seems that if you really want that intimacy you keep talking about, you can't play defense at all.

i've never gotten anywhere with my partner by keeping myself at a safe distance. this made some of our fights pretty spectacular - we live in portland; i think you could have seen lights on the horizon.. in tillamook.

we've been together over ten years. it's been stormy at times. but all the edges of our arguments have smoothed edges now. they're so familiar, we know the terrain of every one. so even though our emotions are still in it, the hurt is mostly gone. the landscape has changed, evened out, worn down.

take off the gloves and give up the anger. anger is only protecting you from real pain, and you have to feel that pain, over and over and over, to get used to it. not to make it less, not to make it better. just to get used to being in pain. being in love is exactly like being in pain, because you are exposed - all the time.

and it's just as great and as terrible as it sounds.

Someone once told me, "Don't just take the gloves off. Step completely out of the ring." I've tried it and it works. When there's no one for my husband to fight with, the fighting stops. It took some getting used to because I'm not generally one to turn away but the more I did it, the more naturally it came and now I can walk away from any situation which I know I'm not going to be able to change. I've said I'm sorry. I've proven I'm sorry. That's all I can do.

I haven't ever been in your situation, well no one's ever been in your exact situation...but:

Talking about it is the only thing that works for us. Honesty about your feelings, perceptions, needs, wants. You can assume you know what the other person is thinking and feeling and after so many years together you may be right in your assumptions. But you might not be. Give each other a chance to talk about it often and it will get easier.

If you tend to use "You do this" or "You don't do that" openers, try "I feel that..." or "I understand it like this..."

This all sounds so simple; I don't mean to imply you haven't tried this all before. But something's not working.

Just curious: What's going to keep you together if you don't want put forth the effort to communicate honestly? Isn't that intimacy on the most basic level?

Good luck. And try hard.

Pete, why are you two still married?

Unless your posts are the equivalent of electronic abdominal crunches--that is, you're just working everything out on the screen--life really is too short to suffer the way you make it sound.

I'm telling you, marriage is hard, but not THAT hard. I can say this because it took me about 30 years to figure it out. If you have to work so hard at something, there is no time or space to lighten up--ever.

So work at it, try to be happy, bend for each other, but good god, get out if you can't make it worth doing.

My ever-so-humble opinion.