[Hopeless Dork]

His selfishness is evident:

Becoming angry with you on the night you bring home your baby -- because you mentioned taking turns eating dinner.

RAPING you, because he wanted sex and you didn't.

Cheating on you, rather than attempting to better your marriage/dissoliving it... he could have decided to fix it or decide it was unfixable rather than have sex with other women.

And now he's depressed and blames you.

Me , me, me, its all about me - say's him.

1st -- When you are in an intimate sexual relationship, committed... and you decide, for whatever reason you don't want to have sex anymore... or reduce it drastically -- there is going to be a riff. You cannot , I think, expect a person to just accept the fact that they have to be celibate now, because you decided they should be.

2nd-- Despite the riff, its NEVER an excuse to rape someone, because you want more sex than they do. Either you have to decide if you are compatible or not. Masturbation was an option that night he decided to force you, as was a cold shower and good long talk in the morning about how to get things right in that department with you.

3rd -- Cheating, isn't going to fix the intimacy between the 2 of you. He has to realize that will only drive you further away from him sexually. Women need to feel wanted and special to thrive sexually, and him being with other women promotes the exact opposite reactions.

So he is , in LARGE part, responsible for the breakdown in your sexual relationship. Forcing someone to have sex isn't going to increase their sexual appetite, neither is cheating on them and breaking their heart. So ultimately ... he's decide what his penis needs is more important than working with you on getting things more compromised and balanced sexually between the 2 of you.

The problem here is, he's demonstrated over and over again how he will put his sexual whims ahead of his love for you... and you have demonstrated you are willing to put your pride and personal physical/emotional safety aside to make this marraige work ON paper. As in, you stay married in technical terms, for the kids, or for your families... but in your home and in your bedroom... thats where the charade ends.

Are you happy? It doesn't sound like it. You can't make him be the man he should be... you can't will it and hope it to happen... there comes a point when you have to look at what you actually have, not what you had, not what you hoped to have, not what you wish you had, but what you have... and realize... what you have now is very likely the reality of your life with this man.... and decide if thats how you want to spend your years in this lifetime, this life that we only have one of that we know of for certain.

I watched this comedian the other night who said something so poignant in his rant "hasn't anybody told you how this ends? We die at the end!" In other words, life is short, enjoy it. You can take that one of two ways, that , meh... who cares... whats it matter... I made my bed I will lie in it. Or you can decide.. I deserve happeiness, I deserve love... in the here, in the now. He's living for the here and the now, for HIMSELF... you need to figure out what you want for the here and the now for yourself too.

[vickypollard]

I decided to stop having sex with him altogether a few months ago. It wasn't really a decision, it's just that it would have been meaningless for me and because I didn't feel it and he could sense that, it usually ended in an argument. It's like he's comparing me to these hot women he's been with. I used to feel that there was something wrong with me but with several people saying it's mostly to do with him I feel reassured... sorry, been interrupted, will continue later...

[vickypollard]

Thank you so much everyone. Thank you, Crystal, for praying for me. I am so touched that you would do that for me even though we have never met.

[vickypollard]

I'll pray for you, too, as I see you're having similar issues. I can honestly say that I'm not the same person I was when I started this thread. Hopeless Dork, you are nothing of the sort : )! Your evaluation has lifted me out of the state of complete confusion I was in. I was not and am not being hit or physically abused but yes, I was and still am to a certain extent being emotionally abused and brainwashed! I can always see it happening to others but you can't see it happening to yourself easily until you reach out to someone and they show you what's happening. I feel worry, guilt, self-reproach, self-doubt, fear (but of what exactly? - fear I can't cope on my own, a fear which is partly augmented by his behaviour and what he says). Fear that I don't understand what's going on in his head (is he a sane human being?) and will not really be able to predict what he will do in the future. I have dared to leave him. I have made that courageous decision. We are still living in the same house but he has lost that hold he had on me. You are absolutely right - I am putting aside my dignity and acting like a at times. To be completely honest it is worse than that - I feel used like a piece of cheap meat. This is not living! I often feel choked up. People must sense my lack of joy. I cannot change him.

[Hopeless Dork]

Its hard to decide to let go of someone you love.. its never a decision to be taken lightly. But when you find yourself constantly hurting you have to really weigh it. Weigh the ways he enriches and makes your life better vs the way he makes it miserable. Every relationship has problems, ups and downs... but if the amount of time you spend sad at the hands of the one you love tips the scale so entirely over all the time you spend happy at the hands of the one you love -- its time to make a change.

If you talk to them, try to work it out with them, tell them how you feel, ask them how they feel... so what compromises can be made and they refuse to hear you out, your feelings are irrelevent... thats when you really have look at what you have and say... this is it, this is as good as its going to get... and do I want to spend my life this way?

You don't have to wait to find yourself til you walk away, you can start that today. You can decide you aren't going to worry about what he's doing because you have no power over what he does or doesn't do. You can decide that you are going to wake up in the morning and think about what makes VICKY happy... and tend to that (after your children of course).. join a gym, pick up a new book, go to the beauty salon, go have lunch with some old gf's you lost touch with... look up classes you always wanted to take... learn to see that you can make yourself happy and that he can't control your level of happiness if you don't let him.

Once you are strong enough in that affirmation, walking away won't be so hard... especially if he has still done nothing to try to make it work.

[pretzel]

Its hard to decide to let go of someone you love.. its never a decision to be taken lightly. But when you find yourself constantly hurting you have to really weigh it. Weigh the ways he enriches and makes your life better vs the way he makes it miserable. Every relationship has problems, ups and downs... but if the amount of time you spend sad at the hands of the one you love tips the scale so entirely over all the time you spend happy at the hands of the one you love -- its time to make a change.

