The Exact Nature of My Cowardice?

I've been thinking more about my last post - more accurately put, my thinking has continued beyond it.

I started thinking about how much I hide from people; how I am not "myself" in so many situations. It's much much better than it used to be, but nonetheless I essentially play a role with my friends and my family.

With my marriage, it's a bit different. I dont think I play any role at all, but I struggle with a fantasy life that wont seem to let me out of its clutches. I want to be close to my wife. I want us to have good communication and great sex (at least on occasion) and I want us to set a good example of intimacy with our kids. I don't feel we have these things and so I fill the gap with fantasies of women behaving as if I am desirable. There, I admitted it.

Anyway, thinking about that fantasy ... addiction?... led me to do a little Googling [how not to be a coward> how to have more courage, then; how to be myself, then, I began reflecting on my fantasies and poor relationships since childhood. Starting with my imaginary friends as a toddler, then moving forward through grade school, adolescence, adulthood and into my 30's, I could see a very very strong pattern of having a dual life. I'm still nogt sure how I got to the following, I must have remembered a diagnosis from 10 yrs ago, which I thought was bullshit... personality disorders.

This page's collection of various types of personality disorders seems like a menu of my chronic problems. 

Clearly, I need treatment and yet, clearly, I am striving to embrace reality more and more. Simultaneous to this, I emailed my wife with this:

and also let me please say that I love you dearly and the reasons why I am so sorry for my behavior and why this can feel like "torture" is because I love you dearly. Like the song says, "I love you more today than yesterday - but not as much as tomorrrrroooooww."

On Mon, Jul 15, 2013 at 1:47 PM, I wrote wrote:

Hi - you asked a big question yesterday that I keep wanting to answer: "what do I want?"

I guess what I want most is for us to embrace reality - and ideally, I want that to lead to us being happy together and having a great marriage/family. 

I'm sorry my approach was so upsetting, honey. I guess I am just sad and scared and filled with lots of emotion about the insights I gained from talking with Eugene (re: why Jenna has closed off comms with me/us) and Ken (how his marriage has so much intimacy). 

There are things that just dont add up for me, for example:

- why the only way we can have emotional/ physical intimacy is under such high standards (impractical?) of low stress + high energy + a gentle approach + a positive context + no pressure? 

- why you say you have no secrets but then say you dont feel you should have to communicate with me. 

- why you say you love me and cannot imagine life without me, but then dont incorporate my feedback or make our relationship a priority. 

- why you say you want us to be closer, but dont treat my emails about us seriously. 

The only reason that makes sense in my mind is that I am not worth it. And, as I have said, there's lots of evidence that I am indeed NOT worth it:

- my anger

- my inconsistencies

- my lack of following through on promises

- my treatment of you in front of the kids

- the ways I have embarrassed you with your friends and family and work colleagues.

- my low support of your interests and needs (keeping the house clean, helping out with house projects/ kids' appointments, etc)

- and I'm sure there's a lot more we could add to this list. 

So, what do I want?  I just want us to embrace reality. If I am a shit, then say so. Tell me it'll never get better. Dont lead me on. And, let me do what I need to heal and take care of myself instead of us both living in the this limbo. 

From there, we can agree on what makes the most sense. If you dont want to be 'friends' ok fine - what do you want instead? Let's have an adult conversation about what's actually possible and come to some actual conclusion we can (at least mostly) live with. I am not trying to end our marriage, honey. But, I cannot keep up this charade that we are actually in a real relationship. In my mind, we basically coexist together. We're roommates and you let me hang out with your friends and hook up with you from time to time because it's less work than having to deal with all my BS and the associated fall out from telling me what's actually in your heart and mind about me/us. 

I'm so sorry. I'll apologize for my behavior and my actions for the rest of my life, because I basically took something that was really good - our special connection  - and slowly poisoned it and made this unhealthy, weird thing, I think. 

I warned you this would happen. I told you back when you were preggers with Fia that if we didnt sort things out we'd become strangers. I feel like we're more than that, but my point still stands. I just want you to please, please, please be straight with me. Just tell me that I'm a huge disappointment or whatever and we can then potentially work things out from there. Like you said, I am getting a little better. Maybe there are rewards or something with each step we take together?

I just want you to be happy as for me, I just want to NOT go insane with wondering and trying to figure out what the best angles are only to come up short again and again with you because of the above bullets I listed. I am soooo tired of being lonely and sad and depressed. It takes such great energy to be shut down and sad and I dont want to be that anymore. 

Please stop torturing me and put me out of my misery, honey!!!  Please???