perfect madness diary

To JADE or not to JADE

2011-08-31T10:31:00.005-04:00

People with Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) are controlling people. They will cross normal personal boundaries. They will question you, criticize you, argue with you, try to humiliate you, berate you, disregard your personal preferences and tell you what to do. This is very confusing and disorienting to nons (a non-OCPD person, i.e. people who don't have a personality disorder but live with a person who does). The behavior of the OCPD person is so unquestionably and so outrageously wrong that it is almost a reflex by those who are treated this way by their partners to respond to them with righteous indignation. It has been determined by experts that typical response of a person bullied by a controlling partner consists of 4 components:

Justify

Argue

Defend

Explain

This concept is known simply by the acronym JADE. It is extremely tempting and very common for partners to JADE. We all have the same "fight or flight" response to perceived threats. When someone attacks us blatantly, we fight back. JADEing is all about the defensive strategies everyone uses when confronted by a controlling person.

Unfortunately JADEing does more harm than good. A controlling person is oblivious to the fact that he/she has crossed the personal boundaries of another person. He/she is actually expecting the other person to be sorry for his/her mistakes and apologize. When the other person becomes defensive instead, the controlling person gets angrier and an argument ensues. Is there any chance that such an argument results in the controlling person realizing his/her mistakes and back down? Anyone who has ever dealt with a controlling person knows that this will never happen. Tension rises, everyone becomes upset, the relationship gets hurt and nothing gets resolved. So why do we partners knowingly and repeatedly fall into this trap? We fall into this trap due to our totally irrational belief that we can somehow set the record straight or somehow prove to the other person that he/she made a mistake. This, of course, never happens because the controlling person's behavior is an emotionally induced behavior. Any attempt at responding to them with rational reasoning is always bound to fail.

Over the course of last 6 months since I realized my wife's OCPD, I am pleased to say that I have successfully avoided the JADE response on many occasions but unfortunately I continue to fall into this trap from time to time. I wish there were some kind of an alarm bell that goes off when Peggy indulges in critical or controlling behavior. I do it instinctively. The pattern sneaks up on me unrecognized and before I realize it I am arguing with her or defending myself. Just this morning, Peggy told me that last night when I came home I took off my shoes by the door but I didn't align them correctly. I immediately began to defend myself, tell her that she too leaves her shoes misaligned, the shoes don't always need to be aligned the same way, etc. etc. It took me a minute or two before I realized what I was doing. It was so silly of me to argue with someone who was telling me that my shoes were misaligned. Anyone who is not a member of our household would find this discussion absolutely ludicrous. Being a perfectionist, Peggy is heavily into ordering things in a particular way. When things are not ordered according to her system, it makes her anxious. She criticizes people who distrupts her system of ordering things in order to re-gain control and feel less anxious. Yet here I am, responding to an emotional reaction by making rational arguments. It will get me nowhere. When I realized what was happening, I stopped immediately, I used humor to chang the subject.

As the schools open in September, Peggy's stress level will rise. This is when it is most important for me to manage Peggy's anxiety. Her anxiety leads to controlling behavior and her controlling behavior tempts me to JADE. Next thing you know we are in a full-blown argument. I do not wish to be engaged in these pointless arguments anymore. I don't have to justify myself to Peggy. I don't even need to explain myself. At the same time, I don't need to submit to Peggy's rules either. What I need to say is simply : "This is the way I prefer to do things" calmly and matter-of-factly. I don't owe her an explanation why. Everyone is entitled to their own preferences. She is entitled to hers, I am entitled to mine. When the situation is framed simply as diverging set of preferences, there is no need to Justify, Argue, Defend, or Explain.

Anger and OCPD

2011-08-29T10:52:00.004-04:00

Among all the symptoms of Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder that partners and families have to deal with, frequent displays of anger is without a doubt the most difficult one. I discussed Peggy's frequent anger in this blog very early on (See: Short Fuse). It is very interesting and educational for me to re-read my own post on this issue from two and a half years ago. I didn't know then that Peggy suffers from OCPD. Notice in that post how hard it was for me to understand and explain Peggy's behavior. Notice how personally I was taking Peggy's anger. Notice how wrong my reaction was to Peggy's outbursts. Don't take this the wrong way: I am not blaming myself for my reaction. Anyone who is not afflicted with OCPD would naturally react to another person's seemingly irrational bursts of anger exactly the same way. If somebody is yelling at you for very minor mistakes, displaying a completely disproportionate show of anger, you feel threatened in a very violent manner, all the natural defenses of you body and mind kick into high gear. Adrenaline rushes in, you get defensive, you get angry, you fight back. This cycle repeats itself. The relationship deteriorates.

2 years ago, I saw Peggy's anger as strictly her responsibility. It is still her responsibility. However, I didn't understand then the futility of my response. I didn't realize then that my reaction was not helping matters. Just because Peggy was the cause and main instigator of this destructive pattern did not mean that there was nothing I could do. There was and there is something I could do and that was remaining calm and seeing this simply as Peggy's problem and not taking it personally. My new attitude has done wonders. Peggy still gets angry but her outbursts are more short-lived and they don't escalate as much.

Is it fair that I had to fix a problem that was not my own making? No it is not fair but given a choice, how many people would prefer peace and happiness over justice and fairness? I personally prefer peace. I think most people would prefer peace.

What has changed within the last 2 years is that we now have a teenager in the house. Teenage years cause friction between children and parents even when the parents are the most level-headed individuals. Imagine what happens when one of the parents has OCPD! Just yesterday our son asked our daughter's help with adjusting the curtains in his bedroom. The curtains fell. Peggy was yelling our daughter for helping our son. Our daughter was completely incensed at what she saw as a very obvious case of injustice. She was only trying to help her brother. No permanent damage was done anyway, yet there she was, getting yelled at by her mother! These are the kinds of situations where I feel I must step in and tell my daughter that her mom has anxiety issues and that she overreacts. I feel bad for my daughter because when teenagers need understanding and support the most, being criticized for attempts to be helpful is very upsetting and disorienting to a young person. I feel that this is my most crucial role in this family. To remind my children not to take their mother's anger and overreaction personally. I feel that my presence in the household helps balance Peggy's behavior, reduces some of the confusion she creates in our children's minds and helps our children feel safer and have their feet more firmly on the ground.

Lack of empathy...even Schadenfreude

2011-08-26T10:04:00.000-04:00

As Peggy's Obsessive Compulsive Personality has progressed, I began to notice in her a fairly consistent pattern of lack of empathy towards me. I think from time to time she is able to feel some empathy towards our children but when it comes to me, her empathy is almost entirely absent. Lack of empathy is not explicitly discussed in the book Too Perfect as a symptom of Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder but I suspect it is a natural consequence of this condition. Imposing their exacting standards on other people without being able to consider how this may make them feel, has to involve a great deal of inability to put themselves in someone else's shoes.

I am a fairly strong person pysically and emotionally and I rarely break down. I don't even get sick with a cold very often. Peggy, on the other hand, catches every single cold that is out there and she frequently has a hurt shoulder, back, or an elbow. I always express empathy when she complains about her maladies even though I am not quite sure how many of them are truly physical, how many are psychologically induced. However, on the rare occasions that I get sick or hurt, she expresses no empathy whatsoever. On the contrary, she frequently does something that has puzzled me for a long time: She laughs or giggles. Yes. She has laughed many times when I was sick and my voice was hoarse. She even laughs if I cut my face when I shave. This is what one would call Schadenfreude, i.e. to enjoy the suffering of other people. We all know that most humor is based on the misfortunes of others but we don't normally laugh at the expense of our loved ones. That's why sitcoms on TV are so popular. We laugh at a person on TV throwing a proverbial pie on another person's face. It is a legitimate outlet for our tendency to laugh at the misfortune of others. However, like I said, we are not supposed to laugh at the misfortunes of those closest to us. When my loved ones suffer, I don't even think to laugh. My first intinct is to feel bad for them for the pain they are going under.

I think the reason Peggy enjoys seeing me suffer is because it makes her feel better about herself. She is very a self-critical person and she feels very bad about getting sick or hurt so often. When she sees me having the same experience, it is a form of comic relief for her. What she doesn't realize is how bad it looks.

I have come out and directly asked her why she laughs when I am sick or hurt. She didn't even answer the question. I pointed out that her laughing at my suffering means to me that she doesn't care about me. Again, all she did was remain silent. This comes on top of her controlling behavior, anxiety and depression I have to deal with. I feel that if some day I get sick, old or disabled, I cannot rely on her to help me. I feel that I don't have a true partner in the world who would care for me if I am sick, who would dress my wounds if they need to be. I feel that I always have to be strong. There is no one to help me if I feel weak.

Being Right at all costs

2011-08-25T11:45:00.001-04:00

Peggy never admits to being wrong. She never apologizes to me either. Ironically, she is not a self-confident person. Where then does this urge to be always right, come from?

I think she knows full well when she is wrong. There have been cases where her mistake was obvious and blatant. For example, about a year ago she had an angry outburst where she crossed the line and insulted me. Her angry outbursts have been going on for several years now but she never crossed that line before. I guess everyone has their limits as to what level of abuse they are willing to tolerate, so I didn't let this one easily. I demanded an apology. She wouldn't give me one. I kept insisting on it for days. I refused to normalize our relationship until she apologized. At one point, she came close to apologizing but she was almost panicked at the thought. She instantly retracted her apology. Eventually, she apologized in a very half-hearted way in a message left on my office voice mail. The manner in which she apologized in the message was very similar to the way which was described in the book Too Perfect: There were a lot of "buts, howevers, and other qualifications that their listeners can barely hear the admission within the verbal thicket. Even in admitting error, perfectionists seem to be saying that they were... semi-right". In fact, her entire voice mail lasted 2 minutes and her apology consisted of a single sentence "I said some harsh things but...". The voice mail then continued to describe how I made her angry by not disciplining our daughter in a manner she asked me to do. Basically she verbally abused me for simply not applying her principle of discipline on our kids and while she slightly regrets using an insult, there were plenty of good reasons for her to be so upset and resort to such insult. That's basically what is saying. I had told her numerous times that there was no excuse for verbal abuse within a relationship. She never accepted this simple universal fact. Her apology was as close to a non-apology as you can get. There is no point in trying to push this issue with a person like that. I gave up insisting any further. I moved on.

A casual observer may mistakenly conclude that Peggy has such a high opinion of herself that she geniuinely believes that she is always right. Actually, Peggy is not a confident person. In fact, her insistence of being right does not come from a geniuine conviction. Instead, it comes from her insecurity in such a way that she fears that if she ever admits to being wrong, she will be railroaded and trampled upon. She feels an admission of a mistake on her part will give the other person the power of being right and as a result she will lose control.

What Peggy doesn't understand is that in a relationship, a well-timed and well-deserved apology repairs the relationship and increases intimacy. There are some couples who have fierce fights in their relationship. Yet, they apologize and make up. Sometimes they actually compete with each other to take the blame. This behavior mends the relationship in such a way that the relationship actually becomes stronger. In our case, however, Peggy maintains this false facade of being right but she can't actually fool anyone. She knows and I know that she made a mistake that hurt our relationship. In the short term, she may feel she won the argument but she actually hurt my feelings and she did very little to repair that damage. It astounds me how people with OCPD don't understand this very basic aspect of human relationships. I apologize to people in my life freely and frequently. When I apologize, I often see them counter-apologize to me. This brings the matter to a close and my relationship with those people actually improves. With Peggy, however, each incident like this deteriorates our relationship a little further. My recent understanding of OCPD and her resulting need to be compulsively right help me a little bit to at least make some sense out of this.

Obsessed with work

2011-08-24T10:53:00.003-04:00

My perfectionist wife is obsessed with work. She is always busy doing something. She believes that she has a heavier workload than most people (she doesn't). She certainly believes that she has more responsibilities than I do (she definitely doesn't). She further believes that there are not enough hours in a day to get her work done. Most of the time, I am not even sure what she is actually busy with. I know that she is supposed to be filling out some form or register one of kids for a class or something but that shouldn't take the whole day and night. What is she actually doing? Why is it taking so long? She doesn't even sit down with me and have a leisurely conversation. By all appearances, she is a very conscientious, devoted and hardworking person. What is wrong with this picture? What is wrong with a hardworking spouse, you may ask? Two things:

She is rarely available to me for companionship. In fact, she often chases me out of the room if I interrupt her doing some work which she considers important (but I don't even know actually what it is). I don't remember the last time she and I sat down to have a leisurely chat.

Just because she is always busy doesn't mean she is actually getting anything useful done

I am the spouse of a typical workaholic person. Lonely and abandoned. Except that my wife doesn't earn those big bucks in a high-flying career! In fact, she doesn't even have a full-time job. She is very "part-time". We don't even have young children at home to care for. My wife is not even a domestic goddess. I still do more than half of the domestic chores in addition to being the sole breadwinner of the family. I even do 90% of all the cooking in the house, for God's sake. You may wonder how can a person fill all her time so totally and completely, appear completely overworked and overwhelmed, yet accomplish so little useful work? Here is how:

She invents chores and then enslaves herself to them: The elaborate photo albums I discussed in my previous post is one example. There are many items on her schedule most people consider optional or elective.

Every little chore is made more complicated by performing them in the most inefficcient way possible. She always strives for absolute correctness, completeness and error-free results. There are no shortcuts. She checks and re-checks everything. She makes phone calls to people (annoying many people with her inquisitiveness) to verify information that she already knows to be true. She corrects the mistakes on the forms that she is given by other people to fill out. She discusses with other people the pros/cons and ramifications of various choices. Choices that she is not even considering to make. She asks my input on the matter, draws me into endless conversations even though there are no important consequences of making the wrong choice.

If she finds herself not doing something productive, her mind races until she finds something legitimate that needs to be done. If she finds nothing to do, then she begins to think proactively to do things that don't need to be done just yet but may possibly need to be done in the future. Sometimes she is so hasty that circumstances change after she gets something done too soon, so she now has to re-do them once again in a different way

If she still cannot find anything to do, she begins to organize papers, furniture, computer files, clothes, etc.

She attends every single meeting, lecture or function available to parents in the schools our kids go to. She knows that most of these meetings are unnecessary to attend but she fears that someone in some of the meetings someone will say something important and she will miss it.

She reads thoroughly every single newsletter, mailing or e-mail sent to us by our kids' schools. She then marks important dates on those newsletters on her calendar.

She keeps diaries separately for each of our children. She records their daily life, milestones, important accomplishments.

She goes through our incoming mail carefully. Making sure that every piece of mail is read and appropriately handled. She shreds address labels on the envelopes so that no one will go through our trash and use the information on the address labels to steal our identity. In our modern digital age, the good old-fashioned Postal servive is hardly relevant anymore. I rarely receive anything important in the mail anymore. Bills, personal correspondance, statements all arrive on the Internet. Yet, Peggy is still hung up on our delivered mail, meticuluously going through the incoming mail, spending inordinate amounts of time appropriately disposing of it

Surely she performs some necessary tasks among these unnecessary ones. However, the necessary tasks only occupy perhaps one third to a half of her time. The rest of the time is spent spinning her wheels, doing tasks that either don't need to be done or don't need to be done so thoroughly. There is huge cost of her Obsessive Compulsive personality on herself, on our family and on our marriage.

When I come home, I find Peggy buried in work. Actually buried in obsessive busy work. She doesn't even say hello to me when I arrive. Sometimes she lifts her head and gives me a quick nod and goes back to her work. When I arrive home, she won't open the door to me even if she is right there on the other side of the door and she sees me through the partial glass door because she considers the door knob of our main entry to be contaminated with germs. Once inside, if I go up to her and make conversation, she interrupts me abruptly and tells me that she has important work to do. I see her one more time before she goes to bed. She tells me that she still has more work to do but she is exhausted. She feels guilty to be quitting work but she is unable to work anymore.

I am a hardworking person myself but I am practical and effective. However, I value my leisure time. Once in a while, I sit down and enjoy reading a good book or watch some TV. When Peggy sees me relaxing, I can feel it in her demeneanor that her blood is boiling, her blood pressure is rising by seeing me "waste time". This is completely irrational and unfair to me since by all standards of measure, I get more useful work done in our household than she does. Since I am not bound by her meticilous standards of perfection, I got 10 times more work done than she does. In the past, when I used to see her quietly fuming like that, I used to feel uncomfortable. I used to get up and do something, somehow look busy just so that she won't get angry. I stopped doing that some time ago but it is still very unnerving to see her boiling resentment when she is stomping her feet and resenting me for taking a break.

Nobody knows exactly what she is busy with. Even our kids have expressed curiousity to me about what exactly Mommy does with her time. They know that she appears to be very busy but they don't quite know what exactly she is busy with! Actually it is usually about our kids' school or their extracirricular activities. If you look at her, you would think that parenthood is a job that is full-time and a half. If you look at her, you would think that she has no help from her spouse with parenting the kids. Yet, I am the one who takes our son to sports practices and scout meetings. I am the one who helps them with all their homework. This is what an obsessive-compulsive person is like. I began this blog thinking that it is our modern society's perfectionist standards of parenting that has caused my wife to behave this way. Only recently have I come to the realization that it is not normal to behave this way and my wife actually has Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder which is compelling her to be this way.

Demand Sensitivity - Demand Resistance

2011-08-23T12:49:00.004-04:00

One of the biggest problems in my marriage has been our sex life. Throughout my marriage, we went without sex several months at a time on a regular basis. My loyal readers will remember the counter on this page which automatically counted the number of days Peggy and I went without sex. Those who want to refresh their memories can refer to this Sexless Marriage post. At the time, I would rack my brain trying to figure out why my wife would refuse to have sex with me. I would ask her over and over again. Everytime she answered my question, her answer was a little bit different and her answers would never quite make sense. She would tell me that I am too angry and that's why she couldn't have sex with me. Duh! I was of course upset because she was refusing to have sex with me. She would sometimes tell me that the reason she couldn't have sex with me was because I didn't appreciate her enough. Hmmm, what does that exactly mean? She would tell me a whole bunch of other things as well but her answers always shifted, they were always somewhat fuzzy.

After I read the chapter on Demand Sensitivity and Demand Resistance in Too Perfect, finally everything began to make sense: Peggy's Obsessive-Compulsive personality resists everything which she perceives as a demand. A demand does not even have to be of the dictatorial "Do this, or else..." variety. Anytime something is requested or expected of her, an obsessive-compulsive person will immediately perceive this as a demand and will do whatever is in her power to make sure the other person doesn't get his way. In fact, even the things she wants for herself will be considered a demand, if God forbid the other person made the mistake of coming out and asking for it. The entire reason my wife has denied me sex all these years is because I made the mistake of asking for it. Not even demand it, simply ask for it.

There are many other examples of demand resistance in our interaction. Peggy has this strange habit of complaining about tasks that nobody has asked her to do in the first place. A demand that she has placed on herself basically. For example, she spends excessive amounts of time making very elaborate photo albums of our family. Even though no one in the family has ever asked her to make such elaborate photo albums, she herself has decided to take on this task, and she is the one who made this task into such a time consuming and elaborate one, yet she now feels opressed by this obligation. She complains endlessly about the amount of time and effort she spends on these photo albums. When I tell her that she always has the option to stuff all the photos in a proverbial shoebox (in other words, save them on a harddisk or a CD), she seems flabbergasted by my suggestion as if I have two heads. How dare do I possibly suggest that? The pictures always have to be organized in a neat photo album and that's that! This is her non-negotiable obligation. She resents it terribly but it has to be done. This is, my dear readers, an example of unbridled perfectionism that is wreaking havoc with our lives.

Her refusal to have sex with me had the same exact set of reasons behind it. Once I asked for it, or perhaps even before I asked for it, the fact that there was an expectation on my part for a regular sex life, in her mind this was now an obligation and she had to do whatever in her power to resist it. She needed to have that kind of control. Acquiescing to that obligation meant she was no longer in control.

Finally, about a year ago, a partial turnaround occured. She began to have sex with me about a couple of times a month. It is still somewhat too infrequent in my opinion but much more frequent than once in 6 months. Yet she didn't relinquish all control. She still dictates every aspect of our sex life such as the timing, the manner and the place of it. The more predictable it is, the better it is for her. Frankly, it is not very exciting for me like this but as in every other aspect of my relationship with a person with OCPD, I had to compromise and accept this because if I ever dare ask for a change, she will perceive it as a demand, and that will be the end of our sex life.

