Couples therapy stretches out before me like a never-ending road, barely undulating, ascending only the gentlest slopes, never turning corners that so desperately need to be turned. There is no question the road goes somewhere better than our present location...but only eventually.

Indeed, the question before me is one of time. Am I willing to invest a few good years — my fleeting youth — in building a better relationship with my troubled husband?

No doubt such an investment has the potential to pay off big. A couple that goes through hardship and works together to find a solution can come out the other side stronger than ever.

But do I want to sacrifice the open window of opportunities in the present for pay off so far down the road?

Today in therapy it was clear Rob is capable of making breakthroughs that will allow him insight and room to find new behaviors that will make him easier to live with. But the more progress he makes, I'm worried the bigger the expectation (on his part and our therapist's) that I should stick around for the pay off.

A kindler, gentler, better communicator of a husband would be great, but sticking around for it to come to fruition — in what? two or three years? — will be the tough part.

Today I'm confident about being here, doing the work with him. Tomorrow? If my track record is to believed, tomorrow will be another story entirely. I'm taking every day as it comes, and perhaps one day it will feel like time to make a decision one way or another. Not today.

This weekend a scientific conference created the opportunity for a convergence of Rob's old friends. Once a close-knit group of graduate school students, these men and women pursued jobs in their particular specialties and settled in various far-flung states and countries.

I had long ago grown close to them through Rob, but given our recent troubles, this time they didn't feel like my old friends. They were his.

It was tough to dutifully play the part of doting wife as brunches with other couples turned into walks around the old neighborhood, drinks at the pub, and eventually dinner as well. That's many hours of reminiscing and, eventually, tired smiles...

Talk focused on weddings, births, and — this gang's ultimate milestone — the defense seminars that concluded their graduate studies. It took me back to my first couple years with Rob, when every few months we were participating in the celebration of someone's landmark event.

We pub-crawled after friends' dissertation defenses, hosted graduation parties, and traveled the country for weddings. Our courtship was lined with others' milestones.

As the frequency of the rites of passage dwindled — once everyone had wed, settled into jobs, and had their first children — our sense of couplehood faltered.

Was it the ritual reinforcement of our roles within this community that kept us together? Years later, everyone else is going strong. Rob and I, now isolated from the community we were born into as a couple, don't seem to have our own glue. 


As any sometime-reader here knows, I feel guilty and ungrateful for wanting to leave Rob after he has been such a great comfort and support when I've needed it.

Recently a reader asked when Maya was going to start loving Maya. Indeed! As I pine over the hurt I might cause this nice man, and reconsider leaving him, I'm in danger of sacrificing my worth, potential, and dreams to protect his feelings. Not much self-love in evidence here.

And the fact is, I have done just as much for Rob as he has for me. Why don't I give myself that credit? While he helped me through depression, showed me how to get on track with money, and supported me through my parents' divorce and father's illness, I helped him leave an anxiety-provoking job and make a very successful career change. I refused to allow him to continue neglecting his health and made him start visiting a doctor and dentist regularly. I strongly encouraged him to find hobbies (he is now well into Tai Chi) after many of his friends relocated out-of-state and he was drinking alone and heavily. Most importantly, I started him on his pursuit of therapy, from which he is reaping benefits. That's not nothing!

But rather than growing together through our mutual support during life trials, we seem to have become two new people who don't need the other the way we did when we first married. It's a terrible irony that we helped each other grow and change, and now our new personalities don't seem to need what the other can offer.

Is it time to accept we've changed, say thank you, and move on? One thing is clear, I will continue this investigation with a healthy dose of self love. Maya comes first.

I've been thinking about Rob's and my past a lot lately. Dating him was fun.

He was a great comfort, maybe because he presented solutions to my biggest problems. I felt isolated and a bit depressed; he helped strengthen my connection to mutual friends. I was living paycheck to paycheck; he fronted me cash when things got tight. I craved a love connection; he was available, and horny as hell.

Indeed, before dating, in the very beginning, what is now a quagmire was just pure and simple lust.

