Ok, so here's the dirt on my situation and I'm hoping I can get some advice/perspective.
My husband and I have been married for almost 3 years. During this time, our sex life has deteriorated. Before marriage we were very active, usually once a day often twice. A year after marriage I began to develop several physical problems, and went to doctor after doctor and they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me or told me I was making it all up. Finally, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and put on some medication in February when I switched doctors (yet again). I'm starting to come out of the fog, my pain has improved and my energy level is up. Needless to say, over the past couple of years, my condition has certainly impacted our sex life. Fast forward to this past fall, my husband wrote me a letter in which he expressed his frustration and growing resentment that I didn't clean up the house or do chores, I didn't balance work/home (I'm a PhD student in a very demanding program), and mostly, that I didn't want sex or intimate physical contact. The letter was written because we were caught in a constant cycle of conversations about the same things over and over again. He basically said, please make more of an effort or we need to figure out how to end our marriage. He was sick of feeling like my roommate and not my spouse. I didn't take the letter well, as I was overwhelmed with preliminary exams the week he wrote it and I was feeling horrible physically. My pain level was at a 7-8/10 and I was not sleeping. But I took the time and evaluated what he said. While his resentment hurt, I felt like I owed it to our marriage to make an effort to work on the things he was unhappy about. I started making an effort around the house, I nagged my doctor more to figure out what was wrong with me, I tried to make a more equitable work/home balance and be more efficient with my time. He acknowledged that I improved things and said he appreciated the effort I was making. Things seemed to improve a little bit.
But what he doesn't think he needs to do is work on anything that bothers me. There are several points of contention that I am starting to really resent. I don't want to resent him, as I love him and want our marriage to work. However, I am starting to feel bitter that I've put effort into improving things that were bothering him, but it takes him years (literally as I will explain in a moment) to address concerns I have with him. The first thing, is that since we got married he has developed sleep apnea. He always did snore, but before our marriage it was more of a dull humm. Now you can hear him snorting and choking through 3 walls and 2 doors in our house. Part of my condition is sleep difficulties. I have a hard time going to sleep and staying asleep, which exacerbates the pain and foggy brain symptoms, which in turn makes me even less likely to want to have sex and it really does effect my work. Two years ago, it got so bad that I had to start sleeping on the couch and I've been sleeping there since. Since I can sleep through the night, I do feel better. The problem is he takes it personally. When the issue first started to affect my ability to sleep in the same room, I insisted he see a doctor. We went together since he doesn't like doctors and his new doctor gave him a script for a sleep study. It took him 3 months just to call and schedule it. Then after the sleep study was done and showed that he had obstructive sleep apnea and would need an at home sleep study, it took him a year to get that scheduled and another 2 months to turn in the device that recorded his sleep at home. That was last summer. Last week he FINALLY saw the pulmonary specialist to see about getting a CPAP. Over this time period, he gave me multiple and conflicting excuses for why he was not getting this done ranging from the doctor's office wouldn't call him back, to the doctor told him he didn't have sleep apnea (which is a lie because I saw the lab result and the diagnosis on it), to he was playing phone tag. It does not take a year to get someone on the phone at a major hospital pulmonary clinic. I know he never even bothered to call. So he is finally getting the CPAP machine next month after nearly two years of dragging his feet. All throughout this time I have missed the closeness and intimacy of sleeping in the same bed with him. He said he missed it too, and became resentful of the fact that we weren't physically close anymore. Every few months he'd bring it up that he was unhappy because we weren't having sex. I told him I needed to feel a certain physical closeness and emotional intimacy in order to get in the mood, and until he got the CPAP and we could resume sleeping in the same room, the situation probably would not get any better.
Another problem that has more recently become an issue that prevents me from feeling intimate with him is the fact that he has stopped brushing his teeth. He has periodontal disease. I can see the gums receding and the plaque build up on his teeth. He has taken up smoking cigars (which I normally wouldn't mind since he doesn't smoke in the house) which has compounded the problem (and probably isn't helping his sleep apnea either). I know he has periodontal disease, as I work with researchers who study periodontal bacteria and disease. I know what it looks like and… (forgive me if this is too gross) smells and tastes like. His kisses often taste like the crap you floss out of your teeth. It disgusts me. Kissing, for me, is one of the things that gets my libido going. I can't feel sexual if I can't stand to kiss him. I've tried asking him gently to keep up with proper hygiene, I've tried being blunt, I've tried buying him a softer toothbrush, I've tried buying special toothpaste… Nothing. He can go weeks without brushing. It is seriously disgusting. But yet he wants us to be more intimate. I feel like I've taken steps to work on things on my end, and I feel like he should do the same but if I ask him to do so he claims that "I'm trying to change him". I don't think asking someone to practice regular hygiene is changing someone, especially since it wasn't an issue before our marriage.
