I have back problems that sometimes spread up into my neck, and it gets really painful. I have two young children who I can't lift and a bunch of housework that doesn't get done because it hurts to lift stuff. Thank God I have a job I can do while sitting and not moving.

Luckily for me, the pain comes and goes and with the help of my chiropractor/massage therapist/sleepy meds I muddle through. I don't spend all my time in pain, but when it does hit I'm pretty useless.

My back pain was in full force the other day, so I was happy to finally make it to the evening and lay down to go to sleep. My husband was already in bed so we chatted a little. He asked me how my back was feeling (code for "Can we have sex?") and I replied that it hurt pretty bad (code for "Please don't make me do that right now").

"You know," I said, "maybe I should get a pillow like yours." He has one of those pillows to keep the back and neck aligned. The thought occurs to me that maybe we can switch pillows for the night and in the morning I can go buy my own. He doesn't have back problems, and it would be great to try something — anything — to make my back feel better.

Before I can propose the idea he replies with, "Yeah, maybe you should get one," and then rolls over on his side to go to sleep. He's done with me. I can't offer him what he wants, so that's that.

Years ago he would have thought about switching pillows long before I did. He would have gone to great lengths to help me get comfortable. I laid there thinking about what a different man he is now, but then the thought occurred to me that maybe he was thinking the same thing; after all, when I was 25 years old I didn't have back problems and didn't have to deny sex because of my aches and pains.

I have one black hair that grows on my neck. Whenever I notice it coming in I pluck it using tweezers, but it always comes back. It annoys me to no end. I would go get electrolysis if it wasn't just one stinking hair.

Sometimes I forget to check for the hair, but then I'll be sitting there minding my own business and my hand will land on my neck and there's the hair again. It's my recurring reminder that I'm not the same gal in my early twenties who snared a husband and had my whole life ahead of me. No, I'm in my mid-thirties with two kids, a mortgage, and a marriage that runs hot and cold. Wait, no, scratch that...a marriage that runs lukewarm and cold. 

After all, this neck hair was nowhere to be found when I was younger. I never had to tweeze neck hair before heading out to dance clubs with my friends. When I bought my first car I'm pretty sure there wasn't a black hair residing on my neck. When my husband and I went out on our first date there sure as heck wasn't a dark hair nestled under my turtleneck.

I'm a different woman now. I can't go back to how things were before I got married or before I had kids. It's not like my contemplating divorce has anything to do with wanting to reclaim my past life — sans unattractive neck hair — but instead it has more to do with reclaiming myself. I want to feel sure about where I am in life. I want to live a day without wondering if my relationship is the thing that makes me feel so incredibly uncomfortable and helpless.

Yeah, I'm older now than when I was last single. I'm in a completely different stage of life. The younger, no-hair-on-the-neck me would probably think that the present version of me is pretty lame. Hey, if you aren't happy in a relationship, you just move on, right? 

My husband and I try to trade off parenting duties on weekend mornings to sleep in, since neither one of us gets to sleep past 6:00 or so during the week.

I'll take one day and he'll take the other, so one of us will get up with the kids while the other will sleep until 8:00 or 8:30. It's not the "sleeping in" we did before kids came along, but it's better than nothing.

Friday night I asked my husband, "Do you want to sleep in tomorrow or Sunday?"

He said, "It doesn't matter to me."

I say, "Okay, I'll take tomorrow and you can take Sunday." He agreed, I headed to bed, and then morning came. Our son is calling, "Daddy! Daddy!" and I remember thinking to myself about how fortunate it was that he was calling for Daddy since it was my turn to sleep in.

It isn't long, though, before I wake back up because my husband is scolding my son. He's telling him something about how he better not go into the living room just to lay back down on the couch because if he wants to sleep he can stay in his bed.

I think to myself, "Okay, fair enough I guess..." but seeing as my son isn't even out of bed yet I don't really understand the pre-scolding.

Ten minutes later I hear my husband call to my son, "Breakfast!" My son, down in the playroom, replies that he's going to finish looking at his book. My husband shouts, "Get up here now!" and I hear him stomp down the stairs to collect our son.

This is the point when I got out of bed (our daughter did too because Daddy's shouting woke her up) and as I walked into the hallway my husband was carrying our son up the stairs. My son was squirming and crying, and my husband had a look on his face like he's ready to lose it.

A year ago I was on my way out the door, ready to end a relationship that had deteriorated into more of a roommate situation than a happy marriage.

A year ago I was, shall we say, a few pounds lighter. I realized this just the other day when I could no longer ignore how tight my clothes were feeling lately. I worked up the courage to weigh myself and yep...I had packed on 20 pounds.

I guess I could see this coming. My work schedule has been really hectic so I can't make it to the gym as much as I would like, but 20 pounds? Yikes! I already needed to lose a little, but now I have to lose a few — plus 20. That's no fun.

It was a big wakeup call. I don't take care of myself like I should, or at least I haven't been in this last year since I made the attempt to leave my husband and then wound up staying. Maybe I'm sabotaging myself, or maybe I just don't think I'm worth the effort anymore.

By the way, in case you're wondering, yes...I do analyze everything.

There's a theory that people gain weight intentionally — yet subconsciously — because they are trying to distance themselves from other people. I guess this makes sense. I stayed, but we certainly aren't as close as we once were. I still think about leaving every day. Maybe my weight gain is my subconscious effort to distance myself further from him. Maybe I'm trying to make him leave me.

