Dear DSO: "Can Attraction Come Back?"

All right, everyone, we have a new Dear DSO entry on the website, and you can submit your own story to dadstartingover.com/dear-dso. And if it's a good one, I will share it here for the whole world to see. And this one comes from Jake, and the subject line is resentful. He says, my wife and I have been married for 20+ years. Last year, she didn't mention anything to me about how bad our finances were. Pause. How do you not know how bad your finances are? Don't put all the weight of something as monumental and important as your family's finances all on the shoulders of one individual. That can lead to some catastrophic stuff. They can do all kinds of things that you have no idea about, put you in all kinds of financial stress, and puts a lot of stress on them. And they could commit what's known as financial infidelity. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. He says, last year she didn't mention anything to me about how bad our finances were until I swiped a card and it declined, only to see 47 cents in my account and weeks before I got paid. Ouch. I had extremely low self-esteem at the time. All right, so pause. What was going on there? Anything you want to share about what was causing you to have such low self-esteem? And he goes on to say, I almost cashed in my life card. So this was pretty severe. But I went home and confronted her and laid out a path to recover financially. Good. So you took control. So right away, all kinds of questions. You know, these are kind of the things if you're going to submit a story here, let's lay it all out there. Did she overspend? Did she spend frivolously on things she shouldn't have? Did she not pay bills and therefore interest and fees added up? Yeah, so all kinds of questions here. You know, what exactly caused this? Why weren't you more involved in the finances? Why were you at a point where you were so depressed and such low self-esteem that you're considering killing yourself? All kinds of questions here right off the bat with just the first two sentences. I forced her to get better— to get a better paying job to help relieve the burden since I was the primary breadwinner. I resented her for a while and I decided I needed to work on myself. I went to therapy and made strides in personal work, bettering myself. So he recognized he had issues. Well, it sounds like he did based on some of the stuff he said before. Went and got help. Good for you, dude. We barely communicated after that, and she let herself go. She gained a lot of weight over the years, and I don't find her attractive anymore. Did you tell her? I started putting myself out more in the world and ended up becoming close friends with another woman. Who is into a lot of the same things that I am. I became close friends. You fell in love with a woman. Let's just— again, let's just put it out there. It was easy to talk to her and be vulnerable, which was always met with contempt from my wife. So you guys have a lot of issues there. I sought a lawyer for a separation agreement and approached her to come together like adults and end it. It did not go over well. I left the house, but she continually contacted me and I gave in and I came back home. My wife and I have been communicating more. Sure. And have even had sex a few times. I still don't look at her the same, and I still feel resentment and unattraction, he says. Do you often have sex with people that you're resentful, no respect, and no attraction to? What are you doing, dude? And she says that— he says that she has put an effort to working out and wearing makeup, but he's still not interested. Well, obviously you're interested. You had sex with the woman. You know, I'll tell you what's— and then he follows it up with the last sentence: Is it possible to bring that attraction back? I guess so many questions, man. These stories are always so complex, and they always just boil it down to one little question. So, can I get attraction back to my wife? Which begs so many questions. Why would you want to? You— so we have— I'm going to assume a lot here. I could be way off base. So some kind of financial infidelity, strike one. Um, once you got better, uh, mentally, the distance between you and the wife grew. Not uncommon. She, uh, I guess you could say, coped with this distance, if you will, uh, via a lot of weight gain and further distance from you. And you in turn grew contemptuous of her, lost attraction to her, and then you started filling the void with another human being and forming a relationship with another person. So you in turn realize, wow, I really don't have any need for wifey over here anymore that I have zero attraction to and a lot of resentments towards. Let's get divorced. Should have been the end right there, right? But no, she threw a hissy and convinced you to come back, and you come back and you've been communicating and had sex. Which is probably a form of hysterical bonding. Very, very common. Let's get divorced. No. Oh, wow. We've had more sex in the last couple of weeks than we've had in forever. This is great. And then it just drops off a cliff and you're like, what am I doing with this person? Kind of sounds like it's maybe what happened here because you're like, I'm still contemptuous of her. Still resentful. No, still no attraction. And can you get it back? I keep using this term with a lot of you guys, but this sounds a bit of a dumpster fire of a relationship. And you're like, can I bring that attraction back? Yeah, we're ignoring all these elephants in the room. You're, you're emotionally or mentally, we're in a spot where you were suicidal. The financial infidelity thing, dude. Her tremendous weight gain. You're going to get therapy. Once you got better, you distanced yourself from her. She pulled you back in. This is just nuts. And so the whole, is it possible to bring that attraction back? Timeout. That's the least of your worries. What's going on with you two? What's going on with her up in her head? What's going on with you in your head? Why would you want to bring these two together? I know you made vows and marriage and everything else, but it sounds like it's been a kind of a disaster for a while now. To not have attraction to a person is perfectly understandable, especially when they become unattractive, especially when they do things that you find resentful. Women say, this isn't a male-female thing. Women say the same thing all the time. Like, caught my man in an affair, caught my man with a gambling problem. The man lost his job and didn't, you know, couldn't find another one for 6 months and we ended up in the poorhouse. All because these reasons, I have a tremendous amount of disrespect and resentment towards him. And as a result, I don't want to be his wife anymore. Perfectly understandable. And that's, that's your situation. And yet you're sitting here going, can I like her again? I don't know, dude. Can you? Should you? That's up to you, not to me. Not to anybody else. How would you regain attraction and regain that bond between the two of you? Look better, talk out all these past issues. I have resentment towards you, wife, because of the following. And she says, yeah, I have a lot of resentments towards you because of the following. Let's work together on this, shall we? And maybe it comes out, you know, some of the shallow stuff, like how she looks is important. She may come to you and say, yeah, same thing. I haven't liked the way you've looked forever too. All right, cool. And then you don't like her spending issues, you don't like this, you don't like that. The only way to hash these things out is probably with a third party, some kind of, you know, therapist or somebody like that, that is kind of a referee between the two of you and you hash it out. And it's going to take a long-ass time. And in that time, dude, you can't be running off and having relationships with other people. That's counterproductive here if your goal is in fact to get back with this woman. Is it possible? Of course it's possible. Is it probable? That's tough, especially with all the stuff you have, you know, in the background here that you're telling me. Some stuff that sticks out is the financial infidelity, the way she copes via overeating, the, uh, uh, when she was not supportive of you when you were, uh, when you emoted to her and so forth. These aren't good. And I bet if I went to her, she'd probably say, let me tell you how he's not good. So you got your work cut out for you. This ain't gonna be easy. Is she worth it? Are you guys together as a couple worth it? That's the big question. All right, brother, best of luck to you. Thanks for reaching out.