Trying to understand my husbands mindset

Hello,

Husband and I have been married almost 11 years. We met in high school, got married at 20 years old. He’s never been one to argue or have strong emotions about anything, but the past few years (since we had our daughter) anytime I express frustrated feelings or something he’s doing that is upsetting me or saying we need to work on our marriage he doesn’t even try to take any responsibility for his part, or ask how he can help. I feel like he’s just blowing off my concerns and feelings as being a woman or something and thus he doesn’t have to do any work on his part. He said he would go to counseling but A) doesn’t think we need it and B) I would have to take the initiative. I would have to find the counselor, make the appointments, make sure we got a sitter, etc. I already do all the other housekeeping on top of my job. He works a lot and I’m very grateful but I have the brunt of literally everything else. He never thinks anything is wrong with our daughter, me, our marriage, even when I have a concern about the damn dog he always says “it’s fine” so basically if I care about it I have to do all the work to fix it, because he won’t ever acknowledge a problem exists. I wonder if he has strong denial about pretty much everything out of fear? It’s a trait that runs in his family pretty heavily. His father is exactly the same way.

I don’t know what to do. Nothing about him or our marriage is divorce worthy in my opinion, but we don’t have a lot of connection and love anymore since our daughter was born. I understand that since I’m the one expressing concerns, naturally I would have to do more of the work in fixing it but he never ever confides in me about his own issues if he even has any. He’s always calm, always even keeled. Kind of like a robot. I don’t know how to work with that. I always end up looking like the crazy one because I have what I consider to be normal human reactions and emotions. Anyone have a partner like this?

Submitted August 23, 2019 at 12:10AM

Hello,Husband and I have been married almost 11 years. We met in high school, got married at 20 years old. He’s never been one to argue or have strong emotions about anything, but the past few years (since we had our daughter) anytime I express frustrated feelings or something he’s doing that is upsetting me or saying we need to work on our marriage he doesn’t even try to take any responsibility for his part, or ask how he can help. I feel like he’s just blowing off my concerns and feelings as being a woman or something and thus he doesn’t have to do any work on his part. He said he would go to counseling but A) doesn’t think we need it and B) I would have to take the initiative. I would have to find the counselor, make the appointments, make sure we got a sitter, etc. I already do all the other housekeeping on top of my job. He works a lot and I’m very grateful but I have the brunt of literally everything else. He never thinks anything is wrong with our daughter, me, our marriage, even when I have a concern about the damn dog he always says “it’s fine” so basically if I care about it I have to do all the work to fix it, because he won’t ever acknowledge a problem exists. I wonder if he has strong denial about pretty much everything out of fear? It’s a trait that runs in his family pretty heavily. His father is exactly the same way.I don’t know what to do. Nothing about him or our marriage is divorce worthy in my opinion, but we don’t have a lot of connection and love anymore since our daughter was born. I understand that since I’m the one expressing concerns, naturally I would have to do more of the work in fixing it but he never ever confides in me about his own issues if he even has any. He’s always calm, always even keeled. Kind of like a robot. I don’t know how to work with that. I always end up looking like the crazy one because I have what I consider to be normal human reactions and emotions. Anyone have a partner like this?