Guys, I am starting to run out of options, so I am hoping that someone here on this site will have some thoughts to help me out. I a 39 year-old expat American entrepreneur that has been living in Asia for the last 7 years. I met my wife 11 years ago while an exchange student in graduate school (she was also an exchange student, but from a different US university). We were attracted to each other at the time and became friends (with a kiss or two thrown in) but given that we were returning to the US to different schools nothing really progressed. We would meet up on occasion and I was more romantically inclined at first than she was, but eventually we ended up in the same city and started to date. At the time I had a high-pressure, high paying job while she was working more temporary positions, but our relationship started to take shape. I was in my mid-20s so was reluctant to really commit to the relationship, and though I was happy to be in the relationship, still wanted to ‘explore’. She on the other hand kept pushing the relationship to the next milestones, first moving in together and then deciding to move abroad to Asia. She also led the drive to engagement/marriage - I went along, though not exactly enthusiastically. To be clear, my reluctance had nothing to do with her, but just my immaturity and need to keep options ‘open’ (I wasn’t actually a spring chicken when we got married - 33 - so its not that I can chalk up any reluctance to extreme youth - its just the big city temptations keep men unattached longer than they might otherwise be.)
All that said, we had a wonderful relationship and I truly loved her when we got married, as I would never taken that step unless I knew that I wanted to grow old with her. We quickly moved abroad after we got married, to follow a pretty interesting business opportunity for me. I think the first few months abroad were very good as we were settling in and she was looking for a job. However, after those few months, a combination of my ceaseless travel, her inability to find a good job (it was the beginning of the GFC, so not her fault) really started to take a toll on the relationship. I started to resent her inability to really ‘pull her weight’ with regards to household expenses and I began to see being married as a sort of a weight. Instead of exploring the world and working as a team, I started to become more distant and less forthcoming with regards to finances as my resentment rose. She tried to placate me, not trying to stir me up, and go along with my tantrums. I would make excuses to be out of the home and surrounded myself with single male friends that were constantly going out, and I wouldnt invite her. She suffered these slights with a few complaints, mostly asking me to be more affectionate toward her and to be ‘nicer to her’ She would try to make me hug her when I got home, but I would push her away. It breaks my heart to remember these things now! In any case, this persisted - the sex life shrivelled up and she started to push to have a child. I realised that we were both in our mid-30s so a request like that was not inappropriate, but I resented her even more for asking to do that when our financial lives were still precarious.
In any case, i went along with it, and we now have a wonderful, amazing young son that is almost 3 years old. Hoping that would stall the downturn in the marriage, and despite the pressures of having a young child, she quickly turned around and pushed to have a second. This I resisted and made angry protestations.
And then one day, about a year and a half ago, it all stopped. She stopped trying to grab my hand, or beg me to sit in the same room as her. She stopped wanting to have a baby. It just stopped. She didn’t say anything, but she just stopped trying. This got my notice, and unlike the typical WAW scenarios, I actually immediately felt that something was wrong (not that her lack of nagging was somehow a good thing). When I engaged her on it what was going on she said “look, I just don’t think this works. I don’t think that I will change the way I feel. I tried for a very long time, but there was always something wrong. And i finally realised it. there’s no reason for you or I to be in misery. Wouldnt it be easier if we didn’t have the stress of trying to make this work all of the time?” She was fairly composed, though teared up when she recounted this. I of course promptly did the classic, tearful begging her to stay and telling her that her marriage vows were sacred, etc. Promising that I would go to counselling. Pressuring her to go to counselling.
She finally agreed and we started counselling where there was a lot of discussion on improving communications. One thing to note is that my wife is INCREDIBLY conflict averse. She comes from a family where expressing emotions is very much not encouraged. She told me that she has never seen her mother cry, for example. She on the other hand is innately more emotional than her sibiligs and parents. So she got really good a burying. As such, it has always been hard for me to really know how upset she is about a particular thing. She suppresses a lot. She will readily admit that her entire life she has taken a suboptimal outcome to avoid conflict or to avoid making another person unhappy. In any case, one day after 4 months of light counselling (once every other week) she announced to me “this is not working. Our therapist is planning on talking about our sex life next week, which I have no desire to do.” Notably, during the time she agreed to counselling, she was overtly going through the motions of reconnecting (pet names, “i love you” in response to my stating it, hugs (though no sex). After this announcement she became hostile. While we slept in the same bed, no physical contact, in fact she almost looks rigid in situations where we might ordinary embrace so that she can avoid doing so. Counselling stopped, and I started individual therapy. It really helped me realise that I had a overwhelming tendency to “flood” her when i don’t get what i want. I dropped all relationship talk. Stopped really lingering around - hard to do when you still sleep in the same bed! IN any case, just try to give her distance and agree with her on everything she would bring up.
Things improved a bit - over 4 months she became less angry, so I thought that progress was being made. Then one day she asked me what we were going to do about our housing since our rental was coming up. I looked at her sort of surprised, and then she suggested that we move into adjacent apartments. I was floored. She repeated that though I was being nicer, she still didn’t think that things were working. By being in adjacent apartments we would at least be able to co-parent our son. I was devastated since I thought we were on the road to reconciling, but here she was suggesting moving into separate apartments!
In any case, I pushed back on that point fairly strongly (saying that leases shouldn’t dictate life and death decisions like our relationship and our son’s future) and down to the wire, she very angrily renewed our lease at the last minute. Looking back on it, I am sure that only added to her mountain of resentment, but she hated the level of discord so much that she caved in. It is worth noting that she has started to use last minute decisions to avoid having to discuss contentious things (she has now gone with our son twice to see her parents and Ive been left to make up some excuse as to why I couldn’t come because in actuality she wanted to be alone, and my presence would “only stress her out").
