Sexless Marriage… I Told Her It Was Over If Nothing Changed. She Laughed.

Got another email from a follower that I think a lot of you are unfortunately going to relate to. This gentleman, we'll call him Craig, he has endured 3 years of a completely sexless marriage. And he finally got up the nerve to tell his wife that we can't go on like this. It's either we fix this or I'm divorcing you. And what did the wife say? She laughed at him. Here's his email. He says, hey man, I don't even know where to start. A few days ago, I finally said it. I told my wife that if things don't change, I'm done. We've been in a sexless marriage for almost 3 years. 3 years. I've tried talking, I've tried being patient, I've tried date nights, I read books, I even suggested counseling twice, and nothing. So I finally said it calmly, no yelling. I just told her this isn't working for me and I'm not willing to live like this forever. You know what she did? She laughed. Not a nervous laugh. She actually laughed and said, okay Craig, and went back to watching her show. I didn't say anything after that. I just went to bed. Now it's been 4 days and she's acting completely normal. She's making dinner, asking about my day, and being friendly like I never said anything. And I'm sitting here feeling like an idiot. Did I not say it right? Does she not believe me? Does she not care? I don't know if I should bring it up again or just wait. Part of me wants to blow up. Part of me thinks maybe I'm overreacting. I'm so confused, man. What does this even mean? Okay, 3 years of a dead bedroom. Holy crap. He's tried the date nights. He's tried the He's read the books. He's even said, hey, can we go talk to somebody about this? And nothing. So this is not a man who has checked out of the relationship. This is a guy who has showed up in the relationship in a big way, repeatedly, over and over again, and nothing. And when he finally drew the line in the sand and said, all right, this is officially weird, I can't go on like this, she laughed at him. We want to be a little careful here in our diagnosis, if you will, or our assessment of what's going on here. And before I continue on, I am not a mental health practitioner. I am not a therapist of any kind. I'm just a bald dude with a microphone, one of many on the internet apparently. But we know know how that laugh feels. Probably to every guy watching or listening to this on the podcast, that sounds like contempt on her part, doesn't it? It feels like she's telling you, dude, you don't matter. Or even worse, your pain, that's a joke, it's humorous. And so you completely understand why a guy in that position just may eventually completely shut down or go seek love elsewhere or just blow up. But before we go into the whole what should Craig do, let's talk about what's going on here under the surface, at least by my assessment. First of all, what does the big laugh, what does that mean? Most men say, you know, either she just fell out of love or she's just a cold, heartless, you know what? But from what I've seen, I think what's most likely going on here is just basically she doesn't believe you. Think about it from her perspective for a second here. This is a woman who has lived a certain way, conducted herself in a certain way year after year for at least 3 years that we know of. It probably extended beyond that, to be honest with you. And what was husband's response during her years of acting a certain way? Nothing. He just stayed and continued doing what he was doing. In fact, he ramped up his efforts to reconnect with her. So he did the whole, you know, let's try counseling, let's do this, let's do that. And she was just like, well, I can see that my behavior gets a doting husband. In fact, if he ever kind of sort of teeters towards the edge of trying to resolve the situation, she knows that all she has to do is just ignore and he eventually stops. So when Craig says, you know, hey, enough's enough, we have to fix this or else, I guess you could say her nervous system doesn't interpret that as a real threat. She just sees this as another manifestation of the same pattern of behavior that Craig has been showing year after year. He is a frustrated husband. He'll get over it. No biggie. That laugh is a woman who has never seen any consequences within this relationship and possibly no consequences for bad behavior probably all through her life. So what Derek needs to understand is that his words, the sorry for the crass language, they don't mean dick. He's just a barking little dog with no bite. Even if he's calm, adult, direct, she just looks at him and says, That's cute. Your words, Craig, have been devalued because of the years of saying things but not doing anything. You just absorb everything with zero consequence year after year. So you suddenly saying a certain thing doesn't mean that suddenly saying a certain thing is bad. No. In fact, probably every mental health practitioner will tell you the same thing. Dude, tell her already. But what you're talking about is kind of trying to build trust and respect from your partner there. And you don't build trust and respect from your partner. By partner, I mean it could be your romantic partner, your girlfriend or wife. Could be your friend, coworker, boss, whatever. You don't earn that level of respect and trust, or