Listening To: Metallica
Mood: Mellow
Disclaimer: This post is about sex. While there’s nothing all that graphic, if you are easily offended or related to me, it’s probably best if you skip this one.
The husband and I have been married for 8.5 years now. We have run the spectrum from making jackrabbits jealous to the Sahara desert, which is totally normal from what I hear. Through it all, we’ve always had either a mental connection or a sexual one and most of the time both. My brother came to stay at our house recently. It was rather unexpected and he stayed for quite a while. While it was wonderful for me to spend time with him, for the first time in almost 12 years, my relationship with my husband went completely to pot. I don’t think we’ve ever had all conversation stop and sex become impersonal before at the same time. The connection just wasn’t there. At all. There are multiple reasons why this happened but I really don’t want to get into it in this entry.
For the first time in my life, I found myself barely holding on to my marriage by my teeth, fighting for something broken that I had no idea how to fix. I had no idea really who or what I was supposed to be fighting against either. Something was not right, but it was completely unclear to me what it even was. We weren’t really mad at each other from what I can figure out. Unfortunately, neither my husband nor I really know how to fight fair when we’re upset. We do try and usually act like adults, but this time we just couldn’t figure it out. My husband’s tactic is to clam up tighter than the Federal Reserve. It didn’t’ matter how much I asked/begged/nagged, the door was shut except for the occasional snarky salvo fired before he quickly retreated back into another room. This of course led me to fire my own snarky comments, and generally act childish too. I may have skin like a rhinoceros, but I am still a girl. I love sex, and I love my husband, but if we’re not clicking, I don’t feel like having sex. At one point I had this brilliant idea that having sex would bring us a bit closer because that has worked in the past when we’ve both drifted a bit. Unfortunately, this time it completely backfired. Not only were we completely awkward and mechanical with each other, it made things worse. It really throws you for a loop when you feel cheap and lonely with the one person in the world who you shouldn’t ever have to feel that way with. I don’t think I’ve ever felt that numb about my husband before. He could have been a stranger and a one night stand at that moment. I was so desperate for the connection and it didn’t just magically reappear. I think the next day was even worse. I felt like I had traded my body for approval and connection that never appeared. The ice was not ready to thaw yet.
Unfortunately, we had the extra pressure of outside family with us too, making things impossible to solve at the time. As is usually the case, I did eventually find out what was eating at my husband. We got out of the house for a walk and the ice cracked a tiny bit. We eventually have worked through the problem that was there, but it took a long, long time for things to be normal with us again. It took a long time for sex to be spontaneous and encouraged again. I’m actually terrified of this happening again because I seriously thought that my marriage was going down in flames and I had no idea how to save it. It’s rather hard to put out a fire by yourself. So how do you deal with the problems in your marriage that just seem to be impossible? How do you deal with a spouse who would rather just pretend they’re not there?
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