Please help,
Hello. I am 36 years old. I have been married for 10 years and have 4 children, 3 are mine and the forth is just as important. I am currently a full-time programmer/analyst, volunteer fireman and I do professional tattooing some weekends for extra money. I also coach my youngest sons T-ball team.
My marriage is deteriorating and I am looking for ideas on ways that I can improve it. I know that one mind can easily miss things so I am looking for another perspective. I will try to list my faults as well as her strengths. It goes something like this:
When we got married, like so many others, we were very much in love. Affection was there, the sex was great and we enjoyed each other’s company with her son from a previous relationship. I wasn’t really much to brag about. When she met me, I was working part-time at Arby’s, loved to party and really had no direction in life – just free. She told me that was one of the reasons that she fell in love with me. However, all that seemed to change when we had our first daughter. Suddenly, I was put on the back burner – the sex slowed, affection was not as common and she seemed quite unhappy. Two years later she was pregnant again with our son. This pregnancy was hard on us as she was sick a lot. Of course the sex and affection died even more. During this time I shamefully cheated on my wife. A guilt I feel still today. I told her about it and she decided to forgive me. I’ve always thought it was directly related to the neglect that I received as I was married and lonely. I still didn’t do very well financially. I went from job to job and went out with my friends, although not quite as often. I was not really applying as much effort as I could into the family.
Then came a turning point in my life. Five years ago (5 years into our marriage), we moved to Connecticut to be near her family. We’d been with my family since the beginning, but they sort of had the same personality as me – the ‘me’ personality. My wife still claimed to love me. It was a very good move. Being with her family made me see who I really was and what I needed to do – a lot of changing. I quit going out with friends, I even quit having many friends. I stopped being like my father who never did any fun things with me. I started taking the kids to park, reading bedtime stories at night, getting them into sports. I learned about and became a programmer in a corporate environment surrounded by college grads even though I only have a GED. I became a volunteer fireman and most of all, I adjusted my priorities to reflect what I really care about – my family. In every area of my life, I tried to make a very hard effort to do the right thing. Although not perfect, I have kept my changes and most are now habit. So many see me now as a success. In fact everyone that knows me – my family and friends, my wife’s family and friends – are exceedingly happy and proud of me. All except for my wife and her father. Her father was one of my main role models that fed my desire to better myself, but is also the personality that my wife has. There is no pleasing this man. He is always in need to criticize. He has made my wife cry countless times by criticizing everything she does – nothing is ever good enough, and she has some pretty high standards. His son (my wife’s brother, Norman) once told me a story – they had just won a championship soccer game and he was the goalie. The score was 3-1. After the game, Norman ran up to his father excited about the win. He complains that he let one go past him. He wasn’t joking either. This is his personality, and unfortunately my wife is a lot like him even though she hates the way is most of the time. I have threatened to leave and she insists that she does not want me to leave. She insists that she loves me. Our sex life is quickie about once year. My attempts at romance are rejected every time I try. I’ll go up to her and try to initiate romantic with a kiss, and she will always push my head away with her lips and look away. If I lay down with her, she all of a sudden needs to go check on the kids. We sleep in separate beds since the baby is still with her at night, but she never comes to where I am sleeping to lay beside me. She doesn’t really do anything that is apart of normal relationships. She seems to be angry with me most of the time about anything she can find. I see times when I’ll come home from a stressful day at work to find my wife playing games on the computer. She’ll say she needs a break and hands me the baby (now 2 years old) and go to her room. I’ll cook supper, feed the kids, watch the baby only to have her come down and criticize me on the supper mess. No thanks, just criticism. Her word is law, mine is nothing. Example: we have neighbors that are questionable. She’s said dozens of times the kids are not allowed next door. A couple days later I’ll let them go next door, and get yelled at and told to go them now. A couple days later than that, she will allow them to go next door. And if I question it, I am dismissed as if I have no right to say anything negative to her. No one is allowed to criticize her – only she can do the criticizing. Like her father, will find something wrong, even if it means digging up something from the past because there is nothing to criticize about today. And the sex – as a result of having the worst sex ever in my life for years, it has now become probably the thing I want most in my life. I’ve remained faithful now, but being faithful to a woman that does absolutely nothing sexual, is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And what’s worse is she’ll lead me on just to drop me on my face. Like a couple months ago, she went to an adult shop to get some flavored lotion. Told me we’d have fun that night – then didn’t. A few times now she’s lead me on attempting to me think “Tonight I’ll make you happy”, and every time it doesn’t happen. I mean, without a reason, without any explanation – just not. I now expect nothing to happen when she says these things, but it still hurts and makes me feel like I am a piece of crap in her eyes. Thoughts of sex now cloud my mind like an illness. I’ve explained this to her many times, but it is simply not important to her. All that matters to her is what she is going through or what she needs. I am getting tired of trying to help her while she is not even trying to help me. Its like our marriage is not a joint effort. According to her, I needed to change many things, and there’s always more that she wants me to change while she changes nothing in herself.
From what I’ve studied on, it seems as though this is a perfectionist personality. Some psychiatrists have said that a perfectionist will try to change those around them because they cannot change themselves. I’ve also read that children that grow up under the rule of a perfectionist generally have a low self-esteem. This can make a bad mixture. A low self-esteem wanting to feel normal will usually do one of two things – fix themselves to raise their own plateau, or tear down/criticize others to their level or below. My wife has acknowledged that she needs to change, but has not as of yet. In fact, she is becoming more and more negative and critical as the years go by. Most of the time she is either tired, angry, stressed and this is reflected in the way she is towards the children and me. She is no longer loving, warm and affectionate. She no longer likes to have fun. I hate to see her miserable all the time, but it seems that even when I try to please her, something about it is always wrong. She is so sexually cold, I can’t even touch her without her pulling away. She feels like she has the answers and never listens to me. Every time she finds a fault in me, I’ll change it and she’ll just find another, and another…and, yes….another. When she talks, I must listen. I cannot say that I don’t want to talk about this now. When I want to talk, I mostly get the unshakable command: “I don’t want to talk about this right now!”.
What could I possibly do make her happier, to make her see. What could I do make or help her actually DO a positive change in herself. I want to see her happy again. I want to feel her love again. I NEED a better sex life. I’ve tried doing the same things to her that she does to me, and she’ll get mad at the act and the reason for the act – failing to see that see does this herself. I have stopped her criticisms of me when she is guilty of the same thing and she’ll then get mad a second time because I pointed that out. Our relationship is very unbalanced. I don’t think that a smart woman could not see how unbalanced our marriage is, unless maybe it’s on purpose. It looks as though she is trying to push me away. I feel absolutely nothing good coming from her – she can’t even look me in the eyes except when she’s found something negative to tell me. I haven’t seen that loving look in years – literally. She doesn’t want to go to counseling because she feels the blame is on her. I admit, I messed up in the past. I cheated on her once and the first five years of our marriage I was not a very good husband and father – I was just like my dad. However, these last 5 years, I have changed a lot. I have sincerely put more effort into my family than anything else ever in my life. I became a much better provider, father and husband. --- I write this in hopes that I can get something that I have not tried yet nor thought about, or is there anything I can do. Is it in fact over in her mind and there is nothing I can do but wait for the inevitable end. Sorry to pour this on you, but I am absolutely out of ideas. I am desperate. I know that I won’t be able to continue living like this forever, and for my kid’s sake, I hope I can do something. They need me as a father, not a weekend visitor. Am I trying to fix something that cannot be fixed or should I not give up on what is important to me?
