Relationship/“Us” Discussions?

[Telecaster68]

4 minutes ago, ryn2 said:

I honestly don’t know if I phrase travel plans with I or we.  I think I normally have said “we should go back to NYC next month,” when it comes up that way... but the long-term discussions are normally one of us saying “where  else would you like to go?” and that tends to elicit an I-worded answer.

Honestly I'd be fine with that - you could follow up with stuff you could do together, explicitly, or suggest things you know he'd like to do. It's about sounding inclusive, I guess.

[ryn2]

2 minutes ago, Telecaster68 said:

Yeah, you have to figure out the version that works for you without sounding and feeling fake, and it doesn't have to be quite as direct, just clear that it's about feelings not just a factual observation.

 

If he has no idea, you could try figuring it out for yourself with observation. What do you do that makes him smile?  What does he seem more cheerful about planning/doing/having done? What makes him seem more affectionate towards you?

The impression I get listening to him talk in therapy is that he does have feelings about things but cannot express them.

 

He’s always been kind of a black box.  Things I do don’t normally seem to catch his attention or make him smile/“light up”/etc.  Sometimes that makes me wonder if I’m being annoying; if I ask if I’m annoying him, he says no.

 

I do suggest movies as we or you, nearly all the time.  I’d be creeped out and irritated if someone commented on how adorable/fascinating/loveable/whatever I was while making a point in a discussion, though, so I’d have a hard time doing that for someone else unless I knew the person liked it.  Some of that may be gendered and generational, though, as it was frequently used in the workplace when I was a young employee to derail the efforts of female workers (no one would ever cut off a male programmer mid-point with “oh, look, Mike is angry.  Isn’t that cute?” but they used to do it to us girls all the

time).

[Telecaster68]

It's all so context-dependent it's hard to come up with specifics. It does sound increasingly that he's like my wife... I get much of the same 'I dunno' and a kind of emotional flatness, to the extent that she once said 'you're trying to dig down for something, and it's just not there'. She did actually get a bit annoyed at that, ironically.

 

I'm sure there is something there with her, but she doesn't really know what it is any more than me, and trying to figure it out is too exhausting so she doesn't bother, and then has very little emotion to show. She does this facsimile of spontaneous emotion but it's all quite superficial, like having a conversation with a stranger.

 

So maybe the emotional separateness is just him, and actually nothing to do with ED, or sex or the lack of. He might be reaching for that as a way to explain it to himself as much as anything.

 

 

[ryn2]

Yeah, it’s interesting reading these forums as - excepting the part where I’m ace and he’s

sexual - the rest of my situation tends to sound more like yours/James’/etc. (with him corresponding to your spouse).

 

Maybe that just says the more emotionally expressive person is the one more likely to take to the internet and discuss feelings.

[ryn2]

I did mention this last night, and assured him that what has always made vacations - and vacation/retirement plans - special has been sharing/planning to do them together... that it’s not the destination that makes it special or makes me want to go there; it’s experiencing the destination *with him*.

 

He said he knew that already.

[Telecaster68]

Oh. It doesn't give you a lot to work with, does it? 

 

Maybe the therapist will tease it out of him. 

[ryn2]

It doesn’t!

 

Next time we see her I will bring it up.

 

Sometimes when he says things like this he is not able to come up with what he meant at a later time... e.g., we both agreed our prior joint therapist wasn’t a good choice for this because he was kind of awkward and we both - SO especially - felt uncomfortable discussing sex with him.  At one point I noticed that, when my husband was saying “I don’t think he was very helpful,” I normally gave examples of non-sex things the guy helped with rather than asking what he meant.

 

The next time he said it, I asked if he could think about why working with the guy wasn’t helpful (from his perspective) so we could share that with prospective new therapists and avoid it going forward.  He said he would.

 

When I asked about it later he didn’t recall saying it to mean anything but “I felt uncomfortable talking to him about sex.”

[Telecaster68]

Do you have any idea of that awkwardness about sex is embarrassment, or because it's emotional, or because he can see where it's probably going? 

[ryn2]

Sorry, I didn’t word that well.  It was the last therapist who was kind of awkward.  Because he was so awkward, talking about “personal” topics like sex was tough.

 

My husband says he (husband, now, not therapist) had always been uncomfortable talking about sex, with anyone.  He definitely was from the very beginning with me.  That was more than 15 years before he would have any reason to worry that I might decline.

 

He’s said it is tied into his overall issue with rejection, which he has apparently tied back to a girl slapping him across the face in front of everyone when he was six.  I don’t know the story of what he was doing when she slapped him.

