Non communication

[temponame]

If your husband refuses to communicate with you, you have been honest in a not too emotional way but he is constantly defensive, refuses to admit to any feelings or discuss anything about the relationship whatsoever, and then you discover he has gone through your joint email account and deleted every single email between you (home and work) which relate to the contentious issues (money, children etc), would it be reasonable or unreasonble to suspect an affair? Would it be reasonable to ask someone to go on living with non communication from a husband indefinitely?

It is very important in this kind of situation to have more independence. It is good that you are going back to work. Although, the financial situation is a problem, the money issues, if you were a SAHM, would be even worse as the would be more righteous.

He needs to treat you as an equal partner generally.

Sorry - I meant 'he would be more righteous'

"yes i have had his children. he sees this as him making great sacrifices at the moment, earning the money, enduring the relative chaos of young babies around and our relationship being somewhat neglected in the newborn months.

my nervousness is saying to him "our children are a joint thing and for both of us"

i want him to say yes and step up to that and not see his financial contribution as me ripping him off"

I just think I should emphasise this.

Because he does not agree with you.

When do you think he will step up to his role?

Is there a chance, of him being the person he is, that he never will? That he will ALWAYS hold this against you, that you have inconvenienced him with children?

You need to think 'What do I think', not 'What does he think'.

Obviously, it is very good of him to give you children.

He might not step up to what you want if he doesn't really appreciate things in the first place.

Devote more time and energy to yourself and your dc. He is taking too much of your energy. (Sorry if I am letting my personal experience colour what I say too much!!!)

VIviAnn if i were to make a stab at the reason (and i might be wrong) it must be something to do with the fact that his mum left his dad. he thinks if he does not squirrel away money (if he is doing this and i dont know if he is) i might turn the tables on him one day and go and he will feel ripped off. With my firstborn daughter i paid the childcare cost apart from his childcare employees voucher which was expensive but manageable on my salary. now childcare for 2 children is slightly more than the mortage he himself is paying.

to be honest most of the "commitment" crunch points in our relationship have been a bit like this. i remember our engagement, we went away for the weekend, i knew he had bought the ring he paid for a hotel room but that night i remember crying in a bar because his behaviour suggested to me he was going to bottle it. the next morning he put the ring on the breakfast tray. if he genuinely had second thoughts then hurtful but fair enough. if he wanted to see how much i cared then that is another matter. i guess i will never know. since then other things like putting my name on the deeds for the family home even tho i wasnt stumping up 50% of the deposit (previous houses we have owned i have paid up 50%) - he made me wait a bit on that but then did it. thinking optimistically i interpret this as nervousness with women in general, thinking pessimistically i think he just does not trust me one iota

he "endures" your young children?

and you sitting there interpreting his behviour - unless he has told you what he was/is thinking - you can't guess what is in his head.

has he expressed the view that he is worried you might leave him as his mum left his dad?

but if he wants you not to leave him, why treat you as he does? it makes no sense - and quite frankly unless he opens up to you you will never know why he behaves as he does.

alll you can do is consider your reaction to his behviours - and consider yourself.

Time is right ,maybe stop putting so much energy into what the reasons might be or what he thinks. There will never be a valid reason for treating you in this manner and while your looking for one your avoiding the bigger picture , and also absolving him of responsibility for his actions.

Never mind what he thinks, or whether you know or not whether this situation is working for him or not. It isnt working for you and you need to start focusing on what your going to do about that .

You simply cannot change his behaviour , you cannot make him see sense and its futile to try. What you can do is start looking at your options and your own behaviour . His behaviour is his responsibility and your behaviour is yours. Let him worry about his.

I try to keep an open mind on your situation but I do not like any impression of prolonging the suspense about decisions or calling the shots and playing with emotions. That is just my experience - to do with keeping someone 'uncertain' all the time.

Experience also teaches you that whilst you may spend countless hours pontificating/analysing/worrying, they do not go around devoting all that time to what you worry about.

Dignified is right. You have to start changing your behaviour and get back some of the control you are losing to him. It is hard, I know.

I have only read the OP. And I suppose the conversation has moved on quite a lot, but at reading your fist post I don't think he is having an affair... he is filing for divorce.

It is also very wrong to feel nervous about the approachfulness of your own husband.

Temp , it all sounds easier said that done , i know . I spent days , months , years pondering the exact same as you .

He mustnt have been aware of his behaviour of the impact it had on me , he must not know hes doing it. If only i could get through to him, maybe somethings happened to him in the past and thats why , the endless pondering and analyzing of conversations ect ect. Bloody mind boggling.

And i happily analyzed and excused , because the alternative was just far too awful to contemplate , that i had married an abusive man and he didnt love me . Have you heard of cognitive dissonanace ? Our mind refuses to see what we dont want to see and rationalises it away.

I lived in that state for a long long time , i will sadly admit that my dcs sometimes did not get the attention they deserved as my focus was always on him. I considered counselling but never went , because deep down i knew what they would say , and i just wasnt ready to hear it.

By posting on here youve taken a significant step. Your not wrong , irrational or unreasonable , he is .

I feel this needs saying...

