Are relationships work?

[menopausemad]

What do you do when your marriage is crap and your partner truly believes that a good relationship is just good without any effort? When he thinks that you should not have to work at having a happy relationship? When he believes you do not need to make any effort to makes things work if you were truly meant to be together? This is after 20 plus years of marriage, an affair and total loss of trust and security. He does not think we should have to work to make things better? We are at an impasse.

at the dog just sitting there. it's beautifully bright here - hope you have similar and can get out somewhere for a bit in the light and air.

guess you're probably at work though.

think a starting point is to think of one thing you could do that you used to enjoy or could imagine you might have enjoyed before and to start doing it and stick to it even if it's more effort than fun initially.

do you write? might help to write your thoughts and feelings down and see them on paper. can be easier to see and challenge the negativity that way sometimes and to get a clearer picture of what could help.

is there any chance you could get away on your own for a weekend somewhere and just have some peace and space and you time?

Crap evening. Bad day at work, struggling with application form for another, house has turned into a tip in 48 hours. Child off sick and reckon another one will be tomorrow. I do not have time to be nice enough to them.

H utterly uncommunicative. Think he is pissed off with lack of care, sympathy for an ache and general boosting.

It did not help that I could not do tea and little food in the house. Another failure.

And my Mother has got the boys' bug and I am worried about her. Why won't he step up when I struggle, or am I just being a wuss? So tired.

I really need to work out what is me being needy and hopeless and what is him being useless. But, whatever it is not working.

Into work tomorrow for what I know will be a very 'politically' sensitive meeting. Oh bugger. If I cry at work I am done for. Have managed up to now...I WILL NOT CRY AT WORK. Anyone reading please send be strong stuff my way tomorrow. I honestly think if work goes the same way as my personal life I will have nothing. No, that is absolute rubbish because of boys...not have nothing, just be proven to fail at everything. I do wonder if they would be better off without me.

PS Stone cold sober - just cant think or write

awful reading meno. sorry you had a shit day - it doesn't equate to being a shit person. that's quite a leap.

hope meeting goes ok.

I hope your meeting went/goes well.

He should step up when you're struggling. And it isn't your job to constantly prop up his ego and do all the caring in the relationship - it should be a two-way street. And tea isn't your problem alone - there are two adults in the house! If he can't cook he could get take-away or nip out and get a ready-meal.

To cap it all I 'forgot' to remind him to put the bins out so a trip to the dump is needed.

Please don't think they'd be better off without you in any way. You're doing your best with a crappy situation and your DH isn't helping you. Been there done that and I know that you can't make it a better relationship/family on your own. You either need to both work at it, or you have to accept that he won't try, so you move on and make a better life for you & your boys without DH.

If he doesn't see the need to try then he has to accept that things aren't working and deal with that, but he can't expect you to bury your head in the sand too. Ultimatum time I think.

Hope work is going ok for you, but if not, surely you're not 'done for'? If you get upset at work you are clearly showing signs of stress and need some time off to deal with your difficult home life.

#head desk#

When my dh forgets the bins, he forgets the bins. When I forget the bins, I forget the bins. When we both forget the bins, we've forgotten the bins. Argh.

I hate this thing where the man thinks himself too important to have to engage his brain about household matters. (Talking about in general, not your situation specifically, OP. Although if the cap fits...)

I think I remember you from another thread.

Can't you see that his infidelity was just the tip of the iceberg here? And his contemptuous behaviour post-affair is a further layer of that iceberg?

Unless you contradict me, I bet your husband has always been a selfish, sexist and controlling man.

The reason you're depressed is because you stay with him and hate yourself for doing so.

And because you realise that you've put up with this for years, but didn't cotton on to what he was really like because you assumed his fidelity meant he loved you.

Having the affair wasn't the crisis point you seem to think. The first time you put up with his selfishness, was the watershed moment in your relationship. That paved the way for more of the same from him. Of course the person with most responsibility for that is him but it's also true that it's human nature to test boundaries. A selfish person pushes them though - and if they don't get called on it, they'll just get more selfish and entitled.

My advice is stop making this all about the affair, because it is only significant in that it should have been your watershed moment, that finally gave you proof that you were married to a selfish, sexist and entitled man.

You need to find out why it wasn't and why you've continued to enable his behaviour. That would be helpful to you as an individual.

But you are flogging a horse that died years ago, if indeed it was ever alive in the first place.

Your depression is because you're still with him, suffering the effects of his behaviour and suffering the effects of your own contempt for yourself for allowing it.

I think this thread has been about our relationship here and now rather than the affair. It is however, relevant to how I feel. Not because of the affair but because of how alone I felt since.

