Why doesn't anyone ever talk about this part of marriage?

Andy and I celebrate 10 years of marriage together this year (we've been together for 12 years and we've known each other for about 15). We're caught in the dry spell. We got in a small argument on Saturday night...he wound up telling me "screw you" which he's never said before. I wasn't superly mad, but the thought popped into my head that if I let him talk to me like that and didn't respect me, that I wasn't any better than the wives who stayed in abusive marriages (I'm NOT saying my hubby is abusive)...and so since I'm trying to work on my self-image, I left for a little while before I said something back to him that I would regret later. When he realized that I was leaving, he told me to come back and sit down and watch the movie with the girls (it was family movie night). I told him he could sit and watch the movie with the girls but that I wasn't staying around someone who was going to talk to me like that. At first I was going to go to the book store and then I wound up going to my Mom's. she knew we got into an argument, but I didn't give her the specifics of what we were fighting over. All she knew was that he spoke to me in a way that he never has before and even though I knew when he said it that he was upset, I wasn't going to give him permission to say that to me again and I just felt it I didn't make a statement that I wasn't going to stand for that, then it would have a chance to come out again sometime later. She felt that I did the right thing.

I sat on her stool in the kitchen drinking tea with her and I asked her why people didn't talk about the part of marriage that it becomes later. It's not always all fire and romance and you can't get enough of each other. The giddiness around each other goes away. You're left in a stale place sometimes with one of you wanting more from the other...but nobody talks about this phase of marriage. Mom looked at me and said "no, Jess, because usually when marriage takes on that phase people divorce one another because they think they're not in love with each other anymore. People don't give it a chance and realize that you just grow comfortable with one another and if you keep just talking to each other (not AT, but TO) each other that you get through it." I told her that one thing out of my parent's divorce, I learned that being in love with someone isn't totally all a feeling...a lot of it is actions...you make a choice daily to act on loving someone...staying or leaving."

She asked me to think about my spiritual dryness lately (something we were also talking about)...she said "you go through periods of spiritual dryness where you feel that God isn't listening to you, or answering you, or you don't feel like going to church...yet He's committed to you nonetheless and you know that you'll eventually bounce out of it. That's just like marriage sometimes.

I just think that if more people talked about this, then people would feel better about being in this part of a marriage and maybe there would be less divorces happening. I don't know...maybe I'm totally out in left field.

Anyway, when I came home about 4 hours later, he was extremely apologetic and he said that it was all the stress of this week that wasn't helping matters and he was trying to move past it all, but he was just still upset and he took it out on me. He asked me to forgive him and he just hugged me. Of course, I forgive him...but I did make it clear that I won't tolerate being talked to like that. If he wants me to respect him, he needs to respect me. We had a chance to sit and talk and got some things hashed out and I think I know what he's missing from me (I had to piece some of it together as he wouldn't come right out and say it), and I think he has more of an understanding of what I think has been missing lately and we both have some things to try and work on.

I love my husband dearly, he's a great hubby and he provides for his family very well. I just feel like we're missing something on some levels lately, even though our relationship has been ok. It's not like we've been fighting non-stop or I can't stand being around him or anything. Things have just been really low-key lately and I just feel that something is missing. We keep communicating and I think we may have had a break-through this weekend about what we were missing from each other. I'm going to work on some things that I "heard" from him this weekend althoug he didn't come outright and say it...and see if that makes a difference.