whatever you want to call it, from your words alone. You earn it via your actions, your behavior over time. Yes, this takes time. You earned what you got now over years and years. You're not suddenly going to flip it on its head. So let's fast forward in the story to 4 days later after the big moment here with Craig and his wife. His wife's making dinner. She's asking about his day, and Craig's like, what the hell's going on here? His interpretation is She's just ignoring the whole thing. It didn't have nearly the impact on her that it did me. This was like a nothing thing to her. She's just brushing it under the rug, acting like nothing happened. But I'll tell you something else that I think is going on here. I think she's sitting back and watching you, Craig. She's observing how you behave. She probably remembers the moment and she's not quite sure if you were for real or not. And so she's, if you want to interpret it this way, kind of testing you. Let's just go about our normal day-to-day business as husband and wife here. Day 1 rolls by and you don't say anything. Her nervous system resets and says, eh, we're back to normal here. Typical Craig 101. Most men in this position kind of blow it, so to speak, in a couple of different ways. One is that a lot of guys blow up, explode. What the hell, woman? What's wrong with you? Don't you remember what we said, you know, a couple days ago? Why are you acting like this is normal? What the eff is wrong with you? You crazy, you know what? All that does is communicate that you have kind of a crazy, emotive, reactive baby. A lot of women like to throw that out at their husband to, you know, shame him. He's a big emotional baby. He can't control himself. And she has kind of an aha moment. There it is. He's just a little baby boy that I thought he was. But for most guys that I talk to, the most common response is go with the flow. You don't want to rock the boat. Things are calm and nice right now, aren't they? She's making dinner. How was your day, honey? Talking about the kids, talking about work. Why blow this up with, hey, remember what happened a few days ago? I want to talk about it. That fills you with a great deal of anxiety. And so you drop it. And by dropping it, you are furthering the conditioning, so to speak, the Pavlovian response. When Craig eventually gets emotional and blows up at me about something, just ignore it. Laugh and move on. He'll get over it and everything will go back to normal. And then another year rolls by and you have another blowup moment and the wife laughs it off or whatever and rinse and repeat. This is where we need to get practical here, guys. Stop sitting around and waiting for the wife to bring it back up again. She will not. She's sitting back and waiting for you to do something. The ball is in your court officially. The ball was in your court ever since you brought up the thing. You sitting back and passively waiting for her response days, weeks, months, Years later, it's the old pattern. You got to break it and you break it with your behavior, not just your words. Otherwise, it's the same dynamic, same routine, same availability, same everything. And then like most guys, you're confused. How come nothing changes? Everyone tells me I need to communicate. I told her stuff. I sit back and watch, wait for her response and nothing. This is a bunch of bullshit. Here's the truth. An ultimatum that is not backed up by some kind of behavioral change on your part doesn't mean dick. It's just another version of empty complaining. She has already learned years ago just to tune you out, dude. It doesn't mean anything. What she and others in your life need to see is a guy with boundaries. There's that word again. And the boundaries are for you, not for her. You've heard that before, right? So give me an example. You say to her, if you do this or you don't do this, here's what I do. Most basic example is, if we don't sit down and work on this, I'm out of here. Which is in essence what Craig did. So she sits back and watches and says, I'm waiting. Are you a man of your word? Are you a man with real boundaries? Because if you don't go out of here, so to speak, your boundaries mean Nothing. Just a yapping little chihuahua dog. No bite whatsoever. But if she laughs at you and you go, okay, understood. And then the next day you go, here's a divorce agreement that I had prepared with my attorney. You know, look it over, maybe get your own attorney and look it over. Let's do this amicably. As you can see, I have all the debts and the assets split and the child custody will be 50/50. And let's— I'm shooting for mediation. We don't need to go to court over all this. That woman is going to what? Take you seriously. She will get wide-eyed and say, oh shit. This guy's for real. That gets the ball rolling. Now, it may not roll in the direction that you want it to. It's not like she's going to suddenly go, oh, I'm scared. You know what? And I'm also really turned on. Let's just have sex all the time and get this happy marriage, you know, show on the road. Usually it results in drama. And you, Mr. Sensitive, you need to be cool with that. It's going to drive you nuts. It's going to make you very anxious. But do you want to work on this relationship or not? Or do you want to get out of it or not? Or do you just