You used to put water on my bedside table every night...

He needs a come to Jesus meeting. Something is clearly bothering him and he's not keeping you in the loop. It's one thing if he doesn't know and keeps talking as he tries to figure it out, but he's NOT talking, which probably means he knows exactly what it is. Something is bothering him and he's allowing it to make him into an asshole and and hurt you. You deserve better and you have every right to demand better from your spouse. I'd suggest going away for a few days, staying at friends. Tell him that you're going of course, that you're giving him time to think about what's bothering him, so that that two you can then face it. Emphasize that you're there for him, on his side, and want to help, but dammit, you're not a punching bag and you don't deserve to be treated in shitty manner by someone who supposedly loves you. He's had his chance to come clean, to talk to you. Now you're taking the reigns, looking out for yourself because clearly he's not interested in doing so. Tell you expect some sort of explanation of his behavior and change in it when you get back. Remind him that you love him, then go and come back ready to work with him if you can or consider the thought of ending the marriage.

I was that guy once. Someone else mentioned the feeling of "it's going to be this way forever", which is pretty on-point. What happened with me is that lots of stuff went from "weather" to "climate". Here's what I mean: - "weather": stuff that happens from time to time but doesn't materially reflect on the perceived "quality" of the relationship; it's entirely possible for a relationship to be "great" and for the wife to get sick for a week; the husband still thinks the relationship is great, it's just not the greatest week due to having to take care of his wife (more obligations | more stress | less fun). - "climate": when something goes from "weather" to "climate" it gets factored into the quality of a relationship and is no longer seen as one-off, isolated incidents. EG: rather than "what misfortunate, my wife is sick this week and so I will take care of her" it becomes "oh great, here's one of the 'weeks my wife gets sick and I have to spend a ton of time taking care of her', I usually get 2-3 of these per year, grrrrrr". The problem here is that say that the guy previously saw the relationship as balanced and "great"; in that case taking care of you for a week is no big deal. If "taking care of you" makes the jump from weather to climate, however, all of a sudden the guy sees the balance in the relationship as having shifted: if you picture a column of "good stuff about her" and "bad stuff about her" you've just gotten another entry in the "bad stuff about her" column, and if nothing else has changed then he's going to be less happy with the relationship than he was before he reclassified "being sick", b/c there's more "bad stuff" balanced against the same set of "good stuff". This is completely unfair to you (and to women in general), as you're literally doing nothing differently than you were previously. It's also hard for a supportive guy to even articulate, b/c he knows just how jerky it sounds: "well, once I figured out that you were going to get sick so often I got a lot less happy, and so you ought to like do something extra to make up for that"....not a winning thing to say by any stretch of the imagination. But, it happens. In my experience the weather->climate shift is triggered by external circumstances: getting older, death in the family, major career or financial shakeup (either good or bad), etc.; anything that'd prompt you to sit down and take serious stock of what you're doing with yourself can be the trigger here. Inevitably the relationship makes it into that taking-stock and the external circumstances are enough push some "weather" into "climate". It can be extra unfair in that as part of the same re-evaluation stuff that used to be in the "good things" column gets removed, b/c his values have changed. Again this isn't about you, it's about him. I certainly think it's possible for couples where the guy goes through this to work it out but it requires a lot of maturity on his part, which I didn't have. It's not really about you. I had to wager a guess I'd suspect the likeliest candidate is the night school stuff being the trigger. A lot of supportive men will say "ok, go for it" when you ask if they'd support your doing X, even if they actually have some concerns or objections to it; the thinking is that since X is temporary they'll just tough it out, and it's a clearer, more-supportive message to say "ok, go for it" than "I guess it's ok if it's for a finite length of time, but I don't like A, B, and C aspects of it". If he's gone from thinking the "away many nights" is "weather" to "climate" that'd be a big change in how he thought of your relationship. Which brings to a general male dynamic at play here, which is that men tend to treat other people with the level of kindness + respect they feel that that specific other person will exhibit to them; eg, if a man thinks the other person has a habit of being a jerk, the man will be more jerky towards that person, and if the man thinks the other person is generally a swell dude, the man will try to be swell-er than usual to the other person. Usually there's an initial level of "charity" extended to strangers and so on, in that the man will act nice until he's sussed out how this stranger treats him. This is a reasonable strategy in the world outside of marriage and other long-term intimate relationships. In the context of a marriage it works pretty poorly. The man can get locked into the following loop: - the man goes around feeling disrespected or treated poorly; starts acting like a jerk - the woman sees he's acting jerky, and initially may step up her efforts a bit to pacify him - the man sees the stepped-up efforts and starts acting nice(r) - the woman steps-down her efforts (to their "normal" level), b/c it seems like whatever has caused the jerkiness has blown over - the man now feels he has to act like a jerk again, b/c as soon as he relents on the jerkiness the woman goes back to her previous, unsatisfactory ways ...and over enough time the level of jerkiness has to keep increasing, b/c the woman gets acclimated to a particular level of jerkiness as being the new normal. So if he's just "promoted" your night activities to "climate", in his eyes a direct result of that is that the quality of the relationship in his eyes took a huge nosedive, and you're not doing anything different to compensate. This makes him feel mistreated, and then the downward spiral of jerkiness begins. Again none of this is intended as criticism for you, as nothing you've written here indicates you deserve any. I'm only hoping to elucidate some of the mental processes that may be at play.

