Dear Lea:

It seems so little that you ask for from your husband, to discuss a book the two of you read, or a movie the two of you watch… hard to  imagine you asking him to do that, to watch a movie and then talk about it, and that he refuses to do so. Hard to imagine he will decline to accommodate you in such a simple way.

You wrote above that you “want to feel listened to, understood”-

I think this is a key statement. This may have been your childhood experience with your parents who watched TV in their free time instead of attending to you, and so you weren’t listened to and understood by them. And then, you shared, that for a few years, your first husband went from I-love-you to I-don’t-love-you, suffering from deep depression, and so he was not available to listen to you either.

Did you ask your husband that the two of you watch a movie and then talk about it, and did he refuse to do so?

You wrote that he referred to your efforts to talk about feelings as “mumbo jumbo”- what specifically did he refer to as mumbo-jumbo?

anita