[greenfrog]

For starters, my wife is my world, and I really do feel nothing but love for her. We have a beautiful 9 month old baby boy whom I would do anything for, and picturing my life with either of them missing from it is near impossible. But I have a lingering fear that my actions from the past have irreparably damaged our relationship.

When we met, I was active duty in the Marine Corps, and just coming off of a series of train-wrecks for relationships. We had been friends for quite some time, however I never saw it as anything serious, just someone to bs with who would actually hold conversations on a level plane with me. I was still stationed in Japan at the time, and it was right before I left that the latest in my string of failed attempts at romance came crashing down. About a year later, I found myself in North Carolina, coincidentally about an hour from where she lived. Months went by and we got closer by the week… eventually I found us in a relationship together which neither of us had seen coming, or knew who started. The chemistry was wonderful, our interests and ideals were near identical, and we found for the first time in either of our lives a partner who was wholly supportive and caring in the other. Eventually we moved in together, and I asked her (although it was some time before this actually happened) to marry me.

All this was over the course of about a year and a half, and at some point we decided we wanted to have a child together. She was 5 months pregnant with our son when I separated from active duty and moved with her to Kansas, where although we had small issues before, the real problems seemed to arrive. Although I attribute a large portion of it to her pregnancy, we seemed to grow more distant by the day. We barely touched each other with any kind of intimacy anymore. We fought over everything. My family didn’t help matters, encouraging our fights and spreading a solid base of dishonesty and resentment between us. I found myself talking to other women, both old flames and random women on the internet, as I felt nothing but neglect and awkwardness between us. I tried over and over again to talk to her about it, but was met with anger and more mistrust, with her alternately accusing me of putting too much importance on our sex life (which had dwindled to almost nonexistent), told me she wouldn’t touch me because I went behind her back, and blaming it on my family and her pregnancy.

After the birth of my son, things finally came to a head. I grabbed myself by the bootstraps and tried to overcome my insecurities, which I know are plentiful. I poured myself into my work, and taking care of my son and her. I stopped talking to other women (at no point did I ever touch anyone aside from her, although I know that what I had done wasn’t much better, I still beat myself up about it), put all of my effort into making her comfortable and regaining the trust I had so foolishly destroyed. We cut the members of my family that seemed hell-bent on our failure out of our life as best as we could manage, and I did all I could to see her happy. Her self-image was rather low on account of both past relationships, and the toll the pregnancy took on her, and I went out of my way to let her know how beautiful I still found her, and how proud of her I was, not only for being a wonderful mother, but for taking such good care of me. Although our sex life didn’t then, nor now is much better, I finally felt like we were more at ease with each other, and felt some of that trust and a bit of the spark we used to have returning. Things had been going well for months, and we got married in September of last year, at long last.

With the exception of a few small fights here and there, which fall well into the realm of normal couples spats, things were great and improving all the time. Our main obstacle was finding time for each other. Between my son, and my work schedule I was rarely home, and when I was almost all of our effort was spent maintaining our home and taking care of our son. I worked an average of 75 hours a week, sometimes more, and on several occasions held more than one job. I worked seven days a week almost constantly. When I did have time off, she was so exhausted she said she didn’t want to go out. We eventually found out that she had hyperinsulinemia, a large contributor to both her recent weight issue and her lack of energy. The lack of a sex life she blamed on the after-effects of childbirth. I offered to do everything from go see concerts, to catching a few drinks at a bar, to taking her out and having a picnic with her and my son, to getting a night alone and cooking her dinner and spoiling her, and was shut down time after time after time. It’s been about 9 months, and I find myself not even offering anymore.

