid, and sometimes is ‘scared of me’. What am I supposed to do with that? I’ve noticed he doesn’t ask “are you ok?” when I get snippy. Am I expecting too much??
What would I like? a smile when he checks in on me in my 'office' in the morning. Sharing a cuppa in the garden. Appearing in public as a couple, and not either just me, or (if we're shopping etc), me and sulky toddler mooching behind me.
This has become something of a stream of consciousness and a rant; what it doesn't say is that I feel so much for him, it breaks my heart that he's so down and hurts so often, but I don't know what more I can do to help him find the easy going joyful person I married 10 years ago.