Examples of Peggy's demand resistance can be seen in many other aspects of our relationship. Peggy will sometimes do personal favors for me, such as picking up my dry cleaning, etc. Likewise I, of course, will do many personal favors for her as well. Actually I happen to do many more favors for her than the other way around. When she needs my help, all she has to do is ask. If I, on the other hand, ever ask for a favor, I feel the resistance immediately. In fact, I almost never ask for a favor because I don't like to be rejected. A year ago, I needed Peggy to drive me to my dentist because I was going to be sedated. She didn't say no outright but she gave me millions of excuses as to why this was such a difficult request for her. She told me that she is very busy and it has to fit her schedule, etc. etc. I sensed so much resistance that I gave up asking her and I decided to ask a friend to give me a ride and he immediately agreed to help.

Only after reading the Demand Sensitivity chapter in "Too Perfect", finally all of my suspicions about Peggy's demand resistance were confirmed. The normal give-and-take of a marriage is severely distrupted when one of the spouses is severely resistant to anything request for help. She interprets them as demands and control, regardless of how politely the request was made and how frequently the requesting spouse fulfills similar requests. My wife literally hands me lists of favors everyday. Yet, God forbid if I ask for a small favor, both her antennae go up, she does everything possible to resist, avoid or if necessary outright reject my requests. The only way she ever does any favors for me is if she can anticipate my needs and does a favor to me in her own volition. Otherwise, forget it folks! It ain't gonna happen!

Too perfect

2011-08-22T16:27:00.003-04:00

It has taken me a long time to realize that Peggy has what experts call Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD). Another name for this disorder is simply perfectionism. A lightbulb came on in my head when I realized this. Many people have heard of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) but OCPD is actually quite different. People with OCD have rituals they have to follow, such as excessive hand washing, fear of germs, repetitive behaviors, etc. but they actually know they rituals are wrong. People with OCPD, however, are convinced that their habits are justified, they impose their habits on other people, they are very controlling and they don't want to change.

I believe the best book written on this subject is called Too Perfect: When Being in Control Gets Out of Control by Jeannette Dewyze and Allan Mallinger. This book has opened amazing horizons for me. It is ironic that I began blogging touting another book called Perfect Madness. I, in fact, named this blog after that book. Little did I know that the answer was staring right in my face. The word "perfect" was the key to understanding what makes my wife tick. What was wreaking havoc with our lives was my wife's obsessive quest for perfection. I couldn't figure this out earlier because I always thought perfectionists are people who are pretty close to perfect and they tend to be confident and conceited people. Peggy has almost no confidence. I never thought of her as a perfectionist. It was a misunderstanding of perfectionism on my part. One doesn't have to be anywhere near perfect in order to be a perfectionist. A relentless pursuit of perfection is all that is necessary.

Update

2011-08-22T15:49:00.005-04:00

It has been a little over 2 years since I chronicled a 6-month segment of my relationship with my wife, Peggy in 2009. I decided to resume blogging for a while because I think I have developed a new understanding of my situation.

First of all, let me summarize what has happened during the past 2 years: Honestly, the more things changed, the more things remained the same. In 2009, I stopped blogging when things appeared to have improved. Then things became worse again. Then things improved once again, only to get worse once more. Typically, things got worse in the Winter and they got better in the Summer. Why, you may ask. Because we typically have a busier schedule in the Winter. As things get hectic, Peggy's anxiety increases.

The question was, and it has always been, what I was going to do. Do I simply ride out the ups and downs in Peggy's moods and hand over the control of my happiness to my wife? Should I get to be happy only when Peggy is happy and live a life of anxiety, anger and unhappiness when she is not happy. In order to address this question, I finally decided to see a therapist on my own in early 2011.

My therapist was a woman about the same age as Peggy and I. She quickly agreed that Peggy has severe emotional problems. I even voice recorded some of the arguments Peggy and I had and had my therapist listen. Just as a good therapist shouldn't, she never told me what to do but she facilitated me to develop an understanding of Peggy's moods and how I can make my life better as Peggy goes from negative mood to another with only brief respites in between.

What I decided to was as follows:

Remain calm when Peggy throws tantrums or is anxious or depressed

Don't take anything personally even when her anger targets me

Validate her feelings even when I don't agree with them

Do not accept verbal abuse, leave the scene if necessary

Some of you may wonder why I would even stay with a wife whom I need to fend myself against. The short answer is my children. If I were to leave Peggy, she would most likely get the custody of the kids. I need to stay for the time being to set an example of normalcy for my kids. This is assuming that I can control and stop Peggy's verbal and emotional abuse. I believe I can. I am now armed with a better knowlege of Peggy's condition. I am much better able to make sense of her moods, her reasons for outbursts and her behavior in general. It has taken me a decade to figure all this out. It is very difficult for a mentally stable person to figure out a mentally unstable person. Their minds work completely different. The only way to learn about the way their minds work is through books written by experts in the field. One book in particular has helped me greatly. I am going to talk about that book in my next post.

Thank you

2009-08-04T13:13:00.004-04:00

This blog chronicled a 6-month segment of my marriage. There were many low points along the way. There were also some scant moments of hope. Those hopes were repeatedly dashed and I became increasingly jaded. When things began to improve last June, I had no good reason to be overly optimistic. My marriage had been an unfulfilling union since the year 2001. Every period of progress was always quickly followed by a major letdown.

I didn't expect what happened in June of 2009 to be any different. I still don't know if this is permanent. All I know is: Peggy and I are still doing pretty well and this has lasted much longer than any period of happiness she and I have experienced since our marriage began to decline. Many of my followers warned me against overoptimism and complacency. They are right! I would give the same advice to myself if I were in their shoes. People rarely change. Who knows? My followers may ultimately prove to be right. I decided to give my marriage another chance. All I have to lose is another few months. When a marriage has already been in trouble for 8 years, it seems like a small price to pay.

This is not to say that my marriage is now perfect. For example, my sex life is not as exciting as I would like. However, I do have a sex life now, which is something I couldn't say barely 2 months ago. It is above the threshold of a sexless marriage (which someone defined as "less than 10 times a year"). It is reasonably fulfilling for both Peggy and me. I am hoping that achieving this regularity will eventually set the stage for more variety and more freedom to experiment.

All the anger and screaming have ended. This is very important. It was becoming increasingly unpleasant to live with Peggy. Now, she is calmer and more pleasant. She seems to pay more attention to me, not just when she needs my help. The normal give-and-take of marriage was re-established. She is more patient with me and more respectful to me. I really have no major reason to complain.

The real test will come in September. Life will pick up speed again. Our kids' needs will increase. She will go back to work. When the amount of stress rises again, will she be able to keep her anxiety under control? My hope is that she is getting a taste of what a harmonious life can be like. I am hoping that this will remind her where our priorities should lie. Trying to do too much results in a complete mess. Perfection doesn't exist. Sometimes, accepting our limitations is what we should all strive for.

During this journey, my followers have been a tremendous source of support and encouragement. They helped me become stronger and more determined. I am reaping the benefits of this tough love approach now. I cannot thank my followers enough for sharing their experiences with me and giving me excellent advice. I hope you stick with me for a while longer until I make sure that a permanent progress has been made in my marriage. To my followers who are struggling with their own battles, I have been following all your blogs. I am continually amazed by the daily struggles of this amazing bunch of smart, strong and articulate men and women in this tiny corner of the blogosphere. I am sending all of you positive vibes. Thank you. Thank you.

Calm seas

2009-06-30T13:55:00.006-04:00

Things have improved drastically between me and Peggy during the last two weeks. It is not just about the amount of sex which has gone up significantly, but also it is the overall quality of our relationship. I am a little surprised by this development. I was getting ready to take some drastic action. Possibly demand a trial separation. All of a sudden, things took an unexpected turn.

I believe she realized that I am serious about what I want from this relationship and that she alone won't be able to control everything. The other reason that contributed to this change is the end of the school year for our children. Peggy is also off for the Summer. This makes for a far less hectic schedule and Peggy's anxiety lessens a great deal. Her angry outbursts are gone, she worries and ruminates less (going in circles over the same subject) and she is able to relax a little. As a result, she has become more attentive to me and less irritable overall.

The Summer schedule is of course temporary. Once the Summer is over, there is great potential for her anxiety to rise. The need to address our underlying problems has not disappeared. I am enjoying this reprieve but it would be a mistake for me to become entirely complacent.

Always on Guard

2009-06-22T09:10:00.004-04:00

Things are substantially better between Peggy and me during the last week or two. I have drastically changed the way I act and react to her anxious and controlling behavior. I can summarize my new outlook as follows: I now derive my criteria for fair and appropriate behavior from my inner value system rather than Peggy's. If she treats me unfairly, I call her on it. If she gets angry at something I said or did, I consult my own value system to decide whether I indeed said or did something bad. I don't let her make me feel bad. Her feelings are hers, my feelings are mine. I don't let her infect me with her negative feelings.

The odd thing is: Not only do I feel better about myself, she seems to have more respect for me. Even though I didn't do many things she asked me to do during the last week, she didn't try to punish me by withholding. She had sex with me and it was pretty good sex. She was present and engaged, she was considerate.

Of course, it is not all a bed of roses. She keeps trying to exert control on a daily basis. However, I now have a much more sensitive antenna. I immediately pick up on it. In the past my reaction to her was automatic. I didn't even notice when I was being manipulated. I complied as a reflex and I felt bad about it afterwards. Now, the moment she attempts control, my antenna goes up. I quickly judge the situation and react appropriately.

One thing I have to be careful about is not to go over to the other extreme, that is, refuse everything she asks me or suggests me to do. Or going further than that, turn the tables on her and try to control her instead. This has been easier to implement than I thought. All I have to ask myself are the following questions: Is it fair? Am I doing this under pressure? How do I truly feel about it?

Peggy's anxiety problem is still unresolved. Now that the kids are on their Summer vacation, things are relatively relaxed and there are fewer triggers for her anxiety. Despite all that, she has a baseline anxiety that never goes away. Once the Summer is over, her anxiety will return with a vengeance. The Summer may be a good time to address these problems.

The Anatomy of a Relationship Talk

2009-06-11T10:58:00.008-04:00

Stormy: I want you to stop yelling at me and our kids.

Peggy: I am an emotional person. You can't ask me to stop expressing my emotions.

Stormy: Yelling is not an expression of emotions. It makes other people upset and afraid.

Peggy: You made me angry by not abiding by our agreement. That's why I got angry.

Stormy: My intention was not to make you angry. It was not a decision against you. I would have let you know but you were inaccessible. You have a right to be angry but you don't have a right to yell at me.

Peggy: (repeats) I have a right to express my feelings.

Stormy: I feel that your anxiety problem is negatively affecting our relationship and family. I think you should see a therapist.

Peggy: What makes you think you are so perfect? You have your own problems. You have no friends. You are unhappy with yourself. You expect me to make you happy and meet all your emotional needs.

Stormy: This conversation is not about me. You are getting defensive. I know I don't have many friends but that is not the cause of my distress. All of my unhappiness is due to our relationship. You can hardly claim that I am asking too much of your time and attention. We rarely spend any one-on-one time together. I can't remember the last time you and I saw a movie together. You are impatient with me when I want to talk to you. We go 5-6 months at a time without sex. I don't think we are anywhere near the point of me asking too much of your time and attention.

Peggy: (not responding to any of my comments but only repeating her points) You are not perfect. All you do is criticize me and make everything my fault.

Stormy: Do you think you have any anxiety problem?

Peggy: I will not answer that question.

Stormy: I think a therapist can help you feel much better.

Peggy: You said in the past that therapists never help. Why do you keep changing your mind?

Stormy: If you prefer, we can have marriage counseling instead.

Peggy: OK, I will see someone, but you have to do all the work and find a good therapist.

Something about the above exchange makes me very uncomfortable. She never agreed that she should not yell. She never agreed that she has an anxiety problem. She hasn't yelled at anyone since our conversation. She is going to see a therapist. Is it too much to ask her to tell me whether she understands and agrees with my points? My goal is not to rub it in her face that I prevailed in the discussion. In fact, it was never my intention to prevail. My goal was to make an argument, hear a relevant rebuttal, go back and forth and somehow reach a compromise. There was no discussion of that sort here. I made an argument. She stuck to her guns. Then she basically said: "OK you are stronger than me, you win.". There is a major letdown here. I never wanted to win by virtue of my power in the relationship. I wanted to win by virtue of the strength of my argument. Ultimately, I didn't even necessarily want to win. If she had a better argument, I was open to her argument. I would have simply dropped my argument and accept hers. But she never made a valid argument.

For example, she never addressed the fact that getting yelled at hurts my feelings. She only focused on her need to express her anger but not even considered how it makes other people feel. She also never addressed the impact of her anxiety on me. I feel her approach to discussions is very selfish. It is always about her. As a result we can't get anywhere. Then all of a sudden, she capitulates. It makes you feel like a rug is pulled off from under you. It is a very hollow victory. She is basically saying "I'll let you have it your way but you will never change my mind!" Perhaps I actually lost by winning.

Conversation

2009-06-10T13:07:00.002-04:00

After my counseling appointment, I asked Peggy to set aside some time to have a discussion. We talked for about an hour and a half that evening. Obviously, one conversation cannot fix everything. We have to have a follow-up discussion.

Conversations like these are very hard. No matter how much I sweeten the pill, it is still hard to swallow. I asked her to see a therapist for her anxiety. By the end of the conversation, she agreed to do so but I am not quite happy with this outcome because I feel I have forced her into doing this. I had hoped that I could convince her to do this. She admitted to her anxiety in the past. So, what is the problem? I don't know. Perhaps she doesn't like to be identified as the cause of our problems. She kept arguing that I too have issues. She claimed that I am unhappy with my life in general and scapegoating her. She claimed that I don't have enough friends and outside interests and I am expecting her to meet all my social needs. She was very defensive. In the end, she made me feel as though she simply yielded to my demand. I don't know if this is good enough. Will she cooperate and engage with the therapy or will she simply show up and undermine the efforts of the therapist? Frankly, I don't know. I also feel like I am controlling her which is not a very good feeling. In fact, I am even considering to tell her that she is free to do whatever she wants. My suggestion was merely a suggestion. She doesn't have to agree with it. She should do it only if she agrees with it.

I hate the way this conversation went. Then again what did I expect? If you tell your partner what is wrong with her, you are running the risk of appearing to be controlling. I don't want to tell her what is wrong. All I am telling her is what I think is wrong. I may be wrong. I have no problem telling her that I do not want her to control me. Yet I have problem telling her that she is irrational or doesn't know what is good for her. All of that is presumptuous. Who am I to diagnose my wife? She, in turn, diagnosed me with being antisocial. How can we address the problems of our marriage by diagnosing each other. Neither of us are psychologists.

We touched on our sex life. I told her that our current sex life is completely unsatisfying to me both in terms of quality and quantity. She once again argued that many couples have this problem as if that makes it right. She also pointed out that we recently had sex and that since then she had surgery and was uncomfortable. I countered all these arguments but what is the point? She never accepted my arguments and I never accepted hers. Where does this lead us? Only a stalemate. She does not even acknowledge that we have an intimacy problem. She makes excuses. Since she is the one who is holding out, the discussion inevitably takes the tone of an accusation and defensiveness. We haven't even agreed on what the problem is. Unless we agree on the problem, how can we find a solution?

One thing I am happy about is that she is not acting hurt or insulted since our conversation. She used to do that after every conversation as a means of making me feel guilty about bringing up these hard subjects. She didn't do it this time. We are interacting normally. No one is sulking or withdrawing. This is a good sign. I think we need a follow-up discussion. I don't want her to do anything which she is not fully invested in.

Counseling

2009-06-08T14:03:00.005-04:00

My counseling appointment today was almost anti-climactic. The therapist found me in some distress but she really can't even see any way she can help me. She offered some medication against stress but she didn't push it. I liked her. Basically, there isn't anything wrong with me to treat. I asked her whether she can help me figure out how Peggy's mind works. She didn't seem too excited about that. She left it up to me to decide whether I see her again or not. She could have easily found some reason to have me keep coming to her. She didn't. She doesn't even think I have a substantial assertiveness problem. She thinks it is understandable that I got into this situation and stayed in it for so long. She recommended marriage therapy and/or individual therapy for Peggy.

I am planning to talk to Peggy tonight. I have to do it correctly . I want to be firm but gentle. I don't want to give her an ultimatum because it tends to shut her down. Yet I want to somehow get the message across that I am serious about a change. I am still planning my talk. If anyone who reads my blog has any suggestions, I welcome their input.

Status Report

2009-06-04T09:08:00.005-04:00

My recovery is near complete. but there are setbacks now and then. Sometimes Peggy surprises me with something thoughtful. Last night she expressed some empathy with the difficulties I was having with an insurance company. I was taken aback. Does she really care? Ordinarily she seems so self-absorbed! Or is she sensing something? I have changed. She must have noticed. I have resisted every single one of her efforts to control me during the entire last week. First one or two must not have worried her so much because I have tried to block her control in the past but always slid back. This time I am doing it more consistently and for a longer period of time.

I have a counseling appointment next week. My appointment is 80 minutes long. I wrote up a 6 full page description of the problem. I will give it to my therapist or read it to her. My goal is to describe the situation quickly so that she can help me plan my first move. Actually I already have a plan I am working on. I am not sure yet. I would like my therapist's input on this. I expect my therapist to agree with me that Peggy has a textbook case of Generalized Anxiety Disorder. After my meeting with the therapist and after taking her input into consideration, I would like to ask Peggy to see a therapist to get treatment for this illness. I asked her to do this 2 years ago and even handed her the name and phone number of a therapist. She made a couple of lame attempts to reach the therapist but when the therapist didn't return her phone calls she gave up. It is my fault that I didn't push her harder. When I urge her to see a therapist, I don't know what she will say this time. She may say OK but not follow up. She may say No altogether. If she says No, my plan is to move out of our bedroom as a first step to make her understand that I mean business. I think one way or another, I will make her see a therapist.

Her anxiety is of course only one part of the equation. Her controlling and manipulative side is the other. Though her controlling side originated from her anxiety, it is quite well-established and became a part of her personality. She is so afraid of being controlled that she has to control me in order to feel better. Now that I have identified her thinking pattern, I have found countless examples of her control:

She yells at me for my supposed mistakes: Yelling is always about control. No one deserves to be yelled at. Especially not for petty mishaps.

She never admits mistakes, never apologizes: She is afraid that if she admits any mistakes her authority will weaken.

She never discusses our relationship problems: She either walks away refusing to discuss or she is not engaged in the discussion. She considers all my relationship concerns as demands. She thinks she either has to surrender or fight back. It doesn't occur to her that we need to negotiate. She thinks it is all about either controlling or being controlled.

She can't enjoy sex because sex is all about giving up control and being vulnerable.

She ridicules or trivializes my sexual preferences as a means of control. I felt there is something wrong with me and I couldn't assertively ask for anything anymore.

She made herself look sexually incapable as a means of control. She convinced me that she is incapable of having sex with me most of the time. Therefore she had to have the control over our sex life.

She uses the threat of her anger to make me yield to her demands.

She created an atmosphere in our house where everyone has to walk on eggshells in order not to set her off.

She convinced me and our children that she was weak, ill, tired, worn out, overextended so that she can demand special treatment from everybody. We all have to be careful not to disturb her, not to make her angry, not to demand her attention, etc. This is a part of her strategy of establishing power and control. Power coming from feigned weakness.

She uses distancing and indifference to control me. How foolish of me that I fell for this. I kept trying so hard to make her pay attention to me. I thought I was doing something wrong. I thought I am not interesting enough, smart enough, kind enough or sexy enough to attract her interest. Yet all the while, she was playing power games. By keeping me at arms length, she was watching me from afar, as I was struggling and agonizing about her lack of affection and attention. How funny it is that she actually yearns for affection. Yet she never believed that I wanted any attention other than sexual attention from her. She doesn't think anyone would give her any attention unless she manipulates them into it.

