State of the Union.

I feel like a fool.

Here is the man I live with:

Patient, kind, sweet, conscientious. He's spent the last ten years muddling through every problem and every tragedy with me. He hasn't known what to do many times, but he's always offered a hug. My mother loved him, even took him travelling and left me at home. She told him, on her deathbed, to take care of me. He does. He's a terrific father, present and fun. He always gets up with the boy in the morning and lets me sleep another half-hour. Always. He buys me books he thinks I will like. Sometimes I still get breakfast in bed. He calls just because he's thinking of me, and says just that. Over and over he offers himself, all that he can of himself, to me.**

And when I complain to him, he always tries to fix it. Everything. He doesn't always succeed, but he always tries. He truly wants our marriage to work. He adores me. He wants me. He wants to fix our sex life. He can't remember how to please me, but he wants the chance to risk failure. He feels as though wherever I am, that is home. I am the love of his life, he says.

And here is how I feel:

I cringe from his touch. I reject him physically at every turn. I don't respect him emotionally or professionally or socially. I feel as though, for many years, I haven't had an emotional peer. I've been so disappointed by his emotional remove over the past few years, that I've closed myself off to him. I don't adore him. I love him as an old friend with whom you've been through the wringer.

There's something I don't feel. Call it passion or enthusiasm. I feel no emotional drive to make this work. I think of my son, and of what a good man I am married to, and the commitment I made, then I go to couples therapy. I try as hard as I can to refresh my thinking, to get out of our old bad habits. But there's something missing. Have I already let go?

I condemn myself for what I don't feel. I am a fool. An idiot. What woman, in her right mind, would forfeit such a partner? Wouldn't fight tooth and nail to keep him, to salvage the marriage?

**I know this is black and white: he is good, I am bad. It's not that simple, but what I'm writing here is the most frequent script playing in my head, despite the lack of balance.**