But, yes I do feel contempt for myself - for my inability to make things better. I have tried but failed. Yes failed. And yes I deserve this for enabling. Do you really think I do not blame myself for the crap?

You can't make things better from within a trap. It's not your failure - you can't change him into a decent bloke, it's not within your power - the only person that can do that is him.

Anyway what's your beef with 'failing'? We learn from failure. Sometimes we have to accept something doesn't work and maybe never will. There's no shame in that.

I mean, if your dc or a family member or friend came to you and told you they were 'failing' at something, whether it be a friendship, relationship, school or work - would you judge them as harshly as you judge yourself? Would you write them off as 'failures'?

Or would you try to build up their confidence and help them through?

I think you'd do the nurturing - and it's time to treat yourself as kindly and stop talking and thinking about yourself in such negative terms. Even if it feels false to start with, you need to change the way you frame this.

If you're blaming yourself for failing to make things better in the relationship, I'd suggest that's the wrong approach. Because that was never going to be achievable, with this man in this relationship.

Instead of blame, I think it's about responsibility. You do have a responsibility for your own mental health and wellbeing and along with your husband, the atmosphere in which you're raising your children. I think that's where you're not taking enough responsibility. Neither is your husband of course, but he sounds appallingly selfish and always puts his own comfort first.

Have you accepted that this is never going to get any better? That actually things have got worse in the past 3 years?

I'm wondering whether you're using your grief as a kind of comfort blanket to stop you doing something? There's so much outside help you could get, but you've deflected posters' suggestions about counselling or seeing your GP again. This makes me wonder whether you are strangely attached to this way of life where you are needy and begging for crumbs of affection from a cruel man and which posits you in the role of victim.

Are you frightened to let go of that role and that way of life?

i don't think it's being attached to this way of life and role of victim but i do think that getting better and leaving him are inextricably linked. doing one evokes the other. avoiding one avoids the other.

depression and utter self neglect are the only means to keep this relationship together and on some level i think meno knows that and steers away from getting better and the things that would make her feel better about herself because they lead in only one direction: the end of this marriage.

i think it's a stark choice now between a life of depression and not liking oneself and the continuation of this marriage. at the moment you are choosing this marriage over yourself.

I have a new gp and don't want to see him. I do not want tablets. Counselling? The one at the surgery is crap. So crap you would laugh at him in his shell suit.

I feel responsible yes. I think if I could get myself in order my marriage would be better. Putting everything to one side I really am no fun to live with. I can feel the exasperation from you coming through the screen. Can you imagine the feeling I get from my husband? Of course he treats me with contempt and who can blame him?

I do think if I were different my marriage would be different. I feel like I try to change and fail.

Does that make sense?

Btw gp is sure pain is an issue. He would prescribe opiates and tell me to stop working etc in an instant. Can you imagine how much worse I would be doped and stuck in house. Work is hard atm (due to organisational changes not my job per se) nonetheless it is a life line. You would be amazed at how I am perceived at work. I am the smiling mrs fix it extraordinaire! If only I could keep that up at home.

I wish my husband did not interpret relationship needing effort with no love. I think he genuinely believed if there is live everything would be plain sailing. So when things are bad as they are now he believes there can not be live. I am not explaining this but it is at least partly to do with his affair. He felt loved up so that must have been right. He loves me but not in that loved up way. I can see that the longstanding true love is something worth having and fighting for. He is like a teenager who only values that starting out feeling. This makes me feel like a failure. He thinks that because he dies not get that feeling with me I am not right.

I know in past I have lost that feeling for some quite periods of time but quietly determined to feel it again. Fake it until you make it has a lot of merit imo.

oh meno wake up! can't you read what you're writing? you are perceived well at work because there is nothing wrong with you and you're around normal people who don't make you feel like a worthless piece of shit. it's not if you were better your marriage would be better it's that this marriage is making you ill and miserable. work is a lifeline because it's away from your husband and gives you access to yourself and others outside of this hell.

Your husband sounds like a mean selfish fucker.

You sound like you'd be a lot better off without him. Who gives a shit what he thinks about everything? Why are you making it all about him? You cannot change him into what you want him to be.

HE is not worthy of you - not the other way round.

Your dh had a setback three years ago. He had a disappointment, it didn't work out with the OW. So he ended up at his Mums house, right? You begged him to come home and he did, cos it's comfy and with the kids and it's not embarrassing like still living with your parents and he can't afford anywhere nice on his own if he still has to support his family.

He came back on sufferance, and he came back passive-aggressive - he didn't come back to try to make it work properly, from what you say. He holds that you were the one who wanted him to come back against you, like a blade to your throat, rather than embracing the chance.

You can't make the relationship better on your own. It's not expecting too much to want to feel loved.