She uses ambiguity as a means of control: Basically she keeps me guessing. She frequently moves the target. Julie calls it the Whack-a-mole game. When I gave her the letter that I wrote, she wasn't impressed because my supposed lack of appreciation was never the issue. When I addressed that issue, she raised another one. She said she is conflicted about her sexuality. Eventually she even told me that my sexual style is wrong and that I am not passionate enough. Which one is it??? Just tell me in one simple sentence: Why aren't we having sex?

She tells me what I should think or believe: There are numerous examples of this. For example, when I asked her to make our marriaga a higher priority, she told me that we should focus on our children, not on our marriage. We??? Sounds innocent, isn't it? It is not so innocent. Whenever in a couple, a partner says we should do this, he or she is exerting control. The uncontrolling way to say that would be: I feel we should focus on our children, how do you feel about this?

I feel uncertain about the future of my marriage. I would like her to get treatment for her anxiety because her anxiety lies underneath her need to control. Once her anxiety is gone, she should need no need to control except that the need to control is very deep-seated in her personality. She learned it from her mother growing up. Her mother has anxiety as well as a controlling personality just like Peggy. The way our marriage and family functions is based on her control. Will she accept a marriage based on mutual respect and geniune care for the wellbeing of the other? I am rather skeptical. It scares me to think that my only option to save myself from her controlling yoke is to end our marriage entirely. I am not there yet but the possibility frightens me.

How did I get myself into this?

2009-05-31T20:10:00.004-04:00

We all know about the stereotypical henpecked husband and the overbearing wife. When I think about a controlling wife, that's what I imagine. Sometimes you meet a couple, there is no doubt who is in charge. I meet couples where the wife ridicules or disrespects her husband openly in front of other people. That's the picture I have in my head of a controlling wife. Peggy is not quite like that. That's why I didn't suspect being controlled. Another reason I never suspected was because Peggy does not try to control our finances, she doesn't insist on getting her way in choosing which restaurant we go to or where we vacation. I planned the last two family vacations we took entirely by myself because she said she was too busy to be involved.

Control issues have sneaked into our marriage quite subtly. They have developed and have become established gradually over a period of time. The areas Peggy inserts her control are very specific. She doesn't try to control every aspect of my life. Her need for control arises from her anxiety. She has many fears. The only way she can calm her fears is to control the situation. Controlling the situation means controlling people. I have always known about her anxiety. She has acknowledged it yet she has never addressed it. I think even seeing a therapist is too anxiety provoking for her. I have always tried to calm her down and help her reduce her anxiety. I thought I was helping her as a good husband. I never saw myself as victimized. I thought between the two of us I was the one who was mentally healthy and it was my job to take care of her. Initially her anxieties did not seem to affect me personally. I always took notice of her irrational thinking but I simply ignored it.

Even the fact that she always seemed to want everything done right then and there, did not seem me as controlling behavior. I saw it as irrational behavior, yes. But not as controlling behavior. I just laughed it off and did what she asked me to do because I thought it helped her feel better when I did what she asked me to do.

I think her controlling behavior began to bother me only when it became clear to me that she was completely unconcerned about my well being. She has this distorted thinking such that she is always weak and disadvantaged. She considers me as a strong and self-sufficient person. Therefore, I should never need anything from her. Yet as a loving husband I should always help her since she always needs help. Basically her controlling behavior comes from an assumption of weakness and helplessness. She doesn't act like a domineering bossy wife. Instead, she acts like a helpless wife, one whose husband is obligated to complement all her weaknesses. This assumption eventually leads to complete selfishness. How dare I want anything from her? She is the one who always needs help.

When it comes to sex, however, clearly I am the one who needs it more. How does she reconcile her lack of willingness in that area? By belittling the importance of sex. By making sex to be a much bigger favor. By making herself incapable of providing sex. By making me look too insensitive to deserve sex. Basically every excuse in the book.

I am sad that my wife has become a totally self-absorbed person who has virtually no concern for my well being. She wasn't always this way. Her distorted thinking, her always-victim mentality has made her think of herself as more important than anything and anyone. I am not sure she can ever change her thinking. I don't hold grudges. Even though she has pretty much made my life a living hell in the last several years, if she realizes her mistake and expresses remorse, I can probably forgive her. What I don't know is whether I can ever love her again. What she has done to me is not what a loving person can do. Even though she was motivated by her fears, I am very disappointed that she stopped having my best interests at heart. Probably a long time ago.

Recovery in Progress

2009-05-31T00:25:00.003-04:00

Even before I had my first appointment with my therapist, I began implementing my own plan to reassert myself in my marriage. Here are two anecdotes within the last 24 hours:

Friday night, my son was doing some homework on the computer and apparently having some trouble. Peggy came to me and asked me to go to my son's room immediately to help him. Things are always urgent and non-negotiatable with Peggy. This is one way she controls me. I usually give in, drop what I am doing and immediately do what she asks me to do. I, on the other hand, never ask her to do anything and if I do ask her something, she simply refuses to do. This time, I told her that I am busy and as soon as I am available I will go and help him. I could see anger in Peggy's eyes. She tightened her lips and spoke under her breath "These are the reasons I get pissed at you". Hmmm, can anybody see a veiled threat of withholding sex here? I'll explain. This was the exact wording she used when she told me why she is not having sex with me. She said "she can't have sex with me when she is pissed off at me". Others may not see it but I am 100% sure that she is referring to getting pissed off in the context of not being able to have sex with me. Soooo, I was just threatened by withholding of sex if I don't do what she said right then and there. My God! This is sick! I had no idea how I was being manipulated like this. I stood my ground. She huffed and puffed and went away. I later went to my son and helped him at my convenience. It turned out that his need for help was not urgent at all. But apparently, Peggy's need to control me was quite urgent. Thanks to my vigilance, I recognized it and her attempt failed.

Here is another example: Peggy was supposed to pick up our daughter from swimming practice. However, our daughter called me and asked me to pick her up early because she felt sick. Peggy had forgotten to take her mobile telephone with her so I couldn't reach her and tell her that I will be picking up our daughter. As a result, Peggy made an unnecessary stop at the pool. I had already picked up our daughter. When Peggy arrived home later, she was furious. She was screaming at me. She told me how I wasted her precious time. I told her repeatedly and calmly to stop screaming but she wouldn't stop. She told me that it was my fault that I wasted her time. Her anger was completely unwarranted but I never apologized or accept any blame. I kept repeating my viewpoint. Eventually she got so mad that she told me to "go to hell". I asked her to stop being rude. I stood my ground. Eventually, she calmed down. The whole time she was angry, I was completely unaffected. I kept reminding myself that she is the one with the problem. I simply repeated my position and asked her to stop screaming. Eventually she stopped. I am very proud of myself for not getting affected by her anger. I believe that she uses angry outbursts to intimidate me and control me but it is not working anymore. I totally desensitized myself to her antics. She can yell and scream. It is of no use. I am no longer under her controlling yoke. The key for me is to remain calm. If I get angry back, I lose the battle. This time I was calm. Eventually she calmed down as well. Now she is acting as if nothing happened. Hopefully she realized how ridiculous she was being.

Good Girls Don't!

2009-05-30T00:23:00.003-04:00

As my readers will remember, Peggy recently told me that she is still conflicted about her sexuality. She said that as a young girl, she was told "Good girls don't!", yet once she became an adult, she was expected not only to have sex but to love having sex. She talked of the difficulty of making this mental switch. It is quite strange, though not entirely unheard of, for an adult woman well into her middle age to be so conflicted about her sexuality. While Peggy mentioned a near-rape situation that was rather traumatic, according to some statistics one third of all women are sexually assaulted in their lifetime. Most women manage to develop a healthy sexuality despite such experiences in their lives.

What is puzzling about this statement is the fact that she was quite sexual when we met. In fact, all the way up to the point when we had children (several years after we met) she continued to be sexual. What could cause a person to be suddenly inflicted with guilt and shame so many years later? She has no reason to mistrust me. I am the least violent person she could possibly meet. In fact, if I were so violent, I am sure she wouldn't dare reject me in the bedroom. She and I have gone as long as 2 years sleeping side by side in the same bed without having sex, yet she never had to worry about provoking any violence from me. So, why should her mistrust of men suddenly rise to the surface and target me? This is something I have trouble explaining.

Before I go any further, let me state for the record that neither she nor I are religious people. In fact, during our latest conversation she specifically stated that religion is not at the root of her inner conflict. Then why?

More importantly, if she is aware of the absurdity of her inner conflict, why is she not doing anything about it? If you had some kind of a psychological scar from your childhood and you were aware of it and you knew that it was damaging your relationship, wouldn't you do something about it? Her attitude about this issue is one of complacency and lack of concern. This is where she is violating our marriage wows. Willful neglect of a spouse's well being is hardly in agreement with the concept of "love and cherish".

Submission Fantasy

2009-05-27T12:51:00.006-04:00

Peggy did not tell me about the self-conflicts she feels about her sexuality until fairly recently. Certainly not during the first 10 years we knew each other. During the early years, she was very sexual. I was the one who was conflicted about premarital sex, yet she seemed entirely comfortable with it. It is almost unbelievable to me now that she can be conflicted about her sexuality. Perhaps after becoming a mother, a lot of repressed thoughts have come to the surface. Or perhaps there is no problem but she is engaged in the most devious form of mindf*ck ever invented.

Let us revisit what she said about my lack of passion. It is quite puzzling to hear this because on the one hand, she talks about trust issues (being a victim of near date rape) and sexual repression. On the other hand, she thinks I am not passionate enough. I think passion is a code word for domination, agree? Perhaps she yearns to be dominated in bed. She has never given me any signals that's what she wants. In fact, she has given me every possible signal that I have to be very predictable in bed and respect all her boundaries.

Here are two interesting articles: The Truth About (Submission) Fantasies and Why Do Women Have Erotic Rape Fantasies?. We are not talking about real rape here, of course. A little domination perhaps. Maybe a small amount of pain. All in the context of a trusting relationship. I think it is better to use the term "submission fantasy". According to this article, nearly half of all women have these submission fantasies. Sexually repressed women have these fantasies even more often. Sometimes it is the only fantasy they ever have. Peggy has told me that she has almost no fantasies. Perhaps this is a fantasy she would never admit to me. What a submission fantasy does to a sexually repressed woman is, it allows her to avoid guilt for being too sexual.

I hope I am not going too far over the edge here. Combining her admission that she is sexually repressed with her admission that I am not passionate enough, this theory fits the situation extremely well. Heaven knows none of my female followers are sexually repressed but as women I think they are in a much better position to evaluate this theory. What do you think? I can be "passionate" if she wants me to but I don't want to make things worse by pushing her boundaries too far too fast.

A new twist

2009-05-26T11:04:00.003-04:00

Peggy and I had a conversation about our sex life. It was the most constructive and enlightening discussion we ever had about our sex life. I haven't started my counseling appointments yet. However, my self-admission that my lack of assertiveness paved the way for many of our problems is helping me become more assertive. I was self-assured. I didn't let her dodge any questions. I didn't let her ridicule me. In fact, by the end of the conversation she simply stated her preferences in a respectful and non-accusatory tone. For example, she said that she doesn't like oral sex because she thinks it is unsanitary. While I don't agree with that, it is a far cry from "I am not going to s*ck your d*ck!". Such comments always wounded me deeply. It is one thing to have hangups about oral sex. It is another thing to call my body parts disgusting. In fact, we had a very open discussion about our likes and dislikes. For somebody well into her 40s, it is amazing how many unhealthy hangups she has about sex!

Unfortunately she reiterated that she basically has no sex desire. That's devastating to hear. How can I have a sexual relationship with somebody who doesn't desire me? It not only makes me feel undesirable, it also makes it a lot easier for her to use sex to manipulate me. Since sex means so little to her, she can easily give it up and use it as a leverage. It is a win-win situation. She gets to use her time doing things she prefers to sex. In the meantime, she punishes me for doing things she doesn't like me to do. Even with somebody with the best of intentions, it is an easy trap to fall into.

In a way, I am a little disappointed to hear this. Last week, I was beginning to think that she perhaps likes sex but she is too busy manipulating me that she denies herself the pleasure of sex. I don't think that is true anymore. We delved a little deeper. Two things came out:

She said that she is still haunted by the messages she received as a little girl that "Good girls don't".: She said "As a young girl, you get groped. You have your own desires but you learn to deny them. All of a sudden, you get married and sex is acceptable or even obligatory now. It is hard to make that switch." She mentioned that at one time, she was almost date raped. OK but, all of that was more than 20 years ago. Am I supposed to pay the price for all those men who didn't respect her throughout her life? For Heaven's sake, she and I sleep side by side in the same bed for 6 months without having sex. I want to have sex but I respect her wishes. What other form of confirmation does she need that I am a different kind of man? How long does she intend to be traumatized by the conflicted messages she received as a child? Life is passing us by. We are already well into our middle age. How long can we go on blaming other people for our inability to deal with our childhood traumas?
She said she doesn't really know what kind of sex she wants but she thinks I am not passionate enough.: Huh? This one was a big surprise for me. Actually, I routinely squelch my passion because it seems to intimidate her. Just during this conversation, she complained that she keeps giving me what I want but I push for more. What she meant by pushing for more was asking for a better sex life. I am receiving conflicting messages. She is right that I am not very passionate during lovemaking but she gave me so many messages to indicate that I am not welcome to display much enthusiasm. She even hides from me when she changes her clothes. She told me that she doesn't want to frustrate me any further. How does she expect me to be more passionate when she is trying to cool down my passion? (Who said women are supposed to be consistent? LOL.)

The other reason I am not passionate is because I am so concerned about her pleasure that I suppress my own passion. She often has trouble achieving the big-O. I have come to believe that if I can last as long as possible, she will have a chance to get there. I have trained my body to desensitize and last as long as it takes. This means I cannot let myself get so passionate.

We ended our conversation agreeing that human sexuality is extremely complex. She tentatively agreed to a couple of changes to our sexual repertoire. Even though the fact that she doesn't desire me is quite disheartening, I think we had a very honest discussion. We made some progress.

Now, I am questioning whether I should keep my counseling appointment. I still think that there is some manipulation going on in our marriage. She tends to harbor resentments and punish people. However, our problem go beyond simple control issues. Even if she stopped being controlling, she still would have trouble getting beyond some hangups she has regarding sexuality. If I keep my appointment, I am not even sure what to discuss with the counselor.

I aced the test!

2009-05-21T11:14:00.005-04:00

While I am waiting for my first counseling appointment, I've been reading the book Who is Pulling Your Strings? which I mentioned in my previous post. There is a test in the book to determine whether you are in a manipulative relationship. I took the test and I got 150 out of a possible 150. A condensed version of the test which includes the questions and my answers is right here:

I sometimes feel confused about what my partner really wants.: I mentioned this before. Back to the Whack-a-mole game. For example, she told me that the reason she couldn't have sex with me was because she was angry that I don't appreciate her. I wrote her a letter and told her how many different ways I appreciate her. Yet, she brought up yet another reason why she is pissed off at me. I am always unsure about what she wants.
I feel that my partner frequently takes advantage of my giving nature.: I always feel that I do more than my share of the work in the marriage. Yet, she has no problem asking for more. I am unable to say no because I don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Sometimes I feel resentful about this but I usually comply with her requests. I feel that Peggy takes advantage of my giving nature. I expect her to say to herself that she already asked enough and stop asking. But she never stops.
Even when I do something that pleases my partner, the positive feelings never last long.: Remember how I was surprised about her mute response regarding last week's events? She had been supposedly upset about my lack of appreciation of her. After she read my letter, she said she liked what I wrote. We had sex. Yet she never seemed overly happy finally hearing me appreciate her. I think her response was muted because it was never such a major issue. She only used that issue for manipulation. When she found that I took the bait, she was probably pleased that she was still in control but my actual behavior did not really have any effect. It was probably never the issue anyway.
With my partner I feel that it's hard just to be myself or do what I really want..: Yes, because I am so concerned about her feelings. Her feelings suck all the oxygen in the room. She is angry. She is upset. She is disappointed. She is nervous. I never have a chance to even stop and dwell on my own feelings. I always think that if I can possibly help her take care of her negative feelings, then she will be able to pay attention to my feelings. How stupid of me to feel that way!
Around my partner, I feel taken for granted...: I feel that she is so sure that I would be loyal to her that she doesn't even feel the need to please me anymore. In a normal relationship, even if one doesn't have strong loving feelings for the partner, if the partner is meeting some important needs, there is a sense of a need to reciprocate. The only reason reciprocation may not be needed is if one believes that the partner has nowhere to go, he will stick around no matter what. Since Peggy is so blatantly negligent of my needs, I feel strongly taken for granted.
I seem to work harder on this relationship than my partner does...: This is absolutely true. It seems I am the only one trying to fix the problems of our relationship. I read tons of books about relationships. I read many websites. Here I am blogging about my relationship. I am the only one who initiates all the discussions regarding our marriage. She acts like she doesn't even care.
My partner has a very strong impact on what I think and feel...: Most of my strong negative feelings in my life are triggered by my relationship with my wife. My work problems rarely have this much impact on how I feel. What she thinks, how she feels and her mood affect the mood I am in.
I sometimes feel that I am trapped in my relationship and there is no way out...: I feel that I have only two choices: Either accept the situation or get divorced. I don't see any third option which would allow me to change my relationship and make it acceptable to me. I rule out divorce because of its impact on my life and my kids. Accepting the situation also seems impossible because it is an unacceptable situation. This lack of options make me feel trapped.
I don't feel as good about myself in my relationship as I once did...: My relationship does not make me happy as it once did. Once in a great while Peggy and I do something together where I enjoy her company. However, in the great majority of the time I am simply upset, unhappy and disappointed. I also get angry at myself for allowing myself to be treated this way. My self-esteem gets a battering.
I feel that I need my partner more than my partner needs me...: It seems like I am the only one who constantly asks the other to meet my needs. I have, at times, suspected that I am a needy person. She even told me that once. Yet outside of our marriage I always consider myself a very self-dependent person. I don't need anyone to take care of me. Why does it feel like I am so needy in this relationship? In reality, Peggy needs me a whole lot more than I need her. Peggy cannot even financially support herself. Peggy cannot even cook even though she works only 1-2 days a week. I think it only feels like I need her more than she needs me because she doesn't meet my needs, period. No matter how few they are. She refuses to meet them. Her needs seem fewer because all her needs are already met by me.
No matter how much I have done, I feel that it's not good enough for my partner...: See above. If I could do everything so that she wouldn't even have to lift a finger, it still wouldn't be enough. In fact, I feel like every passing day I take on more and more responsibilities off her shoulder. It is never enough. She never says she is satisfied. There is always something I am doing that is not quite right. She always makes me feel I have to try harder.
I feel that my partner does not understand who I really am...: Yes. I always feel that she misunderstands me. I feel that if she really understood my good intentions, she would appreciate me. That's why I keep trying harder and harder to explain myself to her. I explained myself in even greater detail last week in the letter I wrote to her. I always try to convince her and myself that there is a communication problem between us. If only I could explain myself more clearly to her, she would surely see my viewpoint and meet my needs. I have never admitted to myself that she knows what I need but she simply doesn't want to meet my need.

There you have it. I got 150 out of 150 on the expanded form of this test. I aced the test!

Who is pulling your strings?

2009-05-20T10:22:00.006-04:00

Mystery solved. With the help of two of my followers, Julie and Paula, I think I have figured it all out. I have suspected for a long time that my lack of assertiveness is playing a role in the difficulties of my marriage but I have always justified my behavior by thinking that it is always good to be a nice person. Well, being nice sometimes bites you in the ass!

I have been trying for years to make Peggy happy so that she can make me happy in return. Big mistake. My wife has her own issues. She is insecure. She has an anxiety problem. Controlling me gives her a sense of power and makes me behave predictably. That reduces her anxiety. She can never make herself feel completely secure, however. Her insecurity comes from within. No amount of control will eliminate her insecurity. She keeps trying anyway.

I can't blame it all on Peggy. I can't excuse her for what she has done either. I need to work on myself. I need to assert myself in the relationship. I have needs. I have opinions. I have my time and space. They should all be respected. I have not properly drawn my boundaries. Peggy has very rigid boundaries, I barely have any. I thought I was being accessible, nice and helpful by being so accommodating. Instead, what ended up happening is that I have become a soft target for Peggy to control me. She didn't do it all by herself. I let her.