Rob was in the midst of a rash of one-night stands when we hooked up. I didn't know this, and expected a repeat performance. He complied, but it didn't evolve quickly enough for me.

Rather than building a connection, we just sort of repeated the one-night stand. I tired of meeting for what was only pre-sex drinks. "Whoa," I said, and announced I was done unless we added dinner or a movie to the agenda. He balked, and I figured that was the end of it.

Instead, Rob called a few days later to ask me out to a movie. He was probably just giving me what I wanted so he could get an easy fix. (He says he doesn't remember.)

In any case, I so desperately sought validation then that I took his invitation as a declaration of intention. He heard me, I thought. I had been deemed worthy of attention beyond the bedroom. We started dating.

Of course, dating gave way to marriage, and along the way the sex waned and now we have none at all. What is a confused marriage could have been a cherished memory of a fun fling, no strings attached.

I wonder if my self-love were enough back then, would I not have caved to his too-little, too-late attention, and would I have left it at that?

Rob has a boyish charm. Soon after we met, I came to adore him. But his childlike approach to the world later became a turn-off.

Imagine a guy who excitedly coos at cats and dogs, exclaiming "hello!" in a loud and squeaky baby voice to all that pass by. Sweet. But he also has a cache of "punny" one-liners that by now I've heard two million times each.

And there are the dances — his repertoire includes the "I got a raise" dance, "It's the weekend" dance, and "We're going on vacation" dance. You get the idea. It's as if he were a 10-year-old performing for his aunts and uncles after a holiday meal. Constantly.

While this was fine when I was younger and — let's face it — a bit messed up and needing attention myself, now it's terribly annoying. Of course, the behavior belies a lack of confidence. The boyish charm disarms and deflects attention from his true feelings and anxiety. I see that, and I have great compassion for his discomfort. But at our age?

I want a partner who can stand next to me to meet life head on. I'm all for celebrating with childlike excitement, but I also want to be able to enjoy dinner parties next to a confident and calm man capable of sophisticated conversation.

I don't want to journey through life like a mother trailing a child entertainer by the hand. I want a man I don't have to raise myself. Cute boy or confident man? I have a strong attraction to the latter. Can you blame me?

I avoided couples therapy for years, worried I'd be found the villain in the story. After all, I am the one who feels dissatisfied. The recent dearth of sex is due to my disinterest. And while I can no sooner fathom sticking my tongue in his mouth than licking a tiger's butt, Rob says he'd love to make it with me. Ew!

I quietly toyed with the idea leaving, and I brought up the idea of trial separation. I'm the one who dreams of being single and exploring the world anew, with no ring.

I imagine simple luxuries will be more meaningful because I will be affording them (if barely) on my own. My apartment will be humble, but it will be mine — no husband in sight to subsidize fancy meals out, fundraising dinners, or even hardcover paperbacks from the bookstore! (Back to waiting for the paperback releases.)

The way therapy played out, however, I saw how we've equally damaged "us." Petty, but this realization saves me a bit of guilt and stress. And, my care for Rob ever-present despite our troubles, I was relieved to tell him the hurtful details of my side of the story in a safe place where he was supported by a listener who had the protection of his ego in mind perhaps more than I.

We've had only one session, but it was promising. Not because it set our relationship on the road to recovery, but because it revealed a path toward a better us — separate or apart.

If any of you fellow contemplators are similarly avoiding "the couch," I challenge you to reconsider.

A year ago Rob was not communicating at a level you could call anywhere near sophisticated — he regressed to silly behavior when he wanted my attention, drank in excess, and had no hobbies or interests about which we could chat. He was boring, our relationship was unfulfilling, and I was not getting anything I needed from him. And I told him so.

Since then, Rob took up Tai Chi, entered into both group and individual therapy, and started learning a new language. Wow. Impressive growth and changes. He slips up sometimes (binges, spends days playing computer games) but in many ways is a changed man.

Such are the actions of a husband who is trying to please his wife, indeed, who is fighting to save his marriage.

So why, now that he has attended to the sorts of things I had a problem with a year ago, am I just as unfulfilled, just as uninterested in him? I had thought so hard about what I wanted to ask him for. Now that he has given it to me, it's clear I missed the mark in making my requests.

