Feel silly posting but I feel like I could use a neutral view. I don’t post very often on tricky issues so if you could go easy I’d appreciate it kind mumsnetters. Sorry for the long post.
I live with my partner of 15+ years. We have two wonderful small children under 5. Things are really strained between us. I can’t really pinpoint where things began to go so downhill but I now don’t really know how to turn things around or if I should keep hoping to. I’m embarrassed to say things have maybe always had their ups and downs. Maybe we shouldn’t have continued and had children but that is hindsight now I’m afraid.
We just don’t seem to be able to talk or relate happily any more. We are not intimate and barely have any physical contact now. I am sad about that though have never been brilliant at that side of our relationship so I know it hurts him even more than me. I feel he’s always felt I didn’t love him as much as he me. I wasn’t brought up in a very emotive family so find a lot of that difficult though have been forced to be more vocal now we have children.
There are flash points at times when he or I disagree with the way we are managing the children.
Our youngest is a difficult sleeper and I am still nursing (I didn’t intend to but am stuck). That causes tensions because when DC2 wakes, nursing is what DC2 wants. It has led to me nearly always putting DC2 down for sleep and inevitable sleeping in a bed in their room after the first wake. I think he would prefer I leave DC to cry or, me to disappear so he can ‘sort it out’ but I just feel so awful leaving DC and find that very, very hard, as does DC2. I have been trying to be out more evenings so that DC2 can be put to bed by him. It is fairly fine as long as I am not in, it’s when I am being 'withheld' that it’s really hard and I find it hard to hack screaming weak.
So, all of that may not seem to be the death of everything but it feels like we are not in a relationship together, just existing for the children. My partner is clearly miserable and perhaps 3 evenings a week drinks a bottle of wine. He is also harming himself physically. He did this when he was much younger (before ‘us’) but has been doing it often once a week that I can tell. I don’t know how to talk about it with him. I’ve tried to speak about everything via email which sounds crap but we used to communicate via letter a lot when we began so I thought it would scare me less and be less confrontational to him. He doesn’t reply, although replied drunk to the last one is a rather odd way. I’ve broached counselling through these. I’ve begun to do some Relate over the phone. I've not told any family or near by friends about the extent of things.
I have had mental health issues in my late teenage years which involved a stay away from home, this included self-harming. I don’t deal with things like this now. I am not sure what to do, how to turn things around or if there is something left to turn around. I know I can't bear the thought of being without the children and am assuming neither can he.