I am reading a good book. It is titled Who is Pulling Your Strings?. It was written for people who are being manipulated by other people in their lives. All the problems in our sex life have been about control and manipulation. She denies this but I don't believe her anymore. Not to be excusing her but she may not even realize what she is doing. Whether or not she is aware of what she is doing, the effect is just as destructive to our relationship. I have been denied a fulfilling sexual relationship all these years, all because she realized how badly I needed it and she used it to control me. Perhaps she killed off her own sex desire in the process. It was a price worth paying for her. She gained control over me which was more valuable than sex.

I don't want to have marriage counseling at this point. Marriage counseling may even be harmful right now. The counselor may try to develop a working compromise. She could agree to it but not follow through. Until I regain my strength and identity in my relationship, I cannot even ask for what I want and make sure that she follows through. Ideally she needs to work on herself too but she is in denial. I am no longer in denial. I made an appointment with a counselor for myself. I am going to learn and teach myself to have healthy boundaries and enforce them. I will ask others (especially Peggy) to respect my opinions, needs, space and time. I will need a lot of will power and discipline to do this. She will not like it. I won't make a decision about the future of my marriage until I do the work on myself.

Thank you, all of my followers, especially Paula and Julie on this journey.

What did just happen here?

2009-05-19T14:52:00.005-04:00

On the surface, it looks like Peggy and I made major progress. After all, we managed to have sex after such a long time. I wrote her a letter and poured out my heart to her. She understood me (did she really?) and we reconnected (or did we?). I thought this was quite a momentous event. A crisis averted. A turning point. A landmark moment. Yes? Maybe.

I don't think she is as impressed by this as I am. What is going on here? She was supposed to be so upset about my lack of appreciation that she wasn't able to have sex with me. I wrote a letter and told her how many different ways I appreciate her. She acknowledged them. She was supposedly so satisfied by my letter that her reason not to have sex with me has disappeared and we had sex. We ironed out everything. How come I don't feel a major outpouring of love from her? We are pretty much business as usual here. If we have ironed out such critical issues of our marriage, then she should be jumping with joy right now. If the issues have not been ironed out, then we should continue discussing them. She is doing neither. She is pretty unfazed about it all.

What is going on here? How can she be so unmoved about this? Is it possible that Peggy and I are actually performing the exact dance that she wants to perform? Is it possible that Sunday's sex was simply a part of a grand plan? Perhaps she sensed that if she didn't offer me sex, I was likely going to do something drastic. She offered me sex and now she thinks we can continue the same dance. Going on withholding sex. More importantly withholding love. Controlling me. Actually I am the one who lets her control me. The funny thing is, I would probably let her control me even if she didn't withhold sex. She is also depriving herself. The reason she cannot have sex with me is probably because she doesn't have much respect for me. The reason she doesn't have much respect for me is because I am a wuss. I do what she wants me to do. I accept whatever crumbs she is willing to dole out. She has fallen out of love with me a long time ago. I am not the man she loves. I am the man who provides for her. Is this what is going on here?

Fear of being controlled

2009-05-19T09:51:00.005-04:00

I am beginning to realize that both I and Peggy are driven by a fear of being controlled. We both clearly think that the other one of us is trying to control us. Peggy told me that various comments I made here and there indicated to her that I hold the purse strings in our marriage. Although she denies it, my conclusion is that she withholds sex to gain a sense of control in our marriage. If that theory is correct, the fact that we had sex last Sunday is not going to change anything. She thinks that the more she withholds sex, the more powerful she is. Of course, she can't withhold sex forever. She has to "throw me a bone" once in a while. Otherwise, I may totally give up and leave the relationship. This means, she is in effect involved in a game of brinkmanship. She withholds sex as far as she can, until the point of no return. Just before I am about to give up on the relationship, she gives in. The cycle begins all over again.

Since we had sex, our relationship feels better but there were a few instances that got me upset. They all revolve around my fear of being controlled. Yesterday she called me at work. She was audibly upset. While she never accused me directly, it was clear she was partly upset by something I did (or failed to do). In fact, she put a percentage on guilt. Our daughter was 90% at fault. I was 10% at fault. Our daughter is going through a phase where she refuses to pose for pictures. We were at an event. I was taking pictures. Our daughter kept making nasty faces instead of posing. I took 2-3 pictures and then gave up. When Peggy saw the pictures, she was upset because there is no single good shot. She of course blames our daughter but she is also blaming me 10% for not making sure that at least one good shot was taken. I got very upset and defensive hearing this. This sorts of things trigger an outrage in me. I feel I am being falsely accused. I do realize that she is making a big deal about this. This event happens every year. We will have other chances to take photos next year and the year after next. Peggy is never behind the camera yet she often finds fault with the way I take photos. I tend to want to capture people in their natural state. She wants almost every photo to look perfect. Create an illusion of perfection in the photos. If something gets in the way presenting a perfection, she gets very upset. Then she blames other people for her disappointment. It is true that our daughter acted in a bratty way but she is a child. We can't control her behavior. She punished our daughter by withholding some candy (Ooops is there a pattern here?) but I don't think the punishment will make any difference to her behavior. I feel that she also tried to punish me by making me feel guilty. I am not sure if I am getting defensive here. In fact, I did get defensive on the phone. I tried to convince her that I did my best and that it wasn't so important to take perfect pictures all the time. She didn't accept any of my arguments and I felt even more upset.

What I am trying to figure out is whose behavior is unhealty here. Peggy didn't criticize me directly. She didn't say I always take bad pictures. She only focused on my behavior on this particular instance. Then why did this trigger such a defensive reaction in me? Why couldn't I just say "you are right honey. I should have kept trying until I took a good picture."? Instead I tried to convince her that I did my best. She didn't accept that and neither one of us was happy. Is she the one with the problem by sneakily trying to control me by guilt and blame or do I have such a fear of being controlled that I get defensive easily?

There were a few other instances yesterday that triggered upset feelings in me: There were some things our child is responsible of doing. She asked me whether I checked to make sure that our child accomplished those things. I said no. She asked me why not. I felt that she thinks I am feeling short. Why do I care about her approval? Once again I felt I am being wrongly accused and I got upset. Why does this keep happening? When these things happen, she is often in an exaggerated and heightened state of upset. It is her problem that she is getting so upset over something so small. When she is upset, her reaction tends to make me feel guilty. I don't know if she is intentionally trying to make me feel guilty or is it my problem to be affected by her upset feelings so readily? She actually expects me to be upset. If I am not upset, that she says that means I don't care. How do I let her know that I care about her but I don't let her frustation infect me? Is there any controlling behavior here? Is this my problem or hers? Or perhaps both? I am quite confused.

Now what?

2009-05-18T09:57:00.004-04:00

Yes, it finally happened. After 134 days. It happened Sunday morning just as I expected. This time it was I who couldn't immediately get past what was said. Before I accepted her offer, I brought up what she said. Remember the "but..." which came after she said she liked my letter? She said I am ruining the mood by bringing it up. To that I responded by saying that I have feelings too. I cannot have sex with her without clearing certain things up. We talked about it. She seemed to understand my point.

It was nice. It wasn't spectacular perhaps but after almost 5 months, anything feels good. Since then, she and I are definitely feeling much closer to each other. In the past, she has always claimed that sex doesn't make her feel closer to me. But that's not what I saw since yesterday. She is no longer trying to hide from me when she is changing her clothes. She is smiling to me more. She is more gentle and loving. Something has definitely changed.

The question is for how long. I asked her for one thing: I asked her in the future to tell me immediately if something I said or did bothers her. She said she would. Will she keep that promise? Paula commented on my Dear Peggy post yesterday. She suggested that I may be in a co-dependent relationship. I think certain aspects of my relationship qualify. I do realize that I am enabling some of Peggy's behavior. I think to some degree I am confused by the conflicting advice that is out there. I gave Peggy an ultimatum before. It didn't work. I was then given the advice that ultimatums are manipulative behavior. So, I went back to more conciliatory methods. These conciliatory methods are inevitably more accommodating. Perhaps I am making it too easy for her to simply ignore my needs and feelings. There is definitely some validity to that. I have to think about this.

Power struggles, passive aggressive behavior and resentments are all poison in a marriage. I am an open book to her. I told her everything that is on my mind. There is nothing I left unsaid. She knows where I stand. I have no interest in power or control. All I want is for each of us to listen to each other and to tune into each other's needs. This doesn't have to be a massive undertaking. It took less than an hour for us to connect yesterday but the goodwill it has generated is enormous. I am cautiously optimistic.

Dear Peggy

2009-05-13T23:21:00.007-04:00

I wrote a letter to her and hand delivered it. My original idea was to have a talk actually. Several days passed. It never seemed to be the right time. In a true perfect-madness fashion she is always impatient, always in a hurry. It is never a good time. Then I had the thought of writing her an e-mail. I composed the message at work. I almost clicked "send" but I changed my mind in the last second. It seemed too cold and too detached to be sending a message to my wife about the most intimate matters of our marriage. I printed out the e-mail instead. I was very nervous about giving it to her. I paced the living room many times with the letter in my hand. I finally worked up the courage and gave it to her.

Why was I so nervous? Was I afraid that she would get mad? Of course not. That wasn't what it was. I was nervous because I was as open and as honest as I could possibly be in that letter. Doing so I opened my heart and my soul wide open. I made myself extremely vulnerable. I thought to myself: The only reason we can't make a connection is because she doesn't understand me. If only I could put myself out there, stripped of all pretense, fully naked emotionally, if we have any chance of making a connection at all, that would be the way. I was nervous because the risk I was taking was for her to reject me in that most vulnerable state.

Reject me she did. At least that's the way I came to view it. I explained in my letter how much I appreciate her. I listed all the things she does, that I appreciate. I also told her why I was hurt. Without being accusatory. I told her how much I missed sharing a physical intimacy. Why it means so much to me. That it was not the physical pleasure that means so much to me but building a bridge between our souls by the union of our flesh. I meant every word of what I wrote. I have never been this sincere and this vulnerable before in my life.

She started off by saying that she is very pleased by my words about how much I appreciate her. But... There was a quick "but" that followed. She continued...But for example, there was another incident between us that bothered her. This one was not even about my alleged lack of appreciation. She spoke of an incident in which, she claimed, I asserted undue power as the main breadwinner of the family which made her feel trapped and powerless. I won't get into the blow-by-blow details of the event she was referring to. What made me so upset was the fact that her positive reaction was quickly followed by a "but" and the "but" was about something very different from what she claimed earlier was the reason for her lack of enthusiasm for sex. I reminded to her that while I earn almost all the money, she is the one who spends nearly all of our disposable income. Surely, I write all the checks for our mortgage, insurance, utilities, etc. but those are all expenses that are already spoken for. She makes almost 90% of all the charges to our credit card which is most of our discretionary spending. I place no restrictions on her spending whatsoever. She readily acknowledged that. Yet she continued to stress how much that incident bothered her.

In a nutshell, that incident involved me telling her that I won't let her borrow "my car". It was a statement made in a moment of anger and I quickly reversed it. She is upset about that. Yet she didn't even know how to drive the car she asked to borrow. Ultimately I let her have it but only after I gave her a 30 minute driving lesson (a manual transmission car). She claims that I made her feel trapped and powerless because I asserted my power as the breadwinner and the only rightful owner of everything. Blah blah blah... Come on now. One incident and I turn into a monster. Everything I do everyday gets erased with one single mishap. She goes around everyday shopping with the credit card in hand that gets paid by solely by my income for years and years with no restrictions placed on her spending whatsoever but one day I slip and say no to her borrowing the car which I solely drive everyday and I get punished by 5 months of no sex. Or is this another episode in our game of whack-a-mole?

I called a spade a spade: I told her straight out that I think she is punishing me by witholding sex. Actually I could have also stated that she is trying to completely control me and keep me on my toes by threatening me with no sex. I refrained from saying that last one. She, of course, objected to both charges. She said: She never punishes me. She never withholds either. When she is upset with me, however, she can't have sex with me. That's just the way it is. Her body cannot respond physically when her heart is broken. The question that remains unanswered, however, is why her heart is broken so easily. Why doesn't she sit down and discuss with me why her heart is broken when an incident has just happened? Instead she obviously takes it in, collects grudges against me and makes another notch against me in her little book of infractions. Unless I am a good boy, cooperating fully, I get no sex. If I somehow manage to please her long enough, Her Highness may consent to sex. Then I get lousy-lousy sex and should be grateful and remain on my best behavior until she indulges me again with another session of lousy-lousy sex. Why do I call it lousy? Because she absolutely refuses to fulfill any of my requests. The last time she put on something sexy for me was 5 years ago when I agreed to put on an addition to our house. Ooops, that was probably just a coincidence.

I managed to hide most of my outrage from her even though she realized that I was a little disappointed by her reaction. She will probably offer me sex at some point soon. Possibly tomorrow morning. Heck, it will be Sunday tomorrow and surely I have grovelled enough. So why do I feel so terrible? I feel terrible because it is becoming clear to me that she will never let us have a fulfilling sex life. Rightly or wrongly, she decided that sex is her only power in our marriage. The more reluctant she is to have sex, the more powerful she is. Anytime I transgress, no matter how small, sex will go out of the window. She won't even let me know what I did wrong. It will be my job to figure that out. If I behave like this perfect little boy, her thinking goes, then I will earn sex. Maybe. Actually I don't think that will work either because which woman would have any respect left for a man who dutifully does everything she asks for? Which woman would want to have sex with a man who has debased himself so low, merely to have a chance to have sex with her? Nobody would.

I am f**ked. Just not literally.

Doctor's visit

2009-05-13T16:21:00.001-04:00

Things are better but still no sex

2009-05-11T14:42:00.004-04:00

Peggy and I had a good weekend. She and I even had some one-on-one time. We didn't exactly go out to have fun but we went out for shopping together. It is very rare that we do this. Either we have the kids with us when we go shopping, or she and I go shopping separately. This time the kids were dropped off at various events and she and I went shopping together. It was fairly pleasant. Mother's Day was also good. The kids did nice things for Peggy which she was pleased about. I helped the kids with their plans to nice things for Peggy, which she also appreciated. All in all it was a nice weekend.

There was no sex though. It has been 128 days. I have mixed feelings about the lack of sex. I am craving it but I'd like to have it with a person who I want to have sex with and who in turn wants to have sex with me. I don't know if Peggy qualifies based on those criteria. I don't know if she wants to have sex with me. I don't know if I want to have sex with her. People have sex with each other all the time without actually wanting to. I don't want that. It's been way too long since we had sex last. I can't accept a reluctant person at this point. If she can't even muster any desire for me after so long, what is the point of pretending that we are intimate partners? I don't want a wife who has sex with me just out of a sense of obligation.

I have no intention of asking her to have sex with me. The ball is totally in her court. She is the one who is too pissed off to have sex with me, remember? If I ask her to have sex with me, it is like asking her to forgive me or asking her to give me another chance. I don't agree that I have done anything that requires forgiveness. I don't agree that she should have the moral upper hand. Asking her to have sex with me is to say I am sorry. I haven't done anything I should be sorry for.

If I swallow my pride and ask her anyway, the stakes are too high. She could say no. In fact, it is highly likely that she will say no. It would be too painful at this stage to face rejection. Letting her to make the first move is the safest bet. That means we could still be months away from having sex again. Last year, we went 7 months without sex. It is very difficult for me to wait patiently for that long. I am likely to get frustrated and lash out. That will set us back even further. Why is something as simple as having sex with your spouse so darn complicated?

emotional distance

2009-05-07T17:36:00.005-04:00

We have the pursuer-distancer dynamics in my marriage. I am always the one who wants to discuss our marriage problems. Peggy is always the one who wants to avoid any discussion.

Peggy and I actually talk quite a bit during the course of a given day. The timing, the subject and the location of our conversations are quite interesting however. She controls it all. She initiates almost all the conversations of substance in our marriage. They are invariably about the children or the house. When I initiate a conversation, she usually cuts them short by declaring that she doesn't have the time. If she initiates a conversation, however, she fully expects my undivided attention for a very long period of time. She always picks a setting where she and I don't have complete privacy. In fact, there are two major settings she chooses:

At the dinner table with our children present.

By the phone when I am at work.

She specifically avoids the privacy of our bedroom. In fact, she avoids any room in our house where she and I can be alone. I realized this recently. I am pretty sure it is not coincidental. She basically wants to make sure there is some physical distance and emotional distance between us when we talk.

It is becoming abundantly clear that the fact that we have a sexless marriage does not have anything to do with sex at all. She clearly wants to keep her distance from me. According to her, all of this is because I don't appreciate her. I view this as punishment for deeds (or thoughts) that are blown wildly out of proportion. What I am wondering is, how do you get a spouse to appreciate you by erecting unpenetrable walls around you? What she is doing is never going to get her what she wants. She is lucky that I am still around. If someone else were in my shoes, he would already be long gone. I keep waiting patiently. I keep trying to talk to her, try to figure out what the problem is. All she does is just keep her distance, erect huge walls and block all forms of communication. This is what I have to deal with every single day.

Passive Aggression

2009-04-30T16:54:00.005-04:00

I recently came across an article on Dr. Phil's website titled:
How to Spot and Deal with Passive Aggressives. I have been pondering quite a bit about Peggy's assertion that she feels unappreciated. This article uses the exact phrase "feeling unappreciated" as a sign of passive aggressiveness. Suddenly a light bulb went off in my head. Like I said before, I actually welcomed Peggy's finally opening up and telling me what is wrong with our marriage. However, something about the way she claimed that my lack of appreciation of her is the cause of her anger, bothered me. I never understood why she never put this issue clearly on the table before, why she never made an effort to resolve it. Instead, she chose to withhold sex from me to punish me. True, she claims that her refusal to have sex with me is not withholding because she is simply "pissed at me" and how could she have sex with me when she is so pissed? However, I believe it still comes down to withholding and punishment, whether consciously or not.

I think I have successfully peeled off all the layers of disguise behind these statements. Now the issue is standing before me in stark clarity. Being pissed at me is about hidden resentment. Not making an effort to resolve the issue is about control. All of this together is about passive aggression.

Here is another article I found on the Internet: Passive Aggressive Behavior, a Form of Covert Abuse. I tell you, it is an eye opener. According to the article, the following are common signs of passive aggression:

Ambiguity
Forgetfulness
Blaming
Lack of Anger
Fear of Dependency
Fear of Intimacy
Obstructionism
Victimization
Procrastination

So, the first sign of passive aggressive behavior is ambiguity. I have discussed how Peggy never made it clear to me why we aren't having sex. She constantly changed the goal post. First, it was her hormones. Then it was our children's needs. Then it was her exhaustion. Now, she claims it is because I don't appreciate her. This ambiguity gives her a lot of power and control. Julie wrote in a comment to one of my posts:

So she needs a gold star for parenting and then she'll show you some intimacy? Not likely. As soon as you meet this requirement, she'll come up with a new one to hold you at arm's length.

I think Julie is right. I can't win.

Another sign of passive aggression mentioned in the article is blaming others and not accepting any responsibility. Peggy's tendency to reject responsibility is so famous that once I sarcastically said "You never make mistakes. You are so perfect.". She said: "You are right. I am very careful. I don't usually make mistakes". She wasn't kidding. She was dead serious. In fact, most of our arguments typically end with me taking some of the blame. My hope is that she will take some of the blame too and we will reach some kind of a compromise. Unfortunately, that never happens. She insists on being right. I am the only one who ends up accepting any responsibility.

Fear of Intimacy. Need I elaborate on this one? I think this one is pretty clear. Another big one is victimization. This is a common theme with Peggy. She always believes that she gets short end of the stick in life. Everything bad that has ever happened to her is someone else's fault. She has the amazing ability to justify her mistakes even when she had criticized other people for making the same exact mistake in the past.