I have been using DB coaching which has been amazing, but I think we are both stumped as to why my wife has not really changed her tune with regards to the thought “that this doesn’t really work” and seeking a way out of it. Its almost like she is so conflict averse, but at the same time so scared of being vulnerable to me that she stays stuck. I’ve be DBing the right things - my entire style of communication with her has been much better over the last 9 months. So i am at a loss of what is going on and what I can do to help move my relationship in the right direction. I do deeply love my wife and it hurts me a ton to see her angry and in pain. But I simply can accept divorce and even a separation scares the daylight out of me. This lease issue will recur - she said the last time that we could just try it for a few months and then if was not helping could move back in together, but I think she was just saying that to put me more at ease. It is clear that this is not just a bid for attention given that this has been going on for almost a year and a half, and that she hasn’t changed her tune on the fact she doesn’t see how this will work. On the other hand, she hasn’t taken the ring off, deleted Facebook posts and pictures or generally done anything to indicate covert action to separate. That could be just because of her extreme dislike in causing pain to me and my son. Please, help me understand what I can do to make things better?
So I have - in the last year I am in awesome physical shape and have seen a few entrepreneurial activities get funding. So things are great from the GAL point. My confusion stems from the fact that she's been in this suspended WAW situation for almost a year and a half. For six months I detached and didn't being up the relationship. Things improved on a day to day basis, but still no physical intimacy. Eventually she brought up the relationship on her own and was still stuck to the script that things aren't working and she feels that she can't change the feeling. So I'm at a loss - not talking about the relationship seemed to only bury the issue, and despite her acknowledging my changes (you are much nicer and approachable), it didn't seem to change her take on the situation. So it seems that I have no choice but to engage her on the relationship? If so, it can only be in bite sized chunks since she's so conflict averse....jeez this is very tough.
Another follow up question - does any of this sound like an A? I imagine a lot of it would, but for the fact that she has stuck around almost 2 years in this limbo. I did find her googling "married to the wrong man" on her iPad, but that could be neither here nor there. The biggest issue is that we have been sleeping in the same bed for almost two years as this has been going on (she attempted to move to the other room but that lasted one night.) and she did try to talk me into moving into another apartment when our lease came up. Sleeping in the same bed means just that however. No touching whatsoever.
How do you detach when you are stil going through the day to day motions with someone?
I have read DR, but it a given my experience with detaching (as discussed above), her position didn't change 4 months into it. AND she was the one who brought the relationship up again, and said that she still didn't think it worked.
It's almost like she has a shield around her and refuses to go back in. And unless she has a chance to engage on the relationship, she will just file away all of the changes as superficial attempts for me to get her back.
I think the tricky thing for me is to understand how GAL and detaching work in an almost walk away scenario. I saw a post here earlier that said the response in A situation is almost completely different then in a non-A situation: the difference between a 180 and a be-present-and-empathize approach. Thoughts?
Hey Pundit. I emapathise with your situation. Last July after drifting further aprt for about 2 years I had another one of my flare ups to which my wife responded "i cant do this anymore" WOW! i didnt see that one coming. I did everyting worng, begged pleaded promised to change blah blah. So we carried on. And i did change. I became th model husband basically, not that i wasnt genearlly good before but now you'd e mad to leave me. So we carried on for months and things didnt really improve. i was still getting blamed for all the wrong in our marriage. There were glimpses of my old wife but i could see she was getting further away and nothing i did could stop it. Then D_day. just over a week ago. I did suspect for a very long time but i decided to find out for sure. She has been PA with her business partner for 6months + So you see, my efforts were futile. She had already gone. She loves me, love our family but she is in the fog getting emotionally fed somewhere else and to her that means happiness and is more important than anything else. Now im not saying your wife is having and affair but what you see on these boards is that they all do the same things. Its like they all read the same script. For a woman it not about the sex or physical closeness, its about the emotional conection she makes. Over time that drifts with your partner as life takes over. At some point they just switch off. You need to try and work on you. You can only control you. do stuff with you kids, do your own hobbies, get out with friends. It is very hard i know especially while under same roof DBing isnt so much about saving your marriage as it is about saving yourself. If you become a better more confident attractive person you will feel better about yourself. Will that get your wifes attention? maybe. If not you have become a better person so you can continue in life. Read the posts on here. Some inspirational stuff where people have turned their lives around with or with their spouse.
Keep posting.
Me:40 W:35 D:8 T:13 M:10 WAW: 7/14 PA Discovered: 1/15 at least 6 months Moved out and moved on
SRD, thanks so much for sharing. I know it is devastating to find out about the PA. If there is a silver lining (and admittedly a very very small one), it would seem at least you get a sense of cause-effect. Really sorry to hear about that.
For me, I feel that I am stuck because she is stuck. I totally get the DR principles of detach and GAL....the problem is that from what I understand, my 'correct' response is somewhat dependent on the cause of my wife's unhappiness. If she is NOT having an PA or an EA, then I should stay engaged and try to show her love. On the other hand if she has already gone, as a result of a PA or EA, the 'correct' approach is to 180. Quite different approaches.
As I mentioned above, I have asked my wife on two or three different occasions if there was somebody else. She has always said 'no' - and she is a very bad liar. I know the boards are filled tons of anecdotes of significant others who one could never ever imagine to be able to lie or cheat, and then are revealed to being able to do so. Still, its just tough to see how it would really be possible, given that we live abroad and the circumstances of our daily lives. Of course, "where there's a will there's a way" but it just doesn't seem to fit.
I guess I am just really struggling with the idea of being a "confident, attractive person" based on the points i make above. Being emotionally vulnerable is key in loving relationships, and unless I am certain she is really gone, how am i supposed to act?