My husband and I have been married for almost 3 years. During this time, our sex life has deteriorated. Before marriage we were very active, usually once a day often twice. A year after marriage I began to develop several physical problems, and went to doctor after doctor and they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me or told me I was making it all up. Finally, I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and put on some medication in February when I switched doctors (yet again). I'm starting to come out of the fog, my pain has improved and my energy level is up. Needless to say, over the past couple of years, my condition has certainly impacted our sex life. Fast forward to this past fall, my husband wrote me a letter in which he expressed his frustration and growing resentment that I didn't clean up the house or do chores, I didn't balance work/home (I'm a PhD student in a very demanding program), and mostly, that I didn't want sex or intimate physical contact. The letter was written because we were caught in a constant cycle of conversations about the same things over and over again. He basically said, please make more of an effort or we need to figure out how to end our marriage. He was sick of feeling like my roommate and not my spouse. I didn't take the letter well, as I was overwhelmed with preliminary exams the week he wrote it and I was feeling horrible physically. My pain level was at a 7-8/10 and I was not sleeping. But I took the time and evaluated what he said. While his resentment hurt, I felt like I owed it to our marriage to make an effort to work on the things he was unhappy about. I started making an effort around the house, I nagged my doctor more to figure out what was wrong with me, I tried to make a more equitable work/home balance and be more efficient with my time. He acknowledged that I improved things and said he appreciated the effort I was making. Things seemed to improve a little bit.
But what he doesn't think he needs to do is work on anything that bothers me. There are several points of contention that I am starting to really resent. I don't want to resent him, as I love him and want our marriage to work. However, I am starting to feel bitter that I've put effort into improving things that were bothering him, but it takes him years (literally as I will explain in a moment) to address concerns I have with him. The first thing, is that since we got married he has developed sleep apnea. He always did snore, but before our marriage it was more of a dull humm. Now you can hear him snorting and choking through 3 walls and 2 doors in our house. Part of my condition is sleep difficulties. I have a hard time going to sleep and staying asleep, which exacerbates the pain and foggy brain symptoms, which in turn makes me even less likely to want to have sex and it really does effect my work. Two years ago, it got so bad that I had to start sleeping on the couch and I've been sleeping there since. Since I can sleep through the night, I do feel better. The problem is he takes it personally. When the issue first started to affect my ability to sleep in the same room, I insisted he see a doctor. We went together since he doesn't like doctors and his new doctor gave him a script for a sleep study. It took him 3 months just to call and schedule it. Then after the sleep study was done and showed that he had obstructive sleep apnea and would need an at home sleep study, it took him a year to get that scheduled and another 2 months to turn in the device that recorded his sleep at home. That was last summer. Last week he FINALLY saw the pulmonary specialist to see about getting a CPAP. Over this time period, he gave me multiple and conflicting excuses for why he was not getting this done ranging from the doctor's office wouldn't call him back, to the doctor told him he didn't have sleep apnea (which is a lie because I saw the lab result and the diagnosis on it), to he was playing phone tag. It does not take a year to get someone on the phone at a major hospital pulmonary clinic. I know he never even bothered to call. So he is finally getting the CPAP machine next month after nearly two years of dragging his feet. All throughout this time I have missed the closeness and intimacy of sleeping in the same bed with him. He said he missed it too, and became resentful of the fact that we weren't physically close anymore. Every few months he'd bring it up that he was unhappy because we weren't having sex. I told him I needed to feel a certain physical closeness and emotional intimacy in order to get in the mood, and until he got the CPAP and we could resume sleeping in the same room, the situation probably would not get any better.
Another problem that has more recently become an issue that prevents me from feeling intimate with him is the fact that he has stopped brushing his teeth. He has periodontal disease. I can see the gums receding and the plaque build up on his teeth. He has taken up smoking cigars (which I normally wouldn't mind since he doesn't smoke in the house) which has compounded the problem (and probably isn't helping his sleep apnea either). I know he has periodontal disease, as I work with researchers who study periodontal bacteria and disease. I know what it looks like and… (forgive me if this is too gross) smells and tastes like. His kisses often taste like the crap you floss out of your teeth. It disgusts me. Kissing, for me, is one of the things that gets my libido going. I can't feel sexual if I can't stand to kiss him. I've tried asking him gently to keep up with proper hygiene, I've tried being blunt, I've tried buying him a softer toothbrush, I've tried buying special toothpaste… Nothing. He can go weeks without brushing. It is seriously disgusting. But yet he wants us to be more intimate. I feel like I've taken steps to work on things on my end, and I feel like he should do the same but if I ask him to do so he claims that "I'm trying to change him". I don't think asking someone to practice regular hygiene is changing someone, especially since it wasn't an issue before our marriage.
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