Dear Emily,
I’ve been married now for seven years, with one daughter who is 6. The beginning of our marriage was wonderful – it was full of passion and romance! Now, it’s got to the point we barely talk except about money or our daughter.
We even sleep in separate bedrooms. When I try to initiate sex, he pushes me away saying he’s not in the mood or he’s tired from work. But when he initiates sex, he gets upset when I reject him. It’s not fair. I understand him when he’s tired but when it’s the other way around, I have to force myself to do it.
I even suggested to him that we go on dates once in a while. He says it’s a waste of time and money. I want to leave him but I’m concerned about my daughter. My husband is not a bad man. He is a good provider, we live in a nice house, our daughter goes to a good school, but he is just indifferent to me. That makes me feel rejected and unloved.
Is it selfish to leave him for how he treats me? Or should I play dead and sacrifice everything for my daughter’s sake?
—Unhappy Wife
When did this estrangement start? Are you breaking up your family and depriving your daughter of her father just because he is cold and indifferent to you? If he beat you up and not because he’s just cold, you probably would have packed up and left. But here, you seem to be just venting so there might still be room for change?
Unless there’s a third party involved, your troubles are just typical of a regular marriage. You’re both caught in this whirlwind of boredom among young couples whose passion and romance started early on to flit away in time. You seem to have failed to catch drifting away from each other, allowing this coolness to take over the very essence that made you both very happy before. When did you stop touching each other, or losing the hunger for each, or doing something surprisingly wonderful toward each other?
Marriage has to be worked on. It sounds corny, but it’s truly like a garden you’ve eagerly planted at the start. You failed to nurture it, thinking you could possibly leave everything to the mercy of the elements to take care of itself.
If you feel there’s a spark left to save this marriage, stoke it and help it flare up again. Working at it now will be much better for your family, than having to look back at whatever else you could have done, or regretting the things you should have actually pursued to save it – while picking up the pieces after it’s been destroyed to a point of no return.
Think about that small matter of second chances.
