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I'm completely floored by the way my H opened up in our MC this evening. He admitted to going through feeling numb. He said his boss recently told him he can't get a read on my H because he doesn't show any emotion. He's always flat. I've been saying this for years. He goes through life on automatic pilot, not really thinking, feeling, or experiencing any of it.

His assignment is to think about what kinds of interactions he wants from me. What does he enjoy doing with me? He couldn't think of anything during the session.

I don't know if this applies to your H but sometimes if someone has been chronically disappointed in life, esp in childhood, maybe they never got what they wanted or needed, whether it was love or approval or affection from their parents, or material things or things from friends or even later through work etc, they might feel that nothing they do matters and nothing's ever going to work out as they want so why should they care? Sometimes this might be to avoid arguments, sometimes it avoids disappointment, sometimes it just seems most efficient. Your husband may be the kind of person who lives most in his own mind and that's where the action takes place. Once he gets into the real world he has no control and nothing seems to work out so why bother. It becomes a habit of thought like anything else. It might take some effort to get him to see that things can be different, that he may have a range of possibilities and therefore a range of reactions. But he needs to get the pilot light back on. I wonder if that can be what cheating is about sometimes, an attempt to get the pilot light back on.

Is he on an antidepressant? Specifically an SSRI? I ask because when you described your husband you described me when I was on sertraline and I was that way for years.

I quit taking it a few years ago, and it took a couple of those years for me to start "returning." I still deal with some of the lingering side effects from it. My wife constantly tells me "I'm so happy I have my husband back!"

I know they've helped a lot of people, but they did more harm than good in my case and was a pretty big factor for the state of my marriage at the time of my WW's affair. I had completely checked out. I didn't want to do anything with anyone. It was like all of the joy had been sucked out of my life, and from what I've been reading it kind of literally was. My reward system was hijacked. Because of the extra serotonin floating around in my brain my dopamine transmitters were suppressed.

I'm an audiophile with a nice audio system and I'd even stopped enjoying music. Those goosebumps I get when I hear a song I love had disappeared. That's returned now, but only in the last several months. I stopped taking it over 3 years ago.

Bond, that is my H. It comes from his childhood foo. We've known this for years. It has taken him a long time to begin to see it.

Pogre, he is not on any meds. He even said he's not depressed. He just learned very early in life that the way to be safe was to suppress himself completely.

I understand what you're saying about antidepressants. I've had chronic major depression since I was about 13. I've been on many different meds. Some helped. Some didn't. I kept going off them and would quickly crash. I was 46 when I finally accepted that I would need to take zoloft for the rest of my life.

From what I’ve learned so far, this lack of emotion – and empathy as well – is often a result of childhood neglect or trauma. When children don’t feel safe to feel, let alone express, their emotions, they tend to suppress them later in life.

I had a very dominant and ill-tempered father. As a child, my main concern was not to bother him so as not to trigger his anger. I learned that my emotions and needs were not welcome. Even today, when someone asks me how I feel or what I want in a certain situation, I often can’t tell.

I would say that your H needs to explore in IC what led him to go on autopilot instead of taking the risk of exposing his emotions. Wishing you all the best!

Yeah! I hope the momentum continues!

I relate to this btw- a lot of the struggle for me was getting to know myself in a similar way at. I think your husbands might be more profound I could have told you what I like to do with my husband, but I also understand things between you have been strained for an extended period of time, that wasn’t the case with us. But the numbing of as my default. I have had to work hard to learn to be able to turn that off and being able to cope with the feelings, anxieties, etc. I have had to also recognize over and over when I would slip back to that. Now a days I can be present in my body and check in with my needs, wants, feelings, and it has allowed me to decorate my life in a way that I don’t want to hide from it.

[This message edited by hikingout at 3:12 PM, Friday, February 13th]