This pattern of your husband's relationships with you, his immediate family, and extended family members is call triangulation. Though he may not be aware of, or intend this outcome, triangulation always results in the individual creating it in distancing from both of the remaining sides of the triangle. This is an important marital pattern to address and your frustration and concerns are quite valid. The problem sounds serious enough for you to seek marital counseling through a recommended social worker. Other disciplines do not address this issue as well as social work by a licensed therapist. Get a referral from someone you trust, or if insurance has a list, try more than one if you aren't happy with the person you are referred to. Social work, like any other discipline has different levels of competence and personalities that "fit" their clients. The economy is such that people are just happy to have jobs; and, your husband's job requires him to be away for long periods of time. This alone would create distancing in his primary relationships, you and your five-year-old. There are many possible feelings and issues underlying your husbands need to distance himself physically as well as emotionally from family members. It is very important he be willing to understand his primary relationship is with you, his wife, and your young son fathered by him. He then must set boundaries and stick to them. You and he are responsible for establishing communication of what you need from one another and feeling you can trust one another to honor your committments as a marital dyad and family. The multiple issues in this situation and layers within each problem needing to be addressed will resolve much more quickly and healthily with a social work professional. The alternative would require your husband to treat you as his primary relationship/partner in establishing new and healthy patterns of intimacy that are exclusive between the two of you. You should not have to beg, plead, get angry, or go jump through hoops to be respected by and to be able to trust your husband to understand marriage is a partnership, and he has let a mob of people encroach upon your marital relationship. You can go on like this, though, no changes will result in continued unhappiness. It's really a shame to waste a good relationship; also you will have to look at your history, especially related to your immediate family of origin to identify patterns of for example, feeling unloved, being left out and ect. People tend to find in their picks of husband or primary relationship ways of not separating from families of origins. There is unfinished when they have unfinished emotional business that fits with your husband's dynamics. You have as much to learn about your underlying, though unconcious, sources of pain and frustration and not "act it out" in your relationship with your husband, just as he is acting it out with all involved in triangulating. It's probable that triangulation is a pattern in your history with immediate family or whomever you grew up with. It is rarely only one person has issues in a marriage...each of the dyad comes into the marriage with issues than tend to reinforce the unresolved emotional business of the other. It is common, and how it is handled directs the shared dynamic toward health, or complete frustration and loss of the relationship. If you love and respect him, persue health if he is willing. One last caution: There is also the persuer-distancer dynamic in relationships. The needier person constantly seeks out the attention, and rightfully so if you are being ignored. However, this neediness expressed in the relationship creates a counter dynamic of your husband distancing, not on purpose, just as a part of his unconscious patterns of relating and feelings about intimacy. Try just writing down your expectations, start with just a couple - including going to marital therapy - and then pull back on your persuing behaviors. You will probably find him less distant with you when you are less insistant he pay attention. This will address your feelings of powerlessness and his of perhaps guilt and resentment that "no one seems to ever be satisfied..." This is a beginning, though the deeper issues will, again, respond most quickly and healthily in the context of a professional who will help you both understand boundaries and the need for change to rekindle your marital happiness and contentment. Good luck and feel free to ask questions.
