I’m 33, my wife is 29. I have known her for 5 years and we are married since 2.5 years. We started off with a long distance relationship, seeing each other maybe 3 times a year for a few weeks. In between we skyped almost daily. Considering the distance it went well until we got married and moved together. Shortly before I lost my new job and even though I found another job a few months later it had an impact on my sex drive for over a year (which I did not realize until a few months ago). She gave up basically her whole life (work, family, friends) to come to me. In return I unconsciously made almost every mistake imaginable - I did not meet her needs, I did not make her feel special or treated her like a woman, I did not initiate sex.
Not surprisingly, just a few months after being married she started to have more or less frequent emotional outbreaks/breakdowns when she would start crying and tell me why she is not feeling well. In the beginning she was rather vague so I did not realize that I was doing this to her and not the new environment as I suspected.
She then moved to another city to pursue her studies which she had given up years earlier and finally wanted to get a degree and I fully supported her with that. We now see each other once a month for a long weekend and skype daily. I assumed having something to do would make things better for her but it only lasted for a few weeks. She then became very direct that I was the main reason for her problems and listed my shortcomings and major mistakes and what I had to do to fix it: make her feel special and treat her like a woman. It was a shock when she considered divorce as an option and that she was losing her feelings for me.
I thought I understood but in reality I didn’t and I finally only got it a few months later what I really did to her. She said she lost her self confidence and thought she was ugly and fat (which she wasn’t, although she gained some weight during that time). She even thought I was gay as I did not initiate any sex with her. It actually affected her health. It broke my heart when I realized what I had done to her and I promised I would change and fix our marriage.
In the meantime I got Dr. Haltzman’s book and it helped me understand things better. However, she firmly believes that if you really love someone you don’t need a book to tell you how to treat that person. So, everytime I tell her how beautiful she is, she thinks I’m forced to say it and will not believe me. (Believe me she is beautiful). I’m not very good in expressing my emotions, I mostly hide or surpress them - sometimes she calls me Mr. Spock - it’s fitting actually. So I find myself regularly in the situation that she simply refuses to believe me when I tell her how I feel about her as she thinks I am forced to say it and do not really mean it. (From time to time when I find the right moment to compliment her, she actually does believe me but it does not happen very often.)
She will graduate in June and then come back to me. She expects that it will drive her crazy then as things have not improved. We planned to have a baby this year but she is very stressed out due to pressure from school, my inability to fix our marriage, the thought of having a baby. We agree that it would be better to have a baby only after we managed to fix our marriage but she is sure I would treat it like I treated her in the beginning. It is hard to convince her that I would not do that same mistake again, especially not with our baby. It also shows that even though I meet her (non-emotional) needs now, she is very sceptical about me being able to change and regularly reminds me of my past mistakes.
She now thinks that she married the wrong guy and it would be better for her to be single. She said she was never happy while we were married (which sadly is true) and lost her feelings for me. A while ago she said the only reason she is still together with me is to give me a chance. I feel she will not wait much longer. Truth is, I did so many things wrong in the beginning of our marriage and I was plain stupid in not realizing how to treat my wife the way she deserves and now I keep telling her that I will change and fix things and even though I try (at least I think so) months pass without any real change, and I don’t know what else to do. I feel like a hamster in a wheel, running but not moving forward.
Last week when I was visiting her I had some hope as she said afterwards that this time I did everything right but she wasn’t sure if she still loves me. She said she forced herself to get her feelings back but it did not work. Now a week later, she says nothing will ever change, I will never change and it would be better for her to be single instead. I love her so much and do not want to lose her and I really want this marriage to work but I don’t know what to do. I mean she told me what exactly I did wrong and what I need to do to fix it but it seems I’m not making any progress. I partially blame it on the distance but she argues that before we got married, distance was not a problem which is true.
She is right and I know it. While things usually return to ‘normal’ after a few days I’m afraid that it will not be long until they won’t and she will leave. I think I’m confident that I can make her feel special when we are together but what can I do to make her feel special from a distance without appearing to work a checklist but to make it come from the heart? Or am I still missing the point and need to do something else?