What Do I Do When I Am Afraid He Doesn't Love Me Anymore?

It's my second "big" time around. I had a 12 year marriage, with two children--they are now 20 and 17 and beautiful. I thought we were wonderful together. But there were ways we were mismatched. Still there was romance, freedom, spirit, and love. But he was apparently cheating on me the whole time--different women all the time, some he just met in a store or on a street (I don't think he ever paid for it, just picked up people with hitting on them). Finally, it was getting so he was hitting on my friends all the time, making comments about their bodies behind my back while they were visiting our home...some stopped coming over, but I didn't find all this out until I caught him in bed at a mutual friend's house--she was married too. They were supposedly bringing my daughters to her daughter so her daughter could babysit--but when I showed up unexpectedly, she was babysitting them downstairs while the adults were upstairs in the bedroom. It was over pretty quickly after that. The 20 year old was about 10 when our divorce was finally final--and she was so resentful of the breakup and so resistant to my parenting when we did the visitation thing. He, of course, was the "fun one" who never had any rules. At one point she refused to see me or talk to me and he did not help--but he also did not take care of her or watch her when, as a young teen, she started just going out at night doing anything she wanted.

Now, I'm with someone who was so loving to me then. He'd known us both for our entire relationship. He helped me feel whole again and we fell in love. (I know, rebound, right?) But it was more. We had shared spirituality. We played music together. We wrote music together. We traveled together. And about a year later, we were pregnant together. She's 11 now. Her daddy and I have been fighting about money for years--I have a full time job, though I never agreed to be the only working parent and always wanted to share both the work time and the parenting time. He doesn't have a job and won't get one, though he's always promising. But he also no longer plays music with me--that's for friends, parties, a band that he doesn't care if I"m no longer part of. But not for us. It used to be a driving force between us. I come home from work and he treats me like a roommate, not a lover. We have a weekend and we might go out--where I watch him turn on the charm for everyone, AND act like we're all so loving together and he's so attentive when people are looking. And then we come home, and he goes to sleep. Maybe we make love once a month, usually when I get upset because it hasn't happened in so long.

He's got this friend..actually, she and her husband have been BOTH our friends for a very long time. She's very spiritual, very pretty, very young seeming--a SAHM who doesn't work for a living at all, has all her needs taken care of, has a loving husband who pretty much does whatever it takes. He is around her ALL the time. I've started to complain about it--that he shows more love for her, more concern for her, gives more emotional closeness to her than he ever does to me.

I've asked for him to please try. I've asked him if he still loves me. He says he does, but he doesn't act like it. Tonight, after he just got back from a week long trip with our daughter to San Francisco--during which I got ill, but still made a big welcome for them home--he said he was taking the van to go vacuum it out. I was out running an errand and happened to go by the little boutique she owns, and the van was parked behind the store. He was in there sitting on the floor close to her talking--when I came in, he told me "she needed him and was going through a rough time." I NEED HIM AND AM GOING THROUGH A ROUGH TIME! I got angry.

He's still not back. I don't want to go through another breakup with a pre-teen daughter, after seeing what that whole stupid custody thing did to her.

What do I do?

Just to edit a bit: I am so appreciative of the things you are saying to me, dear mamas. I cannot tell you how much the support helps. I'm already starting to get my head clear. But a few things...I have ALWAYS been the strong woman--I'm an engineer, a counselor, and a trained (though not practicing) midwife. I just finished a Master's degree so I could return to a faculty position after spending the last several years working full time in financial aid to keep a roof over our head. He is a massage therapist, but doesn't practice and doesn't really try. He has adult ADHD, but uses that more as an excuse than something to overcome. His mother, God/dess rest her soul, was an incredible woman, a refugee from the Nazis as a young girl, but that experience meant that she and her mother doted on him as if he were the only precious rare gem on Earth, and I don't think I can ever recall her correcting him about anything, including not supporting her grandchild, though she always offered loving support to me when she was alive. Since she got ill and died two years ago, he has been even less emotionally connected with me, seeking out the support of this friend because, at least initially, she also lost her mother.

What part do I play? Well, the full-time job (we used to run a part-time craft business and I taught evenings, leaving me much freedom to garden, dance, create, sing, learn, raise children, make a beautiful home) has worn me out. I've told him as much for as long as it's been going on. The stress, the fact that I sit down all day, and the work injury that hurt my knee have all left me with less time and energy for these things we used to love to be together, as well as causing me to gain weight because I'm unable to be as physically active. I'm exhausted! What would help? Him having a part time job ( I don't ask for full time) to help with a little financial security and paying a few bills. Him greeting me when I come home as if I matter to him and as if WE matter to him. A little sexy, sparkly energy did go and would go a LONG way towards everything else. What does he do when I ask for this? Finds a way to turn it into an argument, denies, evades, deflects, until I'm so frustrated that I'm yelling at him--still the same things that I was quietly asking him--but so upset I can't help myself. And then he uses that as the "reason" he "can't" bring himself to give what I say I need.

But strong? I think that's what he used to admire most about me. It's just that now my strength is not being met by his, and I'm telling him about it.