Ask Andrew – 290
Dear Andrew,
I’ve read both ILYB and “how can I ever…” My husband of 22 years, who seems to be going through a midlife crisis, questioning all his life goals, feeling stuck and needing to be free to make sense of his life. He said that he no longer feels the passion he once felt for me. It appeared that he was having an emotional affair, but my ultimatums only led to our separation. He could handle neither the conflict nor the restrictions of his freedom. He felt unhappy in our marriage, resentful to me for any negative feelings he had, and critical of me for not living up to his perfectionist standards (I took a long time to finish my studies because I was working full time, while looking after house, husband and home).
In order to maintain our support to the children, we are semi-separated; he spends half the time at home, half in our country cottage (on his own). I started building communication, encouraging him to tell me his feelings without recriminations. He said his friend had seemed to be the only one who he could talk to, but he wasn’t in love with her or planning to have an affair. I stopped getting angry at him seeing her, and now he sees her less often.
Over time, our friendship has grown, he stays most of the time with me even when I give him the freedom to go, we do more activities together, and he has started doing some of the things that he had stopped doing (because he was always working), such as canoeing. He now tells me that I am his best friend, he feels happier, that I was definitely his true love of his life, and he would love to be able to fall in love with me again.
Finishing my thesis made him proud; I am as happy and cheerful as I can be, and I fully support his need to find sense in his life. He knows he has the freedom that he needs. BUT he still needs his space and tells me ILYBINILWY, still cannot commit, and cannot feel love. I have told him that if he really wants to feel love for me again, he will, when he is happy with his life.
The past two and a half years have been destabilising and incredibly painful. I’m working on myself, and supporting him, He doesn’t want to do self conscious “exercises” as suggested in your books, so I have to involve him more indirectly. What else can I do?
Andrew writes:
Congratulations for working so hard and being so patient. I can quite see why you’re frustrated.
I have two totally contradictory thoughts – one suggests that you do something more and the other that you should stop doing all the work and make him step up to plate for a change.
So rather than trying to make sense of why I’m drawn in such opposite directions, I’ll just pitch in and your guts will tell which is the most appropriate response.
I was wondering about your sex life – while you were together and what has happened to your sexual desire during then past two and a half years. It could be that part of the crisis was your husband finding your joint love-making routine and unexciting and worrying that he was destined to nothing more rewarding until he was loaded into his coffin. Hopefully, he’s realised that an emotional affair and destroying everything that you’ve shared together is not the answer to his problems. However, he’s stopped from committing or feeling love because he fears he would be signing up for years of OK rather than passionate lovemaking. So what should you do?
Think about the sort of sex life you’d like and tell him how you’d like things to be (because forties and fifties is the golden times for love making as we need to know ourselves before we can properly sexually communicate). If you’re feeling bold, you could even flirt.
However, this might seem to exposing. After all you’ve done all the work up to now and he’s given you not that much encouragement. So I would not be surprised if you decided to step back. Sometimes it is impossible for the ILYB partner to commit because their partner has been ‘holding’ all that responsibility. After all, it takes two to make a relationship, so possibly its up to him to make the next move.
So two diametrically opposed thoughts…. now it’s over to you.
