No Excuses

I have been with my husband for 20 years, married 15. I always thought it strange that he showed no emotion towards me, or empathy for others. I blamed the fact that he had been dragged up, by an alcoholic father after his mum died when he was 11. I felt his father never showed any interest in him, and subsequently my husband seems oblivious of social etiquette and boundaries.

For years I made these excuses, but still begged him to get help. He would not talk to me. I felt he might talk to somebody else, his reply.....what good will talking do?

My husband does not communicate how he feels, and our marriage has been in decline for at least 10 out of 15 years. I would be out for an evening and come home and my husband is masturbating in front of a porn channel, I walk in and he just grinned at me, like a bold child. I would vent my frustration, tell him I feel he has no interest in intimacy with me, and he would just switch out. No response, no reaction - just a blank expression. I would then leave his bed, thinking that he will have to make an effort and come to me................never happened. He never sought me out, he never apologised. This behaviour just made me feel totally ugly and unwanted.

Domestically he is a disaster, cannot close presses, cannot put anything back where it belongs, if I put something back where it belongs, I am accused of hiding it. One day he drove his truck through our gates. There were 4 of us in the garden, he caught the side of the truck in the pier of the gate, damaged the passenger door, parked up, and when we told him what he had done he denied hitting the pier...........regardless of the massive dent in the door, the scraped paint, and the fact that 4 of us saw the incident. He is never wrong, and absolutely never apologises. Years ago, before we were even married he sent me a birthday card - from the man who cannot say sorry!

He is self-employed and has 8 staff, one guy once said to me that, he was a great person to have a row with, because he does not carry it forward, I now realise this is because he just files it away, forgotten, never to be mentioned again. He is obsessed with his work, to the detriment of all else, and does not seem to get any thrill from anything but work, I once asked him what excites him, and he told me that getting new jobs excites him.

We have no children. My husband has no understanding of how procreation works, and told me a few years ago he had no idea how 'children were made'. Anything he knows about sex has been learned from porn magazines. Weekdays, he comes in from work, eats dinner and falls asleep, he falls asleep in company, in other people’s houses, watching exciting matches on TV. Nothing holds his attention bar work.

All of this I found extremely frustrating but again, I loved him, and used his miserable childhood as an excuse.

Last year I was involved in a local festival and was very busy for a week or 2, this upset him, and he was acting very strange. I discovered texts on his phone from a woman, and it was obvious there was something going on. Then suddenly, no texts, so I knew something had changed. When confronted he looked at me as if I was mad. I then discovered he had bought another phone. I found it, and there were loads of messages. It was a full blown affair. Again I confronted him, cried, pleaded, but got no admission or explanation. He eventually saw sense and the affair finished after 6 weeks, he apologised, wanted to make our marriage work, filed the affair away, and continued to be switched off and uncommunicative. He agreed to go to counselling, but was unaware he had to participate, and would not go to the third session, his argument, what good was a shrink going to do?

I am at my wits end, I have asked him to leave repeatedly, he keeps coming home and, nothing ever gets better. I am worn out pleading and crying. It is so frustrating trying to have a conversation, he just sits and says nothing, and I get louder and louder, and more stressed. Nothing works. I have written pages of letters to him, I don't even think he reads them, bought books, he won't read them. He shows no interest in either helping himself or us, and I am struggling to cope with him. I feel I am at breaking point, and it's far easier for me to have nothing to do with him than try to engage with him. I feel I have wasted 20 years with a man who cannot grow up, who didn't seem to know what he wanted to do with his life. He has never been able to talk about the future or make plans that do not involve his work. I told him this evening to leave. He was back in 2 hours as if nothing happened. Nothing sinks in.

I don't know what to do, I can't shout it out to the world, I want to tell everybody, but still out of guilt and loyalty I keep it all to myself, and it is destroying me. I was coping reasonably up to the affair, as I honestly felt I was important, even though I wasn't told so, but being cheated on is something I cannot come to terms with, and consider it the final nail in the coffin, the proof that he never loved me.

I feel like running away all the time....... JD