OK, my goal is not to list all the character flaws of Peggy. I am sure I have flaws of my own. I am just trying to understand what kind of thinking patterns can lead somebody to act the way she does. Now everything is beginning to make sense. She has been withholding sex and affection from me out of passive aggression. Now that this is becoming clear, what can I do to break this unhealthy behavior. What am I doing wrong? Am I denying her any power in our marriage to cause her to resort to underhanded method to exercise power? Other than the fact that I am the main breadwinner, I have never asserted control over all the decision making. Whenever we make a major purchasing decision, we make the decision jointly. For small things, she is actually the one making more of the decisions because she is the one who is at home and making purchases. I never put a limit on her spending. We make all the decisions about our children together. So, what could I possibly be doing to make her feel powerless? I make most of the money but I can't help that. I don't use that fact to assert power in our relationship. I have to think hard. How can I make Peggy feel secure and empowered so that she doesn't feel she has to withhold sex to assert control? Can anyone give me a hand with this?

Apple never falls far from the tree, does it?

2009-04-27T13:07:00.010-04:00

Ever since I met Peggy, one thing she has been scared to death about was turning into her mother. She has always felt the pull but she detested the urge. Sometimes she has found herself unaware of acting like her mother and she panicked. Over the years she has told me many times: "Help me God. I don't want to be like my mother". I used to dismiss that fear at the beginning because Peggy seemed nothing like her mother. As time went on, however, the inevitable pull which she was so afraid of has become quite real. I began to notice that her fear was not entirely unfounded after all.

Peggy's parents got divorced when she was very young. She was raised by her mother for the most part. My mother-in-law (MIL) was very bitter about the divorce and continue to be to this day. Divorce is always ugly but MIL's bitterness goes way beyond that. More than 30 years has passed since, yet the magnitude of MIL's bitterness towards her ex-husband does not seem to have subsided. From what I gather, there was no outrageously wrong behavior on the part of my father-in-law (FIL) during the marriage. There was no affair, no abuse of the kind I listed in a recent post. After the divorce, FIL has remained in regular contact with his children. From what I understand he paid his alimony and child support regularly. I have known my father-in-law for more than a decade by now. I know him to be a reasonable man. He and I get along fairly well. He hardly mentions MIL during our conversations anymore. He has long since moved on. MIL, on the other hand, remained literally stuck. She never misses an opportunity to berate her ex-husband despite the fact that there is very little contact between the two of them. Their marriage lasted less than one fifth of their entire lives. Yet her bitterness about him continues to define who she is. The injustice she believes was done to her has shaped her entire identity. The woman refuses to move on. She has never had a relationship with any man to speak of. She has spent her entire life being angry. Why so bitter?

I think forgiveness is one of the traits that determines a person's happiness in life. Forgiveness is not simply an act of generosity but it is about being comfortable about who you are and letting yourself be happy. Some people seem to live in a pattern of holding grudges for things big and small and making their lives miserable. Yet, other people are able to forgive and move on even after very major injustices done to them. My mother-in-law's tendency to hold grudges is not limited to her ex-husband either. For various reasons, she stopped talking to siblings as well as some of her own children. She is angry about many things and angry with many people. She also uses manipulative tactics such as guilt and shame to get her family to visit her. But those tactics only seem to drive them away. One of her daughters simply decided to cut off all her contact with MIL. This daughter now claims that she did it for her own sanity. She believes she cannot live a happy life as long as she keeps her mother in her life. When a person has problems with her interpersonal relationships with so many of her family members, one wonders whether she is the one with the problem.

Peggy is aware of her mother's issues. Each time we visit MIL, she is almost traumatized. We talk about the visit. I try to calm her down. It takes several days after each visit for Peggy to feel normal. When I visit my mother, I am left with pleasant feelings and I miss her. When Peggy visits her mother, she is overcome with sadness, anger and many other negative feelings. Peggy knows it. She doesn't want to be like her mother. She is scared to death about "turning into her mother". Is she entirely successful in resisting the pull?

One thing Peggy does to be unlike her mother is to become a better mother. Peggy thinks her mother was not a good mother. She wants to be the best mother she can possible be in order to break the cycle, to prove that she is not like her mother. Peggy is also better in maintaining her relationships with her siblings and parents. However, I feel one area she is less successful in resisting the pull is our marriage. It is an undeniable fact that a couple's parents' marriages have a profound effect on how partners view marriage and what their expectations are. Peggy's most prominent experience with her parents' marriage is never ending resentment. This is not even resentment caused by genuine misdeeds (if there is such a thing as a justified grudge). This is resentment that has become a habit, a way of life. Resentment that is so familiar that it is more comfortable to live with it, than to live without it. At what cost though? Resentment breeds resentment. It is impossible to resent your spouse, without your spouse eventually resenting you back. I am surprised that Peggy cannot see that.

Punishing a spouse

2009-04-21T10:38:00.007-04:00

Just to recap the events of the last 10 days, I asked my wife, Peggy recently why she hasn't been intimate with me for the last (almost) 4 months. She said she is so pissed at me for my lack of appreciation of her contribution that she can't bring herself to have sex with me. I have been analyzing this statement from all angles on this blog for the several days. Today I'd like to discuss the place of punishment and retaliation in a relationship because I am coming to the conclusion that I am being punished.

Peggy would disagree with that. She would tell me that her anger with me is authentic and her disinterest in sex with me is simply a natural result of her anger towards me. Not having sex with a spouse is not punishment unless it is deliberately inflicted on a spouse for retribution. She would say she is not witholding sex deliberately, she is simply having a hard time getting into the mood with a spouse who is so selfish and disrespectful. Really? She would say that a wife who feels so mistreated by her husband would naturally have a hard time being compassionate and loving to him. Right?

I am having a hard time buying all this. It is hard to believe that she is not being vindictive, and that she is not doing this deliberately. Just to give her the benefit of the doubt, perhaps she is not aware that she is punishing me but I feel that she is. Whether consciously or subconsciously. She has got to know that witholding sex hurts me. There has to be some pleasure in knowing that she is inflicting pain on me to match her own pain. As Dr. Phil would say, this is her pay off. There is always a pay off in everything we do to other people we are in a relationship with.

What I am wondering is: what is she expecting to get out of this punishment? I mean, other than the thrill of hurting your spouse back. It is a guaranteed way to damage your marriage further. Even if we assume for a moment that her belief that I don't appreciate her is such a cardinal sin, so too is witholding sex from your spouse. I don't know which is worse. It hardly matters which came first. Even if she thinks my lack of appreciation came first, I was absolutely unaware of it. From my perspective, she simply stopped having sex with me without giving me a reason. No, no, she did give me a reason. During all those years, she told me that she is exhausted. That she probably has hormonal problems. That she has no free time. Every one of those reasons have been debunked. This is a woman who every single day exercises rigorously for an hour. Every single day. She doesn't skip a day. That hardly sounds like an exhausted person to me. That doesn't sound like a person with no time either. When you consider the time she takes to get ready, take a shower, get dressed, etc., it easily amounts to an hour and a half, perhaps two hours. Since we haven't had sex for 108 days, that easily amounts to 160 hours of rigorous exercise. She doesn't even like exercising. She obviously thinks it is good for her. She makes the time for it and she obviously has the energy for it. Yet she has not found a half hour to have sex with me during those 108 days. I have eventually realized that her excuses were not truthful. How do you think a spouse begins to feel after years of being given false excuses for avoiding sex? He begins to feel sad and angry, right? From his perspective he is the one being wronged. In fact by not giving him the true reason for witholding, he would be entirely justified in thinking that she is being very mean to him. That's where we are now. We are both thinking the other spouse is being awful and mean. That's what you get by punishing a spouse and not even making him aware that he is being punished.

We can already see here that Peggy's punishing me has not helped her cause at all. In fact, I have a hard time having any empathy for her pain since I believe she has inflicted on me a much bigger pain. This could easily destroy our marriage. Over what? My lack of appreciation of her contribution. No matter how terrible she thinks that failure is, she has to realize that there would have been much better ways to deal with that problem than punishment.

Punishment doesn't work in marriage. It only makes things worse. Even when one of the spouses has committed one of the cardinal sins of marriage, punishment is still the wrong way to address it. Punishing a spouse without making him aware is even worse. Since he doesn't know why he is being punished, he will simply assume that she is just being a mean-sprited bitch.

Why would anyone punish her spouse in such an underhanded way? One wonders whether she actually preferred to keep her anger secret from me. By preventing me from addressing the causes of her anger, she would justify holding on to her anger. It must have given her a sense of some power to know that she was punishing me. The more she saw my pain, the more she must have felt a sense of justice being meted out. She tends to think that she always gets the short end of the stick in life. She thinks life has been very unfair to her. She thinks she never got compensation and recognition in the workplace. She thinks she deserves far more than she got in her life. She doesn't blame me for everything of course but she must think I am one of the people in her life who has treated her unfairly. There is one difference though. She never had power to punish any of the other people who treated her unfairly. She has the power to punish me, however. It is hard to let that go. For once, someone is paying the price of hurting her. Why should she let him know what his crime is? God forbid, he may apologize. He may fix the problem. The problem may be solved. Then who would be left to pay the price?

Reasons a wife might be angry at her husband

2009-04-20T12:03:00.006-04:00

There are several that I can think of:

1. He cheats on you
2. He physically abuses you
3. He forces you into sex (marital rape)
4. He insults you or he is very critical of you
5. He disrespects you in front of others
6. Distribution of the household chores is very unfair
7. He neglects the children you are supposed to parent together
8. He doesn't support you financially or emotionally
9. He is very jealous
10. He withholds sex and affection from you
11. He works too many hours and neglects you
12. He holds a disproportionate share of the power
13. He doesn't stop and listen to you
14. He doesn't make any compromises

I am sure there are a few other cardinal sins in marriage. I wonder whether "He doesn't appreciate me" is among them. That's what Peggy tells me is the reason why she is angry with me. I am not saying that spouses' lack of appreciation of each other is necessarily unimportant. I don't want to minimize any of it. However, even if this is all true, I have a hard time believing that it rises to the level of one of the above cardinal sins. Almost every married person I have talked to has complained of being taken for granted. I think it is very common and almost every married person is guilty of this. Sometimes this feeling is entirely warranted and exteremely serious. In most other cases however, the reasons are rather benign. People simply get into the bad habit of turning their attention away from each other. Every spouse who feels unappreciated should always remember that there is another spouse one the other side who is, more than likely, feeling just as unappreciated, whether or not he vocalizes those feelings to you. What I can't quite get my head around is why Peggy thinks this issue is such a cardinal crime that she needs to withhold all forms of spousal affection from me to get her point across to me.

Withholding affection from your spouse is a very serious step. One that should not be taken lightly. It is so serious that in my opinion, any person resorting to this must have exhausted all other means of communication to get her message across and failed. Yet, I am thinking back and I don't see any serious attempt to reach out to me. No, Peggy has made almost no attempt until I have been frustrated enough by her withholding of sex to force her to tell me. During the last several years I have been the one that started every single discussion or dialogue affecting our marriage. She has never come to me with her concerns. Women are supposed to be the communicators. Men are supposed to be the ones resisting communication. We have had exactly the opposite experience in our marriage. This is precisely what diminishes her credibility with me. This is what makes me think there is something more. If something about your spouse is bothering you, wouldn't you try your hardest to reach out to him by using every possible means of communication before launching this marital weapon of mass destruction (i.e. withholding sex)? All of this makes me think: Am I being given another artificial excuse to pursue, a wild goose chase, while our problems continue to fester and our marriage is weakened and damaged every passing minute?

Peggy and I have been doing a lot of talking lately. Finally! That's wonderful! Communication is the key to a successful marriage. We should have done this more. Unfortunately she chose to stonewall me and not allow an honest discussion to take place. Now that we are talking, I am still skeptical that an actual progress is being made. Our problems still seem very fuzzy to me and I am questioning whether Peggy is being entirely honest with me. Unless communication between the spouses is completely honest, I don't think communication alone solves a marital crisis. Dr. Phil McGraw always forces people on his TV show to get real. We are talking but I am not sure we are getting real.

Resentment: an incurable disease?

2009-04-16T08:35:00.005-04:00

Peggy said to me last weekend: "I am so pissed off at you that I can't have sex with you". I am still thinking about that statement. I already discussed in my Monday's post why she said she is so pissed off at me. I don't want to dwell on those reasons in this post. One thing is for sure however: Her anger is quite real and its magnitude is far greater than I previously thought. To say to one's spouse that she is so pissed off at him that she can't even have sex with him is quite serious. It also explains her reluctance to engage me at all levels, avoiding showing me any affection whatsoever, her impatience with me and her overall lack of compassion and generosity towards me. This is serious stuff. I've been living with a woman who has been seething with anger towards me and I didn't even know it.

This is something to think about for any of my readers who are having problems with a sexually disinterested spouse. Those spouses who seem to be physically capable of having sex but choose to avoid it at all costs, spouses who shudder at the slightest possibility of a touch... Maybe, just maybe resentment is the reason for all that. Remember when I discussed how Peggy needs to mentally prepare for sex with me? She probably needed to push her angry feelings to the back of her mind every time just to be able to have sex with me. That's not easy. Imagine having sex with someone who you feel has horribly wronged you. How difficult it would be to have sex with him! No wonder she has always considered sex with me to be a lot of work.

What makes me incredibly sad is that Peggy has never given us a chance to fix this problem. Imagine having these overwhelmingly angry feelings about your spouse. Would you quietly seethe with anger, let anger build up so much that you can't bear the thought of him ever touching you or would you sit him down and say to him "Honey we have a problem!". She's never said that. I swear. I am not so dim. Yes, she's mentioned how it bothers her that I don't appreciate her. But I had no idea how much anger those feelings have caused her. It almost seems like she preferred to take in all that hurt and wallow in self-pity and anger. She must have gotten some kind of satisfaction from that. Sometimes there is a sense of control over somebody when one is angry with you but you don't know how angry she is with you. You can try very hard to please her or you can finally get fed up with her and get angry back at her. Either way she is exercising control over you . Since you don't know why she is so angry, you have no chance to remedy the problem. If you fixed the problem, her control would disappear. She doesn't want to lose that control, so she keeps you in the dark. I wonder if this is what is going on. Otherwise why would anyone with such intense anger at her spouse not make it a priority to discuss and resolve this issue?

Under these circumstances, I am not sure whether there is any hope for us. We are incredibly lucky that I didn't already have an affair. Peggy has purposely withheld her affections from me in order to punish me. Since I never knew about the intensity of her anger, I made all kinds of assumptions about why she doesn't show me any affection. At times I thought she doesn't find me attractive or interesting anymore. At times I thought she doesn't love me or respect me anymore. I have sought the sympathy of strangers to fill that void but never crossed the line into a full-blown affair. I was so starved for affection, all these years that I could have easily succumbed. I was either lucky, excessively moral or too hard-headed to give up on my marriage.

Now I am thinking... I am hurt by the fact that she didn't give me a chance. Besides her belief that I don't appreciate her, I have been a great husband and a father. I deserved a chance to repair our marriage and to avoid being the target of her smoldering anger. She never gave me that chance. What do I do now? I could go to her and give her the most heartfelt apology I can possibly muster. I am genuinely sorry that I caused her such pain. However, I think that her punishment was even harsher than the original crime. I am a forgiving person. I don't want to dwell in the past. If it is going to fix our problem, I am willing to apologize without even a requiring a similar apology from her. Would that finally soften her heart and make her love me again? There seems to be some small shards of love left in her heart for me. Can we possibly revive what we have lost? Perhaps I would be pulling the rug from under her by doing that. Is it possible that she wants to hang onto her anger so badly that perhaps she doesn't know how to live without anger and resentment filling her heart. This has been going on for many years. Is she willing to make peace with me and with herself to revive our marriage once again? Is there truly any reasonable chance for that?

Peeling off another layer

2009-04-14T11:17:00.005-04:00

There is no question that my wife has a lot of built-up resentments against me. I have built up resentments of my own against her too. I am fully aware that identifying and resolving these resentments are the key to preserving and enhancing our marriage. In my
previous post, I discussed my wife's feeling that my lack of recognition and appreciation of her contribution to our family is causing her resentment. I'd like to explore that a bit more. I'd like to stress to my readers that my goal is not to justify myself. In fact, I would want more than anything to find something specific that I am doing wrong. When corrected, it would fix all our problems and we would become a happy couple again. I am in such agony right now that complimenting my wife's contributions, giving her the assurance that she needs is well worth the effort for me. It wouldn't even be so hard since I am already in agreement. Who would want to see his marriage go down the tube by refusing to give her wife the appreciation she needs?

My problem is the lack of specifics. I wonder if the lack of specifics is a sign that there is something more. I think I am going to delve a little deeper. I am going to ask her what specific actions I can potentially take to make her feel appreciated. Is it enough to give her a daily affirmation? Is it enough to avoid saying things that may be construed as critical or unappreciative?

Sometimes I feel that Peggy does quite a bit of mind-reading about me. She has never asked me how I truly feel about these issues that are causing her so much distress. She could have asked me how I feel about her contributions to our family. She could have asked me whether I feel she is falling short. That would have been the direct approach. How would I respond if she asked me those questions? More important question is: How does she think I would respond if she asked me those questions? The only two reasons why she didn't ask me those questions must have been because she either thinks she already knows the answer or she doesn't trust me that I would answer truthfully. If she thinks she already knows the answer, she must think I would say "No, I don't think you are a good mother and a good contributor to our marriage" because clearly that's what she believes to be my thinking. Well, she is wrong. That's not what I would say.

Then the next possibility is that she knows I would say that I appreciate her but she doesn't trust the truthfulness of that response. Even if that is the case, why doesn't she at least try asking that question once? She may not like my answer or she may not trust my answer but don't I deserve being asked just once? Isn't it better to have me on record saying that I appreciate her, that way she can point it out to me when my actions don't match my words?

Is it possible that she actually prefers to leave the question on the shelf, that way she can pretend to know the answer and assume that I don't appreciate her. That way she can blame me for her unhappiness and absolves herself of any responsibility to make herself happy. This idea is not altogether foreign to her. Her parents got divorced 40 years ago. Her mother never moved on. She never had a relationship with anyone else. She blamed Peggy's father for ruining her life for the rest of her life. During most of those 40 years the two of them hardly met or spoke, yet she always claimed that he ruined her life. How could anyone have such a power over anyone? Even rape victims are advised to forgive their attackers. Her mother never forgave Peggy's father. Her father did not even do anything so terrible. They were divorced due to irreconcilable differences. There was no adultery or any horrible misdeed. Why so much hatred? Why did she never let go? Is it possible that she didn't let go because she was afraid to face her own demons and her husband was a convenient person to hold responsible? They say the apple never falls far from the tree. Is it possible that Peggy is blaming me for her inner unhappiness?

Peeling an Onion

2009-04-13T11:04:00.001-04:00

Peggy and I had yet another heart-to-heart conversation about our marriage yesterday. It went well but I don't know whether it will have a lasting impact on our marriage. I am still trying to dissect the conversation, figure out what exactly happened and where to go from here. Our relationship is like an onion. We peel off one layer only to find another layer. Then there is another layer and another layer... I never know if we have finally peeled off all the layers and arrived at the crux of the issue. I have been married long enough and have lived enough to know that couples argue over a lot of things but the true cause of the conflict is always elusive. There are issues in marriage that are too difficult to talk about. Far too personal. Far too hurtful to touch. What do couples do to avoid confronting the issues head-on? They argue over trivial stuff instead. Those things are simply a cover to avoid talking about the difficult subjects. They are metaphors for the painful subjects that remain hidden. Why are those subjects so difficult to talk about? I think they are difficult because they expose each partners insecurities and vulnerabilities. It is difficult to say "I am weak, I can't feel safe on my own, I desparately need your love, I need you to help me and save me". Any and all of those things.

She told me that she thinks I don't value and respect her contribution. I, in turn, told her that she doesn't show me any affection and attention except for what she needs from me, which in my mind means she doesn't care about me. Basically, each of us in our own way feel unloved by the other. How does a couple get to that point? Very easy. It happens all the time. She is focused on her own pain and totally oblivious to my pain. I am probably oblivious to her pain. I can barely understand it. In my way of thinking, my pain is very obvious and had been clearly communicated to her in the past: When she doesn't show me any affection, refuses to have sex with me months on end, I get the message that she thinks I don't matter. That I am insignificant and unimportant to her. I feel taken for granted. I feel ignored. I feel I am not special to her. This is such a fundamental unsatisfied need for me that nothing else matters nearly as much. The number one reason I am married at all is to be with someone who cares about my welfare. Not so complicated, is it?

