Starting Over?

Well, we have found ourselves in quite an interesting situation.

Last night (Sunday), there was quite a bit of talk about our lack of intimacy lately. As I recovered from my usual bit of turmoil, I read a few articles that said in 20-25% of marriages, the wife has a higher sex drive than the husband. So we may or may not actually be a part of that statistic. Yubo says it's just the stress of work that's really been getting to him. I think it could be that, along with a number of other factors -- though I mostly put it on the fact that he's not as physically attracted to me as he used to be. It really is a fact, and I've somewhat come to terms with that.

Anyhow....

Today (Monday), I launched into a related discussion with Yubo. Thankfully I did this with a very level head and mostly objective attitude, so I managed to get some pretty good answers out of him.

It turns out that some suspicions were correct, and Yubo really was not ready to get married when we did. He felt pressure from all over, and with his personality type of wanting to please as many people as possible, he didn't give his uneasiness enough voice and married me much sooner than he really wanted to. Now, he did say that he was certain it would be me that he was going to marry, it just didn't happen in the time frame he had in his head.

I said that was a very good thing to know, as I now feel that is a contributing factor to the struggles we've faced these first 9 months of marriage.

Recently, and especially with the added stress of what's been going on at work, he's really distanced himself from me. Normally I would complain and be all hurt over it, but today I feel magically separated from the situation. I can look at what's been happening and accept it as the reality of our relationship. Of course I would still like to figure out what we need to do in order to have a happy and successful marriage, but for the moment I'm freed from hurt feelings.

I brought up a few possibilities about our current relational status, and we have yet to determine if any of them are actually accurate:

1. Our relationship has become an obligation rather than a choice. (This is from our getting married sooner than he wanted to.)
2. We are like an arranged marriage, and just need to learn how to love each other again. (This stems from the idea of our relationship being an obligation.)

Don't misunderstand! It's not really that we don't love each other anymore. It's a little more that our love for each other has changed a bit from before. It's one of those, "It's not bad; it's different," kind of things. But perhaps our love has gone in a direction that it wasn't really supposed to -- a little backwards into a friendship or generally caring kind of love instead of going deeper into a romantic kind of love.

We've gotten so distant that I wonder how well we even know each other anymore. I feel like our knowledge of each other is just from college, back when we were really interested in each other. It's like learning from an outdated textbook. So if #2 is accurate, we just need a refresher course.

We're going to revisit this discussion in a day or two to allow Yubo to process what has been said and discovered.

One thing that does frighten me a little bit is how I'm reacting to all of this. I feel my heart has closed a little bit just to protect me. It's ready to launch all the way back into acquaintance/friendship mode. Too drastic! But I feel that's something that will help me get control over my desire for him.

Anyway, it's still all observation and speculation. I don't know if and how he's praying, but I'm praying that God securely become the center of our relationship -- I feel like He never really was, even after the wedding. We need to get our priorities straight, and fast.