Our kids are grown. We spent our entire married life working, working, working, and taking care of the family. Cooking working, cleaning working, household chores working, taking care of kids working. There has never been time for "us". But now there is.

And now after more than 20 years of marriage there seems not to be an "us". Though it was never evident before--as though anyone had time to notice--we do not really have developed a one-on-one relationship, my husband and I. And I am very unhappy.

What is it about men that they don't understand that just because you married someone and spent half a lifetime of daily chores together, it's the intimate connection between the two of us that really matters? They figure that if they bank the paycheck and come home for dinner and mow the yard that everything is just honkey-dorey. It's not.

After 20+ years I want to be me now, I want to be *us* now, I want our turn and he just doesn't get it. Never never has he told me that I'm beautiful or special or the love of his life. Never. I feel used and neglected an unappreciated. I know he loves me but it's like the comfortable attachment to a pair of well worn slippers in your pajamas in front of the TV. I am no one's well worn slipper.

Not feeling much like ditching a long term marriage for....what? And yet always thinking that being a warm slipper is not the ultimate culmination of a lifetime of aspiration and dreams and hard work. I lived over 50 years for this???

Ladies, what say ye?