Relationship Reddit Stories, OP’s wife friendzones him and then tells him she would like a platonic relationship. Want to …
hey waffle gang I do hope you’re well my name is Mark and today we’re checking out some more Reddit stories and if you do love a Reddit story why not consider and that like subscribe maybe that notification bell too and let’s crack on with today’s first story now today’s first story is titled my wife friendzoned me and wants a platonic companionship my wife 35 female and I 5 male I’ve been married for 15 years and we’ve been together for 20 years we have two kids 12 and 14 we absolutely adore and work tirelessly to provide the best possible life for them for the past 3 years things have been somewhat bumpy I understand that our kids are at an age where they require a ton of our attention and resources with school band club sports and other extracurriculars and I’m aware of the physical and emotional toll that can have on marriages however for these past 3 years my wife and I have had very little intimacy and very little sex and we’ve been trying very hard to work on that aspect of our relationship this past year has been the most difficult and by far the darkest year in our marriage we didn’t talk very much we essentially became roommates co-parenting our kids under the same roof it was very depressing and very demoralizing it was to the point where we began contemplating divorce and it became very dark and gloomy me in the household because of that we began seeking help with both individualized therapy and couples therapy and it seems to have helped some little by little we started to get along and started to have deeper conversations about what our marriage looks like and what we would love for it to look like this is where it gets tough as time passed my wife started to tell me that she was no longer in love with me and that she only saw me as a best friend that she loved me in a very platonic way and this was one of the main reasons she didn’t have any desire for intimacy and let alone sex this was very shocking to me and quite frankly I was devastated I became angry and depressed and I couldn’t fathom the thought that I was no longer wanted or desired by the person I felt completely in love with things began to deteriorate again and not long after we were back to square one I sat down with her one afternoon and had a heart to heart and began to ask questions about where the root of this problem lies and her answer was I don’t know and that I’ve have built up resentment towards you but I don’t know where it stems from as you can imagine this provides very little to know insight into how to approach this I’m puzzled I’m frustrated and I do not know what to do at this point currently we’ve arrived at a place where she says that she has no sex drive and no desire for intimacy or connection she says that all she wants is simply companionship which basically means our co-parenting roommate d Dynamic I asked her what I could possibly do or what it is about me that is so unattractive or undesirable and her response is always I don’t know she stated that she does love me but it’s not the same that she’s been feeling disconnected for years that our marriage just takes up too much work her focus is only the children for now and that my co-parenting contributions are meaningful to her in our home I’m at a loss and I’m mainly venting about my frustration it’s tough to realize that the person you love has no feelings for you I feel like at this point I’m only here to contribute financially and as a parent I feel like what she means with companionship is that she’s comfortable with the convenience of having a good father for our kids and financial contribution to the household in regard to intimacy and/ all sex she basically told me that it’s not something she’s interested in or once at this time she mentioned that the only way to get to a point of any of that is to be intoxicated which I believe is incredibly awful and very wrong I told her I do not think forcing herself to have sex or be intimate by drinking or smoking is good and I declined to be a part of that which to my surprise it upset her and made her more distant we’re both extremely honest and transparent we’ve never cheated on each other and we are always free to look through each other’s phones emails socials Etc and we hardly ever do I asked her if there was someone else and she declined honestly I believe her we then peacefully went through each other’s things and as expected it was clean we’ve always been very forward even with a hard topic so I don’t smell nor feel any fail play or infidelity am I wrong for declining to be only intimate or have sex when she’s intoxicated I’m firm on my stance have not partaken in this only when I’m high or drunk sex because it doesn’t sit well with me I do not know how to help our situation and I’m starting to become a bit anxious and desperate we’re both fairly young and healthy individuals and good-looking we both have good standing careers and are good parents I’m just not sure how our lives could have driven us to this point I’d love some outside perspective on this matter and some insight on how to address something like this it feels so awful to be unwanted and undesired by my own spouse I hate it so some of the comments were looking at the history of this and doing a bit of investigation and discovered that they were swingers in the past and op replies him we did some swinging in the past that was fun for some time we mutually decided to stop doing it and we’ve established this not the case when we were swinging however our marriage seemed to be in a good place this is something we did disclose with our couple’s therapist and made sure to included to make sure we’re not neglecting an obvious potential issue I will say I did ask my wife if what she experienced during swinging is something that has affecting her view on our relationship and she said it wasn’t our swinging experience was always together and it was very sex driven nothing really emotional or Polly truth is I have to believe her at a word I have no reason to distrust her to date she’s always been very forward and never afraid of dealing with things head on no matter how painful so people were still questioning is is this the consequences of swinging and Opie says the issue existed long before