Is It Me?

You are truly a nice guy. You know in your heart that is true. Dont get sucked in to the lie... Xxxxxx

Maybe it's not too late to mend some fences. The hardest part is recognizing your faults. The second hardest is fixing them. I had to make some mid course corrections myself in married life, and things have never been better. You'll have to much more than try, but maybe if you succeed you'll be in for a pleasant surprise. Good luck my friend.

I have come to a similar conclusion. My H and I finally had a talk that made some sense. He said, "Why would I want to bang someone who won't even sit next to me on the couch?" He then gave very specefic examples of times I have ignored him, and I couldn't deny them. Several years ago, life was hectic with me working 2 jobs. I would often fall asleep with one of the children. Or there were times I would be up grading or lesson planning. Before either of us noticed, sex dwindeled.

Before anyone says he is just trying to blame me, I am not taking ALL the blame here, just admitting my part. He seems to be taking some action as well.

It is common to feel this kind of doubt. Most of us denied will own our pieces of the debris of our marriage. But it's good to know the boundaries. After years of mending my mind, I know I am far from abusive, but I am not "soft" or gentle (not even with my employees or colleagues) --- although I am regarded as fair and objective. Those traits are more important to me than to get regular, or any sex at all. So if something antagonistic needed to be told to my wife, I did it while working to minimize any unnecessary unpleasantness. Yes, it may have had the effect of desiccating her vagina. But chances are, she would not experience ****** even with Nimbus 9000 vibrators. (She probably does not even know that women use vibrators. If she does, she views such women in a very poor light.) So find the boundaries of owning your share, and then live in peace.

my husband is verbally and emotionally abusive. It is crippling. If you are criticising your wife on a daily basis with a drip, drip, drip of self-esteem eroding acid, then you need to own that and do something about it. I applaud you for considering that this may be a problem. My husband won't even acknowledge that he's doing this to me and now to our son.

Will it make her want sex again? Who knows? But even if this doesn't work out, you have a better chance of having another healthy relationship at some future date.

While I agree that it takes two to make a relationship work I also know that it takes TWO to work on the problem. I know that I am far from perfect but I can't make my relationship with my husband better all by myself. I wish I could get hime to see how much I love him and how much we need to work on our relationship. I love him but I don't want to be miserable for the rest of my life. I have learned from past relationships that sometimes its better to be alone and happy then with someone and unhappy.

The same way as you need two to tango, you need two for an argument. It is all about our responses to the action around us. There is never a one person to blame for a situation that involves two people, though we always try to justify our position. No matter how morally right we may be in our actions, our intentions, our purposes, we do contribute in some way in adding fuel to the fire. It may be justified, it may be not, but in the perspective of that relationship - marriage or not - both the partners tend to build a wall, brick by brick, till one day they cannot see each other eye to eye anymore and need to stretch their neck beyond the wall to even discuss anything.
Source: experience.

That is a great perspective. :)

I quite frankly see a lot of myself in some of the jerk husbands we read about here. But then I have this psychiatric disorder where I assume myself to be like horrible people I read about. Like I'll read an article about a serial killer and I will then fear that I am a serial killer, even though I have no urge to go on a cannibalistic killing spree. I'll read about sex refusers and fear I'm a sex refuser, even though I never refused sex in my life and in both my marriages was the one driving her crazy always pestering her for sex.



So some, probably most of this, is blown out of proportion. But I know very well that my wife has reasons for not wanting sex. What she can't see is that there were reasons I gave her those reasons, and I can see that there are reasons she gave me for those reasons I gave her and I think I'm getting confused. But she is not confused. It's all very clear to her. She maybe did a little here and there, but if I had just been more emotionally available and not so passive aggressive we would have a pretty good marriage. So she's partly at fault for not seeing that she's partly at fault. And I'm partly at fault for being a cannibal. So you can see why we have issues.

Rare indeed is the blameless spouse in a dysfunctional marriage.

All you can ever do is own your own ****.

Example.Lets say you are "over critical". As part of your personal growth that is something you would be working on (among assorted other things). You would be working on such things for no other reason than to become a more rounded and better person.

Inevitably, as you work on, and improve aspects of yourself, there are flow on effects to people in your orbit.

Tread your own path.

We are also all complicit in teaching people what we will tolerate. I have very thin lines of behavior that I will tolerate from a romantic interest now that I've been through an abusive marriage. Just as you have some part in perhaps being overly critical of her, she has a part in accepting it and not demanding better treatment. I know because I was like your wife in my marriage.

What I have noticed while dating is simple... people take their cues about how wonderful you are and how much respect you deserve by how much you expect and how wonderful YOU think you are. If someone starts acting a little less than gracious with me, now I simply walk away. They either shape up and come and find me or they let me leave. Either way, the only people left treat me well.

Every dynamic takes 2 people to create. Even abuse. It's not abuse if someone says something mean and you walk away from them with your head held high. That's leaving a situation with bad behavior, not tolerating abuse.

We are all complicit, to some degree, in where we are at today with respect to our relationships.