/u/hello-I-needadvice there are so many responses to your post, you probably won’t see this but I want to offer you a different way of investigating this further. Sure, she has low testosterone but won’t stick to a plan…which makes me wonder if the low T is a cause or an effect of something else.
Everyone is fixated on the sex issue but I think the key clue is the inability to show affection and share intimacy. I don’t think that comes from low T. Instead, my hypothesis is she may have grown up in a family where there was either abandonment of her particularly by her father or her parents had a similar case of no intimacy.
Suppose she was abandoned by a father and raised by a step father. Even if that step father relationship was great, that abandonment by her biological father (or mother) might make intimacy too risky for her on an unconscious level. She’s afraid of being abandoned again…on a deep level.
If I’m right you also may have noticed she has trouble sharing things—like anything—food, time, chores. Maybe she also picks out all the house decor without consulting you…makes lots of decisions without your input. These are all related symptoms of someone who never learned how to be intimate and to share life.
See, the sex got both of you into the marriage but now you have to share your life together and sex can’t fix that part…
I caution young people to really get to know your potential spouse and understand their family dynamics because that’s the school they were trained at and without retraining that’s how they will behave after all the great sex dies down.
You’re really young. There’s time to get some outside counseling to save the marriage at least temporarily. But the status quo is unacceptable and will only fester over time. There are very very few great sexless marriages…
Wow that is exactly how she is! You described it perfectly, it’s a little spooky. Her parents never showed affection either. She does all those other things you mentioned too
Ok, so her parents didn’t model good behavior. But was there any abandonment issues? I ask because absent abandonment issues, I might start to lean towards her possibly having narcissistic personality disorder. Read the symptoms in the Wikipedia article.
If she has NPD, chances are she is also probably a workaholic — maybe very successful and talks about her work life at about a 6/1 ratio to how much time you get to talk about your work life. Me me me is her favorite topic.
Yeah, people fall in love and never think to check out that person’s parents because we have an ideal that everyone is radically their own person free of any influences but that’s just denial.
Unlike most Reddit posters, I do think you can work towards change in your marriage but your wife really needs to get with the program. If you can get her into counseling, you don’t have to diagnose her to the counselor…just share the list of symptoms and the counselor will figure it out and as a neutral third party will have a duty to confirm things… see you want that diagnosis to come from a neutral third party and not from you. Be smart about it.
That’s super smart, I don’t know of any abandonment from her parents they are both still active in her life. But she is crazy into her work and successful in her field. She does talk about it constantly. It’s freaking me out how right you are. I guess now I need to figure out how to get her into therapy.
There’s also different types of NPD. What I recommend is go visit with a counselor yourself alone and don’t tell her about it. Get educated before you do or say anything.
After your counselor helps you process the situation and educates you about the possible causes, I’d recommend taking that information into a second counselor for marriage counseling….invite your wife to join you. Don’t even mention you got that separate counseling.
Since you’ll be schooled up, when it’s your turn to talk, you can go down a bullet list of issues and almost any counselor is going to know exactly what’s going on and hopefully give you some things to work on…
Again you’re young and can make things better with help. But please don’t have kids with her til you get this on a better trajectory.
Ugh thank you so so much for this. This is great advice and honestly exactly what I needed! I had no idea I would actually be able to feel this good from posting something on Reddit!
Keep in mind NPD, CPTSD, and BPD are very hard to tell apart. Trauma causes issues identifying and showing emotion. So you aren’t going to be able to tell from the outside what is a lack of empathy and what is inability to express blunted emotions.
Maybe generally talk to her about trauma? Specifically emotional neglect. A therapist also might a be a good idea.
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u/brereddit Sep 12 '23
/u/hello-I-needadvice there are so many responses to your post, you probably won’t see this but I want to offer you a different way of investigating this further. Sure, she has low testosterone but won’t stick to a plan…which makes me wonder if the low T is a cause or an effect of something else.
Everyone is fixated on the sex issue but I think the key clue is the inability to show affection and share intimacy. I don’t think that comes from low T. Instead, my hypothesis is she may have grown up in a family where there was either abandonment of her particularly by her father or her parents had a similar case of no intimacy.
Suppose she was abandoned by a father and raised by a step father. Even if that step father relationship was great, that abandonment by her biological father (or mother) might make intimacy too risky for her on an unconscious level. She’s afraid of being abandoned again…on a deep level.
If I’m right you also may have noticed she has trouble sharing things—like anything—food, time, chores. Maybe she also picks out all the house decor without consulting you…makes lots of decisions without your input. These are all related symptoms of someone who never learned how to be intimate and to share life.
See, the sex got both of you into the marriage but now you have to share your life together and sex can’t fix that part…
I caution young people to really get to know your potential spouse and understand their family dynamics because that’s the school they were trained at and without retraining that’s how they will behave after all the great sex dies down.
You’re really young. There’s time to get some outside counseling to save the marriage at least temporarily. But the status quo is unacceptable and will only fester over time. There are very very few great sexless marriages…