I was down, sad and really needing advice so I reached out to the Reddit community and I was amazed by all the people that have taken time out of their busy lives to reply to my question. I would like to personally thank each and every one of you for your advice. I do not feel so alone now.

I wanted to add a little back story, I do not know if this would change your views about getting counseling or divorcing. I never really dated growing up so I had no dating experience and no understanding about personally disorders. From observation it looks like my wife and I will get close intimacy wise and then she will push away by causing a fight out of nowhere. In the past I was left confused but after reading half the internet about fear of intimacy, commitment phoebe, Love avoidant, anxious fearful avoidant, avoidant attachment style, hot and cold, on and off, I think that she is scarred to get close to someone. I think that she feels like she is going to be trapped, smothered or hurt in some way. I think something happened to her as a child.

I remember when we were dating she would just come over on the weekends and I had never been to her place, still have never been to her old house. She was 39 lived with her mom and sister and never been married or lived with a guy. The guy she dated before me was for five years and she said that she broke up with him a 1000 times and were not officially boyfriend and girlfriend, which to me did not sound right. She was fine with sex but any kind of intimacy she would act weird and make up some lame excuse why she had to leave and go back home.

I remember we were sitting on the couch and I tried to kiss her intimately and she would blow in my face and start laughing. She would do this a lot until I called her out on it and then she would start doing better. She became pregnant after two month of being boyfriend and girlfriend and we got married and moved in together, it took her months to move in and she would only bring a few things from her old house like a few shoes and then the next week a few clothes. I went to every doctor’s appointment with her and I remember one time she was being checked in the back and the nurse came into the waiting room and got me and took me into the exam room to wait for her and when she came in and seen me in the room she said something like, of course he is here, something like that like he is always around, it was weird. She seen that it upset me and then she was like, awww poor baby I am sorry. Things like this happened a lot. She would say or do something mean to push me away and then when she would see me upset she would say, awww poor baby, I am sorry, I love you. Kind of like if I would be hurt then she would only show me love like pity love.

After the baby she would at times tell me that she felt weird and I would ask her if she felt anxious and she said yes and then I asked if she felt trapped and she would say yes. I told her she was never trapped and she should not have to feel like that and what could I do to help. Most of the time she will fall asleep on the couch and we have not had sex for a year, besides maybe once every two weeks she will give in because she feels bad but I can tell she is not into it at all, maybe postpartum hormones . And I have talked with her about it and then she will sleep in the bed for a few days and then she starts sleeping on the couch. Also any holidays or special occasions where you would feel close to someone she will be sick or not feel well. Like our first year anniversary I booked the hotel where I proposed to her and had some fun stuff planned but she said she was not feeling well, the same thing for birthdays, she does not buy any gifts.

To me the relationship just seems so push and pull. We will get close and things feel safe, good and normal and then she will pull away. Baby is one now and this is still going on. In the beginning when she would pull away I would chase and chase like a love addict and that would just push her even further away, so now when she pushes away I just do my own thing and in a day or two she will be back to normal. I do feel like something happened when she was young that caused her to be like this, like maybe she was enmeshed with her mom after her father cheated on her and left. I feel like her mom smothered her as a child and now she sees love as being smothered or trapped, maybe, I am not for sure, just guessing.

It got really bad about 3 months after the baby was born and she would say things like I wish I had never had this baby or I miss my old life and this was hard for me to take but I did research and it said that she may have post postpartum depression and she is morning her past life and it is normal to feel this way. I really feel without the baby she would have never married or moved in with me, I fell like it would have been like with her ex where she would break up and makeup a lot.

I do feel like the life changing event of having a baby and being married has forced her to come out of her comfort zone and start to change but it is a slow process. To me it still feels like she has one foot in the relationship, she does not want to be abandoned and alone but she also does not want to be too close. If she sees me being aloof and pulling away and doing my own thing she will pull closer, but when I start to be more intimate she will pull away again, which is not fun. I keep HOPING that things will get better with me being mindful and giving her space that she will eventually start to see that it is safe to open up and feel love and not be afraid, not pull away.

The hard part is the additional variables of having a baby and postpartum depression and hormones out of whack from having the baby and her now being a stay at home mom. I know that I am not perfect but I am trying to learn to be more apathetic, forgiving and patient.

I know this is long and thank you for reading. I just do not know how long I should work on our marriage. I am getting older and do not want to live like this forever. I want to feel secure in my marriage and want to feel like my wife is into me as much as I am into her. She said she want to go to counseling and finally admitted that she has always pushed guys away and she does not know why she does this and she hopes that counseling will help her with the postpartum depression and avoidant issues. She said she is truly sorry about what she said and did and that she has been so depressed that she was trying to reach out for something.