Dear Lea:

Your husband doesn’t like to talk “mumbo jumbo”, that is, beyond the practical issues of the day. Your first husband, on the other hand, talked a lot: “He would go thru weeks of saying he thought he loved me again followed by weeks of telling me he didn’t love me.”

I love you- I don’t love you- I love you- I don’t… no wonder you came out of that marriage “mentally exhausted and shattered”.

And no wonder, you welcomed the no-talking character of your next husband: you welcomed the silence, the calm and stability in it (“He was -and is- stable, calm”).

That silence, calm, predictability was welcomed shortly after the turmoil of the first marriage ending. But over time, you got bored, understandably. The side-effect of such silence is a sense of deadness. When you talked with the co-worker, you felt ALIVE.

As the social animals that we are we need connection with others, and as the thinking animals that we are, we need connection, most of us, beyond casual association, as what you experience in your current marriage.

Your husband, reads to me, had significant negative experience with past connections, most likely with his parents. His solution was to focus elsewhere- work. He is comfortable with this solution and is very unlikely to give that “mumbo jumbo” another try.

In comparison to the first marriage, to that noise, the silence of your second marriage was a welcomed relief. But since time has passed, and you had the alive-feeling talking with the co-worker, in comparison to this new experience, the silence of your current marriage is no longer welcomed.

What do you think at this point?

anita