My Dearest Wife,
I have been doing a lot of writing over the past 10 months. Sometimes the words come easy and other times it is a struggle just to bang out a sentence or two.
I know that I had discussed having “touch-points” for us to talk, but also thought it was good for me to work with my therapist to try and better understand my feelings before I started trying to explain them to you. It definitely has not been easy. We have covered a lot of ground these past few months and I have certainly learned a lot about myself, some good and some not so good.
I do feel like it’s gotten to a place where I need to start sharing some of these discussions with you, but given the current circumstances with COVID and all the anxiety associated with that haven’t really wanted to get into any deep conversations, so I don’t know, maybe it’s still better to kick this can a bit further down the road or maybe it’s simply time to start having the hard conversations that I have been trying to avoid, the conversations that at this point seem inevitable.
One of the things that came up the last time we discussed our relationship was that you were not feeling like I was emotionally engaged with you and as a consequence neither were you with me.
When two people lose that emotional connection to one another it only stands to reason that physical intimacy will also suffer as it has with us slowly over the past decade.
I originally thought that my occasional attempts at initiating intimacy were my way of trying to re-ignite something between us, something I felt had been lost. My weekly conversations in therapy have caused me to look much deeper at this now and as a result I have drawn a very different conclusion.
Over the past five to ten years I have felt us growing further and further apart, or more specifically I have felt myself growing further and further apart from you. I have felt very guilty about the fact that my feelings had started to shift away from being romantic to simply being at best a friendship and at worst a roommate. This feeling caused me to create “fantasy” like scenarios as a way to initiate intimacy between us.
I no longer felt comfortable simply cuddling up next to you on the couch or crawling into bed beside you. That level of intimacy was no longer there for me. All the notes, all the emails, all the text messages were really about me trying to “feel” something again because I was just feeling so guilty that those feelings were starting to fade away.
The truth is our relationship has changed.
We have both grown more and more independent (at least emotionally). Looking back, aside from maybe the first few years of our relationship, you probably never really needed me, and certainly over these past years, as you have so accurately stated this has not been an equal partnership and I am left to ask myself why? There was a time that we did have a more equitable partnership, when I was more engaged, but something changed in me. Maybe it is just a natural evolution of some relationships or maybe after all these years we really have just simply gone in different directions.
Our lives truly are independent from one another now. While we have come to depend upon one another for financial, medical, and family needs our emotional needs are not being met by the other. I no longer turn to you when I am hurting. I no longer confide in you about my fears, my dreams, my desires. I no longer go out of my way to try and just spend time with you any longer. The worst part is that when I think about this I am not left feeling sadness, I get much more of a sense of calm then maybe I’ve had in a very long time because I am no longer trying to force our relationship to be something that it isn’t.
You and I are not “In Love” anymore and I have come to accept that.
This does not mean that we cannot still have great love and respect for one another, but the romantic aspects are gone, or at least they are for me.
Gone, because I am no longer seeking to get them back.
I have spent the better part of the last five years dealing with so many emotions; anger, sadness, depression, fear to name a few and it has been because I have been trying to force feelings that simply are not there any longer.
The couple of times over the past few months that maybe I tried to get closer to you was really to see what emotional response it invoked in me. What I realized was it really did just feel uncomfortable and it was simply not something that I wanted to do anymore.
Things are much better between us when we are simply co-existing under the same roof, together but alone. For the first time in an exceptionally long time, I feel at peace with this, but also frightened to death at the future that lies ahead of us.
I do not know if this takes you by shock or if this is something you have felt as well. You must have sensed something changing over the past few months. I have made really no attempts at connecting emotionally or physically. I have been hesitant whenever you discussed taking a vacation together in the fall. My responses to your kiss’s goodnight have been tepid at best. I avoid going to bed at the same time. I have been taking more time to myself to go on long drives, or hikes. I have been keeping much more to myself and I have been happier. I have embraced new friendships and filled my life with an amazing support group of women and men that I have met through my writing and social media. I really have become more and more comfortable with my life now.
What I do not know is what comes next. What all this means in the long term because I still want intimacy and emotional connection in my life. I am not looking to upend my whole life, our whole lives but I’ll need to find a way to come to terms with all of this. I’m sure that I’ll have many more talks in therapy about this and perhaps my therapist can continue to help me learn how to accept this new normal and find a path forward.
It won’t be an easy journey for sure but it’s one that I’ll need to make, one that we will need to make as we transition to this next phase in our lives.
James
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This post was previously published on Hello, Love and is republished here with permission from the author.
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