Quote:
Originally Posted by TooManyDays
healingme4me - I know I need to find someone for us to see together. It's hard to find a good therapist and schedule time where we can both get to therapy without our daughter. I'll make it happen. I think I was too harsh in my initial post and subsequent responses. I do care about my wife deeply. I don't resent her. I just can't get what I need from her, and also I'm having a difficult time reconciling my desire and curiosity about bonding with other people. Those things in combination have caused me to feel tremendous anxiety and regret over ever getting married. I feel owned and trapped by someone who can't communicate with me or understand me as an individual.
I completely understand what you mean by people being mislead by the Disney version of love. I assure you, that's not my perspective. My perspective might actually be worse. I do wonder if love always becomes unfulfilling over time, but I never had that strong sense of excitement and connection to begin with. And if deep love and connection don't exist, or can't exist for me due to some problem with my mind or emotions, then I would much prefer freedom from any relationship.
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What if the onus was off wondering if it's you and on a patterned set of life's circumstances. I hear what you are saying about being much worse than Disney. Years ago, such discussions of similarity I found greatly beneficial as I sorted through how damaging my marriage was for me, yet, from a vastly different viewpoint, so that mention of my outcome isn't remotely a suggestion, as vastly different circumstances and scenarios, but it's one of the great ponderables, the concept of love, that is.
Based upon my own knowledge, I'll ask this. Your friendships, growing up, were they strained and sparse? Your parents, is their dynamics different than what you have with your wife? Trapped in marriage, does she have a certain dependency on you? Not necessarily in a financial way, but more indescribably so? Not even paternally so, yet in fear of independence or aloof to the concept?
Aside from work and your homelife/family life, do you have any hobbies? Maybe expand more on those? Any ambitions for volunteer work or a separate path from your current field? That, also, could help? I reckon that it's difficult to have a social life with your wife? Do you have couples friends?
When I mention resentment, it can also mean towards the life you are living/leading, not entirely at your wife, but why not some resentment towards her, a little?
About passion, is there not a zest for life, in your home? One thing is the five love languages, it's a small insight in compatibility, yet, if not mirroring one another, left unaware, it can be a big deal. My cousin and his wife, gifted that for my wedding. Didn't read it, until after the divorce, but it's a good read, my ex didn't go for such things. Wasn't open to counseling, among numerous other aspects, that are neither here nor there, but for you, before a marriage counselor is found, it's a small step. Ever read harville and hendrix? There's some good stuff over there for relationship building.
I wouldn't worry too much about vindicating yourself to a group of strangers. We all read from our own perspectives, experiences and the like.