What she needs from me is not so clear-cut. I hope I am not coming across as rather dim. Perhaps to my female readers, this is something that is crystal clear but somehow remains obscure to me. Maybe this is a gender gap that needs to be bridged. Let me state it once again as plainly as I can: she is telling me that I don't respect and value her contribution. She seems to be saying that I am belittling the work she does in the house, all the laundry, dishwashing, etc. chores and the myriad od ways she takes care of our children. She is an educated woman but she took the decision to put her career on the back burner for the sake of our children. She clearly feels conflicted about this. She feels insecure about the future. What she will do when our children grow up and don't need her anymore? Yet, she doesn't want to work fulltime and miss our children's childhood. I get all that. I don't completely agree with her choice but I respect it. I told her that in the past. I am not sure why she is not hearing it and what else she wants to hear from me. Isn't it enough to say that I think she is a great mother and doing a hell of a job with our kids but I don't know how we will be able to send our kids to a decent college with just my income? Just disagreeing with her choice to abandon her career for our kids does not mean I don't respect her contribution. It just means we disagree.

Like I said I am trying to figure this out. Is it possible, maybe... just maybe that she is putting an unfair burden on my shoulders? Is it possible that she is expecting me to give her the validation and appreciation that she needs but that she should be getting from another source? When a person works at a job, he or she can get that from his/her superiors or coworkers. When you put your career in a low gear, no one will give you that except for your spouse. The thing is I never get that either but I don't blame my wife for it. Sure, I work at a job but my boss never tells me that I am doing a good job. He is the kind of guy who is not big on praise. My co-workers tell me that is the way he operates and if he doesn't criticize me or fire me, then that means I am doing a good job. Huh? I don't get any appreciation at home either. The same spouse who thinks I don't appreciate her contribution enough has never once told me that I am a good father either. Actually I am a good father and I think a damn good one at that! I do ten times more for my children than my father ever did for me. I don't resent my father. That was a different time. I am involved with every aspect of my children's life. When I brought that up with Peggy, she said yes, you are doing a lot for our children, I don't have any complaints. I said then why don't you ever say "you are a good father". She said "you are". I asked "you are what? Say it. Say you are a good father". Then she said "You are a good father".

See I am not the only one who gets no appreciation for what I do for our children but it never occured to me that my wife should be the one to give me that appreciation. Help me folks. Am I missing something here? In the future I'll gladly tell her often that she is a great mom. I already say that from time to time. Maybe it is not enough. I'll tell her that more often. Heck, I don't even disagree. She is a great mom. It is not difficult for me to say that. I'll say it everyday. Is that it? Is that going to solve our problem?

I worry that it is never going to be enough. I think I am being set up for failure. The validation she is seeking from me may be something that is impossible for me to provide. People always discount their spouse's praise anyway. Your spouse is supposed to be on your side. You don't expect them to be critical of you. You don't expect them to tell you the truth. The emperor may have no clothes but your spouse will not tell you that. We all know that. Our spouses can perhaps make us feel better but instintively we know to discount their assesments. I think the only way she can get the validation she seeks is to get a job where people tell her how wonderful she is at what she does. Well, she is telling me that she doesn't want to get a serious job. That means I am totally screwed!

There is also the possibility that this is just one more roadblock she is erecting to avoid intimacy with me. A few years back, she was resenting me because I didn't agree to have a 3rd child. Now she is resenting me because I don't respect her contribution. Is it possible that she is angry at the world and I am a convenient target? Is it possible that our spouses are sometimes a convenient way to avoid confronting our own weaknesses?

Marriage is hardwork. Rewards are scant. I can't believe that almost everyone rushes to get married.

I am stuck!

2009-04-06T10:34:00.000-04:00

Another weekend has passed. We were home most of the time during the weekend. Peggy kept busy organizing the children's Spring clothes. I spent time doing our taxes, cooking and some yard work. I also spent some time talking to my parents and siblings on the phone. There was no marital intimacy. I didn't ask. She didn't offer. We are on Day 93 now.

She kissed me once during the weekend. I don't even know what to make of it. She never kisses me. Her excuse was a joke I made. She totally cracked up and kissed me as she was laughing. As far as jokes go, I didn't even think it was one of my best. I barely thought it was funny. Did she just use that as an excuse to kiss me? I didn't even realize that she is interested in kissing me at all. I am puzzled about that kiss. I don't know what it means.

I feel totally stuck and conflicted. I am totally obsessing over this. For those of you who can't identify with this, let me try to explain: This is not about being horny and frustrated. In fact, horny is probably the least appropriate way to describe how I fell right now. What I feel is loneliness and despair. Sometimes I feel defiant and angry too. A little bit of depression sneaks in here and there but that is not my prevailing mood. You may think my reaction to this situation is over exaggerated. Look at Mr. B's Saturday entry titled Get a Life. Is that my problem? Should I stop obsessing over this and go get a life? Easier said than done. I can't help it. This is all I can think about. This is not an occasional dry spell. It's been over 3 months and there could be another 3 months before we have sex again. Last year we had a similar stretch that lasted 7 months. I miss my lover's touch desperately. I want to hold her. I want to be held. There are so many thoughts going through my mind. I am weak. I am petty. I am pathetic. I should be stronger than that. I shouldn't need her. I shouldn't need anyone.

Then my thoughts turn in another direction: I hate her. The woman I fell in love with does not want me anymore. She only wants what she gets from me but she doesn't want any other part of me. Why? Am I a hideously ugly person? Am I disgusting and repulsive? I have been the best husband she can hope for. Believe me. Everyone says so. I support her in every possible way: Financially, emotionally... Anything you can think of. I am the person she runs to for help for things big and small. She needs me far more than I need her except for this issue. I do more than my share of the household chores and taking care of the kids. She works only 1-2 days a week. She makes very little money. I am the one who provides for her and the kids. She has the house in the suburbs that she wanted. She has the kids that she wanted. What else can I do for her to make her want me? When I think of these things, every part of my being fills with anger. Then I remind myself not to be angry. Don't be angry. Anger doesn't help. Anger is bad. Angry people suck. I don't like angry people; I don't want to be one either. Anger always makes things worse. She then claims that she is not having sex with me because I am angry at her. Now, that's crazy! I am angry at her precisely because she is not having sex with me and then she turns around and claims that she is not having sex with me because I am too angry??? What kind of sense does that make? Anyway, I think I've done a good job not to look angry. Even when she blatantly refused my advances, I have not acted angry. I've been good. So, what is her excuse now?

I feel stuck because I want sex so badly but I can't even ask for it. What is the point of asking? Last time I asked her (35 days ago), she said no. She knows it has been a long time since we had sex. She can't possibly not know that. In fact, I am sure she is very nervous about the fact that I am probably upset. Some of you may suggest that I should go have a talk with her and explain my feelings. What would I say? What is left between us on this subject that hasn't been said yet? We have had a number of conversations about this. To no avail! I have said everything I have to say. Presumably she has said everything she has to say. What else can either of us say that would be groundbreaking?

Should I just make an appointment for couples counseling and ask her to come with me? What should I do if she refuses to come? Should I move out of our bedroom as a first step towards separation? Should I just pack up my bags and get a room at a local motel? Should I call a divorce lawyer first?

Yet, I am not doing any of those things. I am just stuck here doing absolutely nothing. I am just obsessing. I am paralyzed. I keep googling the phrase sexless marriage over and over again hoping that some extraordinary piece of wisdom will jump at me from somewhere. I have read every book that has ever been published on this issue. Maybe there is no solution. Maybe the only 2 options are accept it or leave. Why can't I pick one of those options and move on with my life? I don't like this feeling of being stuck.

Behind the Bedroom Door

2009-04-01T10:52:00.001-04:00

I am reading a book called Behind the Bedroom Door. It is a collection of essays about sex by women writers. One of the essays in the book is titled Overcome. It was written by a psychologist named Lauren Slater. This essay was originally published in a New York Times article and it can be found here. While I applaud Ms. Slater's honesty, heading her article left me quite a bit hopeless. She is basically saying that she loves her husband but she doesn't desire him sexually. She says she is not sure if she ever liked sex. She is not sure whether she has a dysfunction. She admits honestly that she is dealing with depression which is a well-known libido killer. She seems to feel bad for her husband but she has no plans to do anything about her lack of libido.

This is not the first essay I have read by a female author who admits not desiring her husband. Another one came out a few years ago. In another collection of essays called The Bitch in the House published in 2003, author Jill Bialosky has an essay called How We Became Strangers. Ms. Bialosky chronicles her sexual relationship with her husband. She explains how intensely she desired him before they got married. Then she describes how she stopped desiring him with the following words: "...a little faucet had turned off inside me. My veins were cold. I didn't want to be touched". She relates her husband's feelings about her lack of desire for him: "And D. was furious. Where was the compassionate, affectionate, and caring woman he had married?". And here is how she explains her own feelings: "In my anger I had built up a fortress banning him from the house of love".

Wow! This is quite a bit to swallow. None of these themes are new to me. Even though Peggy has never articulated her thoughts to me quite so honestly, I can stitch together a string of small comments, outbursts of guilt, anger and frustration to build pretty much the same exact story these woman are telling in their essays. There seems to be a common thread in many marriages. I know that there are many exceptions to this but the story is all too familiar to great many married people. Here is how it goes: Boy meets girl. They fall in love and have great sex. He is happy as clam. She is also happy and wants to clinch the deal by getting married. She dreams of a house and kids. He is just happy with the way things are. She pushes him to get married. He is a little skeptical but he finally relents. Things are great at first. Why not have kids and start a happy new family? He says yes. Her sex drive goes into overdrive. Then a baby is conceived and born. Suddenly, she loses her sex drive. He is understanding at first. Hormones are out of whack. Sleep-deprived nights and breast feeding take their toll. It is understandable. Time goes on. Years and years later, there is still no flicker of lust in the bedroom. The kids are in school fulltime now. None of the excuses about the kids are valid anymore but her sex drive is gone out the window. Is it ever coming back?

I don't think any of this is the part of a preconceived plan. Women don't fake a sex drive when they meet their mates. They don't specifically plan on losing it the day after they give birth either. None of this is foreseen by women. Initial coupling seems to heighten women's sex drive and the safety net of marriage and patenthood seems to lower it. They know too well that their husbands are still interested in sex and they feel bad for them. They even have sex with them once in a while out of their feelings of guilt. There is a limit to that though. If a person keeps having sex with someone else out of it guilt, eventually it causes resentment. If she denies him sex, then she feels guilty. Many women zigzag between these two evil twins of marital sex. The amount of sex is determined by which one of these two ugly feelings is more tolerable to her. Peggy is much more comfortable with carrying guilt. So, she opts for less sex. Even for Peggy, the guilt becomes intolerable at some point. Then we have sex. The nicer I am to her, the guilty she will feel and we'll end up having sex sooner. If I am not nice, then she will feel far less guilt and sex will happen far later.

How can we break this nasty guilt-resentment cycle? I don't know. Sex is only good if a person feels an authentic desire and acts on it. What I am afraid of is, Peggy's natural instict to feel an authentic desire for me may have already been severed. She is not asexual. She has the capacity to feel desire and to be aroused. However, the natural mechanism has already been short-circuited. I don't know if there is any way to switch it back.

Self Perpetuating Stress

2009-03-29T21:42:00.000-04:00

Did any of my readers wonder what my marriage is like apart from the lack of sex? I've mentioned occasional fights and angry outbursts in the past. Things are pretty quiet now. We haven't had any of those for a while. On the surface of it, things are quite peaceful. I am totally nice to my wife. Despite my inner turmoil, I am not letting anything on. If any angry feeling bubble up inside me, I pour it out into this blog and I am back to being Mr. Nice Guy. This has definitely improved our marriage. It even improved my wife's mood a little bit. She still gets angry with our kids but she hasn't gotten angry with me quite a while. Then what is the problem?

My wife shows absolutely no affection to me anymore. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. We may as well be co-workers or platonic friends. Sometimes there is a quick and uneasy goodbye peck in the morning. That's it. I sometimes give her a hug, she doesn't push me away but she never initiates a hug either. When she needs to change her clothes, if I happen to be in our bedroom, she goes into the master bathroom to change her clothes. She never changes her clothes in front of me. The last time I saw her naked (or even semi-dressed) was when we last had sex last on January 3rd, 2009. She is acting like we are roommates, not intimate partners. I have never asked her why she doesn't undress in front of me. I think the reason is because she doesn't want to arouse me. Basically what she is doing is the exact opposite of a wife who would want to have more sex. She would probably parade around naked, trying to arouse him. Since she wants to keep the temperature between us as frigid as possible, she doesn't ever show me any skin.

We just had another busy weekend. Peggy was especially anxious about various things that are going on with our children. I knew there would be no sex this weekend. For my wife to have sex with me, her anxiety level has to be exceptionally low. I knew this weekend was not going to be like that. However, things went well. The weekend is over now. She had been losing sleep over the last several weeks worrying. Many of the things she had been worrying about have already passed. There is a small sense of relief. It is Sunday night right now. As I am writing this blog, she is snuggling with our child on a couch in our living room across from me. She arrived in the living room and she went straight to the couch our child was sitting on. God forbid she snuggles with me.

Let me explain her psyche right now as best as I understand it. She scratched this weekend off of her list of worries but she is already planning (and worrying about) her next weekend. She is going to try on our kids' Summer clothes next weekend. I am pretty sure she is not going to have sex with me next weekend either. I know her too well. Next weekend is not stress-free enough. I already explained, she needs to be completely anxiety-free. Trying on our kids' clothes is not anxiety-free. She gets very nervous about what our kids going to wear, whether we have the right size clothes already purchased, whether we need to go shopping for clothes... No, it is very stressful for her. So, there is no sex next weekend.

So, we know that anxiety prevents her from having sex with me. You know what else? Since she knows that we haven't had sex for such a long time, there is one more piece of added stress: The stress over not having had sex with me for too long. She knows that I want sex. She knows that she rejected me outright 26 days ago. 21 days ago, she made a lame comment to the effect that she would have sex with me if it weren't for the fact that she had to take our child to an activity in the city. Now, it's been 3 full weeks since the word sex has last been mentioned between us. What do you think is running in her mind right now? She is probably very stressed and feeling guilty about it. Ironically, the stress over not having sex is adding to her stress level which then makes her too stressed to have sex!!! This would be quite funny, if it weren't so sick!

So, folks, I am looking at my calendar and my first chance to get lucky appears to be on April 12th (Sunday mornings are absolutely the only time slots she will allow us to have sex). This is of course assuming that she is not having her period at the time. I have no idea when her period is anymore. If she has her period, then we are looking at the 19th of April. Of course, in the meantime she could catch a cold, that would delay it further and further. May I remind that last year, we didn't have sex between February-September. The dynamics was pretty similar to now. So, it is perfectly possible that we may be looking at August for our next session.

This time, however, I am not going to be able to take it. I think I am going to drag her to marriage counseling. We cannot go on like this. Unfortunately, I have no faith in marriage counseling. If we see a therapist, I doubt that they will focus on her anxiety. Therapists try to be even-handed. In their zeal to be objective, they often ignore the pyschological issues of one of the spouses. I am convinced that my wife's anxiety problem is at the root of half of our marital issues. Peggy refuses to deal with her anxiety problem. The marriage counselor will also likely ignore that issue. Unless her anxiety is dealt with, we won't make any headway. What I may do is to drag her into counseling first. If she refuses to go, ask for a separation. If we go to counseling and it doesn't work, the again ask for a separation. I don't know separation is the answer but I think putting some physical space between us may be necessary. She takes me for granted too much. She knows that no matter what she has done to me I have stayed with her. I think separation would shock her. A shock to the system may be just what we need right now.

I kissed a girl and I liked it

2009-03-26T10:14:00.000-04:00

No folks, I am not talking about myself. I am not doing any kind of kissing with a girl (woman) these days. I am talking about the Katy Perry song. It was playing on the radio this morning and my wife said something about it that totally made it clear to me that she is practically clueless about the meaning of this song. I reminded her the famous lip lock between Madonna and Britney Spears a few years ago. She still didn't quite get it. She doesn't understand the the appeal of this cultural phenomenon. I explained that this sort of girl-kissing-girl scenes are rampant in high schools and college parties and girls do this sort of thing to shock and attract boys and to signal to them that they are sexually adventurous. All of this was news to her. She is also shocked by the willingness of many teenage girls to give oral sex to boys with whom they are not even romantically involved.

I admit all of this is somewhat disturbing to me too. Women are supposed to be getting better educated these days, climbing higher on the corporate ladder and breaking many glass ceilings everyday. It just seems to me like this behavior is a sacrifice of one's own values just to attract a potential mate. Maybe I am sounding too old-fashioned but it smacks of low self-esteem to me. Generosity in romantic relationships is always a good thing but pretending someone which you are not and sacrificing your identity is not so great in my opinion.

In some ways things changed little since we were young adults. While we were dating, my wife was far more generous to me than she is now, in all sorts of ways including sexual. I had no reason to suspect that someday she would turn into a sexually unresponsive wife. In fact, on many occasions she was the aggressor. In fact, if I had any qualms about premarital sex whatsoever, she had none. She practically attacked me. It is amazing how things change. Now my wife is amazed by how far young girls are willing to go to attract boys, she is forgetting that she herself was far more interested in pleasing me and getting my attention than she is now.

Please tell me folks then, what happens to some women when they finally snag a man? Bait and switch? As soon as they get that wedding ring on a man's finger, their willingness to please their man seems to take a nosedive. I am not saying that this doesn't happen with men. Some men also stop being nice to their wives, they take them for granted, they stop courting their wives. I can confidently say that I am not one of those. In fact, my wife has never accused me of altering my behavior since we got married. If anything, I think I have turned out better than she expected in many ways. She always feared that I would not participate in many household chores. That was very important to her when we were dating but it didn't happen. For example, I still do 90% of the cooking in our house. But she has changed a great deal since we got married. She was willing to do almost anything for me. I fell in love with that woman who really seemed to be in love with me. What happened to that woman? What changed? Now that I am tied down with kids and a mortgage, I am sure she feels a lot more secure that I wouldn't get away. Even if I get away, she can count on taking me to the cleaners at the divorce court. Is that the reason she feels she doesn't have to please me anymore?

My final thought is this: Is the female libido only about finding and tying down a man? My wife is not totally cold sexually. On those handful of occasions we have sex, she gets a lot of pleasure out of it, but otherwise her libido is practically zero. It has been zero for over 10 years. The question I am pondering today is: Do women in secure committed relationships ever have a libido? Or once they get a man to commit, does the female libido entirely disappear? I'd like to know if my hopes and desires are unrealistic.

Not doing well...

2009-03-23T10:29:00.000-04:00

I am not doing well folks. Not well at all. I feel sad, rejected, lonely, emasculated and unappreciated. I also feel like an idiot for just accepting my wife's grossly unfair treatment of me. I ask myself this question: Am I a wonderfully patient husband or just a wuss who cannot get his wife to treat him the way he wants to be treated. I don't think many men would take this kind of treatment. So, what is wrong with me folks?

Over the weekend my wife was not a nice person to be around. On top of her usual insomnia, she went on an overnight trip with one of our children and apparently she got only 3-4 hours of sleep Saturday night. On Sunday everytime I asked her a question she brushed me off. Yet whenever she needed to communicate with me, she came to me and expected my full attention. I am supposed to be patient and understanding because she is tired, sleepless and suffering from a cold. Does that give a wife the right to be impatient and rude to her husband? My wife apparently thinks so. This is really testing my resolve to be nice to her. It would be one thing if she were nice to me most of the time. I could then more easily tolerate occasional moodiness. On the contrary, she is impatient with me 9 out of 10 times as it is. My February entry Don't ask me for anything!? was a case in point. This weekend's is just an increased level of rudeness that I find hard to deal with.

