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Ever since the birth of our son (2y7m), my wife has slept with him in his bedroom. 

I have talked to her several times about why I think she should move back to our bed.

I have made it clear I want to do my fair share of getting up in the middle of the night to attend to him.

She says that it won't be for ever and that he's still very young. She also says she wants to enjoy being with him while he's small.

I think it's just going to get harder and harder to get our son to accept her not sleeping with him now that she has established the habit. 

Do you think there's any way I'll be able to convince her that it's in everybody's best interests that she moves back to our bedroom?  Is it a lost cause?

I'm getting to the stage where trying to talk reasonably is getting nowhere and I don't want to start making threats.  Or should I?

What would a threat look like to you?

Can you think of a way of turning it into a boundary rather than a demand?

I think you are right it is unhealthy, this has nothing to do with your sons needs, but rather your wife's. If you can work on finding out what that need is rather than her justifications it may help.

I feel it's very difficult to draw a boundary when it's her inaction, rather than action, which is making me feel hurt and resentful.

The way I see my options currently is thus: 

Carrot or stick?

Carrot: I'll bend over backwards to cook, clean, help and make you feel loved and special.

Stick: a) I'll leave you.  or b) We'll live like roommates and I'll withdraw all affection.

I think that giving her too much carrot has perhaps brought about this situation.  "Stick a" is not really an option with our son and finances won't stretch to me living somewhere else.  Which leaves "stick b".  I have tried a certain amount of that before, but it only leads to her feeling abandoned, which leads her to retaliate with more abandonment.

When I try to reason it through with her, she goes on the defenses and gives lots of reasons why our 2 and a half year old son can't survive the night without her there and how she wants to enjoy being with him while he's little. Then she digs her heels in even more.  And yes, I have tried to genuinely validate her feelings and offer my support.

I just don't see a way here.  Maybe I'm missing something.

Could your son have sleep overs with a family member.

Is there any reason why she may be avoiding sleeping with you, or deliberately avoiding intimacy.?

If she keeps this up he will develop a dependency on her being there, which could cause him future difficulties.

Have you tried intimacy at other times of the day rather than just overnight, that may indicate whether it is an intimacy fear or not.

It could be a post natal fear of intimacy or complete loss of libido, has she any body image issues?

She won't have our son sleep anywhere else overnight. 

Who knows why she may be avoiding intimacy.  I can understand it when we have our disagreements/arguments, but when things are going well she still seems to prefer not to be intimate or spend any time alone with me.

It's getting harder and harder for me to be affectionately intimate with her and show signs of affection when she seems to dedicate so little of her time and effort to me.  The less she is forthcoming with her affection, the less I wan't to be affectionate towards her.  I guess it's a vicious cycle.

As for body image issues, like most women, she feels she could lose a pound or two but beyond that I don't know.  She has been slimmer in the past, but I would never ever say that to her.  That would be ungentlemanly.  Anyway, I still find her extremely attractive.

Having said that, there are some issues worthy of mention.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, she doesn't like me touching her "down there" with my hands, but perfectly happy with any other of my body parts.  (This has led me to wonder if she had been inappropriately touched earlier in her life)

She says she finds me giving her oral sex conceptually gross, but she really does enjoy it while I'm doing it.  She never returns the favor. 

She has never wanted to take a shower with me and never ever undresses in my presence, although she clearly likes it when she sees me when I am naked while getting dressed/undressed and will often come up to me and touch me briefly in those situations.

So I get mixed messages and it's all a bit weird.

It sounds like she has some subconscious self loathing about her own body or sexuality. As you say it could be linked to some buried past issue

My wife has recently had a mastectomy following breast cancer and is experiencing similar, luckily she has a specific cause to identify with and so is not having to make up excuses. It makes it much easier to deal with.

Is there any chance that she would be willing to seek therapy help in discovering the cause of her distress? i know BPD makes it hard to even allow her to get past her own excuses.

I am pretty sure that if you take her excuses at face value then you will be heading down the wrong rabbit hole.

