Really? Is everything really good? I'm asking for real. As I see it, and in my experience, a dead bedroom is a symptom of a very deep and broken connection. It took me years to see and accept this. I used to say everything is good. But as I've slowly dug deeper in myself, and paying attention to what my wife says, the problem as a dead connection at our core. We can pretend everything his happy and good. But it isn't.

How do I know this? We dug in in therapy, we've since stopped going. But here is what came out. When I felt what she felt for the first time in many years, she dismissed it as "making it about my feelings and disregarding hers." Our therapist saw through this and called her on it, and told her I have a heart as evidenced by my tears. But she said I and the therapist was making it about my pain, not hers. Which was not true at all. At that moment, I saw that she is pushing me away. As soon as I got close again. She doesn't see it that way, but there was our fault line. She has not been connected to me emotionally in year, or I her. As soon as one connection path opened, she shut it down and claimed I'm making it about my pain.

Truth #2. After that session, about a week later, we had a huge fight. I handled it poorly and I slammed a cardboard box I was holding and breaking down onto the floor. That was the second outburst I've had like that in 24 years of marriage. This does not happen often. She claimed I had an anger problem and if I didn't address, I would end up hitting her. I told her if that is really what she thought of me, we are over. If she ever thought I could do such a thing, the trust was so fundamentally broken that I don't want to be with her any more. Back to therapy. In the office, she had convinced the therapist (they had a conversation after that fight when I was not present) that I had a rage issue. In that session, I said I did not. Therapist asked her how many times she saw me slam something. I didn't answer I said my wife can answer that. Twice she said. Twice in 24 years of marriage. The therapist said if I did have rage running in the background, then she was right, it could come out in unpredictable ways. I agreed with that, but said rage and anger are not a problem of mine. My wife never apologized for what she said to me. It was hands down the most hurtful thing she has ever said to me.

I then came across a page she wrote on during this time while cleaning up (I wasn't snooping I swear). She wrote that her "protectors" played a role in her life to get her where she is (this is what the therapist calls our defense mechanisms). And, what if her "protectors" were right about me and that she did need protecting against me? The therapist told her this was not the case, and that if we let our protectors run the show, we will never have a connection again. And she was questioning the therapist and asking what if her protectors were right this time?

So I have seen that our trust and love and connection are fundamentally broken. I do not have a chance at recovering that unless she has a radical change in her mind and heart. I've accepted that.

All that to say, things are not all fine and dandy except for lack of sex. I now see what the problem is with eyes wide open. It isn't sex that is the problem. The problem is she has closed herself off from me and built invisible walls that are impenetrable from the outside. Only she can tear them down from the inside.

So I ask, are there dead bedroom marriages that are really good except for lack of sex? Or are you all pretending things are really good? Externally they may appear fine. I get that. But are they really, internally? Or is the foundational connection that you shared severed?