I don't know what to do with my marriage.

[WorriedandSad062]

Regular who's namechanged for this.

I've been married to DH for nearly 7 years now - we met and got married very quickly (within a year) and now have two primary school-aged DC. We live together as a family, he works FT and I work PT (5 days but reduced hours), no real financial stressors etc.

Here is the problem: I don't feel like I can talk to him any more. I never get the feeling he needs me emotionally (as in, needing support) but by the same token he doesn't seem to understand that I need support sometimes too. It's got so that I don't bother telling him if I'm upset about something, because I know he simply will not get it and the effort of trying to explain it to him will make me feel worse (frustration, anger etc). If I told him any of this, he'd blink at me in that robot way of his and say 'Hmm' a lot and just look a bit nonplussed at my issue, because it would very firmly be MY issue to sort out and no real business of his.

I think he has deep-seated issues coping with emotionally incontinent adults (i.e. his mother, who is kept at several arms' length) but I have issues of my own with having pleas for help rejected and it's got to the point where I just don't want to put myself through the pain of asking for help only to know that it'll be rejected/not accepted.

I feel alone, and miserable, and like I have no-one to talk to.I don't have any friends who I can talk to on topics like this and my family would be sort-of supportive but mostly not (they'd start from the premise that I'm being pathetic and unfair on DH and work from there - my own family don't do emotional need very well either). It's like being single again, only with the added burden of having to pretend I'm happy with my lot.

I don't know what to do.

[TheSparrowhawk]

It sounds like you an your DH are incompatible. It might be worth trying some marriage counselling but I don't see it being very effective.

[MatildaTheCat]

Firstly, has he changed or was he always a bit emotionally self contained? If he has always been this way then you can't expect him to become someone he is not.

My own dh is an unemotional man and always has been really. Not cold or mean but not an empathetic or touchy-feely type. So I need to get my emotional support elsewhere by and large. That's not to say he doesn't support me, he does but not in an expressive way.

You need to have a big chat and explain how you feel. Perhaps he could make more effort to ask about your day or listen to your problems. If he's a practical man he may be able to take on extra instructions like this but he might not really get it.

Play to his strengths and enjoy what he can offer but also develop other relationships which can fill other needs. I don't think one person can be everything to another. Sorry if I'm not explaining this very well, I just mean that lacking expressive emotions doesn't mean he doesn't care always.

[WorriedandSad062]

Thanks both - he has always been self-contained really. I think I was better able to cope with it before, as I didn't have kids/work/household to juggle simultaneously. Now it just feels like I have no spare capacity to manage by myself and I'm struggling, but when I reach for support it feels really hard to access. It's humiliating to have to ask your own husband for a hug and to have to explain that you're sad (and why) when most people have the emotional intelligence to spot this by themselves. It feels like I have to spoon-feed him this sort of information all the time because he's either too disinterested or too lazy to work it out for himself.

I'm also worried for another reason, that it may just be me and my shit that's causing the issue. I had a very controlling, critical mother who died two years ago, and I feel like I'm starting to respond to my husband in the same way I did to her; ostensibly close, but always hyperalert to the criticism that's inevitably coming (and he doesn't hold back on that front - no tact here, thank you). I feel like I am always waiting to be told what I've done wrong now and it makes me less inclined to talk to him because I know it's going to end up making me feel worse.

So I don't know if he is just an emotionless robot person or whether I've mentally moved him into the 'controlling critical twat' section of my brain that my mother used to occupy and am treating him accordingly. Either way, something needs to give.

[WorriedandSad062]

I think I'd probably benefit from it tbh 0dfod..... I did see a counsellor for a year just after my mum died but called time on it as I thought I was better.

I may not be better.....