Answers, five months later

To start with, thank you to Wolfie and Melinda for offering encouragement regarding the situation with my brother. You don't know how much it means.

More than just my brother has me concerned lately. I'm really beginning to worry about my marriage.

I don't mean to sound "emo", and there's really nothing that just pops out as being wrong. We have the same problems as anyone else--we don't really like where we live, we don't have much extra cash at the end of the pay period, there's always family drama. We've got a great kid, and we try to do a lot with her, and we try to spend as much time together as we can.

But I can feel the shift.

We went to the doctor for the issues I alluded to in one of my December posts. We decided to try someone new, at a completely different clinic, to see if she'd have any different insight than the doctors at my old clinic. After all, "I don't know what's wrong, so go talk to a therapist" isn't exactly the most helpful response. This new lady had incredible bedside manner, and I really liked her. She also had an answer to our problems. Her advice was the same as the other doctor, and even though her answer wasn't exactly encouraging, it at least gave me a starting point.

The problem is that therapists are expensive. Insurance won't cover them, typically, unless you've got some sort of mental diagnosis, which I do not. Luckily she's the type who charges based on what you can afford, but that's just the problem--we really can't afford this. Her office is also an hour away, creating an additional hardship. Throw NG's work schedule into the mix and we've got a real issue on our hands. We've tried solving the problem on our own, and have had little luck. The therapist might be our only chance.

We've always said that this one component was not the single most important aspect of our marriage. And really, it's not. But it does play an enormous role in how close you feel to each other and how you interact and how you deal with stress together. Slowly we're getting to a point where we're hardly more than two roommates. I've got a short fuse with him and he's got this little bubble he lives in. Sweet'ums is hanging in there, but I know she has to feel the tension. I love him and he loves me, but I wonder sometimes if love is enough. I've always heard that certain things don't seem important until you don't have them anymore, and I wonder a little if our philosophy the last few years was misguided.

I feel like it's all my fault. The impairment is on my end, and it complicates everything. Something that should be special has turned into something that sparks arguments and creates unnecessary tension. Something that should make us feel connected leaves us feeling alone and misunderstood. NG says he won't divorce me over it unless I decide at some point that I'm tired of trying, and I don't want to divorce, but there's a part of me that feels defeated already. I think it wouldn't be so hard if we could make up in closeness and romance what we lack in the bedroom, but for as sexually impaired as I am, NG is equally as impaired romantically. He just doesn't "get" how to be romantic. He second-guesses himself anytime he does try. He'll stop at the store on his way home, and think about getting me flowers or a card or something, but he'll always convince himself that I won't like it or think of fifteen other reasons not to do it (for example, my cat eats flowers, and in all honesty, I don't need chocolate). Of course it's nice to know he thought of me, but sometime it would be nice if he'd do more than think of me.

And, of course, he blames himself too. His job makes him keep hard hours. He doesn't have a good family background to draw experience from in dealing with things like this and his dad isn't exactly a top-notch resource on dealing with marital issues. He's romantically impaired, doesn't have much extra money to work with and blames himself for not being able to make me feel better about my family issues. He feels responsible for my weight gain (never mind my genetic predisposition to weight issues or my affinity for baked goods) and all the problems that go with it. He feels the weight of the world and the one way I had to help him feel a little less alone and detached is slowly fading away.

The last couple years, but these last few months especially, I feel like have been chipping away at me little by little. When the problems first started we still managed to find enough chances to laugh to balance it all out, but over time it seemed like the problems just got heavier and heavier. I feel like less of a wife, less of a woman, and it's taking its toll on me as a person and a mother as well. I'm feeling more and more detached from my husband and it scares me to think what will happen if we aren't able to find some way around this.

We've made it work for five years, four and a half of it married. It's scary to sit back and wonder what the future holds, or if we even have one. It's even scarier to think that if we split, I'll be losing my best friend.