How To Keep The Positivity In A Dead Bedroom Situation?!

And CLD Gaming says, hi DSO, frat member here. Any recommendations on keeping positive after 5 months of no intimacy? I've given up on initiating, the ball's in her court now. And he follows up to say that he's been working on his physical fitness and his mindfulness, focusing on my life and the kids. So have you, CLD Gaming, resigned yourself to the fact that this relationship is going to continue regardless? 5 months of intimacy, as you know, if you've been watching my stuff, you know better than anybody. A long-term sexual, um, uh, what's the word I'm looking for, drought, a sexless marriage for a long period of time. And that's up for debate on what exactly is a long period of time. Everyone has their own definition of that. One week could be too long for one guy, and another guy says it wasn't until the one-year mark that I finally woke up and realized, oh, this is weird. But anyway, regardless, it's what I call the canary in the coal mine for You got some pretty deep-seated issues going on here between the two of you. One or both of you have some issues that are throwing a grenade in the room of this relationship, and you're waking up to the fact like, oh, this is no good. And here you are going, um, how do I keep positive during all this? Should you keep positive during all this? What is— what does keeping positive mean exactly? Does it mean looking the other way? Does it mean ignoring the giant elephant in the room? Does it mean recognizing like, wow, this is really broken. This is— we're really as a couple, just really, this is no bueno. This sucks. And I've done my part in trying to reach out to her. I've done my part trying to mend, you know, the broken bridge between the two of us for whatever reason, a lot of resentments, personal baggage that one or both of you bring to the table, whatever has caused this rift between the two of you. And you're doing your part to try and mend that, and she's just sitting there with her arms crossed saying, buzz off, buzz off, buzz off. And you're like, well, and I see you've done what a lot of men do in this position. I've given up, ball's in her court now. Dude, we both know nothing's gonna happen. She has shown you, do you suddenly expect her tomorrow just to go, you know what, after 5 months of nothing, I finally realized You're a catch, dude. Sorry, I don't know what I was thinking. You're an awesome husband. Let's get it on. Probably not gonna happen. She's probably gonna be like, oh good, he's left me alone. Phew, that's one less thing to worry about. I'm inferring a lot, I'm assuming a lot, but that's what I've seen typically in these kind of preoccupied anxious guy, avoidant woman. That may very well be your dynamic in your relationship, don't know, but that's what I hear more often than not. And more often than not, when the guy backs off, Let me preface this. Sometimes it quote works. Sometimes it's like, oh good, he's not such an anxious-y, hang-on, clingy guy. Now I have room to breathe emotionally here, which allows me to come more to center, which I'm a better behaving person after that. That happens. But that's not the majority that I've seen. The majority of time what I've seen is that the, oh good, he left me alone. Now I can stop pretending to like him in that way. Now I don't have to feel pressured. Now we can go back to being this roommate situation. Kinda sucks if you're the healthy sexual human being, emotional human being rather. Not good. So, trying not to pout and having the quote non-healthy talk. So have you had the old healthy sit down with her? Just say, we both know what's going on here. What do you say, wife? You wanna join me on fixing this? Let's both get some help with this. Have you had that discussion with her? And if so, was she receptive to it? And if not, what more do you need, dude? Um, I, you know, you say 5 months, but I have a feeling that the problems in your relationship have gone on for longer than that. Um, but anyway, and you admit that yes, it's very much the avoidant anxious relationship. Um, for those that don't know, who are new to this whole relationship talk thing, have just discovered this and don't know what we're talking about with this anxious avoidant thing. And for those that do know, bear with me as I give a quick overview of this. Um, psychologists, of which I am not— I'm not a mental health professional of any kind. Bald guy microphone, one of many on the internet. Yay. But, um, psychologists came up with years ago, um, this— you know, much of what we learn in this realm of psychology is basically smart people that study the behavior in human beings, and they say, you know, we've started to notice patterns and we can start to categorize people and their actions in certain ways, and that helps us to figure out ways to treat and better understand what we're seeing here. And years ago, somebody came up with the idea of, you know what, I'm noticing that people express— how to best say this— by virtue of, of what they dealt with as children with mom and dad, we notice that they in turn attach to their romantic partners later in life a certain way. And we've categorized the way they attach to the romantic partners in certain ways by calling them either preoccupied or anxious, same thing. That's one end of the spectrum. Then we have the other end of the spectrum, which are these avoidant types. And the, um, anxious preoccupied types can be man or woman. It's not a gendered thing. Um, when it comes to my material at Dad Starting Over, I tend to attract guys who are of the anxious preoccupied bent, the, the, that persona, that category. Why? Because it's the anxious preoccupied people that tend to seek out information on how to fix a relationship. They're the ones that are looking at the YouTube videos, listening to the podcast, downloading or buying the books, downloading or buying the courses, signing up for the boot camps, joining the private men's groups and so forth. They just want to fix this situation. It's broken. They