I am going to try to answer some of your questions about our marriage this way. I tried to talk to you about our problems last week but it ended with you placing all the blame on me.
I let you vent without cutting you off in mid sentence until I had all I could take. That's why I
said that I had been beat up enough for the night and got up.

Realize first of all that despite everything that has gone wrong in our marriage I love you more then you are able to believe. I ask you to remember that I had always been affectionate to you. So much so that you have compared me to a puppy dog and that it
was pathetic. I have put everything I had into this marriage. I know that you don't see that
and if that's the case I'm sorry. What is in me isn't enough.

You are not an affectionate woman. At least not since I have known you. When we first started seeing each other their was a sexual chemistry between the two of us that was amazing. That didn't last very long unfortunately. You told me one night that you had this wall up because of the relationship with your 1st and then with your 2nd. I told you that it was okay because one day you would lower you wall and let me in.
One day you started pointing out all the faults
in me that you could find. You started pushing me away more and
more as time went along.

I am the one who calls you honey, baby, love, sweetheart. You call me by my name. Everynow and
then I might get lucky and you call me honey. It is a term of endearment and means alot.
Everyone calls me by my name. Except those who call me something bad. Most of the time I even get the gay, stupid, idiot, jerk, asshole from you. I can't tell you how special that makes me feel. What's even better is the fact that this is done in front of your kids. Your right about the boys. You can't make them respect me but you and your ex have made sure they WON'T respect me. What's funny about it all is that I have gotten on to them for mouthing off to you and Ex.

I miss holding hands with you, holding you, kissing you even more than the sex. You have put me off for so long. I feel ugly, clumsy, smelly, and just downright dispised by you even when you have nothing to say at all. You have no respect for me and never fail to tell me where I stand with you in this marriage. The only thing that has kept me going was knowing that at the core you are a good woman and that you are not as strong as you pretend to be.

I have watched the marriage between sister and brother in law , and your Mom and Dad. I have heard stories of the marriage between your grandparents and see a pattern. I think that alot of your views and actions in our marriage stem from what you were raised in. I feel for you. I was raised in a shitty marriage also. That is part of what is wrong with me. I was abused, my mother was abused. My father seized every opportunity he had to put me down and make me feel less than human. I didn't realize that I would be thinking the same things years later in my relationship with you.

You have often commented on how it irrated you that I was able to wake up the next day after the previous night's arguments acting like nothing had happened. Well you should notice I'm not waking up that way any more. Now I have sunk to the level of carrying the problems we have with me day to day and lately week to week. I know that things suck between the two of us. It hurts me. It scares me.

Another part of this is your ex-husband. You insist he has nothing to do with our marriage
but your wrong. You have told me the story between you and him. You have known him most of your life and use to run in the same circles. He sabotaged your first marriage, he
tried to cheat with you during HIS 1st marriage, he cheated on you during your marriage to him. You cheated on me with him......You see the pattern? The problem that I have is not so much the fact that you cheated on me with him but the fact that through everything over the years you can't distance yourself from him. You have involved him in things about our marriage that wasn't any of his damn business. The boys are always brought up as the
reason why. While that might cover some of the conversations it doesn't cover EVERYTHING! This came to a head with me when I was labeled the reason for your children's
behavior by the both of you. The two of you teamed up on me! I also remember when you
and him cheated you admitted that you had made a mistake and you begged me to take you back. Within a week you were blaming me for the affair and telling me that I wasn't going to hold it over your head forever. I had forgotten about that until last week when once again you pointed out that it was MY fault you cheated, and that you were about to that point again. WTF? I have my part to play for helping to create a bad marriage but I have NO
part in your decision to cheat. That's all yours. I helped create the environment but I have nothing to do with your actions.

Now.....with that said you want me to start on me? Okay.....
I am insecure always have been since I was a child. I was put down and beaten as
a child and that's something that's always there. It doesn't make me any less of a man.
It just makes me human.

I am a Klutz.
I wasn't always this much of a Klutz though...That started about the same time the arthirities started affecting my hands and ankles. You dont' realize hard it has become for me to walk or even hold onto anything. I am in pain 24/7......It makes me tired and weak.
I try not to let it interfere with anything and only say something about it when it is at it's worse. I'm dealing with it thebest I can but it has steadly gotten worse and worse.
I figure I'm doing pretty good considering I was told years ago that I would be in wheel chair by the time I was 35.

I don't pay you and the kids enough attention. I have no excuse for that and will not try and justify it.

I am co-dependant...Looking at my past marriages and my current marriage. I suffer from
the "Wounded Bird" complex. I am attracted to those with problems. In your case, the
first time I saw you, you were crying. It was about going to the fair with a friend while you
were going through your divorce with EX. Your Ex was causing you grief.
Later when we first talked... I remembered that and thinking that you were a very hurt woman who wanted to build her life back. I could understand that given my own past.
That's was attracted me to you. I needed no one else I had you and the boys. I let that
define who I am. Now I'm 40 and looking at losing everything I am. That being your husband, the Kid's step-dad. You dont' think that scares me?
What scares me more though is being married to a woman who hates me. A woman who
can find nothing but fault with everything that I am. I feel the resentment boiling off of you whenever you enter the room. I can't handle that anymore. You don't look at me as a husband and haven't in a long time. I'm the guy you live with. We are "Roomies" as you
have put it. You talk about not making love.....me not trying.......I feel the emotion coming from you and that doesn't turn me on. That turns me off. It's not how you look, it's not how I feel about you.....It's the fact that I don't feel any love or affection from you and haven't in months.
I want to go to counseling to learn to communicate with you. I want to learn to be a great husband. I want you to go to counseling
to learn to open your heart to me and see me as a human being who loves you and wants
to be in your life as a husband. If you don't want to go to couseling there is no hope for us
and it will end. We can't survive without it. I do want to do this though because I can't see
us ending the marriage without trying EVERY option. I want to know that we tried everything to save our marriage.
If our marriage is ending or does end even after couseling. I want to become to kids ANGEL DAD. I don't want to sever that connection. I will help you out. All I ask is for visitation. I would like to spend time with the kids (if they want). I'll leave that option for You, your Ex and them to decide. Either way I'll still send them stuff occasionally.
Well I have made my mind up on things. I want to save our marriage and get couseling. Now you have some thinking to do yourself because it takes two.
All my love....
Your Husband..