I don't think there's much of a chance of her going to therapy about this.

I think it would kill her to admit that a) her approach to the relationship is unhealthy, and b) that she would need professional help.

If I even suggested that, I can see it now: it would end up with me apologizing for being so needy, for neglecting her needs and with me promising to be a better husband.

So I'm writing this from my side of the bed in "our" bedroom.  The other side of the bed is once again empty.  She, of course, went to bed with our toddler son at 7.30pm.

I watched TV downstairs alone until 10pm hoping she might come down and spend some time with me, but that only happens about once a month and then she just grabs the remote and switches over from what I was watching to some program that I would have little interest in. But no, another Saturday evening alone. Like my Friday evening yesterday and the night before that, and so forth.

Today I spent much of the morning doing housework and playing with our son while she made some calls to friends. Just as I finished mopping the kitchen floor, she told me to get down and scrub the cement between the floor tiles with bleach. Begrudgingly I did so and was amazed when later she praised me for it and gave me an affectionate kiss.  She then went to do an hour and a half of exercises upstairs leaving me to look after our son.

When our son went for his nap, I went out for a 10 mile run (I'm training for a half marathon in a month's time).  When I got back my wife and son had already had lunch without me, so I ate quickly and then she left me to look after him all afternoon while she did her homework on a pyramid selling scheme she has just bought into (with my money, obviously).  She barely spoke to me at all today.  Nor I to her, i'll concede, but it's very difficult when she clearly is choosing activities that exclude. 

At around 6.30 I wanted her to do something for a change so I left her to feed our son while I put my feet up in a different room. I needed a break. Then she gave him to me to bathe, after which I helped her put him to bed. I could see she was getting into bed with him so I simply said "good night" to her and she replied the same. That was at 7.30. 

All in all a typical day. Almost zero intimacy. I took off my wedding ring this evening and I said to myself that I'll put it back on when we have a relationship resembling that of a husband and wife. 

Sorry to hear about these issues you are dealing with.  The thing that came to mind when I read your post was the game "frigid woman" from the book "games people play" by Eric Berne.  I sort of glanced at it again before posting this, but I did not see how you are supposed to win the game.  I'm also in a relationship that is less than ideal.  honestly if it were me I would definitely confront her about all of this away from your son, but that probably goes against the advice on this site.  I try different ideas to see if certain things work.  Lately one thing that's been helpful in the short term is that I'll write down my version of the incident or concerns without any insults or judgments, but just write it down for myself and then if I feel it's not super threatening to her, I will text it to her, at least so she can read my internal thoughts and feelings about the situation.  That's actually been working as in her world I truly believe my thoughts and feelings aren't even a blip on her radar most of the time, so the times I have done this it has sort of helped her to see the situation from another perspective besides her own.

There is some deep seated issue at work here that she is unwilling or unable to voice. It may be about you, or it may be about her. Either way she may have gone into avoidance mode as a coping tool to deal with distress intolerance (http://www.m1psychology.com/help-for-distress-intolerance/)

Has she ever blurted out any hints in an angry moment?

I have no idea what her issues are. Whether it's distress intolerance or not I'm not sure.  Even when times are good and there's no distress to be intolerant of, she shuts me out.

Such as the recent Mothers Day when I bought her jewellery she genuinely liked and cooked her an amazingly good 3 course meal with wine. That evening she went to bed early too.

Recently (ie this weekend) I haven't helped matters with the way I have been reacting.  My response to her aloofness and having spent too much time on my own in this marriage, was that this weekend I have been largely ignoring her as well.  I spent another day mostly looking after our son, doing the weekly shopping in the food market and cooking a delicious meal and cleaning, and it's earned me another night solo.

I just don't know how to approach this situation.  Do I:

-Stop bending over backwards to please her and risk being labelled a lazy goodfornothing who expects her to do all the work?  I acknowledge that I appear to be caretaking and making covert contracts - which does not help at all.

-Try to get one of her family involved, because I know she does not like or listen to anything that I want, but she always listens to her family?

