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I'm completely floored by the way my H opened up in our MC this evening. He admitted to going through feeling numb. He said his boss recently told him he can't get a read on my H because he doesn't show any emotion. He's always flat. I've been saying this for years. He goes through life on automatic pilot, not really thinking, feeling, or experiencing any of it.

His assignment is to think about what kinds of interactions he wants from me. What does he enjoy doing with me? He couldn't think of anything during the session.

I don't know if this applies to your H but sometimes if someone has been chronically disappointed in life, esp in childhood, maybe they never got what they wanted or needed, whether it was love or approval or affection from their parents, or material things or things from friends or even later through work etc, they might feel that nothing they do matters and nothing's ever going to work out as they want so why should they care? Sometimes this might be to avoid arguments, sometimes it avoids disappointment, sometimes it just seems most efficient. Your husband may be the kind of person who lives most in his own mind and that's where the action takes place. Once he gets into the real world he has no control and nothing seems to work out so why bother. It becomes a habit of thought like anything else. It might take some effort to get him to see that things can be different, that he may have a range of possibilities and therefore a range of reactions. But he needs to get the pilot light back on. I wonder if that can be what cheating is about sometimes, an attempt to get the pilot light back on.

Is he on an antidepressant? Specifically an SSRI? I ask because when you described your husband you described me when I was on sertraline and I was that way for years.

I quit taking it a few years ago, and it took a couple of those years for me to start "returning." I still deal with some of the lingering side effects from it. My wife constantly tells me "I'm so happy I have my husband back!"

I know they've helped a lot of people, but they did more harm than good in my case and was a pretty big factor for the state of my marriage at the time of my WW's affair. I had completely checked out. I didn't want to do anything with anyone. It was like all of the joy had been sucked out of my life, and from what I've been reading it kind of literally was. My reward system was hijacked. Because of the extra serotonin floating around in my brain my dopamine transmitters were suppressed.

I'm an audiophile with a nice audio system and I'd even stopped enjoying music. Those goosebumps I get when I hear a song I love had disappeared. That's returned now, but only in the last several months. I stopped taking it over 3 years ago.

Bond, that is my H. It comes from his childhood foo. We've known this for years. It has taken him a long time to begin to see it.

Pogre, he is not on any meds. He even said he's not depressed. He just learned very early in life that the way to be safe was to suppress himself completely.

I understand what you're saying about antidepressants. I've had chronic major depression since I was about 13. I've been on many different meds. Some helped. Some didn't. I kept going off them and would quickly crash. I was 46 when I finally accepted that I would need to take zoloft for the rest of my life.

From what I’ve learned so far, this lack of emotion – and empathy as well – is often a result of childhood neglect or trauma. When children don’t feel safe to feel, let alone express, their emotions, they tend to suppress them later in life.

I had a very dominant and ill-tempered father. As a child, my main concern was not to bother him so as not to trigger his anger. I learned that my emotions and needs were not welcome. Even today, when someone asks me how I feel or what I want in a certain situation, I often can’t tell.

I would say that your H needs to explore in IC what led him to go on autopilot instead of taking the risk of exposing his emotions. Wishing you all the best!

Yeah! I hope the momentum continues!

I relate to this btw- a lot of the struggle for me was getting to know myself in a similar way at. I think your husbands might be more profound I could have told you what I like to do with my husband, but I also understand things between you have been strained for an extended period of time, that wasn’t the case with us. But the numbing of as my default. I have had to work hard to learn to be able to turn that off and being able to cope with the feelings, anxieties, etc. I have had to also recognize over and over when I would slip back to that. Now a days I can be present in my body and check in with my needs, wants, feelings, and it has allowed me to decorate my life in a way that I don’t want to hide from it.

[This message edited by hikingout at 3:12 PM, Friday, February 13th]

cocoplus5nuts wrote:

Pogre, he is not on any meds. He even said he's not depressed. He just learned very early in life that the way to be safe was to suppress himself completely.

I understand what you're saying about antidepressants. I've had chronic major depression since I was about 13. I've been on many different meds. Some helped. Some didn't. I kept going off them and would quickly crash. I was 46 when I finally accepted that I would need to take zoloft for the rest of my life.

Okay. And to be clear, I don't mean to bash people who take SSRIs or anything. I know they've helped a lot of folks. The way you described your husband sure clicked with where I was when I was on them, so I wanted to share my personal experience with it and offer it as a possible explanation.

