Been there, done that, over it.
My marriage became a nightly routine of him in the family room watching TV and me in the living room on the computer. Sex was almost nonexistent. His idea of foreplay was to rub his erection against my backside as I was trying to go to sleep.
I remember the last time he did that. His response to my rejection of that advance was, “So much for romance.” My reply was, “You call rubbing your dick against my butt romance?” To which he mumbled words conveying that I had a point.
After which we both rolled over and went to sleep. That was the beginning of me sleeping on the living room couch every night for 6 months.
Still, I wasn’t ready to give up. A couple of different times I raised the subject of how we never did anything together anymore.
Even after such conversations, he left it up to me to set up things for us to do. I decided what we’d do. I made whatever plans and arrangements were necessary. And we did those things.
The last time, we were at the beach, sipping glasses of wine and watching the waves and the sunset. We both agreed we had enjoyed doing it, and should do more of such things.
And we promptly went back to him in the family room and me in the living room. And I was still sleeping on the couch.
He just wasn’t interested in doing anything to try to bring us back together. I was doing all the work and he played the role of disinterested bystander.
I suggested we go to counseling to see if we could get some help deciding whether it was even worthwhile holding the marriage together.
That was the shortest marriage counseling session in history.
We sat there, and I told the therapist what was happening. I did most of the talking while my husband, Numbnuts (not his real name), just kinda sat there, mostly silent. He’d mutter a “yeah” or “no” occasionally but that was the extent of his involvement in our “counseling.”
The counselor took a deep breath, leaned back in his chair, put his hands together and made that little tent thing with his fingers, like many counselors do. And then he spoke, “Well, Deedra, the way I see it Numbnuts can go on like this forever. He’s not going to do anything to change what’s happening. He’s content with things as they are. If this marriage is going to continue it will be because you work to keep it going, and the only way the marriage will end, is if you end it. Numbnuts won’t do it.”
When he finished this, I said, “Okay, I guess we’re done, because I can’t go on the way things are.”
And that was that.
So there’s your answer. I honestly tried but, in the end, I felt completely alone, so I walked away—and have never looked back.