It would be reasonable to say to him, when he throws that you asked him back in your face that at the time, you wanted him back at any price. But you didn't know just how much it would really cost you. That's not your fault. How could you have known? You got a bad bargain - you hoped you would be getting back the man you married, but you got the one who had opted out.

As SwallowedAFly says, the reason work is good and you're appreciated there, is because they see you as you are, not through a lens of negativity as you see yourself and as it suits your dh to see you.

There are more counsellors in the world than one in a shellsuit. Your gp should refer you to someone else if you're not comfortable with their normal one. There are counselling services available through BACP. You have more options than a chap in a shellsuit .

I don't think the reason you're perceived differently at work is solely down to the fact that you're removed from the negative influence of your husband and the atmosphere at home. I think it's at least partially because you can't behave at work like you do at home i.e. like a needy victim who won't do the obvious things to help either herself or her children. The counsellor analogy is a case in point. At work if you were commissioning, you couldn't say "Oh we can't get anyone in to do this work because the last time I used someone to do a he wore a shellsuit and wasn't very good."

I'm sure you aren't fun to live with OP, but the idea that if you changed to your work persona at home and tried to put all this behind you, your marriage would improve, is a fantasy.

It wouldn't improve because you're married to a selfish, sexist and entitled man who doesn't love you.

Nothing you personally do will change that. It is out of your control.

Stop trying to control the things that you cannot and start taking control of the things you can - like yourself, your health, the lives of your children, your future.

It's obvious to me that you won't take responsibility for things you can change and instead you take responsibility for things you can't. I think this is the source of all your problems.

I am sorry to read that you are feeling so low.

Having read through this thread I can understand why many people are focusing upon you and way you feel about yourself. You need to love yourself and remember who you are and what makes you happy.

I also have an alcoholic father and as a result I put up with a lot of s* in relationships. That said, I have had counselling and found it incredibly helpful and am now 100% happy and confident in myself.

I really feel you would benefit from the same. Find out who you are. Speak to someone about your thoughts and feelings. When you are happy, your husband will see and remember what he loves about you. What did you used to do as a couple when you were happy? Can you re-create that?

It sounds as though your husband made a massive mistake - that does not mean he does not love you. It is easy in long term relationships to go through periods of indifference and even dislike and get through it. Is it possible that he is depressed?

To me it sounds as though he does want to be there - with you. You say that he came home because you begged him- he didn't have to do that he chose to. You mention that you would not be able to afford 2 houses, again if he really were selfish and didn't care, that would not be a major concern to him.

He sounds like a typical man - he doesn't help much around the home however you have said that you work less hours. You 'forgot' to remind him to put the bins out - I wonder if that was said in defense when you mentioned the bins had not been put out? Men often say things like that when they feel they are under attack.

I thought I'd post to add a little balance - we are all human and we all mess up. It is difficult living with someone suffering from depression and must be difficult showing love to someone who rejects you when you try to make an effort. To let him in and really try and work out if you want this relationship to work you need to be happy in yourself.

I wish you the best of luck and hope you find the happiness you deserve.

Typical man or typical sexist? Not all men are like this. Sexist, entitled and selfish men are though.

Unless he wanted to stay at his mothers, not a particularly popular activity for men in their forties, then I wouldn't describe coming back to the family home as a choice for which he deserves any credit. Financing 2 houses not a concern for him? I think it would be a concern to most people, unless they have a surplus of funds, which the OP says they haven't.

This isn't about someone making a once-in-a-lifetime mistake that is deeply regretted. He doesn't regret it, that's one of the main problems. He probably regrets that the OW changed her mind and that's about as far as this man's depths go. His regrets are for him not the OP and not his children.

Thank you ilove. My father died of his alcoholism last year. We spent this weekend taking his suits to the charity shop. Monday I went to the shop and searched through the many bags and retrieved the one he had made to walk me down the aisle in 26 years ago.

Part of me, part I don't trust, believes I loved. I do not feel worth it. I do not think that is all my husbands fault.

ThinkIng. I think how I am at work is an act. I think if I could do the same act at home everyone would be happier.

Ilove's post makes a lot of sense. It is almost as though she had heard my husband talk.

I have found this challenging and difficult I have been thinking about why I post here. It is for validation. So sometime else can tell me what I am feeling is not daft. I can see that this is a symptom of my lack of belief in myself. I have lost trust, not in him but in me.

Sorry, I know I am contradicting myself, sometimes not across posts but in the same post!! Ilove said something about letting him in ( on phone hard to scroll back). He says that. I do reject him and you know what. I fear him being unhappy. I hate seeing him unhappy. And unlike a view here I think I make him unhappy. I don't think he is depressed now, although not happy either, but he is not happy. I wish I could make him laugh.