I hear you about your relationships Reyna and eskielover. I guess my story isn't much different.
The kids are off at college and now for the first time we are actually alone together. We have been married 22 years, almost 23 years. I have known all along that my husband is a very negative person, but that didn't bother me when the kids were young. I just poured myself into them. Now that we are alone together, I can see just exactly how negative he really is. Each of our kids has had a "learning" experience with money. Everytime one of them doesn't do something correctly, he gets on a rampage and trashes them behind their backs. I have such a hard time toleratinig this. Here's a perfect example: my daughter called the other day needing some money cause she screwed up her checking account and ran out. The next day she parked in a no parking zone and her car was towed. She needed $90 to get it out of hock. My husband was so negative I wanted to scream. He said things like, "what the hell is wrong with her? Anybody can balance a checkbook EXCEPT "J", and parking her car in a tow away zone? What an idiot. Why are our kids so stupid? Why, when I was their age I had a job, responsibility, blah, blah, blah." I might read something in the paper and want to talk about it, but he's already decided that whatever it is, without page no. and book, it's not right. I'm not explaining very well.

So...here it is in a nutshell.
1. He's antagonistic if he is challenged in any way, shape or form.
2. My 19 year old son is learning about other peoples views of life and often brings it up. But because it's left wing "crap" H decides to challenge him. Real fair in my opinion. A 62 year old man outsmarting a 19 year old. To me, all he does is belittle my son and make him feel bad. Frank thinks Z is going to remain a liberal all his life. The kid is just learning about life and is trying to decide which bits of wisdom out there he's going to keep. But my H thinks everything he does is a permanent thing. I think he doesn't like Z very much, cause Z is not like him.
3. We haven't had sex in 20 years. Thinking back to when we were first married, I realized that if I wanted to make love, I had to initiate, he never did. So we had our two children and the love making stopped. He has no real excuse for why this is this way. He says he's a perfectly healthy male capable of "performing" but he doesnt want to. I think I decided that the reason why he doesn't want me is that I'm too much work. It takes a little time, he gets sweaty easily, just a messy affair. I know he looks at porn on the internet, so I've surmised that since he says he's a normal healthy male, he must be gratifying himself with porn. It's easy, efficient, not messy, etc....
3. I have asked him about all of this and he just won't talk about it. Or very little. He absolutely will not share anything that is going on his head.
4. We don't have mutual friends. I tried to introduce him to my friends husbands, but guess what! He didn't like any of them. Typical.

I don't know what to do about this situation. I can keep my mouth shut and have this sterile relationship going on, although I really can't call it a relationship. He either plays on the computer or reads in bed, and I don't much want to interact with him, so I watch TV.
He never ever thinks up things for us to do. It's all on my shoulders, so I quit. Doesn't seem to have made any difference to him.

I feel trapped. If I left him, I'd have to get a job with benifits. I've lost alot of computer skills by not keeping up to date on the latest and greatest. I have a velcro dog who is all mine. But he's be better off with H, cause H only works 3 days a week and would have to go fulltime. I have a horse I'd have to sell. It would hurt the kids. And my parents! Oh god, if they know that anything is wrong, they grab onto it and worry it to death. They worry it so much that eventually it becomes my fault.

My biggest problem right now is forcing him to talk about stuff he doesn't want to so that I can decide if I should leave him or stay for financial reasons and just go on with my life. Do the things that interest me and slam him down everytime he says something negative.

Thanks for listening. I have only my therapist to tell this too.