 

Most of our related talk early on was around what might help his ED, as that was something that clearly upset and frustrated him.

[MrDane]

I find it super hard to talk about sex. It is either just the words which are hard to say out loud or otherwise I sound a bit like a proffesor making a speech or lecture about “how some people perceive sexual intercourse”. (I dont like saying what kind of music I like either. ) It feels embarrasing. It has, strangely, been a little bit easier, as I realized the asexuality of my partner. I mean; to say “would you mind touching me there, like this?” The words from her are quite rare. 

There is a ton of chemicals released in the brain as two people touch. During sex, I think even more. It makes me feel a part of *us*.  If those chemical-boosts are not there (as much as in mutually, wanted partnered sex and love-fondling) then it is important to feel you get the togetherness-feeling anyway/otherways.  Therefore the importance of saying that ‘we’ comes before ‘destination’.

@ryn2 it sounds like, you are approaching the issue from a good angle. 

 

[ryn2]

It would definitely be easier if he could give me some idea what he meant when he told the therapist we don’t tak about anything with “us”... but now it appears more like a sense he had and not any actual missing things.

 

Sometimes I feel like he doesn’t actually want to attempt a compromise and is looking for hard-to-refute reasons why it won’t work, but he swears to me and the therapist that this isn’t the case at all.

 

Unfortunately having no idea what is wrong, or at least how to explain it to himself (let alone the rest of is) is his normal state. The only unusual thing this time around is that I’ve been included in the set of potential things to eliminate in an attempt to fix it.

[ryn2]

On 4/22/2018 at 9:47 AM, Telecaster68 said:

He might be reaching for that as a way to explain it to himself as much as anything.

He did confirm this to the therapist.

[MrDane]

My guess is, that he feels like love is dying. I remember saying to my wife that I felt like I was still madly in love with her and now it was like she never was. Not even in the prime of our relationship. But she is and was. It is just hard for me to cope with, when my hormones fly high and I really need her in the way that only a sexual would need and be needed. (I am not talking about survival-need, more sanity-/worthy-need) 

It can be hard work to shift focus. I understand if it is more easy/convenient to go with the “love is dying and everything will ve better if...”  but you love him. Love isnt dead. 

[Telecaster68]

This is all sounding horribly familiar. I think you're going to have to rely on your therapist to ferret it out. Partly skillz, partly she's not you.

[ryn2]

36 minutes ago, MrDane said:

I understand if it is more easy/convenient to go with the “love is dying and everything will ve better if...”  but you love him. Love isnt dead.

Alas, it may be on his end.  He says he loves me but is not in love with me.  The therapist noted this is a very common sentiment amongst couples married two decades...

[ryn2]

40 minutes ago, Telecaster68 said:

This is all sounding horribly familiar. I think you're going to have to rely on your therapist to ferret it out. Partly skillz, partly she's not you.

Familiar as in you’ve felt it yourself, or as in you’ve heard similar from your partner?

 

Agreed on (skilz and especially) not being me.  The reason I asked about it outside the office was that she seemed surprised we were only talking about this stuff while there... and then suggested (and my husband agreed to) trying talking about it on our own.  Also we won’t be back there for close to a month...

[MrDane]

2 minutes ago, ryn2 said:

Alas, it may be on his end.  He says he loves me but is not in love with me.  The therapist noted this is a very common sentiment amongst couples married two decades...

Of course things can cool off, and turn practical along the way. I never expected that love would be a roaring fire constantly. Sometimes you get irritated and fed up and even forget what was so great about your partner. But it should be with a base or coat of caring and love underneath. But if your partner turns into someone who is hardly even seen as a friend?

[Telecaster68]

13 minutes ago, ryn2 said:

Familiar as in you’ve felt it yourself, or as in you’ve heard similar from your partner?

 

Agreed on (skilz and especially) not being me.  The reason I asked about it outside the office was that she seemed surprised we were only talking about this stuff while there... and then suggested (and my husband agreed to) trying talking about it on our own.  Also we won’t be back there for close to a month...

Heard similar from my partner. I have no idea if it's 'love but not in love' or some kind of emotional processing issue.

 

 

[ryn2]

9 minutes ago, MrDane said:

Of course things can cool off, and turn practical along the way. I never expected that love would be a roaring fire constantly. Sometimes you get irritated and fed up and even forget what was so great about your partner. But it should be with a base or coat of caring and love underneath. But if your partner turns into someone who is hardly even seen as a friend?