want to stay in limbo? You can continue staying in limbo. You see where they get you, dude. Which is why you and so many guys write into me all the time. You're not happy, and I don't blame you. I wouldn't be happy either. At some point you gotta look at yourself in the mirror, dude. What are you doing? Why do you hate yourself so much? That's what we're talking about. You don't like yourself. You are what we call a codependent individual. You see this a lot with people who are spouses of alcoholics and drug addicts. They enable their behavior, they give them money, they just keep paying all the bills. Maybe they will talk about going to rehab or whatever, and the person continues using, and they continue to stay year after year after year. Why? They don't like themselves very much. They don't think they're worthy of better. Craig and others going through this, That's you too, dude. And you know what? It's all right, man. A lot of us have been there and done that. The problem is, is that you cannot fix this all alone. If I may be so bold, go join a men's group. Talk to guys who have been there and done that. Guys that are going through it currently. It just so happens I run such a group. Go to help4men.com or jump right to the join page and check out the brotherhood at help4men.com/join. Hundreds of men from around the world. We get together on frequent live meetings, you know, over like 1,500 hours of audio that you can listen to. All my books, private forums, you name it. We got it at the Brotherhood. So for Craig and others that are going through something like this and you say, what does all this mean? Why is she not responding? Why is she acting like everything's cool? I don't get it. You're looking at this the wrong way. The question isn't what does her behavior mean? The question is, what are you going to do about it? Here's the big question that I ask a lot of guys, and it's funny, they all hesitate. Dude, what is it that you want? Usually after a lot of hesitation, the guy will spill out, "I want a wife who loves me, a wife who wants physical intimacy, a wife who's not afraid to touch and to emote to each other." A lot of these guys at baseline, it may sound kind of physical and crass that they just want the old in and out. No, most guys are pretty romantic. At least the guys that I talk to. They want the long walks on the beach. They want those long conversations. The guys push for counseling so they can get in and work on their issues. So a lot of guys will go on for 10, 15 minutes about this dream relationship that he wants. And I commonly respond with, "Cool." I would want that too. But can you get that with her? Has there been anything in all the years that you've been together that shows you that this is the woman for that job? More often than not, the answer is no, not at all. Not even from day one, not even during the honeymoon stage for a lot of guys. But there are some guys out there who, yeah, for many years they strung together a great, respectful, loving relationship. And then something happened. Life gets in the way, man. There's stressors, there's kids, there's job loss, illness, loss of a parent, God forbid, loss of a child, something like that. And some of you are married to very good women and you just need to yank your head out of your butt and get to work, both of you. So you need to determine where on that spectrum you fall. So back to Craig's situation, the laugh that you got from your wife, that hurts, that sucks, that was really mean of her. But don't put all your focus on that little moment and the aftermath. If anything, that should be the catalyst to, oh wow, I need to change the way I'm doing things here. Because as you can see, it's getting you nowhere, dude. You can't shame your way into her loving you again. You can't negotiate your way into true sexual desire. You've heard me say that many times. You can't beg your way into a better situation. You act your way into one. You behave as a strong man. You put up the boundaries and you mean it. You act on them. Craig and others, you are not out of options here, dude. This is just the beginning, potentially, of some really great stuff. If this material hits home for you guys, do me a favor. Hit like, subscribe, follow wherever it is you're watching or listening to this. And you may want to check out my bestselling book, The Dead Bedroom Fix, the third edition of which just came out recently. You can go to deadbedroomfix.com. And again, if you're in isolation like Craig and a lot of guys are in these kind of situations, realize that you are not alone. Holy crap, are there a lot of guys going through the exact same thing. It's funny, we have guys in our brotherhood group that are going through dead bedrooms, that are in the middle of divorce, that are past divorce, guys that have zero luck in the relationship game. And you know what? They all have a lot in common. They just do not like themselves a whole heck of a lot, and they just don't know anything about the whole boundaries thing. It's something you can work on, both your self-esteem, your security within yourself and your boundaries. They're all tied together. So guys, check it out, the Brotherhood at help4men.com. And guys, thank you so much for watching and listening today. I do appreciate it. We'll catch you on the next one.