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Q - Dear Annabelle,
I've been back together with my first husband for almost two years now. We were married for 10 years before and got back together two years after our divorce. We have three kids. After our divorce I remarried and became pregnant with a fourth child. That marriage was a huge mistake. it was while I was three months. pregnant that I got back together with my first husband, (this was totally unexpected...it just happened). He's a great and very loving father to the kids and the baby, (now 15 months old). She calls him daddy and he adores her.
The problem is that there is no intimacy between us. He says he's a Īdifferent personā since the divorce and I just need to accept it. I love him and have told him so but he has not once said he loves me since we've been back together. He shows no emotion toward me and refuses to be intimate. When we have sex it's like we're not even "together". I really miss and need to be intimate and close with him but I don't know what else to do. I thought maybe, with time, things would change but it seems like our relationship is at a standstill. Lately we've been having less and less sex too and this seems to happen just when we seemed to be making some progress. Just when I think we're getting closer he distances himself more from me, 9and I'm not being pushy either9. I think he really does love me too but he's afraid of being hurt again. I don't know how much more I can take of not having intimacy and emotion in our relationship. I don't want to end it either though because I do love him and we have the kids to think about.
What should I do? Should I just wait and hope things will improve with time or am I being a fool? Thank you.
A - Tonia,
You're right to wonder. Time does not heal all wounds. Although you don't offer details of your divorce and remarriage, my intuition suggests that you were the one who took the children and left. If that's the case, face the fact that you hurt your husband badly and he hasn't forgiven you. Why, then, did he marry you again? From your description, he loves the children, even the one that isn't his. Tonia, many men, not all but more than you might think, have fathering instincts as strong or stronger than many women's mothering instincts.
The children were not enough to keep you from leaving their father, but they may have meant enough to him for him to remarry you, even though he was still hurt and angry with you. Getting over that won't be easy for him, even if you waited until after your divorce to hook up with your second husband; if you were already involved with him while you were living with your first and present husband, forgiving and forgetting will be even harder for him.
That's the bad news. The good news is that the same concern for your children that motivated him to remarry you may well motivate him to go with you to a good marriage counselor, so that you can raise the children in a home that will improve their chances of growing up to be happy. Even though you told me more about your own hunger for intimacy than you did about your children, I promise you that they are aware of everything important about what's going on. Your divorce and bad second marriage deprived them of a very vital sense that the world is a reasonably safe and consistent place. Whatever the circumstances of your two divorces, you owe the children, if not yourself, every effort to create the happiest family you can.
Get your husband to go with you to a licensed professional. This will not heal itself.
.....You might want to show him this letter
- Annabelle
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