Alan doesn’t confront Steve about the concerns and always acts cheerful when they have to reschedule, but inside he’s seething with disappointment and wonders why he’s not good enough for Steve to spend time with.

A damaged man is incapable of love because he does not believe love will be freely given, only earned through works. He seeks false intimacy in lust and mistakes sex for acceptance.

For their part, the husbands are usually just as tired of the fighting but still optimistic that the marriage can be fixed. They’re constantly in fix-it mode, scanning for ways to manage the mounting damage or figure out the one secret trick to unlock their wife’s heart.

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The detached partner’s view of the world and their place in it is skewed because they carry a fundamental misunderstanding about relationships and love. The old equations from childhood are still logged in the back of their head and intercepting all decisions before their rational adult mind can even process them.

who desperately crave love and want to keep their marriage intact at any cost, but their fear sabotages any attempt at intimacy and is causing the marriage to fail.

The top level is what I call “the fluff”. These are feelings, moment-to-moment emotions people feel toward each other. A couple may have happy fluff as they go on a date, then arrive home and realize someone has left the milk out. Now the fluff is annoyed. But the guilty partner makes up for their mistake with a foot rub. Yay, the fluff is happy ag

The phrase I hear from exhausted wives time and again is, “after what you’ve put me through.” This is usually said as part of a larger sentence such as, “How can I just drop everything and trust you now, after what you’ve put me through?”

reveals that they have tried to initiate sex over the last six months, though they haven’t been obvious about their need.