Quote:
Tatyana2009
My boyfriend's mum died when he was young and though he stayed with his dad, he had to cope with a mentally unstable and jealous step mother who to this day cannot show affection or praise him. His ex wife then cheated on him and he was left very hurt. So he has too, trust and intimacy issues. He loves me very much but finds commitment hard (though he is very commited emotionally and sexualy). We have had ups and down and grew closer over the years. His ability for empathy has grown as well as his communication ability. But that took hard work and willingness from both of us and still there is work to be done.
The best advice I can give you, knowing that every situation is different, is look within. Stop all the thoughts of analysing him. Thinking about his childhood. His problems. His issues and his behaviour. Focus on you. Your emotional well being, your priorities, your values, your needs and your daughter.
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I quoted Tatyana because I liked what she had to say in that instance. I am posting in your thread because I could be your husband's twin. In my humble opinion, your husband is suffering PTSD. I'm sure I do not have to spell out the definition of PTSD for you but it has to do with prolonged exposure to traumatic events that are unnatural for the average human experience and result in emotional damage including........etc. Add to that the fact that he was a child at the time. Consider the damage.
I have PTSD. It comes from being raised by alcoholic parents. When you have parents who abuse drugs or alcohol, it impacts the child and creates a syndrome identical to PTSD. It makes it impossible to trust because you can't trust the people who are supposed to be taking care of you. You grow up afraid, deeply afraid. And in your husband's case, he had only his mother after his father's death and even she failed him. His life was hell.
It is said that men need to have sex to feel intimately loved. Women need to feel intimately loved to have sex. At the beginning of a relationship, the lines of demarkation are a bit fuzzy. But as the relationship progresses, they become more defined. As your marriage progressed and the emotional committment grew, it became more and more threatening to your husband. So he backed away more and more. It feels safer to him to have more control over how much he invests emotionally into the marriage. He prefers to "analyze". Yes, he loves you. But he doesn't trust you. That's not the bad news. The bad news is, he doesn't trust anyone. I'm not sure you could get him to admit to it because it sounds so ridiculous to say you don't trust your spouse. But on an emotional, intimate level, I would bet money on it.
I know these things because I did it too. I did it through three marriages. It took me three marriages to realize the part I was playing in their failure.
I am just now, at age 57, learning to trust and share true, intimate, emotional, vulnerable feelings with my husband of 10 years. He has known that I have been holding back for a long time. He would tell me and I would deny it. Suddenly one day, it became clear to me that he was right. It is so frightening to trust. But I am trying.