Interfaith Relationships Support Group

Here's a little history. I've been married for 11 years and have 4 boys under 10. Youngest is almost 4. Both my wife and I were raised LDS. She has always been much more of an actual believer. About 10 months ago I came to the realization or think it is that I do not believe the church and am now agnostic. I told her last September. Since then we have started to have more issues, but for the most part, I do not do any of the things she assumed I might want to do being agnostic. I'm not abusive, I provide extremely well, I love her and I want our marriage to work. I did push her away while dealing with the mental change of dealing with this, but I know I want our marriage to work for myself and our kids.

So I obviously have some issues to deal with and I am trying. At the same time, my wife is also dealing with issues. We are both getting counseling separately due to not being in the same place because of work. We will have a 3 week vacation and have already scheduled some counseling for that period.

I want to talk about all of our issues and she does not feel ready to deal with them all and needs time to figure things out. Her counselor said she has boundary issues. I'm not sure what problems I can work on that are just my issues that don't involve her. I will obviously need her input on what is acceptable with her in dealing with my lack of faith and until I know what she needs I can't work on me. All I ever get when I try and work it out and help her find these answers I am pushing. This is causing other problems in our relationship just by her not deciding or knowing what she needs. Supposedly the only issue that is a huge concern and one that I have no control of helping, but affects me is that she still keeps wanting to just continue life as semi normal while still being in the "not knowing if she can deal with my lack of faith". She does not talk about divorce, but this one issue is one that may or may not be a deal breaker for the marriage. She has had almost a year to know this and yet still isn't sure if she can be happy with this choice. So from my point of view I want the marriage no matter what, but she says she wants to work on it, but at the same time isn't sure if it will work out based on this one decision. So she expects me to continue to work on everything as if we are working on our marriage while not being committed to making it work and throwing this possibility of divorce in my face all the time. I would treat the relationship very differently if it is an inevitable divorce vs if it is going to work. So I keep getting torn between the 2 emotions and have to deal with them separately. This is causing more problems in our marriage. Her counselor said she thinks they will have her to a point that this answer will be known so we can go one way or the other. So I have 5 weeks before she will likely know that answer. I am not sure how to proceed during this time. I know I have patience issues. I just don't know how she can still not know if she wants it to work.

One issue that is probably major and will continue to be an issue that gets bigger is in the financial area. I am currently making very good money working overseas. She does not want to live very far from her parents so she has the support she needs. I am trying to find a job locally, but won't be able to actually take any jobs until December when I get back from Iraq. Work has me a job lined up in California, but she would really prefer to not move and live by family. That option would pay at least $25k a year less than California with pretty similar housing costs. I am willing to if I can find a job there though. In the mean time, I suggested she be on a budget of what I would be making if I were working where she is at. I make sure she has plenty of money in that account, but the majority of our money is in a separate account that is mine. She wants to feel valued and she thinks all the money should be in our shared account, but I do not feel comfortable with that choice while she isn't even sure she wants the marriage. As long as she can't decide, I feel that is an area that I can't work on either. I obviously have trust issues which in turn gives her trust issues. I feel I need to protect myself financially incase she wants divorce. I see the extra money from being overseas as something that we would not have if I were there and it is my sacrifice so if we get divorced, this money should not be mine. I am already giving up 60% to 70% of my current income in just trying to find a job there so she can be happy. She has plenty of money there and I feel she is more concerned about the money than she is about the marriage when she tries to get me to deal with the money issues before she can commit to the marriage fully. Am I wrong in this view? I do see us as an equal partnership, but until she sees a future, I can't make all my actions reflect that. We never had separate accounts until recently which I got from the need of not being local to that bank.
One other area that I think is possibly my issue is in the area of sex and how it should be viewed in a healthy marriage and if it's not healthy then how does it affect other areas of the marriage.
In lieu of recent events, my wife just said that she wants to not have sex for some undetermined short term period to make sure that I love her for her and not for sex. I mentioned that I did not talk about some issues in the past because I didn't want to rock the boat and create conflict that would make her not want to have sex. More history, I have been an almost daily guy for the whole marriage. Might not be actual sex, but some form of it that has the same results that doesn't involve myself as she sees that as wrong so she either wants it herself or takes care of me. I did feel very blessed in this area. Thus the lack of wanting to do anything to avoid it. She thinks I may be a sex addict. I would say about monthly I would take matters into my own hand and over time that also added porn as it makes it faster. I don't feel that I have an addiction in these areas. I would consider myself to be obsessive about it and I really want it to continue to be a daily thing. We are apart for about 2.5 months, then will have 3 weeks together, then apart for 5 months and hopefully after that all this apart time is over. In the past we used Skype and emails to still keep the personal connection with things while still taking care of business. I personally really liked this and felt like we still had that connection sex can give you in person. This time, even though I have told her that I am not addicted to porn and would completely stop if she could provide me with that. I would much prefer it be her, but I am not good with just not having sex of any sort. I never cheat and don't do anything unhealthy. I just really like it and I want it to be her, but sometimes she doesn't want it as often as I do. Again that was generally monthly while we were together. When we are apart like this I am still a daily guy and it's obviously not her since she has made no effort this time to be a part of anything. She says that she is now probably OK with things once I am there and we talked about a way that we could both agree to deal with it, but no effort to do anything now. Anywho, I'm saying tons so if there are any issues that may show cause for some concern, you have plenty of details to know it. Back to the situation I was getting to that may be my problem, It has to do with my views of the relationship if sex is not happening. I personally feel that at least given our situation, that sex is or can be viewed as a requirement of a healthy marriage which has both capable and generally wanting and enjoy it. I feel very hurt and rejected if I don't get it at my regularly scheduled times just because of her choice to not want to. Then with her saying that she didn't want to have sex, to me that is basically saying she doesn't want to be married. It also feels like she is just trying to punish me even though she says it was not what she wanted. This is also when I started to make sure the money was separate. She in turn is now feeling like a prostitute since if she doesn't have sex with me, I no longer see her as an equal partner financially by separating the money. So in turn she does not like that feeling and she doesn't do anything sexually over the internet while we are away, thus I keep the money separate as I see her not being the wife, so why should I be the providing husband? Am I completely off base with this type of thinking? For 10 years it was never even a thought, but I was also taken care of very well during this time.
Posted on 06/11/09, 09:06 am