More About My Wife....

I would like to share some more details about my wife's personality, to help people better understand some of her behavior.  She is fairly smart, and has a fairly outgoing personality.  She is not an ugly woman by any means.  Before I met her, she had had all of two other boyfriends.  The phrase that comes to mind to describe the one she dated the longest would have been, I think, a "completely hopeless loser."
My wife is what I would call "theoretical" in her beliefs about things.  Most people would say someone like her is "idealistic," but I don't like to use that phrase as sometimes people interpret it as having high morals.  (I am not saying my wife has low morals, but I want to be clear).  The missus will say she firmly believes in a principle, and it will be important to her self-image that she believes this.  However, the actual practice of that principle is often very different than what she says she believes.  This is why I call them "theoretical" beliefs.  For example, she has always been a strong believer in various causes for animal welfare.  There is nothing actually wrong with that; in some part, I agree with her.  (We regularly eat meat and use leather, just so you know).  She has given a little money here and there to various causes over the years:  saving whales, tracking wolves, building an impenetrable force field around some endangered plant, etc.  I do not really agree with all of them, but I haven't discouraged her as long as the sums of money were small.  That said, a few years ago she got a pair of cats before we got married.  She treated the cats very well, for awhile.  Once they started to get older, her affection for them started to wane.  After kids came along, she really started getting annoyed with them.  At first, she just ignored them, and wouldn't give them any petting.  Then, she started to complain how much of a chore they were.  Once they got really old, she stopped cleaning out their litter boxes, and eventually stopped even giving them food or water.  All this responsibility went to me, of course.  By the time they both had died, she was doing nothing for them.  All the while, though, she remained a firm advocate for "animal welfare."  She was all for helping out strays and animals out in the wild, whom she would never see with her own eyes, but ignored the ones living in her own home who relied on her for love and care.
In the same way, I am sure my wife thinks that love and affection are important, but that there is nothing odd about our relationship.  Whenever I bring up the fact that we live in separate parts of the house at night or that she completely ignores me, she will state clearly that she loves me and wants to spend time with me.  She will claim she has absolutely has no problem with physical contact or even sleeping with me.  I am convinced she completely believes all of that.  Her behavior, of course, would indicate that in reality none of that is true.  In her mind, though, we are having a romp in the sack all the time, and she's always giving me whatever I want.  It's impossible to argue with someone who simply will not look at basic facts over what she believes about herself.
This is why it has been hard to get her to understand why I am so upset.  She simply does not believe she is ignoring me or being cold and frigid.  There is no set of facts that would change her mind.

One step forward, two steps back...

Well, in my last post, I said I was going to try to suggest something different.  I would try to get her to do something she really would hate, and then get her to do something that isn't so bad but that would be better than usual.  Well, it didn't work out at all.  She acted like she simply couldn't understand what I was asking.  What exactly are you suggesting?  Then:  why, exactly, do you want to have oral $ex?  Why would you suggest that?  I am not sure if she was playing dumb to avoid saying no, or if she really is that naive.  In the end, we did have sex, but she almost passed out asleep before we were done.  Wonderful.
It's experiences like these that make me think there is no hope.  Making love to her is awful because she hates doing it.  I can make a child behave by using a punishment; the kid doesn't have to like it, but he will do it because the consequences are awful.  I can't make my wife want to do something, especially have sex.  I can threaten to leave her, which might change her behavior, but again: will it be pleasant if she feels like she has to do it?
I will suggest counseling eventually, but I am pretty skeptical.  How do you change how you feel about someone?  Will she actually make an effort, or just half-a$$ it like she does now?
I am pretty sure she doesn't want to leave me, but why does she choose to stay and live like this?

