giboir,
Firstly, mazel tov on reaching level 4. Rejoice in your accomplishments and look to the future for continued growth. Never settle for yesterday's accomplishments. Every day look to see how you can become even a greater person than you were yesterday. But make sure you only try to accomplish today's goals.
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Regarding issues with your wife, I do not have any quick solutions, but I hope to share with you something that will get you started. And if nothing else, knowing that others out there understand and relate to you can prove to be helpful. In my own marriage I have experienced this. And I have grown a lot in this area. But it takes effort.
It is certainly very emotionally painful for the husband. The Rambam's son, writes in his sefer, "maspik l'ovdei hashem", that this feeling is normal and natural. He explains that when a woman pushes off an onah night even one night, he is pained. We obviously do not need him to tell us that. We know it from ourselves. But oftentimes knowing that something is normal and documented by our Holy Rabbis makes it easier to work on.
Oftentimes, the husband, when untrained to deal with his emotions, will undergo intense feelings of deprivation and frustration which can lead to anger and resentment towards his wife. He may further react with coldness to his wife and express subtle contempt. He may begin to blame his wife for not loving him. This is the man at his natural state, where no internal interventions have been implemented.
So lets internalize a few important attitudes and then move on to something practical.
1) The first thing to realize is that this is normal for some women. There are women out there that simply are not easily aroused for whatever reason. I have heard this from very chashuve people who spoke on this topic. For me knowing that, certainly eased the pain.
2) Your wife does not love you any less just because she is not interested in you sexually. This is a physical issue and not an emotional one.
3) As stated above, the frustrated reaction is normal. Which does not mean you have to stay that way. Just that you shouldn't further get depressed about yourself that you react this way.
4) Accept this is a nisayon to work on your internal midos. Life is all about growth. Hashem puts in situations to force us to grow. If you work with the proper tools and ingrain the proper attitudes in the long run you will prevail and become a greater person.
5) Marriage is not about sex. I am sure you know this. But we need to remind ourselves this constantly and learn to internalize it. Make sure you are working on expressing your love for your wife outside of the realm of sexual activity. For me this was hard at first, but with enough effort and the right vision, I have grown tremendously. Do not expect this to lead to a better sex life. If you do so, you will further frustrate yourself in the long run. You will be judging every minute action as to how it will effect your sex life, which is not only wrong but terribly unhealthy. So, you need to begin internalizing what love means.
Lets move in to practical goals that need to implemented:
1) Working on yourself - The first thing is your personal avodah. You need a plan of actions to train yourself to react in the correct fashion. This is in itself will take me a long to explain. But I hope to at least explain the basics. Through proper introspection and self reflection, I have realized that my actions and emotions are often a long chain reaction of internal emotions. One thing leads to the next which in turn leads to the next. I have described this briefly above. Our actions are a result of our emotions. Our emotions in turn are a result of some other emotion or some action. That is in the world of cause of effect. A person that learns to work on himself, knows how to break the chain reaction of the natural state of cause and effect. He knows how to internalize the following statement: "just because I feel a certain way does not mean I have to act a certain way". (This, by the way is how I was able to break my own addiction: going from acting out constantly to cold turkey with no major impulses, and remaining sober for over a year) The easiest way to work on this is by working backwards. Meaning, look at the actions that are caused by your emotions. If you see yourself acting in a cold fashion, train yourself to not act in a cold fashion, even though you feel that way. Then you can begin working on your emotions. Working on your emotions means not letting bad emotions linger on. Allowing our emotions to linger on, can be very dangerous. You will learn how to discard them. The next thing that needs to be addressed is understanding WHY we feel a certain way. And then understanding WHY feeling that way is incorrect. What misconceptions of my wife, my world, myself, G-d, etc have I not fully internalized that leads me to this. Don't settle for the usual, "I am normal, and I will always be that way". You can grow out of it and FROM it.
2) communication - This next one, will be a bit controversial, but I personally found this to be very healthy. You need to learn how to communicate in a mature fashion how you feel. The purpose of this is NOT to make her feel bad. It is NOT to make her give-in, because she feels bad for you. It is simply because she is the one you feel closest to in your life and it is important for her and for you to that she understands you. This will remove the confusion. This needs to be done in a very sensitive fashion. I have found that describing myself in a letter proved to be very helpful. It gave her time to absorb it. Another advantage was just by sitting down to write a letter, allowed me to admit to myself that I was a bit immature in my emotions, and that in itself helped a bit. I can send you a letter I once sent to her. Over time, I have learned to talk with her about this. She has learned to understand me and not let that make her feel bad. Without the open communication there was too much unspoken emotions floating around the air that made a very tense environment. In the long run, this entire method of communication has proven to be effective. But it can be potentially dangerous. So beware and do it smart.
3) therapy - I cannot underestimate the importance of getting help from a competent therapist. You cannot do this on your own. Your communication will only go so far. It will only ease the tension caused by the situation. But it will not solve the situation. While these situations are normal, there are things that can be done to improve the situations. You may want to start by speaking to your Rav about this and asking for guidance. Hopefully, he can refer you to a good therapist. Getting a good therapist with loads of expience is imperative. Do not settle for a beginner. Oftentimes, the real issue happens to be with the wife, and like I said there are methods that can be done to improve the situation. There are people out there who will tell you that the issue is in the husband of not knowing how to please his wife properly, which may be true also, but if the women is not interested, not much will help. And again, having love for someone does not always translate into wanting to have sex.
4) daven - I am sure you know already that hishtadlus is in our court, while results are up to Hashem. You need to have full bitachon in that. The true way to express our bitachon is through davening. Ask Hashem to guide you properly. HE should open up your eyes and see the proper path. HE should lead you to the right people. HE should assist you in saying the right words whether speaking to your wife, a Rav, or therapist. HE should help you not be frustrated. HE should help your wife with her issues.
I hope I gave enough food for thought.
May you and your wife be zoche to continued growth together for many more years to come. May the two of you be zoche to feel intense love and a natural bond for each other forever and learn to express an everlasting simcha.
-Yaakov