I had pretty much accepted all of this, but lately she started acting strange towards me. Never since I have known her does she delete text-messages, e-mail, or anything else. But over the last few months I find her talking to more and more ‘guy friends’, which I assumed were just old Army buddies of hers from when she was in. But she always deleted the texts. Her e-mail, which we both use, she all of a sudden became very paranoid when the issue of me checking it came up. It was always harmless, and I didn’t have any suspicion of anything until this behavior started. Now she deletes every message she sends or receives that doesn’t come from her sister or mother, and changed the password, asking me to make a new one and not use hers. I put all of these in the back of my mind, and didn’t let it affect my actions or feelings towards her, but that small nagging doubt was lurking in the shadows this whole time.

Then in the last few months she started a new job, requiring her and her co-workers to travel almost daily. It’s local, but she is gone for 12-15 hours a day, usually, with them. She immediately told me that her supervisor was hitting on her, asking inappropriate questions and prying about our marriage. As time goes on, she calls and texts him more and more often… I tell her I still trust her, and she assures me over and over again that she wouldn’t cheat on me, and that it’s all harmless. But tonight, she went to the bar with him, calling me and telling me after the fact. She came home buzzed after I’d been taking care of our son for the entire night, which is common with her new hours… and the second she called me when she was on the way home, she let me know that he was calling her and got right back off the phone. I know I should just take her at her word, but I just can’t help but wonder, is all of the pain I caused her and the shady things I did leave her resentful? Is she looking for a way to return the favor, and make me feel the way I’m sure she did? Or did she really write me off and only stay with me for the sake of our son? I want to trust her, and I love her more than anything, but the longer we continue, the stranger her behavior gets. Part of the jealousy stems from the fact that she goes out with someone she’s barely known a month, who obviously is interested in her despite our marriage, without really asking me beforehand, and part from the fact that after all the time I spent trying to get her to do ANYthing to try to recover a bit of that glow we had before, she chooses to go out for the first time in months with someone other than me. Am I right to be worried, or is it just my own fears playing havoc on my mind because of the horrible way I treated her before leaving me with so much guilt?

[April Masini, your AskApril]

You’re right to be concerned, but this isn’t something you did single handedly. This problem you’re having in your marriage is more common than you think. The bottom line here is that regardless of how you got to this place, you’re both lonely in the marriage. You’re trying to put your nose to the grindstone and do the right thing, and she’s looking for male attention because she doesn’t feel that spark in the marriage any more. That she’s narrating to you every time her boss or some guy hits on her, is her way of trying to draw you back into her life. It’s not a particularly great way to do it, but make no mistake — she’s not hiding things form you as much as she’s trying to throw up a flashing yellow light to tell you she’s having trouble in the marriage and she doesn’t want to be. It sounds like she’s unhappy, but she wants to right things with you — and is too stuck to do it.

The question is, how to make things better. You can’t make her do her part, but you can do yours and hope she’ll react well. You’re both exhausted from the pregnancy, the birth of the new baby, the new marriage, and the extended family problems in addition to work stresses. Anyone under these circumstances would be wiped out. She’s got hormone issues and residual weight gain, and she probably doesn’t feel that sexy with you because you’re so familiar to her, and her home reminds her of obligations, the grind and not so pleasant history.

The quickest fix is to try and whisk her away for a weekend. See if you can get a friendly relative or a good friend that you trust to babysit for you and take her away for some romance. She needs to get out of her rut, and maybe you can bump her out by taking a weekend on a plane or a road trip or something out of the ordinary.

Grand gestures work, too. Maybe it’s time to have an early Valentine’s Day with roses, a card, and some jewelry. In other words, you need to shake things up.

Gaining her trust back is going to take time and it sounds like you’re really on a good track now. Stay on it. If she wasn’t so exhausted and spent from all the life events that have happened in what sounds to be a very short amount of time, the two of you would be doing better, but you have to ride them out and do damage control now so that this guy at work doesn’t become more of a problem than a nuisance (which is what he is right now).

I hope that helps. Let me know how things go, and please follow me @AskAprilcom on Twitter and on Facebook at this link: [url][/url]. 🙂

[Member]

Posts