Relationship crisis

[PancakesOnSaturdays]

I read something on here describing a partner getting ready to cheat and my DH met all the criteria.

He is distancing himself, expressing general unhappiness with me, spending time having "another life" away from family life etc.

He said a few weeks ago he wasn't sure if we would end up staying together, and I can't remember the last time he said he loved me.

:(
I don't think he is seeing anyone else, I think he has just fallen out of love with me. I'm not what he wants anymore.

He did love me in the past, he used to tell me all the time, say how fabulous I was, and how lucky he was.

I don't know what to do. We have young DC's and I want us to stay together and be happy.

I don't want us to stay together and be unhappy.

I hate feeling like I am not good enough for him every single day. Like he is judging me and finding me lacking. It is bloody depressing! I'm trying to be happy and wonderful for him so he will want me, but at the same time I'm so sad that I'm having to do this. It's tiring and I want to cry all the time.

I have become resentful. We can't get on now, one or the other of us is storming out of the house every evening practically. He's just stormed off with DCs in the car. We were meant to be going out, we had a row in the driveway (about the fucking car seat!) and he drove out without me!

I don't know why I am posting, I don't have a question really, I'm just so very sad.

Would Relate help? Is it too late? I feel like it is over. Everything is so bad. :(

ok

well, all the best

you know where we are

he really should see his GP if he is depressed though

it's thoroughly not-on to blame depression for his shitty treatment of you, then refuse to seek help for it

you cannot help him...he has to help himself

and sitting on his arse all day and taking it out on you is the not the way to go about it

and blaming your childhood, then repeating the same destructive cycle is very bad form too

is he actually going to "change" anything at all ??

actions, not words

I will let you know what is happening and not deny warning signs to myself. You are right, of course, he needs to help himself.

I do feel like I have regained some self respect and courage from these forums. It is him with the problem, not me, and I can't change that, I can only wait and see if he means it, I hope he does.

ok love, all the best to you x

Never mind whether these miserable tosspot men are having affairs or not: their behaviour is generally horrible. Potential breaches of monogamy are much less relevant than sustained emotional abuse from men who basically don't like women. The constant criticism of you, the undermining, the bullying - as Poppy says, treating you like an underperforming employee - these are signs that a relationship is not fixable because the man thinks you are inferior to him for the simple reason that he is the one with the penis.
Best of luck in finding a good exit strategy.

the sad truth though, sgb (often, not always) is that women will put up with endless bad treatment and undermining as long as the twat is their twat

the straw that breaks the camel's back is often uncovering some infidelity, enabling you to have a "proper reason" to walk away

so, so wrong

but quite common, I think

let's hope some of these cocky twats get a bit too cocky very soon, eh ?

Hello,

I know this ain't my thread but thanks for keeping me in mind. Just got back from our third Relate appointment, where yet again he just reheated the rant from yesterday and gave the counsellor a grade A demonstration of what I get.

He seems to have no conscience. I have not been trying to change to suit him, I have been trying my best to resist all my conformist urges. I am desperately sad that it has come to this and I really do not know HOW.

Before we had kids, I would have said that one of his stand-out characteristics was that he was kind. Kind? Kind? He is unrecognisable to me. I don't think he's having an affair - and I don't think I'm in denial about that, I've thought about the possibility because I've pretty much tried to think of anything that might account for him being a total shit.

I sat in the Relate guy's front room and really wondered if, in his professional duty, the counsellor ever just says 'Look mate, you are totally out of order - this is abusive and you need to know that.' I was sitting there listening to H just ratcheting up his righteous anger and being more and more horrible. Will this never stop? Well it did, but only when the session was over. Leaving me feeling unprotected and just as vulnerable.

Better stop as I had promised not to hijack, er, not very successfully. Thank you AF and SGB for your cathartic messages. I am just shaking my head at the injustice of it, and then no idea what to do next. Good luck Pancakes - keep us posted, I feel we're in the same boat. xx

Poppy, let me tell you something that is well recognised but for some reason hasn't been communicated to you

joint counselling where there is abuse is counterproductive and not recommended

it just gives the abuser another stick to beat you with

clever wordsmiths such as your H manage to bamboozle even experienced counsellors and use the session to flatten the abused partner's self-esteem even further

can I suggest you stop the joint counselling ?

seek individual counselling to try and explore why you are putting yourself through this, an why you don't think you can do better

you can stop it

you can stop him

you really can

please look at this link here

it is a precis of the book "The Verbally Abusive Relationship" by Patricia Evans

you will recognise your H there

I strongly suggest you buy that book and read it from cover to cover

Poppyfield you do realise that you can request to see the Relate counsellor on his own? I am aghast that a practitioner is continuing with the sessions in their current format, if they are as you describe.

