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Hello everyone,
This is an issue that I've been struggling with for years. On top of my generalized anxiety disorder, I've fallen into depression over it. Despite a couple years of therapy, I don't feel like I'm making any progress. Here's are details. Please, note that this is written from my POV. I'm sure my wife has her own version. The truth is somewhere likely in the middle.
My marriage is going on 15 years this year. 10 years ago we immigrated back to the U.S. for my job. My wife had lived overseas before but not in America. Of course she had reservations about leaving family and her culture. I promised that I would go out of my way to provide and make sure she was always connected to that culture. I also said I would support her in anything she wanted to do, which at the time was to become a homemaker and raise children. My first job didn't pay enough to make that a reality, but a couple of years into it I received several promotions that made it possible. We bought a house and started trying for our first daughter.
That's when the problems started. She had a tough pregnancy. And she felt isolated because she didn't really have any friends of family here. I felt I was supportive, but she struggled. Our intimacy dropped to almost zero. We didn't have sex during her entire pregnancy and online once or twice during the first year of breast feeding. I moved to another bedroom because of my early morning work schedule. I worked 10 hour days and then came home to help with the household and parenting duties. We became roommates.
The good news is that as our daughter grew my wife began to engage with a community of other moms from her country. She seemed to be forming a social circle. Things improved. Then when my daughter was between 2-3 she began to have complex febrile seizures. This understandably traumatized my wife. She would stay up all night with my daughter and be afraid to leave her side during the day. Our relationship took another hit.
Despite all the warning signs and stress, we decided we wanted to try for daughter number two when my daughter turned 3. Once again my wife had a terrible pregnancy with morning sickness and gestational diabetes throughout. Her support circle had grown, but it was still a huge ordeal for her. Our intimacy again dropped to zero. I developed habit of watching porn and masturbating almost daily to control my libido.
This continued for years. We would have maybe one or two dates a year because she was afraid to leave our oldest daughter. We would had sex probably less than 4-5 times a year. Hand holding and cuddling were non existent. She became more and more homesick. I ended up taking out a loan to make sure she could travel with the girls back to visit her family for a couple of months when my daughters were 5 and 3. I joined them in the second month. My wife and I were able to tack a mini vacation since we finally had childcare in the form of her mother. She was still reluctant to do it, but I convinced her. When we got to the inn, we tried to have sex that night, but it failed. That was when my wife admitted that she felt a lot of pressure around sex in general and had never orgasmed in her life. I was floored. We'd been together almost 10 years by this point, and this was the first time she ever brought it up. I felt hurt and worthless as a man that couldn't even please his wife and hadn't even realized it. It was another wedge in our relationship.
Upon returning, we fell into some money issues. Honestly, we had gone into debt for two reasons. First, I had taken on an expensive hobby to fill in the void in my life due to the declining relationship and lack of engagement at work. Secondly, I spent tons of money trying to provide her everything she wanted to be happy. I didn't want her to be said. I believed that if I could just provide more that she would be happy and our relationship would improve. That was pretty naïve. But I was able to get financial support and begin to pay back the debt. We are now debt free thankfully.
Just prior to the pandemic, I finally confronted her. I still had the porn addiction and my anxiety was increasing. I went from one or two anxiety attacks a month to one or two weekly. I couldn't concentrate on work and had bad mood swings. To make matters once, she had very bad mood swings due to her cycle. She would either become very angry or just retreat into her head. For at least half of the month, I had to walk on egg shells to avoid being yelled at. She became convinced that everyone in America hated her and that she would never fit in. She got angry at the girls for not keeping up with their foreign language skills (they are bilingual). She would yell at as all. Worst of all she would be completely down on herself. Full disclosure, she has a history of parental abuse and also was ostracized as a kid for being part of a ethnic minority in her home country. I'm sure she has a lot of pent up trauma and self-image issues. She doesn't really believe in therapy and hates medication. She says Americans just want to give you a pill for everything, which is kind of true if you think about it.
Anyway, back to the confrontation. I told her that I felt our relationship was one-sided and that I wasn't getting what I needed from it. The lack of intimacy and quality time together was eating away at me. I told her that if things didn't improve that I didn't see how our relationship would ever get better. She said she would try but she needed a lot of space and time to get ready. She couldn't just "flip the switch" like I could and go from being a mom to a wife. I understood that. I told her that I would take on more of the household load and parenting duties. I also encouraged her to spend more time on herself and her hobby, going to the gym. Things improved for a month or so and then when back to the status quo. Fast forward we had the same discussion every few months or so. I ended up in therapy and eventually on antidepressants. She did finally go to the doctor and was diagnosed with PMD and prescribed antidepressants to take during the premenstrual period as well. She took them the first month and then stopped because she said they cause sleeping issues. I said she should tell her doctor and see if there was an alternative. She never did.
So here we are. I'm feeling neglected in our relationship. I feel like the lowest priority. She's really busy. She actually started working again by choice about 6 months ago. We don't need her too because I worked my way up to an executive position. She just wants extra money to put toward education, retirement, and saving for our dream home. She's become obsessed with budgeting and monitoring every dollar that comes in and out. She hates her job but doesn't want to be viewed as a quitter for going to another place. We manage to have sex maybe once a month. I wait until she's a sleep to go down and watch porn about 2-3 times a week. We rarely hold hands or cuddle outside of that. She talks for hours about her job, and I listen. When she ask I provide advice on how to handle work situations, which is in my wheelhouse due to my HR consulting and leadership development background. I do a lot more work at the house and still work my butt off at work. I'm very involved with my children's school and activities. Why don't I have a better relationship with my wife?
I've reached the point where I'm seriously contemplating separation, asking for an open relationship, and in my darkest moments even cheating, which I never thought I'd do. I actually downloaded Tinder several months ago not to actually pursue anything but just to see if anyone would be interested in me. Lots of women flirt with me. I'm a physically fit, successful middle aged man with a great sense of humor and who cares a lot about others. I feel like I'm wasting my best years putting all of my effort into a relationship where the other person will never return my feelings or put in half the effort that I am. I'm leaving a lot of other details out, of course. I'm sure I share a lot of blame. I just don't know what to do. I don't know what to say that hasn't been said. Should I just give up? Thanks for hanging in there as I ramble.
