Originally Posted by
roku1
Hi all… if anyone is still reading this thread I just wanted to add a little more.
Last night my OH was working late and I was reminded how the work comes first for her, as it has done for years.
Whilst lying in bed together, trying to get to sleep, she started talking about some things and whether I had spent any time considering our future. This led to a minor argument which evolved into conversation about our current situation, where I (partly) opened up to her… totally the wrong time and place but she drew it out of me.
I was honest, that I didn’t know what to do and that I loved her, that I care for her more than anyone else in the world but that I don’t know if we can go on the way we are.
I last bought up my issues with ‘us’ in summer 2014, most notably, the lack of intimacy and sex; how I had spent so much time playing second fiddle to her work. It had taken about a year of patience and gentle suggestion before I had to say something. From when I first opened up through to now, she hasn’t taken one bit of action to make things better and yes, I have tried ‘turning things up’ myself – I haven’t just been sat back waiting for something to happen. Nor have I been overwhelming or ‘gung-ho ‘ with my attempts.
Her reason for this, from as far back as 2 years ago, is that “we hadn’t gotten married or discussed marriage, so (my OH) started to withdraw, sexually, from the relationship.”
I just don’t quite understand this...
I thought that intimacy bonded couples and brought them closer together, which leads to marriage, children etc? Not that you should expect marriage and then get intimate?
This sounds like excuses to me, not very good ones. I just don’t think we work on this level, which is a shame as it’s a very important ‘level’ to me.
So, after more chat and a bit of a cry we came to ‘what happens next?’ My OH said that she wanted to ‘reset’ and start over with me, asking whether we could go back to the beginning and try again. She didn’t want us to end.
I told her ‘I didn’t know,’ which is the honest truth. That must have been terrible for her to hear but as much as I love and care for her, I don’t want to ‘change’ her; we shouldn’t have to ‘change’ at all! You can change anyone to fit your needs, shouldn’t a life-partnership be with someone that just ‘fits’?
Now I’m stuck again and don’t know what to do, she wanted a ‘date night’ tonight to spend some time together but I don’t want her to do anything that isn’t natural i.e. I don’t want to feel like she’s trying to win my emotions, I have more respect for her than that and I just want her to be her and to be on the same level. I just want us to be ‘us’ again, like we once were, before she started to ‘withdraw’! Is that ever going to happen? Can this be fixed?