I’m really trying to find out whether I’m being unfair, or expecting too much of my husband. Over the last year both of my husband’s parents have died, one of them after a short illness, and the other suddenly a few months later. My husband had a good relationship with them and has obviously been devastated. During the illness he talked quite openly about how he felt, we were both very sad and I felt that it would be hard but that we would help each other, and our kids, through it. I have experienced the loss of a close family member so I understand how painful grief is.
However, he has not been able to talk about how he feels at all. He started off by saying that he feels numb, and I felt that he was still processing the shock and had buried all the pain, but a bit more time has passed and I had thought that he may start to find it easier to express how he feels, or at least attempt to put this into words. However, it still seems just as hard as when they had both just died. He says he thinks about them but doesn’t get upset.
I feel like he has shut all his emotions away, as he also finds it difficult to relate to anyone else’s emotions. If I talk to him about how I feel he doesn’t really respond, I find this hard, as it’s difficult to talk about for me, and so when I get nothing back in response I just wish I’d not said anything. He can’t really understand how our children are feeling either. Getting him to discuss anything where emotions are involved is really difficult, it’s almost like it’s a foreign language to him.
We both work, we have children and so our lives are busy, days and weeks will go past without there being the opportunity to talk about anything more than who’s picking up who and who’s paid the bills, etc. I completely get that that is the reality of family life. But I love him and care about him and feel that I should try to help him, and try to get him to deal with things and talk about things. I also feel that I should be trying to help our relationship and so I will bring the subject up after a bit of time has passed. This is always really hard, as he is defensive and will deflect my questions or focus on small details that are not really important. I always end up regretting that I’ve tried, and it just reminds me that he’s got everything so bottled up and he hasn’t really begun to deal with what has happened to him.
I understand that everyone deals with grief differently and if I felt that the way he was dealing with it was enabling him to gradually move forward then I would respect that, but I feel he is stuck and it is seriously affecting our relationship. He says he feels ‘flat’, and when he describes how he feels it sounds like depression. He can’t get enthusiastic or excited about things. We have no sex life and this as well as getting no emotional input from him, has made me feel lonely and un-loved.
I want to help him, but feel like I'm not, and am losing hope.