I was also on zoloft, under the generic name sertraline. I've also had major depressive disorder since I was a kid. Plus anxiety disorder, but wasn't diagnosed until I was well into my 30s. I was taking 200 mg of zoloft daily, which is the maximum allowed prescribed dosage, and I was on it for many years. I, too, thought I'd be on it for the rest of my life.

It helped with my anxiety, but didn't really do much for the depression. It made me very emotionally flat and I just stopped enjoying things. Of course when you don't care about anything you don't have much to be anxious about. For me it came with too many unwanted side effects that included a nonexistent libido, and as I mentioned earlier I just stopped enjoying pretty much anything. Time with friends and family, music, connecting and bonding with others... it's just like that kind of thing was cut out of my life.

I've done a lot of digging into SSRIs and they can have the unintended side effect of suppressing or depressing your dopamine activity, which leads to decreased motivation or pleasure in individuals, and I believe that's what happened with me. I actually started feeling better when I weaned off of it, but it took a while. It took time to wean off, then it took even more time for my system to readjust back to my "normal." Like a couple of years.

I've determined that it's just something I shouldn't be taking. My wife, tho it took a while, did eventually notice the difference, but I was flat for so long, and my libido was one of the last things to return so it didn't register with her for quite a while. As you can imagine, we'd grown apart and, well... blah blah blah. This is your thread so I won't hijack it, lol. Needless to say, she's very happy with where I'm at now, and so am I.

I'm glad your MC session went so well, and that your husband opened up enough to get some of that out. It all sounds really positive. I'm genuinely happy for you. We see things that don't go so well quite often here, so these positive outcomes are always welcome to see. I hope things continue to go in a positive direction for both you and your husband.

Pogre, I know you weren't dissing people on ssris. I just wanted to relate my experience.

My H is starting IC again soon. I'm hoping it will go better than the first time he tried since he's more aware of his own issues. Before, everything was about me as the problem.

As a child I was subjected to physical and emotional abuse by my father, and sexual abuse by another relative in the home.

I describe my father as a "terrorist". The other relative is now meaningless to me; he is an alcoholic and suffers from depression, has a terrible home life, and I’m indifferent.

From an early age I had to learn to compartmentalize my rage, fear, and anger. I didn’t understand feeling "happy", because my life was spent trying to keep from being attacked on two different fronts.

There was no "truth" in my family. The "truth" was whatever my dad said it was, and often bore no relation to reality.

It was very hard to keep my head in a place where I could protect myself and my sense of reality.

So as a result, people often think I am hard to read. I’m not opening up around anyone I sense as "unsafe", and will avoid them.

FOO issues form our reactions to many things in life. I know that I feel things very deeply, but do not show those emotions externally except with some very few people under tight circumstances.

So I know that just because someone appears unemotional doesn’t mean they aren’t feeling something.

My H was not abused as a child, at least not in the traditional sense. His father was domineering, I think. He made all the decisions and everyone else had to fall in line without any argument or dissent. The worst punishment my H has described was being lectured for very long periods when he was not allowed to say anything. That's the worst it got. Idk why he reacted so strongly to that.

He was never physically punished. He wasn't called names. He was just told he was a disappointment, and even then, idk if it was actually expressed or if implied. I know that's my H's worst fear, being a disappointment. Whatever his dad said to him as a child made him feel as if he couldn't do anything right. The only other thing I know his dad said to him was that boys don't cry.

My H has been completely unaware of any of his emotions other than anger. Several months ago in MC, we were talking about his emotions. He commented that he didn't realize he had feelings other than anger. He was surprised by it.

The psychological damage from having a domineering person over you is difficult to explain.

My father was very domineering as well.

And some of the things he said still ring in my head, long after the physical pain.

There was a time in my life when anger was the only emotion I could readily point to if asked how I was feeling.

I get that feeling. I "woke up" to emotions about three years into my marriage, when I moved thousands of miles away from my FOO. All,of a sudden, without the burden and fear of the judgment of my family, I found out the world was not how I perceived it for so long.

I know his domineering father causes him psychological damage. That's evident. I am glad for him that he is finally able to see it. I've been telling him for years that he needs to work on himself for himself.

He has always been so wrapped up in me that he couldn't see himself. Or, maybe focusing on me was his way of avoiding looking at himself. I'm sure that wss part of it. He is so extremely avoidant of anything he perceives as negative that he has shut himself off from anything that could be positive. It's sad.