the lifestyle and then says I agree that swinging wasn’t a solution in the end never was meant to be it was more of discovering or exploring if she felt any different if that was the case we agreed we would talk about and if we arrive at that conclusion that myself is the problem and she has no problem with other men would amicably part ways however this wasn’t the case she didn’t like sex nor intimacy there either she’s very much in control of that whole swinging situation and yes I went along with it what gives it felt very organic and it was her effort if you will they discovering more and learning more about our current issue I saw it as means of learning if I’m the problem was very much ready to accept that it turns out it wasn’t the case sh a miser sounds awful I very much hate that Opie had some more information if this started when The Swinging ended Opie says finally a comment on The Swinging topic with actual insight you’re absolutely right about the fact The Swinging experience had things and changes that will impact our marriage and lives forever for example the best thing swinging Tau us even above sexual exploration was the level of transparent and open communication a it requires we would literally have mental orgasms having dialogue with such intentionality we implemented that in all our lives in areas including parenting with our children she agrees that we’re thankful for that takeaway from our swinging honestly I cannot stress it enough with people here yes we explored swinging however it was actually a positive experience when we decided to stop it was because it felt natural and organic to just do so in fact we met with a couple who we meshed super well with the night before we actually enjoyed the actual friendship and even spent time as vanilla friends that wasn’t because of something negative wife mentioned that it certainly wasn’t any better and since she’s not enjoying the sex we both agree that there’s no point to this I agreed and we moved on and we’re still friends with those people because it’s great all that said I know more often than not swinging causes massive issues however this was something we explored in pursuit of a solution to an issue that was present way before I think of it as a practical approach approach to trying to solve the problem now I’m not going to get into the whole swinging side of things I ain’t got a clue but obviously marriage takes two people to work and if she’s checked out what else is there she says that she has builtup resentment towards you but doesn’t know where it comes from it just feels like you know she’s holding something back doesn’t want to say anything but Opie says you know she’s very open up front a go-getter type person so why would she hold anything back especially when she’s telling you that she resents you that’s pretty damning in itself I don’t know I want to know what’s going on so we’re going to move on to the update which says I wanted to give you guys an update of how the therapy session with my wife went this week not sure if this is helpful or not but I took many of the responses comments and suggestions from my initial post and put together some things I wanted to discuss with our couple’s therapist to help us navigate some of the core issues that may be affecting this situation one of the main things that is the buzzword of this has been the term resentment and been really eating me up inside knowing my wife keeps telling me that she doesn’t know why she’s resentful or doesn’t know why this is affecting her emotionally or mentally I brought this up with our therapist once again and resurfaced the conversation about being married for so long 15 years and being together since we’re 14 years old a long history of growing up and how having children when she was 19 years old me 20 significantly changed the trajectory of Our Lives we experience severe poverty and many hardships in the process we essentially had zero social life for the past 10 years because we were so busy raising babies two kids now ages 12 and 14 she followed up with tons of questions directly mostly at my wife about her feelings towards this and 90% of the responses were very our kids focused it definitely felt like she was afraid of saying yes it sucked because she would feel guilt or shame because it would imply she regrets the kids I mentioned this in the session and the therapist encouraged her to look outside of the lens of being a mother and try to view it a bit more selfishly and individually it was very eye openening my wife mentioned that she was very frustrated with the fact that we did miss out on many things in life she was also very clear and saying I do not think I missed out on other partners or dating or partying but I certainly lost all my friends this was huge because one of the big pieces that caused a strain in our lives how siloed and isolated we’ve been again busy raising kids I followed up by reminding her that it’s important to have good friends and to make time for herself and her friendships for the past three plus years we’ve had multiple conversations about friends and how it is important to have them in life especially when you have similar peers that can help in many areas of life that perhaps we have no experience navigating and even simply for enjoyment it has been something my wife avoids even though she’s always been someone who needs that external stimulus the main reason for her not investing in friends or even herself has always been the kids like I mentioned earlier in this post 90% of the answers have to relate to the kids to some degree at this point in our session I started to feel like there was a a common denominator the kids in most of the frustrations and problems she was experiencing I simply asked her do you think you may be upset at me because I’m responsible for these kids in the sense that I got you pregnant so young I wasn’t wasn’t ready but she said that she was upset at me for that she also followed up with the fact that she knows that’s unreasonable because it takes two to tango I did feel like it progress because it kind of gave us something to work on and help alleviate some of these burdens so we agreed to invest more time in nurturing good friendships both together and individually towards the end of the session we began to discuss what actionable items we would take from