I feel cheeky posting as I'm not a regular, but I've lurked long enough to know the advice will be sound. I'm driving myself loopy trying to deal with this alone.
What do you do if your gut instinct tells you that something is amiss, you ask upfront and your dp carries on as if the words were never spoken?
We've been together for 13 years. Our dc is 8. He's always been my best friend. He does the whole male-thing of bottling his emotions, but normally, if I ask, he tells me what is troubling him and we sort it out.
The last few months have been strained. It seemed to happen overnight. Over a weekend in fact. His job means he works away. On this occasion, someone rang in sick so he had to cover. He was fine when he left and a different person when he came home.
I asked him at the time and he started to blame me for financial decisions we'd made together. How he can no longer afford to change his car once a year or buy designer suits. He hates being poor.
We're not poor by any stretch. We have less disposable income, but we're not poor. I asked him what he wanted to do and he said he was resigned to poverty.
He's been detached since. There's no affection coming from him. I have to ask for any morsel of attention from him. It's breaking my heart. He acts like a friendly stranger.
I ask him and ask him if he's okay, if we're okay and he just ignores it. I wonder sometimes if the words disappear in the air between us. He'll chatter quite pleasantly about the mundane and functional, but nothing more. We're like two people at a bus stop.
This week has been bad. Day after day of silence. In the end I broke and told him I was leaving to think things through. No reply. Then a few hours later, he sent a breezy text about how he was heading home and how cold the weather was.
I don't understand. Is he having some kind of breakdown? Is he hiding something? What do I do?