Or maybe I just need to go the gym more.

I had a pretty bad case of the so-called baby blues after my son was born. My daughter wasn't even 2 years old yet, my husband's work schedule had him going out of town quite a bit, and I didn't get much help at all, since both our families live in other states. From what I've heard, my mom dealt with post-partum depression to the point where she felt suicidal, so I knew that when I started to have the feelings of depression it was no joke. I figured I better tell my husband and we could figure out a solution together.

"I think I have some post-partum depression," I told him.

"Oh yeah?" he asked.

I didn't think he was getting it, so I let him in on an embarrassing fact. "Sometimes I fantasize about getting into a car accident just so I can spend some time in a hospital recovering. Maybe then I could get some rest and a little time to myself, as weird as that may sound."

He gave me a concerned look, and we made an appointment with my doctor. She agreed that I had some PPD and we decided together that I would combat it with exercise and wait it out to see if my hormones would stabilize.

The thing is this: After I intimated to my husband that I was so desperate for some time off from the kids that I was hoping for a debilitating injury, he still didn't step up any efforts to help me. I still got up every time the baby cried in the middle of the night. I still woke up every morning with the kids. My husband didn't offer to take the kids so I could get a nap once in a while. He never jumped in and took over some chores. In other words, the only thing that changed was that I had an actual diagnosis.

I eventually bounced back from my depression, but my marriage took a huge hit. It really opened my eyes as to what my husband assumed my role was, as well as his. I felt more alone during that time of my life than any other, and it shouldn't have been that way.

Once in a blue moon I take medication for spasms in my back. I don't like taking it — the pills make me sleepy and sluggish, but it certainly does get rid of the pain. I just become a zombie until it wears off.

So when I decided to take a muscle relaxer for my back a few nights ago, I prepared myself accordingly: I finished my work, did the dishes, and then dressed in comfy pajamas because I knew it was only a matter of time until I would be in dreamland.

I was in bed and half-conscious when my husband lay down to sleep. He tried snuggling with me, and I told him that I was really out of it because of the medicine and that it wouldn't be long before I would be asleep. He sighed and stared at me.... Obviously, he had come to bed with something specific in mind.

So there I was, drugged up and with a bum back, and apparently that's pretty hot to him. I now know this was a mistake, but I said, "Look, if you want to have sex go ahead, but I'm just going to lay here because I'm really out of it and my back hurts."

Yep, he did.

It was one of the most bizarre moments of our marriage. He was having sex with me, but I was essentially nothing more than a ragdoll. The whole time I was thinking to myself, "Is he seriously having sex with me right now?!" I didn't think he would take me up on the offer, but I guess it's my own fault for offering.

When he was finished with me he rolled over and went to sleep, and I cried. I haven't taken a muscle relaxer since.

I've already revealed that I don't have the strongest libido right now, and we've already ruled out any medical issues as the root cause. Since this is obviously a problem that is based in my head and my feelings, I once tried to just toss my feelings aside and get into sex like a willing participant would.

What a disaster.

I shopped for lingerie and bought two different pieces — one romantic and one naughty — and then asked my husband to choose one of them for me to wear. He chose the naughty piece, and so I went into the bathroom to get gussied up. As I was putting the outfit on I kept telling myself how this night would be the rebirth of our sex life. This would be the night my mind would click back to wanting to have sex, and if need be I would separate my emotional feelings from my carnal ones. Essentially, I was my own sex cheerleader.

I tried, I really did. Our sex that night turned into some bizarre situation where I found myself taking on a character as though I was an actress. I know some people role-play in the bedroom, but that's not what this was. It was more like a disassociation from myself in order to get through it. I couldn't shake the thought that I was sending mixed signals to my husband by acting as though I was having a roaring good time in the bedroom when all was not right in our relationship.

I'm sure none of these thoughts were going through his head. I'm sure he was more like, "Woo-hoo, we're having some great sex here!" and that was the end of it. Sometimes I really wish I could separate my feelings like that, but so far I haven't had much luck.

I have a bad back. It's just something that developed after I went through labor with my son, but I guess if that's the worst thing to come from delivering a 10-pound baby then I'm still pretty lucky. My back problems come and go, but for the most part I'm okay as long as I don't try to lift too many heavy things too often.

Of course, my husband is familiar with my back problems. He's seen me stumble around in a muscle-relaxer-induced haze when my back is really bad, and he's footed the bill for the deep tissue massages I get regularly to try to stave off future back flare ups. In other words, he is well aware of the problems with my back.

Now let me tell you the correlation between my bad back and my contemplating divorce. Our laundry room is in the basement of our home, and so there are a couple of flights of stairs to navigate when it comes time to take the dirty clothes downstairs. We go through a lot of laundry in our house, so it's a constant battle to try to keep the dirty laundry from piling up in the bedroom hampers. I've asked my husband many times to please take the laundry down at regular intervals so I don't have to carry it down and risk aggravating my back. It seems like a reasonable request to me, but even though I have tried my best to assign him this chore -- which would be the only household chore he's responsible for -- he still ignores the piles of laundry unless I pull it all out into the hallway and ask him to take it downstairs.

I know all about the theory that you have to ask a man to specifically do something each and every time you want it done, but I truly don't understand why this particular task cannot simply be his responsibility without me constantly hounding him. I'm not asking him to do it because I don't want to do it myself. I'm asking him to do it because I'm supposed to avoid lifting heavy stuff.