So I have been going through it over the past 12-18 months with my wife. We have been married for 15 years this year and together for almost 18 years. We are both 38 and have two children, between 9 and 15. about 12 or so months ago I was concerned about her lack of intimacy, hugging and kissing, just general loving nature so I asked her how she was doing, her mother passed about two years ago, and her family is distant, so I was concerned and wanted to talk with her about how she was feeling. She informed me that she just didn't love me like she did in the past, and that she had blamed me for not seeing her mother enough prior to her death, to put it simply she saw me as a lazy man whom she was not really attracted to any longer. She gave me a list of items that she wanted me to work through to see if she could find that feeling again, however her resentment towards me was clear, and I was not sure if it was a possibility for me to become someone she wanted, based on my schedule and limitations with work and taking care of the family. We came up together, started dating when we were 21 and I worked and she took care of the kids. we eventually earned enough money and live in a dream community with a dream life most would kill for. She has hobbies, but not many friends, she has a few, but still not many. I would classify her as very friendly and easy to get along with, but also holds herself and others to very high standards, sometimes so high that it can become exhausting trying to meet her standard of what she sees a person should be. Like any relationship we have had our troubles in the past, but nothing so large that would affect a marriage. Anyhow, like any blind man, I went on with life thinking that she was hurting and felt neglected, so i focused on being loving, caring and made sure to hug her and tell her i loved her, despite her clear aversion to this, I am the kind of guy that thinks love and affection will fix things, and I believe based on our most recent conversation that i was wrong. We have been making love, not on a schedule but sort of an expected time table, Fridays/Saturdays, but only once a week and this has been going on for quite some time. I am personally very fit, lean and would consider myself attractive, who knows, I haven't dated or pursued a woman in a looonnnggg time, but I am not blind and can see that women do look at me and are often complimentary towards me in the gym and in public places. She is also beautiful and exercises regularly and is attractive from what I can see in the public spectrum when we are at the gym or in public. I do love my wife, and I suppose I just don't have as high of standards as her when it comes to little faults, and am more forgiving because i believe in marriage you should be forgiving towards your partners faults, Afterall, its supposed to be a lifelong commitment, and it can be tough. She does complain that I have left my socks on the floor, need to clean the back yard more, keep the outside tidy, finish projects around the home etc... I am trying to be more frugal about spending, but it is tough with her current habits, she spends a good amount of money on just everyday life, and doesn't have to consider things like mortgage/taxes/insurance, really anything as I have made a decent living and have always paid for everything for the past 11 years or so, I don't think she sees that we spend about 10-14 thousand per month on our expenses and it is very hard to keep up with, so these projects around the house, the upkeep of the backyard etc. I have tried to do myself to save money, and it has turned out great, we have two or three projects that need to be finished, but nothing big. Anyway, this past week she asked me if i wanted to have sex, and I told her that I wasn't sure if we should because she was not really wanting to, more asking me to fulfill my needs, and I, being a passionate person really cringe at the idea of having a wife who just wants to fulfill my needs and doesn't desire me passionately. She coaxed me into sex and while we are making love, she is always satisfied, to put it mildly, multiple times; but i have found it difficult to enjoy because she doesn't like kissing me, and turns her head away when I do try to kiss her; totally kills the mood for me, after she is tired from sex she tells me to finish up and complains that I am trying to turn it into a marathon, truthfully i am just trying to enjoy the little bit of a passionate intimate moment i can with my wife. Anyway, I informed her that i was no longer in the mood to finish having sex and it created quite an argument. I told her how i felt and she let me know that she had lost romantic feelings towards me and sees me as her "friend" or "best friend" as she put it. I told her that i thought things were getting better between us and clearly i was mistaken. We have discussed this multiple times over the past few days, quite reasonable conversations and we have always been respectful towards one another, but she has informed me again that I need to make personal changes and become a person that truly loves myself and need to find happiness. I told her that I am very happy, and don't really have many things I want to improve. I simply told her i didn't know if I could be the man that she has envisioned, or created in her mind and that i was not really sure if I could be the person she was thinking of, hey, why lie right? I am not the begging type of person, but I did ask her, how she could live with someone she didn't love and sees as a friend, and she said that if I didn't want to see if she would come around and love me again as a husband that it was not fair for me to stay in the relationship. She has recently, over the past year or two been listening to some self help gurus and studying transcendental meditation, I informed her that I think a lot of these guys out there peddling these theories are trying to get wealthy women and/or unhappy women around 40 years old to buy their books and pay for their seminars and are not everything she believes they are, and could be damaging her relationships etc. I told her that i am concerned about her happiness and that I do love her despite the hurtful things she said to me. I told her that I personally think she should focus on her family and building our relationship back up to where it was, and that could be the true key to her happiness. Anyway, I told her I would give her space and let her figure her stuff out. In the mean time I did ask her to look for a job and inform her that if we were to look towards separation that we would need to sell the house and that i can find a place for her while she gets on her feet so we could divide up assets and all that fun stuff. Anyway, this is my story, for what its worth, I am not for divorce, but as a young, fit man who has been rejected for about 2 years regularly, not just intimately, but for any type of affection such as hugs, kissing or just general bonding I am sort of at my end with trying to be whatever she wants, I have discovered that I need to focus on my ability to take care of my family, which is my only focus really and figure out how I will take care of her and the kids in a two household situation as alimony and child support will be expensive. I told her that this was a very big thing for me to figure out and deal with the potential reality of and I may have to stay at families houses while we go through the process. This is just a rant, not sure what I can do or say at this point, but I did like the advice given on this forum and thought it might be a non judgmental place to get advice and perspective. The weird thing is she still wants to plan vacations to go to far away places with our kids, months in advance, still is discussing summer plans for things for us to do as a family, I don't know how to tell her that this whole situation makes me feel that I have lost my family and that I don't want to invest in these trips as a family because if we are about to separate, group "family" trips wont exist as I cannot take my "best friend" on a trip, while pretending to be a happy loving couple.
Thank You!