this session at this point it was still very ambiguous and blurry as to what the outcomes were I was very direct and very forward in asking my wife what a plan moving forward notes I decided prior to the session that should my wife say the same thing about being co-parenting roommate that I would take the 180 approach and essentially do me she started basically saying the same thing that she doesn’t have any desire to be intimate or sexual with me as of now that she loves me immensely and she feels bad for not being there for me as mentioned in my first post I also brought up brief swinging that happened to which for the 50th time said it wasn’t a problem I agree with her on this this was a somewhat mechanical approach for a solution to a problem that was very much in existence when we tried this we both really have no issue to this we know it happened we tried it and mutually stopped and turned the page I also brought up other life events that may cause resentment and really we ended up not getting anywhere else as far as the root for resentment which was discouraging I then basically expressed to my wife that I would not be okay with that arrangement I told her that I’ve really done everything I can and that this issue really has reached a point where it has nothing to do with me or require me to do anything that I’m currently not doing I was very direct in saying that I will not be accept in this Dynamic and that I need to be with someone who is actively involved in our marriage works towards resolutions maintaining an active intimacy and sexual relationship I expressed how I’m not going to be a convenience and that there was more to life than being roommates and co-parents I made sure she knows I love her dearly and I do want this to work for the better I also told her that I’m fully committed to this marriage so as long as she is as well and that if she wasn’t it’s okay however will not be part of something where these efforts are not reciprocated I told her I have no plans of leaving and I do not want a divorce however I made it clear that if this Dynamic continues that divorce will be the only outcome of course there were tears involved and it was a very Bleak and sad ending to the session still nothing was said and I walked out very discouraged and very determined to start working on the 180 as soon as we left the room it’s painful and very difficult because much of the 180 requires you to be very short and cold and transactional the saddest part is realizing this Dynamic already is very cold and transactional here is where it gets very interesting I started working on implementing many of the 180 recommendations that same day I mentioned to my wife that hey things are going to be a bit different moving forward I’m going to honor her roommate and Co parent Dynamic without reproach and that it should be no mistake that I’m not happy here and I’m never going to be okay with it I’m done working on it if she wasn’t going to work on it she agreed and went to bed I started to build distance and started to basically focus on myself very short and transactional she asked for help on some of her personal things to which I declined and it really shocked her she was upset saying I was being petulent I explained to her that she is now fully in charge of her own life and her own issues we didn’t talk all day and we only spoke when necessary few days I keep this going and she’s very visibly upset and stressed I typically react to that with gestures of help or nurturing but I didn’t this time that night she was crying telling me she’s stressed and she thinks something is wrong with me because I’m indifferent I simply listened and I told her that this is the dynamic she proposed and I’m simply much like her taking care of myself and focusing on myself I’m not going to lie it’s been very hard to be cold and distant because as I mentioned before I love her and I wish I could hold her and love on her however I know this is somewhat manipulative in a way just to get away and still keep me in the friend zone so I’ve been staying the course we’re now going on a week of this 18 180 and let’s just say there have been many changes on her side I think she starting to realize that there is more to me than just friends and co-parenting I sent her a text a few days ago essentially itemizing bills and separating the financial responsibilities 50/50 and she lost her [ __ ] she basically told me it was out of left field which I responded hey friends go in 50/50 and as your friend I expect nothing less this was very eye openening because it gave me a glimpse of I’m really being taken for granted and how a level of comfort and convenience at my expense has really overlooked I pushed through anyways and basically told her that this is the new Dynamic she asked for and that it’s still a bargain because she would still have 100% if was on her own I’ll wrap up with this while the 180 has been working in many different areas I’m still very much sad about the overall situation there have been many eye openening statements being said and realization that has not been Pleasant to encounter it has also sparked new energy and new efforts on her side as well she’s definitely seeking to talk to me more often and while it’s hard to turn down I hope if things improve this continues to happen I’ve also noticed that she’s making more time for herself aside from being a mom which is huge because she pretty much neglected herself for years I’m very pleased seeing her be more herself My Hope Is that as we work on ourselves the marriage improves there really is no telling at this point where this will go we are very much cordial and amicable even to this day and that’s a very good sign boundaries are set and expectations are very clear and I feel that no matter that outcome I’ll be at peace with everything that has been done we’re still going to continue continue the couple’s therapist until we either rekindle our marriage or end up in divorce I feel like having this non-biased third party really helps as a witness and a guide through this no matter what I will always love my wife however I will not participate in a sexless intimacy less marriage because we both deserve better thank you all for the kind words and recommendations and feedback this will be my last post on this topic and I wish you all the best there was