Intimate Chasm - monologue from a struggling marriage - the woman's perspective.

This connects to the earlier installments from Intimate Chasm. Their communication gets worse over time. Here are the wife's internal musings. Soon the husband's will follow.

A sense of being utterly alone rippled over my skin and made me shiver. Abandonment seemed like a worse punishment than death. The dread of a loveless future hovered over me like a storm cloud.

Even when my husband was in the house, it never felt like he was fully there. When it came time to eat dinner, he would walk toward the extra bedroom. He preferred his man-cave to my company. Television was his lover. That, and his stupid phone.

He would sit for hours in the dark just staring at the evil thing. He knew I despised silence, but he ignored me anyway. It tore through my insides every day, but I didn't have the inner strength to bring it up.

Psychological self-torture was much easier than confronting him with my feelings and risking abandonment. So I agonized over what was broken in my mind.

Hatred at myself burned hot. Why had I plunged myself into another situation that made me insecure? In my last failed relationship I'd had to kill my own personality to exist peacefully in a house with a man who didn't love me.

Maybe I'd always fall for men who didn't know how to love. I wanted to go to sleep and never wake up when I pondered my reality for too long.

This morning when I tried to touch him he said if I wanted it so badly I could get it elsewhere. Seriously? What decent husband said stuff like that to his wife?

The problem with our marriage had to be me. I was used to sacrificing my own happiness for someone else. I'd been doing it my whole life.

You'd think it would get easier over time since martyrdom was so ingrained in my personality. Something told me it would never get easier. Could I ever change the part of me that was drawn to men who were distant?

Maybe in the beginning I'd convinced myself that I loved him because back then he was trying hard to win my heart. At first, the sex was amazing. Almost impossible to sustain. Now it's practically non-existent.

Once we got married the times of heated lovemaking became few and far between. I wondered if he got his needs met elsewhere, but he never went anywhere so that would be difficult to accomplish.

Truthfully, his life was boring and it sucked. I knew he suffered from depression even though he denied it. Maybe passion was hard for him to sustain. Or he was manic depressive and existed more often in the depressive state.

After we married he admitted he kept an emotional distance between because he didn't want to lose me like all of the other people he ever loved. Really? Seriously, that didn't even make sense.

I wanted to scream, "Why did you lead me on, you asshole!" but I couldn't talk about how I really felt. That was my greatest weakness.

Worst part was every time he told me he loved me, I wanted so much to believe him. My skin set on fire when he touched me. One smoldering look from him turned my body to liquid and I would be powerless to resist him. It wouldn't hurt so badly if I didn't want him so much.

Yesterday I cried on and off for several hours. In private, of course. All because his little kiss melted me and I wanted to slap myself for the longing I felt. Love shouldn't hurt so much. I felt such intense emotion on my end, but only my end.

Every time we talked on the phone he said he loved me, but couldn't say it to my face. When probed about his feelings once I finally admitted my concerns, he had said yes, he was in love with me. Liar.

Men in love don't act aloof. Men who are in love with their wives don't ignore the woman's needs. Men in love don't push their wives away when they want something as innocent as a kiss or a hug.

No, he wasn't in love with me despite what he said. Real love was showing you cared, not just spouting the words. Yet I still had hope, and I hated myself for it.