1aokgal

Hi Baroness..

I know how difficult it is to live day to day with a man you love and you can't reach out and become close to him intimately. Since you are not his good realtive, mother or cousin, it is hard to be affectionate with a pat and platitudes. He tries to pacify you and avoid conflict. Since he is not
the big communicater, you still have the mystery about what goes on with him. You feel a bit more injured from these efforts perhaps, to fake out everything is alright..when it is far from that.

That is a hard position to be in, but I will tell you that little verbal confrontation works like a hit and run. There might be some satisfaction for a second, but you both need peace so you can schedule time together without performance anxiety, stress. The longer is the space between your intimacy, the harder to breach the bitterness as time passes.

A similar situation is that my husband always puts his arms around me and tells me daily he loves me. Sometimes it is hard not to reach out, give him a wack and say, "What planet do you live on?" He wants to reassure me but it does not make it easier, does it? A passionate person wants a whole relationship and not a sham. I think confrontations now will not keep your space open to talk about the nice things you do have together.

I would say bide your time to a more pleasant moment when you have time to talk, and you open the issue by saying, "I feel this way or that." you say "You do this or you do that"..you will have conflict. Your man is not one to talk, without corralling him in a really nice moment. Keep the talk to what he sees for the two of you, if this continues. I wonder what he might say, if asked?
You want to let him know what you expect and what are your hopes.

It would be good if you could set a night as a "date" or plan to be intimate on a certain day. Maybe you can pin him down to some schedule that doesn't involve your TV set. If the two of you could just get together for a nice evening and without licquor involved.

On the house painting he does free. He may feel it is OK to give his services free, but it would seem to me that isn't help to your finances.
When you make plans to create your items, don't extend yourself with a lot of expenses. Remember there are items in the second hand shop that can be cut for fabric and used for pennies.
I made some great stuff with recycled fabrics. The hardest thing for you is to keep yourself on track to so your time together is better than him staring for hours at TV, while you occupy yourself in another room. Maybe you go for a walk and just spend time together.
Oh, wouldn't it be nice to turn back the clock when things were easy.