If you talk to them, try to work it out with them, tell them how you feel, ask them how they feel... so what compromises can be made and they refuse to hear you out, your feelings are irrelevent... thats when you really have look at what you have and say... this is it, this is as good as its going to get... and do I want to spend my life this way?

You don't have to wait to find yourself til you walk away, you can start that today. You can decide you aren't going to worry about what he's doing because you have no power over what he does or doesn't do. You can decide that you are going to wake up in the morning and think about what makes VICKY happy... and tend to that (after your children of course).. join a gym, pick up a new book, go to the beauty salon, go have lunch with some old gf's you lost touch with... look up classes you always wanted to take... learn to see that you can make yourself happy and that he can't control your level of happiness if you don't let him.

Once you are strong enough in that affirmation, walking away won't be so hard... especially if he has still done nothing to try to make it work.

I honestly don't think this could have been said any better.

One thing I've learned is that when you stop being who you are and forget about those things that make you who you are, you lose. Not only do you lose what makes you happy, you lose the ability to want to make yourself happy.

No person should live like this.

[vickypollard]

Thanks again for all your insights. Yes, it feels like I haven't made love for years, just had sex. When I gave in to try and keep him happy and avoid the cycle of him getting annoyed and making me cool off, I was bottling up my own feelings and living a lie. We all do this sometimes but to do it so repeatedly and for so long isn't doing anyone any favours. We're now operating on the level of amicable housemates and everything looks rosy. The children are pretty happy. But I go through phases of feeling very anxious about what feelings might be brewing. His wants/feelings are being taken care of, I presume, by someone other than me. So he should be happy, but I don't know how that/those relationship(s) are going. My fear is that he may not let go of me, that I may have made a rod for my own back by being so kind to him without realizing it (because I felt I wasn't being kind/patient enough!). It seems the problems are mainly with him, not with me, after all. Also, I don't know if he's just trying to make me jealous, although he does try to hide it and I don't think he knows I know (it's such a crazy situation!!). In a way this is reassuring but in another way I feel he has become increasingly mentally unstable over the past few years. Other people seem to be noticing this, too. I thought (and he would have me believe) that it was just our relationship breaking down and his response to this happening, but it's not a normal response especially when he's the one wrecking it (for the most part). If I have to leave this house (which my family paid for but is legally joint property), it will be financially harder but also it means that I will have to tell people why I'm leaving, including my mother who is getting quite frail now. I worry about what this stress is doing to my health, but my mum gets really stressed at the thought that I might be less than happy or that our relationship may end. She doesn't know about the sexual assault incident 3 years ago or the infidelity. It's like she feels it's her job to keep us together for my future happiness. I know I feel my children's pain more than they do and she's the same with me. I need her to be strong for me but she can't be any more and I have to shelter her but if I don't give a reason she'll try to persuade me to stay and will be upset anyway. She's also a christian and divorce was always something she didn't really approve of. Also, if my husband's mental health deteriorates further and we have to move somewhere away from him the children's lives will be disrupted and I will have to explain what's happening. I'm just trying to cover all eventualities. It could be that I'm over-reacting, but when I feel anxious there's usually a reason for it. I don't have paranoia or any other condition, although I feel like I'm going crazy when I then swing to the other extreme and imagine him happy with someone else and think 'that could have been me, if only I'd given it more time/worked harder at it we could have been together until old age...' and that makes me panic, too! I sound like a real neurotic now. Who knows, maybe that's what he's trying to do to me. When I stand up to him he gives up on intimidation as a weapon and starts being nice to me until I cave in then he gets intimidating again, this is a cycle I've recently noticed. I'm not caving in at all now. I set boudaries with my children, so they learn respect for people, and they are mostly nice because of it.

'Adults are just children who own money.' Peter's Friends (movie).

[pretzel]

Hi Vicky,

I'm going to be honest. This was hard to read as it brought back memories and feelings I've had before. I know how appearances that we give to others that mask the pain inside hurts and is tough to sort out. You don't want to let others down by dissolving the marriage but you don't want to live the lies any longer either. You go through the motions of marriage.

That's not fair. It's not fair to you, it's not fair to your children and it's not fair for your family. I remember quite clearly the conversation my ex and I had when we finally admitted to each other that we were just going through the motions and the marriage had become nothing more than a business. For the year prior we had begun plans to build a new house (actually just renovating her mom's to accomodate a joining of households), had the plans settled and approved. Contracts we drawn and about a week before we were going to sign them, she came to me and said that she wants to do this without me. We ended up talking about how each of us had drifted apart from each other and what we wanted out of life at this stage wasn't the same. There was no blame thrown at each other, no argument, no trying to talk the other out of it. We both sort of knew but neither one of us wanted to admit it until we had to.

To be honest, it was a huge relief knowing that we both tried our best and mutually came to the realization that sometimes not matter how hard you try, people change and what they want out of life change. There are no right or wrong nor is there blame.

Telling our families actually became a realization that what we were trying to hide was visible to almost everyone. We heard many times over "Yeah, we kind of thought something was up". We ended up with a stronger support network to help us get our lives back and our individual happiness than we did in people trying to help us save a marriage that had run it's course. I say this because you're very concerned that your mother's reaction will be negative. I'm saying, don't be suprised. She only wants for you what you want for your own children, and that's to be happy.

[whit4488]

wow the stinger in that post was the last sentence...why the are you staying around with this chump when he's screwing around on u and ur family. move the on...that is so ridiculous!! u deserve better HELLO!!!

[vickypollard]

Thanks!