-acknowledge that she never loved me and never will be able to provide the intimacy I need

-express my need for us to spend non-sexual, private and intimate time together and to have a physical sexual relationship that happens more than once every 10 weeks and threaten to do something drastic like move out or cut off money or cease to go with her to see her family/friends if it doesn't happen?

I really thought I would have at least some emotional and physical intimacy when I got married.  But I feel I can't force her to give me something it looks like she can't give.  Sorry for the negativity, but I am still looking for a way to salvage this marriage.

If she thought your need for intimacy was off the table do you think she may be less hostile/stand offish?

The problem is this has spread beyond just an intimacy issue, and until the rest of it is back on track there is little chance of effective intimacy. It seems whatever her problem is it has been buried under so much smoke and mirrors its hard to work out what it is.

Some pwBPD can effectively be emotional cripples, some are over the top and others cope by shutting it down. Expressing emotions leaves people feeling vulnerable. pwBPD fear vulnerability.

Hi Dragon72,


here is my take on it

- There is no point in bending over backwards. What is missing in our relationships is not closeness and attachment but respect. Without respect and clear boundaries it is hard to feel for the other as where does the other beginning?

- Wider family in your bedroom? That may well be triangulation. Won't help much with respect/boundary issues would it?

- "acknowledge that she never loved me and never will be able to provide the intimacy I need" is b&w thinking and speculation. What may help is validating what the situation is NOW: "You struggle with intimacy or whatever".

- expressing your need is never wrong. Threats however may not be so wise. Just demonstrates how frustrated you are (expressing that is ok) and how helpless (not so ok).

There may be more going on and not everything is about you.


PwBPD have a hard time with boundaries and may have a very close, sometimes too close relationship with their children. The child provides a clear identity for her.

Possibly sex and sleeping can be handled as two different goals? Don't see them in b&w terms - there is definitely a spectrum. Maybe some aspects of these goals are negotiable? Maybe travel (and being forced into a smaller space) can be an enabler for change? Can you listen to her - practice open questions and biting your tongue. Review SET and DEARMAN.

This is a hard problem to deal with

Dragon, the issue isn't "she's sleeping in our son's room" but rather, for 2 years, you have had no sexual intimacy. If you focus on THAT issue, and leave the "mother/son" out of it (bc she can always make an excuse for that) and get her feedback for the lack of intimacy, that has a different solution. If she was intimate with you a reasonable amount of the time (whatever "reasonable" is for you both) would you be as concerned about the sleeping arrangements? She seems to be using her "mother/son" excuse to keep from being intimate. That is certainly a more serious issue than the sleeping in son's room. Even if she refuses, at least she is refusing an actual "activity" that is a normal part of the marriage covenant, as opposed to your differing views on childcare. Have you approached her with THAT specific issue? I'm not judging, just trying to get a clearer picture of what the behaviors are.

How 'bout this?

DESCRIBE

":)arling, we need to talk.  Ever since our son was born we have only been intimate on very few occasions"


EXPRESS

"I feel lonely and sad that we don't seem to have the connection we used to have before he was born and I am worried for our marriage."


ASSERT

I want you to spend more time with me alone and for us to make love more often.


REINFORCE

I would be a lot happier if I had more time with you and I feel that it will bring us closer together.


STAY MINDFUL

I'll maintain my position and avoid being distracted onto the topic of parenting with

1. Broken Record repetition

2. Ignoring attempts to side track by offering to address them another time.


APPEAR CONFIDENT

I'll try to use a... .

Confident tone of voice

Confident physical manner

Appropriate eye contact

No stammering, whispering, staring at the floor, etc... .


NEGOTIATE

I'll be willing to give a little

I'll ask: "What do you think we can do?" 

"How can we solve this problem?"

How does that sound?  (Easier typed than said!)

Have you considered taking your son to bed?  Right now there is sort of a stalemate.

Also definitely agree on lack of respect.

I would also try to work one issue at a time.  Is this or money more important?

I would suggest money first, establish respect.  Then tackle this or other issue.

FF