This line of questioning always leads to "Is it all me? Am I just not capable of happiness?" Perhaps. But I should note that I have not been sitting back making Rob do all the work. I too work with a therapist. I too have made efforts to attend to his needs that were not being met. It's just so frustrating to think all our work is for naught.

Over the next two days I have three appointments to see apartments I might potentially move into without Rob. I'm counting on this drastic step-time apart-to give me some answers.

It's 3 p.m. on Saturday. I slept in a bit late, but I've cleaned the kitchen and bathroom, listened to a lecture while working out at the gym, returned books to the library, fed the cat, and settled down to read the opening passages of the novel I chose for my book club's next meeting. I have a long to-do list this weekend, but there's time, and I'm feeling pretty good about my accomplishments so far.

This is when Rob finds me tucked into my favorite rocking chair by the window, tea in hand, nose in the book, and says "So, what are you going to do today?"

Grrr. When he asks what I'm going to do halfway through an already productive day, he implies I've done nothing of worth yet. He does this a lot — with a short quip he devalues my interests and efforts.

As I try to explain for the umpteenth time why that's kind of a shitty thing to say, I have an a-ha moment.

I realize he isn't judging me for an unproductive day; he is upset that I haven't yet done one thing in particular. Namely, I haven't paid attention to him.

And, in fact, you could say I am acting as if we already live apart.

This is when I know the trial separation we've been discussing can't come soon enough. Given money issues and other logistics, it's necessarily a few months off. I probably owe him the kindness of acknowledgement in the meantime. Better add him to my to-do list.

It's been a month since Valentine's Day, my last big effort to reignite something of substance with Rob, to save us from demise due to indifference.

Rob and I never celebrated Valentine's Day, even in the best of times. We just weren't interested in forced romanticism, we said. Instead, we named it "New Leaf Day," and each year endeavored to turn one over in our relationship.

As the rest of the world chose stock-in-trade overtures in form of chocolate, flowers, and extravagant meals, we acknowledged each other mindfully and with awareness to our true situation. We dealt in cards promising support and small gifts of gratitude for the other's contribution to the troubled relationship.

Until this year. I made Rob dinner, wrote him a card with a sincere pledge of effort to improve our situation, and presented him with a Buddha statue in the Earth Witness Position, fingertips to the ground in recognition of the here and now.

Rob had nothing for me in return. Given the state of our relationship-lifeless-I shouldn't expect anything. But given our shared vision for this day, his inaction spoke volumes.

Over the last few weeks I've learned that indeed Rob is toying with giving up on us and moving on. This has come as a shock, as I thought I was the sole driver in this decision to stay or go. I should have known I had co-star capable of affecting the plot as much as I. Turns out I must prepare myself for a journey of which I won't always be in control. How silly of me to think otherwise. Interesting times ahead.

I read Lori Gottlieb's buzz-worthy Atlantic Monthly article "Marry Him!" with a sinking heart. Her thesis that older singletons hoping for motherhood should settle for Mr. Good Enough seems dangerous.

Yes, it's silly to wait for an ideal Mr. Right who doesn't exist. Yes, you and your child will have the immeasurable benefit of a participating father. Yes, you get a co-manager in the maintenance of your home and lifestyle. But you must be sure the price at which you procured these things for yourself was right. And you have to be certain you are capable of living with your decision.

Worse than remaining partnerless — and now I'm talking as someone who did what Ms. Gottlieb suggests and regrets it — you could find yourself spending days, months, years in secret agony wondering, is my husband indeed Good Enough or not? Do I ignore the needs he cannot meet, perhaps forgoing them for the rest of my life? Do I just need to focus on settling my mind as I did my life? Or perhaps, am I worth a bit more than I bargained for?

To anyone thinking of settling, I'd say be sure you can live without the things you bartered away in exchange for the security, motherhood, or whatever it is you settled for. Of course, women considering settling are likely not surfing the blogs at First Wives World. But perhaps some women who have settled, and who are contemplating reversing that course, are.