I'm back.  It's been a while.  Anyway, my wife has said in the past that she wants to be emotionally close but I'm not vulnerable,  that  I don't share my feelings.  I didn't get what she was saying at all.  Now I think I'm starting to get it.  In the past, and even now, when she gets upset at me for something I did wrong, I would get angry and deny I did anything wrong.  Now at least, I won't deny it and I'll  apologize.  

So I read an article on people that lack emotional intelligence and I thought, maybe that's me.  They talked  about a man who would always get angry at his wife and was angry at her when she said she was leaving him.  Anyway, to some extent, that sounds like me.  

When my wife gets upset at me, I feel tremendous shame for hurting her, but I never realized that until I recently started thinking  about it.  So, I would often crawl into my shell while she would push me to react in some way.  I would get angry at  her for pushing me.  All that time, I was hiding my shame that I didn't want to share.  Maybe I should speak to a therapist about this.  Do you think that if I shared all this with her, it would do any good?  Also, I think that the shame I feel and hide from everyone is a factor in my falling over and over again.

Any thoughts are welcome.  Thanks in advance.  

I'm baal teshuva.  Ever since I got involved in the observant world, in my late 20s, I've always lived in a community that had kiruv.  In addition, the shuls I went to were kiruv shuls - Chabad and others.  I always felt at home in shul and really enjoyed going.  Recently my family and I moved to a "religious" neighborhood (it's been over 3 years now).  All the shuls are "religious" and mostly people with a "black-hat" yeshiva background.  I HATE HATE HATE living here.  I feel SO suffocated here.  It used to be that when I went to shul, I would feel uplifted.  Now, and I'm not trying to be dramatic, but when I leave shul, I often have suicidal thoughts.  I came really close one time to driving on shabbos so I could go to a shul I liked.  Why do I hate it here so much?  Is this normal?  Is there something wrong with me?  For sure, my observance has suffered since moving here.  I'm not inspired at all by torah or Judaism in general anymore.  In fact, I've lost most of my zest for living.  This is a major cry for help.  I've haven't spoken to anyone about this except for my wife and it only hurts our relationship to discuss this, so we don't speak about it anymore.  I keep it all inside.

I was prompted to revisit these feelings when Esther Jungreis passed away this last week.  I got started in observant Judaism by going to her classes.  Her class was very small when I started going and grew to by enormously popular.   I was hooked by her message from the first minute she started speaking.  She was inspiring.  I don't find anything about my community to be inspiring and it's a very nice community.  My rabbi is a extremely talented speaker and is a professional speaker.  His talks and classes rarely resonate with me, though.

I fell over and over again and didn't want to face reality in here or anywhere. Now I'm depressed. My marriage is peaceful but not good in my opinion. There's essentially no physical relationship from my wife and hasn't been for years. There is sex but it's not intimate at all. She's not interested in intimacy. She NEVER does any of the following:
1. touch me
2. let me kiss her on the lips
3. cuddle with me
4. says she loves me
Things are not good in the bedroom so to speak. The alternative, which I'm trying to avoid, is far more satisfying. I have a more intimate relationship with my pet cat. She'll at least cuddle with me and responds when I pet her. I crave any attention from other women b/c I feel SO LONELY. I recently travelled for a work convention and had an opportunity to ask a single woman for a drink and it took every ounce of my willpower to not do it. I think about that incident every day.

I don't see any way to improve this marriage.

Last night she told me that she thinks are marriage is a joke and that I don't care about her feelings. I asked her to tell me a recent example and she came up with one that I thought was legit, but not really big at all. I had already apologized for the incident. She says she doesn't trust me, so she can't love me and that implies no physical relationship. I wish I had never married her.

By the way, I treat my wife like a queen.

I recently read a daily lift from Aish HaTorah that discusses people that are ultra-sensitive and it says their lives are unlivable.

Here's the full text and I think this is the best description of my wife that I've ever heard:

Three types of people live an unlivable life: those who are overly compassionate, overly irritable, or overly sensitive (Pesachim 113b).
Why is being overly sensitive so unlivable? If we sustain a severe sunburn, we avoid contact with other people, because what would normally be a friendly pat on the back or a gentle caress can cause exquisite pain.
Our emotions can become as overly sensitive as our skin, and things which would otherwise be neutral, if not pleasant, may be very painful. To avoid being hurt, we may withdraw from human contact or set up other barriers to communication.
The ego is the source for this touchiness. When people's egos become inflated, they feel superior to others and imagine that they deserve more recognition. No amount of recognition is sufficient, however, and other people's innocent comments or actions are misinterpreted as insults or slights.
Unlike sunburnt skin, ego-burnt emotions are not easily recognized. This lack of awareness may then cause these poor people to think that others intend to harm them. Such misinterpretations will make their lives unlivable.

Today I shall ...
try to avoid reacting reflexively to painful experiences, and try to understand that my discomfort may be due to my sensitivity rather than to others' behavior.


I have to go talk to someone.

When I get involved in other activities, whether it's a Chabad event or something else, outside of my community, I feel better.  I'll probably never really enjoy this community.  We live here for the school for my daughter.