Reply Time: first of all, thank you all again for taking the time to offer perpsective, experiential wisdom, and even youthful exuberance (which we all need regardless of age!)

The Ruminant:

Your reminders that, essentially, our needs and desires are coming from our purest ‘souls’ is really good. If what I’m needing and desiring in my life isn’t hurting anyone else, and ideally that someone else is into it as much as I am, why should that be shameful? I think part of the shame here is that 1) I get hung up on the thing that if she doesn’t like sex, I shouldn’t either, and 2) when I do think about it these days, a little fantasy now and then, she is not in the ‘picture’ — kind of like ‘fantasy cheating’….but what’s a guy to do?!

There’s something called ‘depersonalization’ or ‘disassociation’, and I think I suffer a bit from one or the other, or both. This statement reminded me of that: “…your needs aren’t being met, which obviously causes physical and emotional distress.” Now this is going to sound weird, but I think it’s really the root of why ‘I’ am not able to feel properly, having been relegated by my wife to the proverbial doghouse…….. When I read that sentence I nodded in complete agreement….but felt that it was someone else who was experiencing those issues and that ‘I’ was agreeing as an objective bystander. WTF is up with that? No wonder I don’t feel strongly enough about what has been said and done to me…..it’s like I’m two people. The one that knows your statement to be true is cowering in a corner of my mind somewhere, while the ‘thinking and responding’ part of me just reads that and agrees with it, without it seeming to be ME it’s written about. Holy hell. Does that make any sense? I think that, to survive my formative years’ social trauma, my brain rewired itself for protection and became nothing but a deflecting shield to drive those hurts so deep that they wouldn’t affect the ‘me’ that still had to walk those hallways every day. Ya know what I’m saying? How does one reconnect oneself into a psychologically whole human being? (still can’t do therapy/counseling, sorry!) It seems like if I KNOW what the problem is and where it came from, I should be able to get my shit together on my own.

Thank you, The Ruminant, for writing something which allows me to understand myself much better.

Jess:

Your emotional feedback loops are spot on, thanks for crystallizing that for me. I see exactly what I’m doing there – good visual. You wrote, “This supposed ‘failure’ in your marriage is one domain of your life that is making you under-value so many other things about you – your self-respect, dreams, health, happiness.” Yep. 100%. And I can see how skewed that is. I have taken my marriage, to a woman whose personal changes, likes, and dislikes, over the years I had no control over, and made them all my fault. I have had her on a pedestal so long, but didn’t realize I was gazing upon her with my head firmly entrenched in my ass. If I could JUST JUST JUST get to that bridge of ‘Ya know what? Fuck this. I don’t need this anymore. I’m sorry I’m not the man for you after all, I wish you well…and 50% of my income….and cross it, this would be over in a blink. That is where I’m stuck……..having her on a pedestal, grossly overvaluing her opinions and whatnot, while savagely degrading my own needs and desires, and yes, my SELF. That is it in a nutshell. I can think that all day long………but when it comes to really FEELING it, that is where I stumble. How do I get that concept, that she is just one woman out of some 3.5 billion on the planet, to TRULY REGISTER?? That’s the key, right there. BOOM. Now to get to that place I need to be, based on that understanding……….how??

Danger:

Hahaha, man, I loved your post. I have sons ages 23 and 20, what a great time of life, and at the age, guys take no shit (nor did I at that age — golden years, full of confidence, tanned, working at a resort beach, girls everywhere)………this was a fresh wake-up call. I could almost hear the rallying cry of the young man still inside me. If you’ve seen LOTR, there’s the scene where the Brotherhood and Gandalf go to see the King, but he’s been taken over by Saruman and he’s just this disgusting old crusty lifeless ‘thing’ sitting there on the throne. But they are finally able to cast Saruman’s spell away from this guy and he positively blossoms back into vibrancy and life. Great scene…….it fits my situation and what I want to see happen for myself. Also, interestingly enough, just yesterday, before I posted any of this, I wrote a note to myself (I write a lot, I know) to stop reading and reading and rehashing and analyzing and reading some more……..all procrastination. It was helpful in the beginning, but I realized this week that I was using all that shit as a crutch……….pretending I was going to find THEE KEY to my release in some hidden treasure of a sentence somewhere, or a quote or someone else’s mantra. I realized it was all time-wasting. I know what my problems are and I know what I need to do, and it got to the point where I realized no amount of reading and analysis (paralysis) was going to do anything for me anymore. I know of Tony Robbins but nowadays it’s almost like a cult. H emay have really good stuff, but some of the things I’ve read about his own character leave me a bit cold. I will give it a look, though, who knows – he may be the ass-kicking I need. And yes, I am obsessing, tremendously over-thinking, constantly churning and rehashing what is essentially a simple matter: ‘this marriage is fucked beyond repair — it’s sad, but time to move, the clock is ticking.’ Have you read ‘The Universe Doesn’t Give a Flying Fuck About You’ by Johnny B. Truant? Do so. You’d like it.