Yeah, this is where I’m confused (by him, not you).  He says he loves me, cares about me deeply, and considers me his best friend... but is not in love with me (which to my understanding is normal over time).

 

I’m sure it’s not helping that one of his close friends started a new relationship shortly before he decided to break up and was (and may still be) deep in the throes of New Relationship Energy.  Regardless of the sexual compatibility issue not many 20-year-old relationships will compare favorably on the excitement scale to that.

 

The only other specific he was able to give me is that he’s not sure we can get back to where he wants to be because we know each other too well now.

 

I said (this was in our last therapy session) that the only way I know of to get that in a monogamous setting is to have a series of shorter relationships.

[ryn2]

2 minutes ago, Telecaster68 said:

Heard similar from my partner. I have no idea if it's 'love but not in love' or some kind of emotional processing issue.

 

 

Or both...

[ryn2]

Well, he got fired from his job today (two months paid leave and then done, so I suppose he’s technically fired in two months).  That certainly makes everything more complicated.

[vega57]

12 minutes ago, ryn2 said:

Well, he got fired from his iob today (two months paid leave and then done, so I suppose he’s technically fired in two months).  That certainly makes everything more complicated.

Ryn, I want to ask you something that i'm sure you've already considered but...

 

Given his I-love-you-but-i'm-not-in-love-with-you (ILYBINILWY) speech, and now being fired from his job, I'm wondering...

 

Is it possible that he's been having an affair?  Those words are very often classically uttered by people who are having an affair (or had an affair).  If you ask him, he may or may not tell you the truth, but it's just...food for thought.  

[Telecaster68]

@vega57

 

Why would being fired have anything to do with having an affair?

 

@ryn2

 

Oh. That's tough. Kind of makes any practical moves about leaving rather moot.

[vega57]

3 minutes ago, Telecaster68 said:

@vega57

 

Why would being fired have anything to do with having an affair?

If he's having an affair with someone where he works, or if someone where he works finds out about the affair (even if his affair partner doesn't work with him) and disapproves, he could easily be fired from his job because of it.  

 

People can be fired because affairs are sometimes hosted at the company's expense.  A salesman who brings along is 'secretary' while traveling...a woman who travels to the same city "for business" over and over again, never once gaining any business from her travels...someone who travels alone, yet who expenses dinners for two in their hotel room...

 

The list goes on.  Plus, some companies are looking to protect their reputation.  So, even if the CEO is having--or had--affairs him/herself, it doesn't mean he/she will look away if someone else is doing the same thing.  

[Telecaster68]

Oh course, you're in the US. Fire at will barely exists in the UK - some employers disapprove of workplace relationships but there's not much they can do about them officially.

[ryn2]

2 hours ago, vega57 said:

Ryn, I want to ask you something that i'm sure you've already considered but...

 

Given his I-love-you-but-i'm-not-in-love-with-you (ILYBINILWY) speech, and now being fired from his job, I'm wondering...

 

Is it possible that he's been having an affair?  Those words are very often classically uttered by people who are having an affair (or had an affair).  If you ask him, he may or may not tell you the truth, but it's just...food for thought.  

I actually asked him at the very start of all this upheaval (and more than once since then) if he was, or wanted to, and he said he wasn’t.  I’ve also made it clear that I would not be as upset about it as I am about the leaving.  Agreed that he still might not tell me (or the therapist) regardless.

 

It’s still (always?) a possibility but I don’t know that it would change anything either way.

[ryn2]

46 minutes ago, Telecaster68 said:

 

@ryn2

 

Oh. That's tough. Kind of makes any practical moves about leaving rather moot.

Yeah, it’s not going to do much for his potential intentions.  It’s also awkward because I still need to leverage my connections to help him find work (it’s best for both of us) and if he leaves after that it may cause issues with them (for him).

[ryn2]

We do have fire at will and a workplace affair certainly can lead to termination, but he says he was told it was over his attitude/angry outbursts at work.  While he had told his manager we might be splitting up and that certainly (shouldn’t, but) could be a factor, the work behavior issue is a longstanding one across several bosses and would be hard to argue.

 

Again, he could be hiding an affair but there’s no way for me to know and I don’t think it would change anything from a practical standpoint.

[MrDane]

I think my wife occasionally feels like I get to touchy, kissy and clingy. It can backfire into a regression for her, where it gets very important for her to keep her boundaries/distance. 

 

@ryn2 I wonder if it all boils down to the hardship of dealing with love having changed. I would chose my wife any day, because i am still madly in love. I think her feelings are a bit more mellow, but she would still chose/keep me.