All of this of course comes on top of our ongoing 79 days of drought which adds to the tension. That's what my handy-dandy blog gadget tells me. I am making it so much worse for myself by coming up with such ~~clever~~ stupid ideas. Man, this clock is ruthless! It makes everything so black and white! As the clock keeps ticking on this gadget, hours and days keep accumulating, it makes me more keenly aware of the decrepit state of my marriage. I named it relationship barometer. One reason was to keep it relatively clean by using a euphemism. The other reason was because how often we have sex does seem to translate into how well we seem to treat each other. Minor annoyances and irritations have a way of growing way out of proportion when we are not having sex.

Basically by this morning, I lost my ability to be nice to her. No, we are not fighting yet but my anger is erupting in the form of minor outbursts, picking on little things, taking offense from small things, making a mountain out of a molehill and yelling at the kids for their mishaps. This last one is totally terrible of me. I just realized it after it happened. It is not that they are perfect little angels. They misbehave. They don't do what they are supposed to. But under normal circumstances I am so patient with them. Even my wife marvels at how patient I am with them. Well, when I am pissed at my wife, sometimes those beautiful things bear the brunt. I have to stop doing that.

Power of some shut-eye

2009-03-16T13:58:00.000-04:00

I am very happy and encouraged by the feedback I received from some readers of my blog recently. Their insightful comments are immensely valuable to me. I have even gained a follower recently, which is the ultimate form of flattery for a novice blogger like me. Thank you so much. I am so glad that my experiences and thoughts are of some value to someone else out there, perhaps helping someone look at things from a different perspective, perhaps help some others avoid some of the costly mistakes I have made in the past.

I would like to take this opportunity to take a step back and reintroduce myself. I re-read some of my early posts and found their tone to be quite a bit on the angry side. I'd like to apologize for that. I would hate to come across as an angry person to my readers. At the same time, I was indeed angry when I started this blog and my feelings of righteous indignation became an impetus for this blog. Fortunately, blogging about my angry feelings has helped diffuse my anger quite a bit. Anger has not entirely dissipated but I have been able to channel it towards a more constructive purpose, that of improving my marriage. Please view my early posts from that point of view.

I was on a trip with one of my children during the weekend. We got back late afternoon on Sunday. My wife was not home when we arrived. When she arrived later, I greeted her at the door and noticed that she seemed more attractive than usual. I don't mean this in a sexual way. She is ordinarily <...nervous, anxious, tired, rushed, short... insert any of these adjective here>. I said "You look good. You look pretty." to which she immediately responded by saying "I got 10 hours of sleep last night! Maybe that's why.". She is probably right. She was smiling. I rarely see her smile lately. There was a more mellow, less rushed air about her which made her instantly more approachable. Wow! It was absolutely amazing how much of a difference a few hours of sleep can make to a person's outlook.

My wife has a self-described sleep problem. It is byproduct of her anxiety. She knows it. She doesn't do anything about it. She often tells me in the morning that she got barely 4 hours of sleep. She has no problem falling asleep but when she wakes up in the middle of the night, she begins thinking and worrying about her problems and boom! Mr. Sandman is out of the window! It is a vicious cycle. Her anxiety keeps her awake at night and when she doesn't get enough sleep her anxiety gets worse. Perfect Madness!

I have known about the impact of her insomnia on our lives for some time but I was struck by what a transformation a restful night of sleep has resulted in yesterday. Insomnia can become a bad habit. Some of it is caused by a person's biology but another big part is simply poor sleep hygiene. An article that appeared on the TIME magazine 10 years ago, titled Get Some Sleep suggested that your time in bed be limited to only two activities: sleep and sex, both of which are presumably restful activities. No caffeine or alcohol is allowed just before bedtime. The article says one can banish insomnia from his/her life within a reasonable period of time without ever using sleeping pills.

I can only imagine what a positive change it would bring to our lives if she managed to get regular nights of sleep. The person I greeted at the door yesterday was someone I haven't seen in years. She smiled to me, she laughed... she cracked jokes. She was likeable. We woke up this morning, she already announced that she couldn't sleep well last night. Too bad! I could see the difference from yesterday. She was back to her usual self. I think I somehow have to help her sleep better. Without a good night's sleep, she won't be able to break this cycle of anxiety and insomnia feeding off of each other.

Losing my resolve

2009-03-09T11:15:00.000-04:00

I stumbled upon a website called simplysweetmarriage.com last week. There is a blog associated with the website and last week's post on the blog was appropriately titled Living in the Marriage Desert. This well-written post then led me to a yet another post in another blog: Help for Husbands Stranded in the Sexual Desert. Hmmm, a few years back Sexless Marriage was the catch-all phrase for my little dilemma. Now, There is another name for my situation: Stranded in the Sexual Desert! Nice! Anyway, I was pretty impressed by this post. The blog is kept by Laura Brotherson who calls herself an author, an intimacy educator and a relationship consultant. The post was very timely because after our Valentine's Day weekend pow-wow, I had already embarked on a new charm offensive with my wife.

The gist of the post is basically the following: In ~~desperation~~ an effort to improve the situation, a sexual frustrated husband sometimes makes things worse by appearing petty, intimidating and unattractive to a wife. While the man blames his wife as the cause of the sexless marriage, the wife feels the husband is oversexed, overanxious, and all-around unpleasant. I can see how a dynamics like this can develop between a husband and a wife and I have suspected for a while that we may well have this dynamics at work in my marriage. So, what is Ms. Brotherson's suggestion to fix this situation? A few things. First of all, she recommends that the husband should "stop fanning the flames of frustration". He should "listen to and address her concerns" and "reawaken gratitude and positive perceptions". There are a few other recommendations but they all boil down to patience and understanding. Wonderful, I can do that!

In fact, I've been practicing "patience and understanding" for the last few weeks since the pow-wow but today as I am writing this post, I am struggling with my resolve. My readers will remember my last post titled Rejected again!. I talked about what transpired last Monday when I approached her for sex and she rejected me by using a fairly lame excuse. I think I deserve a great pat in the back for the way handled that rejection. I continued to be nice. I did nothing to make her feel guilty. I put my arms around her and gave her a hug. After the rejection, I swallowed the bitter pill and didn't change the way I acted around her. Basically, she experienced no pressure from me at all. Rightly or wrongly, I expected to be rewarded for this good behavior. I know, I know... Good behavior is not good behavior if there are strings attached to it and it is not quite as commendable if there is an expectation of reward. Yes, I am a little guilty of all that but give me some credit, will you? I didn't let myself get frustrated or sour. I remained cheerful and pleasant.

This past weekend was an unusually busy weekend for the family, especially Saturday. My wife and I went in separate directions, shuttling kids from one place to another, handling many different chores. I had to do some cooking for the dinner we were invited to. We all got back home late in the evening. I expected Sunday to be much calmer. She woke me up Sunday morning explaining that she would ordinarily have sex with me that morning but at the same time, someone (out of the two of us) should really take one of our kids to yet another activity in the city this morning. She and I spent some time trying to decide who should be the one to do it. We both volunteered but she insisted more strongly so I relented. In an hour or so, she and our kid got ready. I made a breakfast sandwich to go for both and sent them on their way. I knew that moment that any hope of sex with my wife for the weekend was shredded into smithereens.

I still had a tiny bit of hope for the afternoon. They were supposed to be back by mid-afternoon but they didn't actually come back until much later. It turned out that my wife took our kid to a nearby mall. They didn't really do anything urgent. They hung around, made several stops in various parts of the city. They had a really nice time. They came back too late for her and me to have sex. A copout? Quite possibly. Next weekend, I am going away with one of our kids on a 2-day trip. Our next chance to have sex will be two more weeks later. So, if we are lucky, we will have sex 2.5 months after the last time. If we are not lucky, then who knows? Months will lead to more months. We are known to go as long as 6 months in a stretch without sex. Last year for example, there was no sex between February and September.

I am getting really frustrated and despondent right now. I feel like telling her what a terrible wife she is for neglecting our sex life. I feel like making a big scene. Vent my frustrations. Rock the boat. Trigger another period of conflict. I have a hard time making myself be nice to her. I am getting resentful. Are there any lurkers out there to give me some advice or encouragement? I could easily wipe out the progress we have made in the last several weeks in a 15 minute outburst. Then again, are we really making progress? Despite the fact that I am very nice to her, there is no display of affection to me, 2.5 month-long dry spell. Is there really anything left there to preserve? I want to go away. Go far away. I don't want to live Stranded in this Sexual Desert anymore. I had enough.

Rejected again!

2009-03-03T10:45:00.000-05:00

She and I seemed to be making progress. We have been nice to each other. However, we haven't had sex for 2 months. While we were fighting or not talking to each other, I wasn't in the mood either. Now that we are on good terms, I thought maybe it is time we should have sex.

Yesterday morning was a perfect opportunity. Due to a snowstorm, neither my wife nor I were able to go to work until later in the afternoon. All of a sudden, we had this block of time we never expected to have. The kids were sound asleep. She could not claim that she didn't have time for it. I went ahead and asked. Without hesitation she said no. Her excuse appeared to be valid but it was something whose accuracy I could not verify. I acted like it wasn't a big deal. I gave her a hug. That was it.

What bothered me was that she didn't seem disappointed at all by this missed opportunity. She almost seemed to be glad that she had a valid excuse. She didn't say "I am sorry" even for simple courtesy. I was puzzled. Could it be that she lied to me to get out of sex? If she lied to me about it, that would hurt my feelings even more. I would much rather her say that she is not in the mood. Then again, after 2 months of no sex, she probably feels that is not a good enough excuse. Perhaps she thought it was much better to lie than risk getting me upset.

There was a time I used to get very upset when she rejected my sexual advances. I don't do that anymore. Even though it seems quite reasonable to expect sex after such a long time, I have come to believe that asking your spouse for sex and after getting rejected displaying irritation puts a lot of pressure on the spouse who is rejecting. That can cause a spouse to lie, rather than tell the truth. I think the loss of honesty is a much bigger price to pay. I don't want to use emotional blackmail to get my wife to have sex with me. It would make me feel horrible if I ever thought for a minute that my wife is having sex with me because she is feeling pressured into it. Then again, we are married. I expected that marriage includes sex. Here I am, a married man. Both spouses are healthy. 2 months since the last time we had sex. I miss a woman's touch. I miss being my skin pressed against her skin. This sucks!

Good news!

2009-02-15T22:49:00.000-05:00

I have some good news today. I can't call it a breakthrough quite yet because only time will tell but my wife and I had a talk today and it went surprisingly well. This is not the first time I tried to reach out to her but it never worked in the past. Whenever we sat down to discuss our marriage in the past, we ended up feeling sadder about the situation and angrier at each other. As our marriage hit a new low in the recent weeks, I considered one more last-ditch attempt to approach her but it just wasn't easy to bite to bullet. The fear of another disappointment was too great. I am pretty conflict-averse by nature. I just couldn't stomach another angry exchange so easily. I think by yesterday, my desparation had grown so strong that I had to do something to break the stalemate. I asked her to sit down and talk. She said yes. The discussion happened yesterday and it went very well.

Why did it work this time when it never worked in the past? What was different this time? Honestly I am not absolutely sure. I have some speculations. Perhaps we were both tired of fighting and we were desparate to turn things around. Perhaps the way I approached her was better than before. As I explained in my previous posts, my wife hates being "ambushed". Talks like this are very emotionally charged for her. It is very easy for her to take my concerns as criticism, become defensive and fight back. I think I did the smartest thing by letting her to choose the time of our conversation. This allowed her to be mentally prepared and reduced her anxiety a great deal. I also tried my best not to put her on the defensive. I kept using those so called I-statements. I avoided any you-statements. I tried doing that in the past, but somehow it never worked. Surprisingly this time it worked like a charm.

We talked almost 5 hours. Yes, it was a marathon session. We didn't resolve all our differences. We couldn't possibly have. Some of these issues are almost 10 years old. I think, however, we both felt heard and we both managed to clear up some misunderstandings. In some past conversations we had, we just couldn't stay on topic. The conversation invariably turned into a kitchen sink. This time I gently steered the topic back into what was truly important. I began by asking her about the reasons for her recent angry outburst. She began by giving me some trivial reasons for it but after some gentle prodding, we finally got at the true reason for her anger. As I took my turn to explain my own feelings on the same subject, she began to realize that I too have a lot of the same feelings towards her as she has towards me. I consider that moment to be an important turning point in our conversation and I truly hope that it is the first step towards a new period of understanding between us.

I am tired tonight since I was too stressed out to sleep well lately. I feel pretty good however. I am cautiously optimistic. I gave her a hug at the end of our conversation. We both cried a little. The day after Valentine's Day turned out to be much better the day itself.

Sexless Marriage

2009-02-15T00:40:00.000-05:00

Valentine's Day is especially hard for folks like me in near-sexless marriages. I am not sure which is worse: To be single and dateless on Valentine's Day or to be married and sexless? Anyone who has read my previous posts can tell that my problems go way beyond the issues in the bedroom, so I would never reduce my problems to one of sexual incompatibility. I have to say though, some physical intimacy tonight, if it were possible, would go a long way in restoring some optimism to my soul.

I think this post is shaping up to be the long awaited, sexless marriage post. According to the experts, 10 times a year is a common, if not somewhat arbitrary, measure of a sexless marriage. Last year, the number was 7 so I definitely qualify. A sexless marriage does not have to be bad. If both spouses are content with not having sex, there is certainly no problem. In most cases, however, one partner is not happy with the situation and this leads to a pretty intractable problem. How does a marriage become sexless? The birth of our last child was the trigger but by no means the cause. My wife just didn't want to have sex during her pregnancy for fear of hurting the baby. I was understanding about that. Then she wanted to wait for a long time pospartum before she was ready to have sex. All in all, 26 months had passed after the conception of our child before we had sex again. This is a rather shocking number for a happily married couple probably. I should point out that I never demanded anything during this time and patiently waited for her feel ready. When she herself finally ended this long stretch of celibacy, I had every hope that we would resume a sex life of some regularity. Boy was I wrong!

I was pretty shocked when she declared that "At this stage of our lives [being parents of young children] sex is just not a priority for us anymore". What is so wrong about this statement is that in married life, no spouse should ever make unilateral statements that affect both spouses. She didn't ask me what I thought. She didn't care what I thought. Even though I disagreed with this idea, she imposed it on our marriage without giving me a choice. I think this is one of the cardinal sins of marriage. Unilateralism. If she had asked me my opinion, here is what I would have said: "True, we are parents of young children. Our children's needs may sometimes trump our needs but I think we should still preserve our sex life in some capacity as an important component of our togetherness." I was never able to get this message through. As our sex life declined sharply, along with every form of intimacy in our marriage, anger and resentment filled the vacuum.

I can't say I handled the situation as well as I could have. When she didn't agree with me, I began to make demands which was a big mistake. This is another cardinal rule of marriage: Don't make demands. No matter how just your case may seem to you. In my desparation, I begged, demanded and threatened with divorce. All of which made the situation even worse.

At the beginning, I didn't realize that in addition to low desire, my wife had also developed some anxiety around the act of sex. Sex became something she began to feel nervous about. I still don't know what the cause of this anxiety is. Perhaps the whole thing became too much of a minefield for her. Perhaps this is another manifestation of her anxiety-filled personality. A chicken-and-egg story probably. In order to reduce her anxiety, she needed to control when and how we would have sex. I don't mean scheduling sex here. Scheduling sex would mean deciding jointly when sex would take place. In this case, she alone would determine when sex would take place and not even tell me in advance, so that she could change her mind at anytime without notice. She made a half-hearted attempt to include me in the decision. She suggested that I would ask for sex anytime and she would then get back to me within a reasonable period of time with sex. Apparently "a reasonable period" in her mind was sometimes 1-2 weeks. This proposal made no sense to me because under the disguise of giving me some control, she was giving me no control whatsoever. It would be one thing to say to your spouse "I can't have sex with you right now but how about tomorrow? " or "How about 2 days from now?" Basically, a raincheck with some specific day would be fine. Her proposal was something quite different: "I can't have sex with you right now, maybe not tomorrow. Maybe not even the next day. I will have sex with you some day at some point when it is convenient to me. You won't get any advance notice from me when that date comes. You will wait patiently until it happens.". Her proposal never worked. I think it was a disingenuous idea to begin with.

In addition to controlling the frequency, she also controlled the actual sex act by using shame and ridicule. To every suggestion I made to spice up our sex life, her reaction was "How could you suggest something so disgusting?". Trust me folks I am not talking about some bizarre and kinky sexual practices here. Pretty ordinary sex acts like oral sex or any position other than the 2-3 positions we always use. Her shame and ridicule tactics included statements like "I am not going to suck your d**k!", "I am not a dog!" or "I am not going to dress up like a whore!". This is not somebody who is either religious or conservative. It was not her morality talking here, but her anxiety was. The more scripted and predictable our sex would be, the less anxiety-provoking it would become for her. Well, she won. Our infrequent encounters now have a very well-defined script. We follow the same steps each and everytime. They are pretty boring and uninspiring. She squelched all my attempts to spice up our sex life by making me feel like a pervert for suggesting pretty run-of-the-mill sexual practices. Any enthusiasm I ever felt about having sex with her is gone now. I don't know if there is any hope left of ever jump-starting our sex life. I think the patient is dead. I think it is a pretty hopeless case.

Need to control

2009-02-09T10:58:00.001-05:00

Judith Warner says the following in her book Perfect Madness:

Hyperparenting, the need to control everything, do everything, singlehandedly, is damaging to ourselves, our children, our marriage and even our society. Mothers are stressed, children are taught to win at all costs, our husbands are ignored and our marriages are falling apart.

Hmmm, the need to control. The need to control is said to be an attempt to reduce anxiety in a World where most things are out of our control. We cannot control the weather, we cannot control the economy, we cannot even control our children's schools but we can control our kids and our spouses. This is how the thinking goes. The trouble is most people don't like to be controlled. Children, especially young children tolerate this, because well... they are children. However, adults really really despise being controlled. Things go pretty sour pretty fast from there.

In my previous post, I discussed how my wife will allow conversation between us only on her terms. When I approach her to discuss anything, it is never a good time, it is never an important enough topic for her spend her precious time on. Yet when she feels a need for conversation, she simply interrupts whatever I am doing and begins to talk. My readers may wonder whether she is aware of this disparity. I am pretty sure she is aware of it. Then why is she being so unfair? Why is she not being as accomodating to me as I am to her? You are not going to believe my answer: She actually thinks that her conversation is more important and more essential. For two reasons: One is because the topics she favors are more important. The other is because her need for conversation is more important. Don't forget, everything she talks about is related to our kids somehow and everyhing that has to do with our kids trumps every other conversation. Her need for conversation is more important also because she feels she is the one who is doing a harder job and she is stressed out more. I am sure in an ideal world she really would love to listen to me if she had the time and energy but she doesn't. She is far too busy. Too overwhelmed. Her life is too crazy. So, the husband never gets a willing ear.

How about our sex life? This is another area where control issues come into picture a big way. My wife needs absolute control over when, where and how we have sex. She asked me never to ambush her with a suggestion to have sex right then and there. Requests for sex has to be made in writing. Allow 2-3 weeks for delivery. LOL. Seriously, she told me to ask her for sex in advance and she would then somehow make it happen. I actually tried her suggestion a couple times. I let her know that I would like to have sex in advance. Sure enough she got back to me and we had sex. Several days after my request. It is one thing to refuse a spouse's advance once in a while. I get that. To say that she will never accept my advances unless the request is made in advance and she gets back to me when it is convenient for her is pretty outrageous. I will make a post fully dedicated to our sex life someday. Suffice it to say that in addition to deciding when we have sex, my wife also decides exactly what we do in bed. No more and no less. She refused almost every single request I made.

Why is she so controlling in the bedroom, my readers may ask. The reason is because she has a lot of trouble getting into the mood. She feels so much anxiety about every aspect of her life that sex requires a major switching of gears. In order to enjoy sex, one has to put all worries aside and tune into her sensual side. For her this is a very daunting task. For me to come out of nowhere and ask her to have sex is unthinkable to her because she wouldn't have a chance to do the necessary mental prep work to get into the mood. The least anxiety provoking way to have sex is therefore one which she knows exactly what will happen ahead of time and when, where the same exact script is faithfully followed. This, of course, makes a very unfulfilling type of sex. However, the alternative is no sex. Going with the flow (which is what some people call spontaneous sex) is pretty much out of question.

