Needing and Wanting in Carver's The Student's Wife

Upon beginnging to read Raymond Carver's short story The Student's Wife I have to admit that I was annoyed. I was peeved at the constant whining of the strong husband who just wanted to sleep. He makes her a sandwich, he rubs her feet, keeps his eyes from their only desire to close...he's the guy who does "the little stuff" of whom the flashy ladies magazines dream. Then enter his wife, a disheveled and needy thing hell-bent on keeping him awake and making him suffer insomnia with her. She is a being of wants.

As the story continues I begin to identify with the husband even more. Paragraph after paragraph she chides him from sleeping and nags for a constant flow of information. I don't want to read these scenes either--there is a reason they are in bed and goddamnit she needs to let them sleep. 

It is only when she begins to cry that I realize something is amiss. And all at once I begin to feel like the husband too busy and encumbered with his own daily life to pay attention to the person he married, the mother of his children. As her crying is uninterrupted by the silent house I feel shame and guilt in not responding. How was I so careless while reading to not pick up on these signs of desperate loneliness? A whole paragraph of everyday pleasures by which she defines a happy, whole life. Her statements are really pleads for affection. I am deplorably silent at her recognition of needing, not wanting.