Have you snooped at all to see whether your H is having an affair? If not, what's stopping you from doing that?

SGB I said in my post upthread that the possibility of infidelity is secondary to the abuse being suffered. However, AF is right about infidelity often being women's dealbreaker. I also remember having a similar discussion with you on a thread about a year ago where you couldn't see what could be gained from proving infidelity when a poster was grieving the loss of a partner who kept leaving and returning.

I said then that it really does matter to know, because it actually helps people to move on more easily once they know that their departing spouse is not some tortured soul, but a common-or-garden adulterer. Suddenly, it explains everything when it emerges that there was an affair all along.

I have kept in contact with that poster through various name changes and she is still on these boards. As suspected, there was an OW involved and as soon as that was revealed, there was a jolt of renewed pain when she had been coping pretty well on her own, but before long, this information helped her to make sense of the end of her marriage. She would have healed a lot quicker though if her H had been more honest, or she had discovered it herself.

Like AF, I'm baffled why anyone would put up with abuse and violence, yet infidelity turns out to be the death knell, but if that's what it takes to get women and children out of these relationships, I always recommend finding out.

Just spotted something in your last post Poppy that sounded strange. You said that you "sat in the Relate guy's front room"...

Relate don't normally operate from front rooms in houses. Is this man a private practitioner and if so, how did you find him? Is he a fully accredited therapist?

WhenWill - he is an accredited Relate counsellor, got him off their Website. I don't think it is that unusual for therapists/counsellors to conduct sessions in a room at their home, is it?
AF - will check out that book. I have considered individual counselling. I feel like I need the help. However I have no idea what can be done for us together. Is there just nothing for it but to split up? Surely there is something. I agree, I feel flattened by last night's Relate session. I was hoping that it might have the opposite effect. I understand the decisive nature of the revelation of an affair. And it is easier to grasp as a deal-breaker because it is absolute, not a 'boiling frog'-type event which accumulates over time so that you don't know the point at which behaviour has become unacceptable. Thanks.

Keep posting poppy

Buy that book

Ditch the joint counselling

Why continue soemthing that is is only helping you to feel more crap ?

It certainly doesn't sound like your H needs any more opportunities to kick you in the heart

My bottom line advice ? Stay with a man who makes you feel like this ? absolutely not. You will find I am pretty consisttent in that view, and not everyone will agree.

I just happen to think women are worth more than to be dicked around by these arrogant, self-entitled men who think the sun shines out of their own arse.

I don't believe hanging onto a relationship that doesn't enhance your life is at all sensible, sorry.

Your counsellor is either a conman (ie misrepresenting himself as a trained counsellor) or a fucking idiot, Poppy. Counselling 101 is 'don't counsel a couple when one of them is clearly abusive'. I would stop the sessions with that particular counsellor straight away.

I'm dubious about the counsellor too. AFAIK the Relate central website doesn't have a list of named or recommended counsellors on their site and they don't operate from private houses. Private practitioners (who may or may not be Relate trained) do though - and they are not bound by the rules and ethics of Relate, if they are operating independently.

Might be worth doing a check with BACP to see if this man is accredited, because up until recently, a person didn't even have to have a qualification to call themselves a counsellor.

Has he given you any paperwork with Relate logos on it?

He is accredited with BACP. I have some literature with his qualifications somewhere. Relate website does have a 'Find Your Nearest Service' search feature on their website, which is what I used.

Having qualifications doesn't stop him being a knob. Counsellors are only human beings, after all, and if you're not happy with the one you're seeing, call a halt to it.
Because the service you are recieving from him is going to make your situation worse as he is, for whatever reason, ignorant about abuse and not picking up on it therefore playing into the abuser's hands.
It;s not impossible for a counsellor to have a bit of an agenda, after all: his may be that abusers can be cured as long as their wives stop disobeying them.

If he is accredited, it doesn't change my opinion

this kind of counselling is wrong for your situation