Spreadsheet Man
My husband [M26] sent me [F26] an immature, inflammatory email as I was driving to the airport for a 10-day work trip. Now he has cut contact.
My husband and I have been together for 5 years, married for 2 of those years. We just bought a house 5 months ago. No kids yet. Our lives have been crazy busy though. We spent all spring renovating our new house. At my job I was given nearly double my usual workload after some of my colleagues were laid off. I gained some weight in the winter and have been busting my ass at the gym to get rid of it.
Yesterday morning, while in a taxi on the way to the airport, Husband sends a message to my work email which is connected to my phone. He’s never done this, we always communicate in person or by text. I open it up, and it’s a sarcastic diatribe basically saying he won’t miss me for the 10 days I’m gone. Attached is a SPREADSHEET of all the times he has tried to initiate sex since June 1st, with a column for my “excuses”, using verbatim quotes of why I didn’t feel like having sex at that very moment. According to his ‘document’, we’ve only had sex 3 times in the last 7 weeks, out of 27 “attempts” on his part.
This is a side of him I have never seen before - bitter, immature, full of hatred. In person, he’d been acting normal the whole time, maybe a little standoff-ish in the last week. Completely out of left field. Our sex life HAS tapered in the last few months, but isn’t that allowed? We are adults leading busy, stressful lives. I cook for him, I do his laundry, I keep our house clean and tidy. It’s not like our sex life was going to be this way FOREVER, it was a temporary slow-down due to extenuating circumstances.
I immediately tried phoning him 3-4 times before getting on the plane - no answer. When I landed in my destination city, I tried calling 2 more times - no answer. I texted him saying we needed to talk, and he needed to call me at his earliest convenience. No response. He’s never intentionally ignored my communications before. I pretty much stayed inside my hotel all evening waiting by the phone, then cried myself to sleep.
It’s now morning and he still hasn’t contacted me. I am supposed to be out visiting clients for the next 9 days on behalf of my company, and I am an emotional wreck. Why is he putting me through this? What the hell am I supposed to do?
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Red Response
You guys think this was an attempt for the husband to seduce OP? The email is that of a man who is equally desperate and angry. A man who encountered so much unacknowledged rejections that he needs to count them.
Let’s put it this way, he started documenting sex attempts 7 weeks ago. When do you think the sex actually ‘tapered off’? I’m guessing several months before that. I really don’t believe was as out of the blue as OP would like us believe.
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Blue Response
For the sake of your sanity in dealing with clients for nine days, reply back with an email. But a nice one. Even if his email was pretty lame, he is probably fearing that the past 7 weeks are not only temporary but a new way of things.
Tell him you love him, things have been crazy with all of the stuff going on, but you will work it out. And for your sake, even though you guys have a lot of stuff going on, you have to enjoy life. Make evenings together “your thing”. Make dinner after the gym but leave him the dishes while you go and take a nice shower, get into something comfortable and just relax and enjoy your night together. Watch TV, have sex, snuggle. Married life gets busy. When my kids were little my grandmother told me that housework will always wait for you. I always spent evenings with my kids making dinner, giving them a bath, reading to them etc. Your evenings together are as important as anything else in life, maybe more so. Cut yourself some slack, and him too.
This is the best response. Husband is in a crisis and emotional. Best to take the high road, acknowledge his concerns and try to diffuse the situation. Getting upset will just increase the drama. What he has done is childish. He needs to get the tantrum out of his system so they can take the next steps.
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Next steps… what a wonderful marriage, due for a round of layoffs
For more Dystopia, enjoy one that doesn’t exist, but could, in the future.