I have terrible wiring in my brain where I don't do a very good job of managing small stressors -- the little things that don't even seem worth the bother of engaging in a minor argument about, versus the relative ease of just "putting up with it". The "why am I always the one that takes out the recycling?" kind of things -- rather than be an adult and sit down with my wife and map out who is responsible for what, and whether it's fair, and why, I'll just take out the recycling and chafe a little inside about it. Then, over time, I will accumulate a few dozen of these niggles, and the collective tiny voices of discontent will over time become a small chorus, but rather than deal with them (because they are so diverse and disconnected, ranging from "why am I the only one to take out the recycling" to "I wish she would put the cheese back in order of height" to other incredibly minor and irrational things) I just kind of become more jerky. This is compounded if I'm having a stressful time at work or feel overwhelmed by projects around the house or something -- my stiff-upper-lip carry-on mentality prevents me from dealing with minor irritations promptly and sanely. With the invevitable result that I become grouchy, and withdrawn, and then flip the fuck out and stomp around the house wtih my boots on shouting at the cat. Then I calm down and talk about what's bothering me. Which is often, at its base, very very little. But there's always (I'm working on this, and I recognize the cycle, which makes it easier to deal with) an interval period where I'm basically being a big grouchy baby and any attempt to ask me what's wrong is met with "nothin' I guess" because I haven't processed what's wrong to the point that I'm capable of articulating it, or still don't think that what's bothering me is worth getting into. This is obviously not a direct solution to the question, but a data point that I think I'm a decent guy, a good husband, and a relatively kind person, but one whose internal life can spool out in directions I don't realize it's going in, and sometimes it takes a good shove to get me to realize that I'm being a jackass. Recognizing this makes it a lot easier to give me the corrective shove, and for me to receive it, but I still need to be realigned every once in a while.

...he will not make eye contact me and often physically turns his back away. I ask him a lot if there's anything bothering him about me, or work, or other things in his life but he just says 'I don't know' and won't go further with the conversations. It's very odd.This is bad. It is not something you need to move past. In a way it's a cry for help, this behavior, as annoying as I find it when people say that about things like this. I say this as someone who has exhibited behavior like this myself, from time to time -- without an affair or a deep relationship dissatisfaction being involved. For me the culprit has usually been work/money stress in one form or another: and the "are you having an affair? are you sick of me?" questions are so awful to hear when you're so stressed out about not meeting other commitments. "First I fail to {finish big project/please boss/get raise/pay mortgage} and now she says my marriage is falling apart? There's no way I can tell her XYZ." But whatever XYZ is, he might not want to face it himself and that'd be another reason why he doesn't know. History/family history of depression? Big changes/problems? New stresses? There's a problem here. The little things are a symptom. But in the face of a "little things" complaint, the kind of evasiveness that turns its back on you is just going to say "You're making a big deal out of a glass of water on your bedside? Fine, I'll get you water if you'll shut up." Maybe he feels you're not pulling your weight in some way, that you're sick too much, that your soup isn't cute anymore. But that could mean that, underneath that, he feels freaked out about the total amount of weight he feels he has to pull in all parts of his life, and that nothing's cute anymore. I wish I could give you some advice on how to break past it without it being a huge annoying nagfest. Usually when my wife gets me out if it, it's by way of a huge fight. There's something he doesn't want to face, so it'll be hella hard for you to get him to talk about it if he won't even talk to himself about it. Could be big, could be something small-in-the-scheme-of-things that he's too stressed/afraid to ask for help about.

I ask him a lot if there's anything bothering him about me, or work, or other things in his life but he just says 'I don't know' and won't go further with the conversations. It's very odd. Have you asked him if he's having an affair?

You only mention things he does (or doesn't do) for you. You don't mention anything you do for him. Do you do all the things you used to do?

I feel a little uncomfortable giving people I don't know personal advice, but I can maybe speak to this from my own point of view - that of being a husband that was guilty of acting in the same apparently inconsiderate way that your SO is now. It might be just a case of him getting complacent in your relationship and feeling that as time goes by and you become an "old married couple" that it isn't necessary for him to act like someone that is dating or wooing a new love for the first time. The first blush of marriage does sometimes wear off after a while and maybe those little things that never bothered him at first now get under his skin. I was guilty of the same thing and for no reason at all started to act mean, unfeeling and quite unloving towards my wife after 7 or 8 years of married life. I'm still not sure why it happened, maybe it was the realization that this was how my life was going to be forever (we married in our 30's also), and I resented that it would never change. A little self-analysis and a little counseling made me realize that it wasn't a case of "Crap, this is as good as its ever going to be and I hate it" but was actually "Hell this is great and I want it to be like this forever" . Once I figured that out I stopped being a butt-head and (hopefully) returned to being closer to the guy that she married. Do I put water by the side of her bed every night or rub her feet while she's watching Dancing with the Stars? No, but I think I am now a considerate, loving and good husband (again). Maybe he needs the same kind of kick in the pants that it took to make me understand that what I had was a good thing. For you two that kick might be counseling, but I have no way of knowing that. I just wanted to let you know what may be going on on with him. It seems that confession is good for the soul after all.

This "taking care of" thing - was it mutual? Did you give him sweet little presents and take care of him when he was sick too? Could it be that after seven years of marriage, he was feeling like a parent and not an equal in a marriage? I hate to sound so critical, especially since my husband "takes care of me" too, but at the end of the day it balances out that we both put the other person before ourselves.

Oh, and: He doesn't even put a glass of water on my bedside table at night. Something about this statement really struck me, because putting a glass of water on someone's bedside table seems like something a parent does for a child or a server does for a customer, not something a partner does for a partner. I have to wonder: have you spent the majority of your relationship being "served" in this way, and not doing the same for him in return? When's the last time you brought him a glass of water for his bedside table? I absolutely still think talking to him is the best place to begin, but I have to wonder: is there a chance he's just starting to realize you've been taking his kindness and caring for granted for the last seven years, and not returning it in kind? I can see how that might make him cranky. If you have been doing those kindness to him all this time, then you can ignore me here, but if not -- why don't you start doing those things for him that you miss him doing for you, and see what happens?