Something different

My wife has been out of town for a few days.  She is struggling with her addiction to TV and the Internet because the place she is staying does not have cable, Internet service, or even reliable cell service.  I have only been able to talk to her sporadically.  She sent me a couple of messages this morning from the airport on how much she missed the rest of us.  Maybe this will make her understand how bad it is.
While she has been gone, I have done some thinking.  When she gets back tonight, I am going to try a different tack.  I am going to ask for something she would never agree to, and then propose something far less objectionable to her that I actually want.  I will say that I want to have oral sex, and I will just not let it go for some time.  She will never agree to that; for someone that abhors touching me, that is just the worst idea to her.  I will keep at it for a few minutes.  When she gets tired of discussing it, I will then say we should have regular, good ol' fashioned sex, but with better conditions than usual.  She would have to touch me, no complaining, and maybe she'll actually take her clothes off.  That will sound far less of a stretch compared to oral sex.  Don't get me wrong; I'd love to have oral fun, but that is just not in the cards ever.  Maybe this way, I will get something I want without her making it into such a horrid drag.
If this works, maybe I will try this other evenings.  I'll have to be careful, though, as I should make sure the "bad alternative" is something I really would be into, just in case she says yes.  I don't want to accidentally get stuck doing whips and chains in an effort to get her to last more than five minutes in the sack.

The Long Journey to Where?

I have been asking myself lately:  why have I allowed this to go on so long, when it makes me so miserable?  More importantly, are we making progress?
Last week, I was feeling better about the state of things.  She no longer treats me quite like the complete pile of trash that she was about four or five years ago.  If I had left her back then, no one that knows us well -- my family, my friends, maybe even her family -- would've blamed me.  There are still some disrespect issues, but she is at least trying to remember to say "please," "thank you," and I even heard her say she was sorry once a few weeks ago.
That said, I can't say things are well.  I went online to see what others in my boat are doing.  I found a forum on relationships, and the topic was "how do you know your wife still loves you."  The answers just tore me apart.  Several women had posted that they loved to "goose" their husbands a lot, or surprise him with kisses.  Some mentioned buying him a nice surprise once in a while, or sitting in his lap.  My wife doesn't ever do anything of the sort.
My wife and I do have sex more than we were, but there is a big drawback.  She acts like she is only doing it because she feels she has to.  I have said before that I've never owned a blow-up doll, but I imagine doing it with one of those dolls is no different than getting it on with her.  She actually seems to want to do it about 7 or 8 times a year, which is...exactly what we were doing before.  Now, we're doing it maybe twice a month (emphasis on maybe), but it's just awful most of the time.
The real crushing part, though, isn't the sex.  It's the fact that she simply does not want to physically touch me at all, and she can barely tolerate me touching her.  She will never hug, kiss, or caress me on her own; she will only stand there and receive these things from me.  When we have sex, she does not touch me at all.  If I hold her hand, she just sits there without moving while I hold onto it.  "Snuggling" consists of me practically leaning on her.  At no point does she ever make any effort to touch me.  I have tried dropping hints by draping her arms over me; that's all it becomes, just me draping her @#!& arms over me.
If I ask her if there is a problem, she will always say "No, this is fine."  However, her body language says otherwise.  All physical contact feels like I am feeling up a mannequin.
I read another site that said that the item that was the best predictor of whether or not people will stay together is...how much the spouses touch each other casually.  Well, my wife won't do that at all.
My wife always says that I should not be so hard on her, as she is "trying."  From a certain perspective, she isn't wrong.  She is trying; she is not as mean as she was, and we are having sex more often.  The fact that she is trying is, I think, the problem.  She has to try, and that is what makes it unpleasant.  Affection is just a chore to her.  She only does it because she has to.  She simply has no desire to hug, kiss, or even touch me.  I have asked her if sex is like work, and she never answers me.  Have you ever had sex with someone who really didn't want to do it?  It's AWFUL.
Lately, I have noticed that things get a little better after I lose my temper completely, and she notices a change in my body language.  She then tries to frantically fix things.  Unfortunately, it is really too late; after blowing up, the "fix" can't erase what transpired.  It is sad, as her efforts are always just behind what where she should be.  If she bothered to act the same way before I blew up, then I wouldn't ever blow up.  I feel like nothing, on the whole, is better as I have to get completely furious before things improve.
On a side note, I realize a lot of you had questions and suggestions in your comments.  I will try to address some of those in my next post.