a couple of comments after this which op resp responds to so cat’s Gambit says so I’m going to assume that your wife has a lucrative job and you’re both going 50/50 on child care as you both work and share children cuz otherwise this is just plain financially abusive and if you’re planning on saying I won’t pay the bills unless you have sex with me sexually abusive as well assuming that is the case and you aren’t a total piece of [ __ ] I’m actually interested in how this works out for you I feel like I’m in an unstated similar situation we both work and have Blended finances but we don’t go to bed together or eat together have barely any intimacy a kiss or two hugs every couple of days and spend maybe eight hours a week together just the three of us him me and the toddler even less just the two of us maybe 3 hours a week otherwise he’s on his game or out playing sports watching YouTube or whatever else he does it barely feels like a friend situation let alone a marriage I’m curious how she handles it as the spouse that presumably was pulling away first hope you keep us updated hope he say says yes we both have degrees good careers and while I make significantly more money the salary is very proficient and above average the 50/50 was not to [ __ ] nor hurt her financially that is cruel but mostly to send a message on what a roommate Dynamic looks like in the real world I really dislike how many people immediately jump to conclusions about the finances as a way of manipulating her it’s not the case at all plenty of money left over after bills however 50/50 means she has less whatever money and the understanding that roommates share everything equally part of this 180 approach we did everything together and with our kids we always saw ourselves as a unit that do things together both alone and with the kids too that’s changed now where I’m choosing to focus on more independent types of pastimes and focus that is what has sparked a reaction and realization of there’s more than just roommates here the loan Jackal says how does one dump half of the household expenses on the other person if they share a bank account or are your finances kept separately just curious how this would work if applied to my life Opie says excellent question we shared everything the proposed 50/50 was suggesting we place the necessary amount to pay the bills in the same account and any leftover money can be deposited to a new account I think this is why she was very upset she felt like a huge loss of control knowing she won’t be able to monitor my finances also she felt a huge loss in her leftover money with this Arrangement and saw that I would keep significantly more of my own this is still being worked out because I think she has calling my bluff here but my plan is to notify her next week as I modify my direct deposit and open a new account it will definitely be more real there to be clear for all the trolls here yes she’ll have less leftover money after responsibilities and it’s still enough to live on example for reference assuming I make $3,000 a month she makes $1,000 a month response abilities are $11,000 a month so she’d contribute 500 and I would contribute 500 whereas before she would contribute only 250 this is the last comment I’ll add regarding money and finances she’s fine and she’s not hurting I promise so someone asked what if she leaves for another man Opie says interesting she has no shortage of men hitting on her and we’re by no means jealous people I’ve witnessed this multiple times and her reactions are somewhat indifferent I will say if another man for her was the answer she’d tell me or she’d have some inkling Maybe there’s no telling but I think the problem is deeper than superficial attention from a different person and you might be right and if this is the case so be it however I’ll live with peace knowing I left no stone left unturned crazy thought I know I’d have been disappointed and saddened if she left for another man if she did leave for another man that would accept the bare minimum but I’d also feel peace knowing it’s not all my fault I know I’m responsible in some way to some degree that’s just marriage I know sadness and depressing will creep but we’re both overcome but if this does happen at least there will be clear reasons and clarity as to why it did also I know for a fact that she wouldn’t cheat we’re both very blunt and open and transparent she would definitely tell me that she wants to step out of our marriage before it actually happens as would I we owe ourselves disres for each other and we actively practice it I’m getting from that that the main reason that this is all happening and the resentment is because basically their kids young and they had no life in the background didn’t get to live pretty much but there was one comment below that who said this Rel this relationship’s just on life support and that’s the way it kind of felt it just felt like a a slowly declining relationship and you’re just dragging out the inevitable and you know with the potential of it just turning nasty with additional resentment towards one another especially with all the finances and stuff and My worry is how that’s going to affect the children you know kids pick up on this kind of thing especially at 12 and 14 years old they’re going to see this I think it’s just it would be time to just stop this especially for the children’s benefit they’re going to be seeing this and I just think it just sounds so unhealthy I mean are you guys happy with the way things are going it certainly doesn’t sound like it and like I said the kids are going to see it and if one day wife turns around and says oh I do want this to work are you going to trust her or you just going to think oh she just wants things to go back to how they were before maybe find financially it just feels like the marriage has been soured so I don’t I can’t see any way back from that oh Deary me what do you guys make of this situation what are your thoughts on it do you think it’ll work out in any way can it work out uh let me know your thoughts down in the comments below and just a huge thank you from the bottom of my heart for getting involved in today’s stories your love your support your time always means the absolute world to me so thank you so so much and hopefully I’ll see you in the next one take care and much love …