recognize it's broken. They're not about to sit back and just say, oh well, and move on with their life. No, they're going to fix this, damn it. That's typically your anxious preoccupied kind of mindset. While the avoidant is basically of the mindset of, oh dear God, can we just please stop talking about this? It's always something with you. It's always, let's talk about this, let's talk about that, let's listen to this podcast. I just want to live, damn it. I just want to exist like normal people. Do we have to always talk about this stuff? They have a point. The preoccupied anxious person has a point too, because they're over there saying, yeah, if I didn't bring this up, we would have zero attachment to each other at all. We would just be two separate people living under the same roof. We don't touch, we don't talk, we certainly don't have sex. We don't have any of this good normal secure people stuff. Anxious guy just wants a nice secure relationship. Avoidant, from what I've seen— I don't mean to demonize the avoidant type people, by the way. The avoidant types tend to be men more so than women, but not always, obviously. Um, they both have their point, so to speak. They both have their, their, their, uh, um, point of reference, their perspective on all this, and there's validity to both. But they both need to come more to center, to what we call the secure. And when it comes to working on a relationship, the anxious person tends to win the trophy for the person who wants to work the most. They're ready to like, whatever, they got their journal out, you know, they're at their, their marriage counselor with the pen and paper literally and writing stuff down as the counselor saying, uh-huh, what's my homework, Mr. Counselor? What do I need to do before our meeting next week? Well, the avoidant person is just like, ah, they can't wait to get out of here. And like, God. And then here comes the anxious person at the end to go, I can't wait to work on this stuff that the counselor told me. And the anxious or the avoidant's like, oh God, yeah, uh-huh, yeah, I can't wait. And they don't do their homework. And that's a very typical scenario. It's from the anxious point of view, it's not much to work with there. You're trying and trying. And the anxious people, depends on their severities of this, you know, some are super, super anxious, some not so much. On a scale of 1 to 10, some people are like a 2 or 3, while others are like 11 out of 10. They're super anxious, hangy-onny, to the point of being codependent at a very unhealthy way, and they don't let go no matter what. And ironically, it's not unheard of for the avoidant types to be involved in extramarital affairs, for example. They go elsewhere for the love and affection, which makes no sense to the anxious person, but not unheard of. And sometimes Mr. or Ms. Anxious will discover that, wow, the person that I've been with who's so resistant to any kind of love and affection is screwing around. So instead of taking the message and saying, I guess it's time to move on, Mr. and Miss Codependent often says, I'm just going to double down on my efforts. This just shows that I've really failed as a partner. I've driven them to that. I gotta hang around and keep working on this. They don't get the message. And I'm hoping, CLD Gaming, that is not you, and that's not necessarily your situation, but not unheard of. CLD Gaming says, your explanation sounds so accurate for me. Even my 19-year-old son is seeing that dynamic in his parents' marriage, and he called me out it on the weekend. It's so interesting that a young man can see it, my friend. Writing is more than on the wall. There's, you know, they say writing's on the wall. That means like it's subtly, it's, it's up there, you just got to look. Not only is the writing on the wall, somebody's sitting there with a megaphone in your face yelling at you repeatedly. Your own son saying, Dad, I love you, but this is effed up, man. What keeps you around, brother? Even your own son is saying this is effed up. Your 19-year-old son, basically an adult, young adult, is saying, Dad, this is messed up. Called you out on it. Boy loves you. He's worried about you. He doesn't want to see, uh, Dad going through that, or maybe even Mom going through that. Maybe just sees that you're both wildly incompatible in that way. Again, I'm not pushing for divorce. I'm not pro-divorce. I'm not anti-marriage by any stretch of the imagination. With these scenarios, not to doubt anything that you're saying, CLD Gaming, but, um, we're only hearing one side of the story. And I have learned over the years, occasionally I will hear both sides. That's pretty rare, but there have been in the past where I'll hear from man, and then woman will come along saying, I understand that you've spoken to John, I'm wife in said situation, I wanted to give you my perspective on this. And it always, always in the few instances that I've had of this, totally changes the picture of the situation. I go, oh yeah, he didn't mention that little thing. He didn't mention there was a secretary that he screwed around with 10 years ago. That kind of changes the dynamic here quite a bit. He didn't mention his gambling problem. He didn't mention all these sources of resentment and why the wife has split from him emotionally and physically, et cetera, et cetera. So maybe there's more going on here. Don't know, maybe not. A lot of the time it's just a very sex-averse, intimacy-averse wife, very, very avoidant, with a guy who has a lot of needs. And you're caught in this vicious circle because there's Mr. Anxious who's like, wants nothing more than to have a wife to hold and touch and, and squeeze and, you know, and show his affection too and get some in return. But he is with this woman who is ironically not wired in that way and is wired exactly the opposite. So he goes without, which builds this need, which builds this desire, which causes her to be even more repulsed. And they're just caught in this vicious circle and it doesn't go anywhere.