Matt:

You wrote, “It’s stupid to pretend we are not thirsty….” Yes, it is. I have pretended, behind a pretty gnarly mask attached to some mammoth Dickensian chain, that I can cope. That I must be wrong to want this and that. That I can be stronger than this. I can be a freakin’ martyr! Well, we see how well that ahs worked out. I have utterly dismissed my own needs (I can handle it!) and desires (I must be a perv!), and then crawled behind that martyr’s mask. I won’t let HER see that this is bothering me because……gasp….she might think even LESS of me if I raise a fuss!! The issue has come up several times and always just resulted in me being on the receiving end of more hurtful criticisms and comments……….to include the most mind-boggling utterance two years ago that the sexlessness was “mutual, so don’t hang that on me!” Huh? Rewriting history there? By that point it was NOT mutual, but those words pretty much made it so, right then and there. I realized then that this was over. In a conversation prior to that, I used words like “nightmare”, “walking through hell”, “I don’t understand why you’re doing this to me”, “I feel like an 8th grader who can only look at girlie mags” “can’t sleep”, “confused”………so she KNOWS EXPLICITLY how much pain this has caused me……….but her response was, “What am I supposed to do, go stay with my mom?” in a sort of sarcastic, caustic tone. A big mistake I have made is that I never set boundaries or timelines……..I wish I had said, “I’ll give us six months to try and find an adequate resolution to this problem, or it will be over.” Never did that. Wish I had. Oh well. Too late now.

You had a question about my mom – she was great. Dad – alcoholic, distant, never did anything with us boys, missed being at the dinner table several times a week, would come home smelling of booze around 10pm……..never abusive or anything, just quite simply ‘absent’. This is part of who I am, but haven’t puzzled it into the whole quagmire yet. Maybe it doesn’t play any part, I don’t know. I DO think, however, that having a strong male figure to speak to at this crisis time of my life would be pretty cool. I know that father, had he existed, would be helping me to get out and would have my back.

“The solution for this is actually pretty simple. It’s time to throw your hands in the air, accept you have no idea what the heck you’re doing or what’s going on, and surrender with humility to who you are…..” THIS IS POTENT. It is truly all I have left. I have churned and burned for years now with no improvement, I have read numerous books and articles and quotes and forum posts from others in similar straits, I have journalled, listened again to RUSH “All the World’s A Stage”……all with no improvement in getting myself across the bridge. At least now I’m standing AT the bridge. A year ago I was wandering aimlessly in the woods. I find it somewhat helpful, for whatever reason, to picture the gods or angels or what have you, kind of laughing at how hard I’ve tried when all they really wanted me to do was trust my universal gut.

It sounds like you are in a really good place for yourself now, so kudos for stepping up and taking care of business. That’s good modelling for me!! I need to get there.

Lunch is over, back to work…….THANK YOU ALL for your responses………very much appreciated!!!

Addition:

I seem to be enmeshed – severely enmeshed – in some kind of weird religious righteousness, almost Puritanical, though I’m not a churchgoer. Why is this? I know I’m also extremely emotionally codependent on my wife (three decades together). I have this need to be this ‘good little boy’ — little angel who must always be perfect – to get approval – and because my wife has had many harsh criticisms of me, my bubble has burst. I did everything to be the perfect husband and dad, and I guess I failed in the biggest and most important arena of all (to me) – the forever marriage and family. I failed. Gave it my all. Failed. It’s as if after this grandest of failures, what do ANY successes really matter any more? Why even try any more?

I am here, however, because I’m looking for help. There is some little ember, buried deep, that is saying – ‘I’m still here – don’t forget about me’.