There are myriad of other ways my wife exercises control over me on a daily basis in order to reduce her anxiety. She will tell me how exactly to load the dishes in the dishwasher and run the clothes dryer. Even the slightest departure from her way of doing things is unacceptable because the possibility that clothes or dishes may come out of these machines dirty fills her heart with intense fear. I know there are a lot of messy guys out there who expect their wives to always pick up after them. I am not one of those. This is not a matter of sloppy behavior. This is a matter of demanding that your spouse do things exactly the way you ask them to do. Sometimes I am even given exact directions as to which hanger needs to be used on which clothing item and which end of the item should be clipped on the hanger in order to avoid hanger marks.

Going back to the quote from Judith Warner's book, I believe that Ms. Warner's assessment that parental anxiety is "damaging to ourselves, our children, our marriage and even our society" is right on the mark. One of the ways this anxiety manifests itself is a need to control everything. Sadly, the more you try to control things, the more they get out of control.

Don't ask me for anything!

2009-02-05T09:59:00.001-05:00

I am not just talking about sex here. What I am saying here is: "Don't ask me for anything!" Period. The thing is I am not much of an "asker" to begin with. I have always had trouble asking for favors. If I need something, my first thought is always how I can do it myself without bothering anyone. If I still can't seem to be able to do it, my second thought is how I can learn to do it myself so that I don't bother anyone else. Asking someone for help pretty much doesn't occur to me. In marriage, however, you are invariably in a position to ask. Not necessarily personal favors. For example, I do the taxes and pay the bills for everyone. Sometimes she doesn't give me the paperwork I need, so I ask her. These are things like receipts for purchases she herself made, services she procured. Yet they are things that I need to file the taxes for both of us or pay the credit card bills for both of us. This is a situation I have come to dread. I brace myself for a negative reaction the moment I approach her to ask. Sure enough, she lifts up her head and her facial expression immediately changes into an anguished look. One which I interpret in any number of ways ranging from "It is you again?", "Are you kidding me? Don't you see how busy I am?", "What? Do you take pleasure from torturing me?" to "Go away bastard! Leave me alone!".

Of course, everyone has moments when they are doing something that requires complete focus and concentration. A spouse should understand and be respectful, right? The trouble is, we see each other very rarely as it is, especially during weekdays. So I don't many opportunities to ask. The other trouble is, no matter when I approach her she is always in the middle of something that requires that level of concentration. Ultimately what she is doing is no more complicated than what I do every single day. However, she has so much more trouble concentrating than an ordinary person that every mundane task turns into a delicate matter of crisis. When I interrupt her in the middle of such "a crisis", she invariably reacts with irritation. It doesn't even matter how much time I give her to get back to me. My initial approach is always met with anger and irritation.

I understand her. I really do. In her mind, she is overworked and overwhelmed. A barrage of demands and responsibilities seem to ambush her from all directions and leave her unable to cope. I, on the other hand, seem to be having a grand old time, appearing relaxed and dealing with problems as they come. God forbid, I seem to even find time to sit down and enjoy a good book. Seeing this angers her further. That's how her angry outburts against me seem to flare up. She thinks I can relax only because I don't seem to have a hell of a lot to do. In her mind, she is so overwhelmed because she has more than her share of responsibilities. The truth is, it is her anxiety that is making things loom so large in her eyes. I know, I know... I am threading dangerous waters here especially with some of my female readers. Let me assure you that I am not some typical clueless male who watches footbal on TV all day Sunday while his wife cooks and cleans. On the contrary, I am the one who does most of the cooking in the house. I also do fair amount of the cleaning along with a myriad of other so-called "manly" chores. If anything, I find myself taking over more and more of the household chores to give her more of a chance to relax but her anxiety never lessens.

OK, I get that! She has an anxiety problem. This problem makes it more difficult for her to concentrate. It makes her more irritable. It makes her restless, keyed up and difficult for her to sleep. The reasonable thing to do in this kind of a situation is for her to get some help, right? No. She refuses that. The fallout from her refusal to get help is an ever-deteriorating marriage and anxious household walking on eggshells so as not to trigger one of her angry outbursts. How would you feel if your spouse is totally unapproachable? Whenever you ask him/her something, she gets upset because she is overwhelmed. Yet you know that you do more than your share of the responsibilities and that his/her anxiety is causing this sense of overwhelm. Getting pushed away like that eventually takes it toll on you and you begin to feel a complete sense of rejection from the person you married. Rejection in every sense of the word: rejection of small daily requests, rejection of requests for sex, rejection of requests for conversation... A complete utter sense of rejection! How long a person go on feeling such deep feeling of rejection from his spouse? How long can you keep on doing more and more to reduce her anxiety, only to be met with further rejection and even resentment? I know there are potential innocent victims in case of a breakup but how long can a person go on like that?

Short fuse

2009-02-02T10:10:00.001-05:00

She has been on edge for quite a while. She snaps at both me and the kids at the same time, so I am never sure how much of it to take personally. I asked her why she is upset a lot lately. She complained that there is just way too much stuff to do and she doesn't get enough rest but she didn't mention anything I did personally. I think spouses sense it when there is some underlying resentment. It seemed like she picked fault in everything I did.

Our marriage is already in a delicate stage. It has been near-sexless for a long time. There is hardly any meaningful conversation. All my attempts to discuss our problems have failed. Whenever I approach her to discuss our marriage, her first line of resistance is to refuse to talk. She claims that I always approach her at the most inopportune times. There is never a good time. It took me a long time to realize that this was just a way for her to avoid conflict. If I somehow get her to sit down and discuss our problems, she gets very defensive. She takes offense at the slightest hint of insult in what I said and accuses me of all sorts of ill will. It is taking me another stretch of time to figure out this is yet another tactic in conflict avoidance. At that point, whether I apologize or rephrase what I said, nothing seems to make any difference. In her eyes, I already said something horrible. If she can't find any fault with what I said, then she digs up something from the past. So conversation about our marriage never goes anywhere. I don't remember a single conversation where we actually discussed the problem itself. What is the problem? What do I feel about it? What does she feel about it? What are the potential solutions? Can we make an action plan? We've never gotten that far in any conversation we've ever had.

Now we seem to have reached a new stage in our marriage where her anger seems to flare up in all sorts of unexpected settings. It is never stated openly but I suspect it is due to some kind of deep-seated resentment against me. This is interesting because whatever gripes she has about me, I am totally in the dark about them. I must have been indicted, tried and convicted all in absentia. I always thought I am the one who has some legitimate unmet needs in our marriage. The lack of conversation and intimacy being the primary ones. I have clearly told them what they are and she hopefully knows. I don't know what her gripes about me are. She sometimes says that I don't value her hardwork as a mother. Could that be the reason?

Well, whatever it is, her anger has reached a boiling point lately. 3 weeks ago on Saturday I took one of our children to sports practice. When we came back, my wife was gone to run some errands. I spent most of her absence making lunch for our kids and cleaning up the kitchen. I then called my mother on the phone. Five minutes into my conversation, my wife came home with some groceries. While I was talking to my mother, I could sense the anger in her demeanor. She was having a full-blown tantrum. She was throwing things around. While she said nothing against me, it was crystal clear to me that she was angry at me. How do I know that? I don't know but spouses know. I apologized to my mother and hung up. 10 seconds after I approached her we were in a full-blown fight. I don't even remember what was said. While the supposed topic was the sports equipment that was left lying around and wasn't stored away properly, the real topic was her seething anger against me. I did nothing to calm down her anger, instead I stoked it by saying things that made her even angrier.

That is not nice of me doing that. Why did I do it? I did that because I had been living within the firing range of her anger during the past few weeks and frankly I was fed up. Do you know what it feels like to be living with somebody who is ready to cut your head off if you dare say something wrong? It is usually men who display open anger in a relationship. In our case, I tend to be much more low key. My wife is the one who always yells. Mostly, she yells at the kids. When she feels like yelling at me, she just yells without making it clear who the target of her rage is. I sometimes ignore it but this time I couldn't. I said things to her that I don't even remember now. I think I said things that I knew to be false but I said them just to hurt her feelings. They say spouses always have weapons in their arsenals to hurt each other. I have my own. When I get hurt by her too much, I strike back by hurling hurtful words back at her.

After the fight ended, I was overcome with a deep sense of sadness. Why was she angry at me? What did I do to her to make her hate me so much? Sole breadwinner. The main chef in the kitchen. Gardener. Handyman. Electrician. Painter. Plumber. Family accountant. Homework tutor. Part time Cheuffor to our kids. Computer Consultant. Seamster. God-knows-what-else. I am very approachable. She calls me whenever and wherever I am to discuss whatever she wanted. When I approach her, she usually tells me to go away. I don't know what is running in her head and why she is so angry with me but I am doing my best and I think I am a pretty good husband. In fact I give so much to her that I have nothing left to give. Why is that not enough?

Photography 101

2009-01-31T11:47:00.002-05:00

When you become parents for the first time, it is natural to record every stage of your children's development. You want to document their first steps, first pair of shoes, first bicyles and many other "firsts". Like all parents, my wife and I quickly joined the ranks of all new parents with cameras following very move of their children like starstruck fans.

As time went on, my wife began to spend a great deal of time on photo albums adding various momentos to the albums, turning it into a scrapbook. As the technically-savvy parent, it always fell on me to take the photos and videos. Eventually I noticed that our photo albums began to look like a family of three rather than four. I was practically absent from the albums. I mentioned to my wife many times but she was happier just posing in the photos that I was taking than taking turns with me to take my picture with the kids. I kept reminding it to her that I was too absent from the photo album and that she should take more photos of me with the kids but she rarely offered to take photos.

Thus the family photos turned into another area where I began to feel ignored. This was in stark contrast with the photos taken before the kids were born. There are almost equal number of photos of me and my wife before the kids. After the kids were born, I am nearly absent from the photos. This situation has continued despite my requests and reminders. It makes me feel like I am an outsider and I am invisible. My services are demanded in every aspect of our lives but I am treated like indentured servant. She is so absorbed in documenting our children's development that preserving my images doesn't seem to matter to her. I am not saying we should choose one over the other. We are a family. We should take everyone's pictures. I have my family's photos when I was a child. I love to see my parents in those pictures. It is so nice to see them when they were young parents themselves. Someday our children will outlive us. When they look at the photos we are taking today, our images will be just as precious to them as their own. I know that because my parents' images taken in my childhood are very precious to me.

I see my wife's seemingly benign neglect of taking my pictures as another way she shifted her focus entirely away from me, her life partner. When my children were born, there was enough room in my heart for everyone. I didn't remove my wife from my life to make room for our children. Is this another example of perfect madness? What bothers me is that she not only puts our children up on a pedestal, but she sits right up there with them. I seem to be the only one left in the house in a lower rank. My job is to serve. I support the whole family. I take care of the house and yard. I take care of all the bills. I cook all the homecooked meals. None of that gets me even a spot in a family photo. I am not precious. I am not a precious child. Neither am I a precious mother. I am merely a husband and a father.

Too crowded for comfort

2009-01-29T14:30:00.000-05:00

Just google the phrase co-sleeping, you'll get a lot of hits about parents sleeping with their infant and toddlers. I think most people view co-sleeping with young children fairly positively these days and I am not against it in principle. When our second child was born, I myself slept with our first child several months to ease the anxiety of a new sibling. I am always open to the idea of a scared or sick child crawling into his parents' bed in the middle of the night, but how far should it go? If I take a poll about what is the oldest age for a child to sleep with her parents, what kind of answers would I get? Five? Seven? Ten maybe? How about twelve?

My wife goes to bed earlier than I do. Our older child goes to sleep almost every night with my wife in our bed. Sometimes our younger child is in our bed too. Three or four of us can't fit comfortably in our bed anymore. They are getting too big. So when I come into our bed, I wake up whoever is in our bed, sometimes one, sometimes two children and send them to their beds. I am not happy with this arrangement and I asked my wife to stop allowing our children to sleep in our bed but she doesn't want to do anything to stop it. In fact, many nights she either invites them to our bed or she goes to their bedrooms to sleep with one or both of them in their beds. I am not concerned about incest or any other inappropriate behavior but I think this is wrong. I think it is bad for our children and it is bad for our marriage.

It is true that one of our children is frequently scared about sleeping alone and he often cannot fall asleep easily on his own. However, I think this problem is not the reason for him to sleep in our bed, rather it is the result of it. He never learned to fall asleep on his own. My wife makes no bones about why she lets our children to sleep in our bed: because she enjoys it. She has been telling me that there will come a time when our children would no longer want to sleep with mommy. She predicted that would come around when they are in kindergarten. She told me that she will enjoy the closeness as long as they would not mind sleeping with her. Well, both our children are now several years older than kindergarten age and they are still frequent nightly guests in our bed.

I don't think the proponents of co-sleeping were thinking about a grade-schooler or a pre-teen in parents' bed everynight. What does that do to the marriage of his parents? What does that do to the confidence and independence of a child? With children in our bed, is it any wonder that intimacy is almost non-existent in our marriage? Why would a wife continue this behavior even though it upsets her husband and make him feel unwanted?

Breastfeeding

2009-01-28T23:11:00.000-05:00

My wife breastfed our first child for about a year. I was very supportive of her. I helped her pump and freeze her breastmilk, cleaned the breast pump. I instructed the childcare people on what to do with the breastmilk. With the second child, this was no longer necessary. She stayed home, so she could breastfeed the baby without the need for pumping.

This period was the beginning of a widening gulf between us as a couple. She was very concerned about the impact of a new sibling on our first child. She thought it would be a good idea for one of us to sleep with him every night. So we began to sleep in separate beds. I slept with our toddler, she slept with the baby, nursing through the night. This went on for 6-8 months. When the baby began to sleep through the night, we moved to baby to a crib and my wife began to sleep with our toddler. Now, I moved to the master bedroom and began sleeping alone. It was a year and a half after the birth of our second child, my wife was still nursing and still sleeping with our now 4.5 year-old preschooler.

I felt very lonely. I loved both our children but I couldn't understand why she had to nurse the baby for a year-and-a-half and sleep with our first child every night. I should also mention that we had not had any sex for over 2 years at that point. I never felt this neglected in my marriage before. Up to that point, I had always put my needs second after those of our kids but finally my need for affection was too overwhelming. Finally she approached me and we had sex but quickly after that we returned to our child-centered life. She continued to nurse and she continued to sleep with our first child.

At that point, I asked her to move back into our bedroom. She was unhappy but she complied. I realized that my wife was now too absorbed in our children and if our marriage was going to become a priority again, I had to take the lead. It had been 2 months since we supposedly resumed our sex life but we didn't have sex a second time. One day as a surprise, I prepared a romantic scene in our bedroom. Candles and music. I invited her. We had sex but she seemed distracted, perhaps annoyed. She didn't seem to appreciate what I did. She told me not to try to surprise her like that again. She said she needed to know in advance that we were going to have sex and mentally prepare.

To say that I was puzzled would be an understatement. It seemed like she didn't care about me anymore. I knew that her hands were full with two kids but I was very supportive. Every night when I came home from work I took over the parenting duty. I was never into sports, I didn't have buddies anymore. I went to work, I came home and spent the rest of my time with the kids. That was no problem but I felt our marriage deserved to have a place in our busy lives too. I felt lonely and neglected.

By now the baby was a year and 10 months old. My wife was still breastfeeding. What was difficult to understand for me was my wife's reasons for breastfeeding. She agreed that there was no overwhelming benefit for the baby anymore but she just couldn't let go of this stage of our lives. She basically continued to breastfeed not for the baby's benefit but her own personal gratification. I know I am not a mom but I just couldn't understand this reasoning. Breastfeeding seemed to be driving a wedge between us as a couple. I was blaming breastfeeding for her lack of sex drive (which turned out to be wrong). I was asking her to stop breastfeeding. In the meantime, she was pushing me hard to have a third child.

Having another child seemed like exactly the wrong kind of thing to do as a couple at that point. We were clearly having problems prioritizing the needs of our marriage agains that of our children. My wife kept telling me that our marriage should take the backseat right now. I felt terribly neglected. What sense would it make to have one more child at that point? Wouldn't it be better to strengthen our marriage now? My wife would hear none of it. She was now growing resentful of me not allowing her to become a mother a 3rd time. In the meantime I was growing resentful of her for neglecting me. I used to be the most important person in her life. Now, I was a distant third. I didn't want much. Just some conversation while the kids are asleep. A sex life with some regularity. Some interest in my life and well-being. As a supportive husband and an enthusiastic father, I felt I deserved that. She was alone with our children for 10 hours everyday when I was at work. Why couldn't she give me some attention when I came home? Not a lot of attention. Some token attention. Something to indicate that we are still a couple. She loved ranting about her hard day and I sat down and listened. I gave her backrubs. Nothing changed. She was in love with our kids now. She was no longer interested in me. All she wanted from me was to support her and allow her to become a mother a 3rd time. Ironically, it would take sex for her to become a mother again. She was willing to do that for the sake of becoming a mother but she was not interested in having sex with me to express love.

How it all began

2009-01-26T10:27:00.000-05:00

My wife was still working part time when we had just one child. After we had our second child, she decided to stay home. I was totally up to her. I respected any decision she would make. If she wanted to work, that would be fine; we would somehow manage the childcare problems. If she wanted to stay home, that was fine also; we would somehow try to make do on just my income. She made the decision to stay home. Ironically, life didn't get any easier after that. On the contrary, days seem to have gotten more hectic and more anxiety-filled after she quit work.

All of a sudden she transformed from a woman with many different roles (a wife, a career woman and a mother) to just one: A mother. While some may see this change as a welcome simplication of one's life, expecting less stress and anxiety, the result was exactly the opposite. I have to note that my wife has always had a tendency to worry. Becoming a full-time mother simply took her worries to another level. She began to worry about every aspect of our children's life, big and small. Even something as small as getting them playdates was an anxiety-provoking issue. While her worries about motherhood steadily grew, she became less and less interested in anything else.

My role in our young family had changed too. I grew up in a family where mom never worked. However, I considered that arrangement to be a part of a bygone era. I expected that the woman I would marry would work and we would share the duties of earning a living as well as parenting. Before we had kids, my wife seemed to share that vision. She always expected me to cook and clean and do all the chores that are traditionally in the female domain. I, in turn, expected to have a partner in supporting our family financially. That vision completely went out the window when she decided to stay home. It was back to Ozzie and Harriet now. I was the sole wage earner and she was the stay-at-home mom.

There was one big difference, however, between the family of my childhood and my new young family. In the family I grew up, my mother was then called a housewife. In my new family, my wife was now called a stay-at-home mom. The difference was not simply in the semantics or political correctness. My wife fully believed that her job was first and foremost the job of a mother. My mother on the other hand was a wife first and a mother second. Actually, this was more than a difference in priorities. My wife believed that her responsibilities to me as a wife were fully superseded by her responsibilities as a mother. She believed that she sacrificed her career only for the benefit of our children and they should solely get the benefit of that sacrifice. Even though I never shared this vision with her, she fully expected me to cooperate and not expect anything from her as a wife anymore. It was no longer just a matter of our marriage becoming a lower priority. It was not a priority at all. Marriage was our past, parenting was our future. We would postpone our marriage to some undetermined future date.

The book

2009-01-26T09:47:00.000-05:00

While this blog makes heavy reference to Judith Warner's 2005 book, my thoughts about the subject had been crystallizing quite some time before the book actually came out. What the book did for me was to independently confirm and validate my thoughts and observations. I realized that my experience was not an isolated case. I was affected by a phonemenon that was affecting millions of families in America.

There have been a fair amount of criticism of the book after it came out. Much of it has been centered around the suggestion that the book is elitist, it is a reflection of an upper middle class angst, and it is not representative of the daily lives of most middle class families in America. Some have even viewed the book with some disdain and snicker calling the problems discussed in the book as ones most people would love to have. I will not answer those charges for Judith Warner except to point out that her book's description of family life has an uncanny resemblance to mine. Yet, I do not think I belong to the upper strata of the middle class.

In the upcoming postings, I will discuss the ways in which parental anxiety has adversely affected my personal life and my marriage. Despite the noble intentions behind this quest for parental perfection, I think children are also victims of this misguided way of thinking. I will share my thoughts on the impact of this phenomenon on children as well.