Understanding 'Why' someone does something does not necessarily mean condoning/accepting that behaviour.

All the 'Why' allows for is perhaps an understanding of how entrenched the behaviour is.

The more entrenched the 'Why' the more help is required to unravel it all.

IMO both you and your DH temponame would benefit highly from some counselling...preferably separately.

Does he tell you he loves you? Just wondering.

Does he make grand gestures (every now and again eg with the windows)? which don't seem to relate to how committed he is to you?

The more you write OP, the more odd his behaviour sounds, and the more distressing the situation seems to be for you.

Assuming he has some money put away, which shouldn't be just his money since the two of you contribute equally but differently to your family, do you ever do anything fun with it? Exciting things that your older child might enjoy, or new/interesting things for just the two of you? Because what comes across in your posts is that the life he 'allows' you and your family to lead is drab and unexciting. I apologise if that sounds horrible, it isn't meant to. It's just that your life at the moment, as a young family with two lovely children and not having the money worries of many others, should be great. (New windows etc obviously don't count, because they are an investment).

Those years with young children are hard at times, but so precious and will be gone before you know it. When you look back at them, it should be with a smile on your face and happy memories.

This is getting worse and worse, isn't it?

My dh kept a close fist on the finances, especially after he'd made me give up work (I wasn't keeping up with my domestic duties ). Thereafter he would peel a fiver off a wad of 20s and 10s, hand it over with a grudging "don't spend it all at once" - I'd ask for money because I needed, for instance, tampons. I couldn't have moisturiser because he had some Pure&Simple on the windowledge which was about 7 years old and smelt vile (and even if it didn't, I was over 40 and P&S was not appropriate for me). Many many other things.

Do not let this happen to you.

I just can't believe he wavered on putting you on the deeds to the house, simply because you personally didn't put forward 50% of the deposit - if it was a family house, the family needed to own it! In our case it's a bit different because we were fortunate to have the in-laws help us with the deposit, but there was never any question of putting us both on the deeds.

It does sound to me as if he's preparing to ensure you couldn't have any of 'his' money if you ever split up (he might not be planning of it, but want it 'just in case' because of his mother). I think you need evidence of how much he has because you have helped him earn it and if you did split you would be entitled to some of it to help raise the children. If you don't know it exists, it might be much harder to get access to any of it at all.

Oh I can believe it, FortunateHamster. I never got on to the deeds of our original flat. It was only when we bought this house, paying almost half the purchase price using my mum's money (she was moving in with us) that he didn't argue about that. It's a power thing.

Now look temponame, I don't want to frighten you, and I have no idea whether this is your dh having a power trip and getting you under his thumb, or whether he is a bit damaged by his mum's 'defection', but you have to get this sorted out now. You can't let this go on. If it's a power trip you have to know, as it will only get worse. If not, he needs professional help.

Either way, if nothing changes, you'll get to a point where you will need to leave him for the sake of your own sanity and that of your children. And it will be harder to do.

I'm sorry, and it is difficult; I am thinking of you.

thanks for all of the posts, no internet connection for a few days. as you all say the only way of knowing about this is some proper communication to a degree which resolves it and allows us to go forward.
i still dont know what is going on, on occasions i think i am being paranoid and need to get back to work to focus on something else. but i know there is a gulf in communication which will not be solved by me being pre occupied with something else, even if me earning gives me more security about money. i eventually showed him the piece of paper about shared finances on saturday night. he looked taken aback. we had spent the day where he had made some real effort in us going out for the day and he spent some money (not much £20 in a cafe but more than usual). When i produced the paper i explained i had to do it that way as i thought he would otherwise walk off before i had finished what i had to say. he gave it a fairly cursory glance and then said he was happy to arrange our finances in any way i liked as it was all "wooden dollars" (corporate speak for all of our money is in the same pot) but that i had to come up with the "direct debits" from his account to my account and from my account to his to sort it. the two options were 50-50 where i we both pay 50 of the mortgage and the childcare or 70-30 where payment is pro rata income. he didnt express an opinion on either. so i did the maths for the 50-50 to which he said "but then you will be worse off" to which I said it is not about me getting more money from you it is about you using your "own" earned money to pay for the childcare and also to show that you accept the fact that you have 2 children. i also said i wanted to be judged on my own actions towards him and not the actions of any other woman in his life however they have behaved towards him and that i didnt particularly want to know how other women have behaved towards him but just that i want to be respected as his wife and not as someone who is about to behave the way he thinks i might behave. to which he responded with a slightly surprised face and silence. so no doubt if he is playing me again i have shown my cards and he has shown me nothing.
homeboys yes of course no one likes to recieve emails at work and you are right, the thread details that this was my only line of communication with him as he previously agreed with me that a peaceful evening after the 2 children are in bed is important to him so we dont "talk" then and if i ever used to initiate a conversation he walked off. of course everyone hates having to think about any knotty relationship issues when they are trying to get a days work done. and yes he does work hard but not 60 hours a week, but now i am being picky which is not the point. the point is sometimes it feels like he is treating me as a lazy employee subordinate who needs ignoring because he has better things to do. anyway i guess it will all work itself out one way or another and thanks to anyone who has posted.