I am feeling really confused about my marriage, and I really want to get an outside perspective on how I can fix things (or not). I need an outsider's perspective. I don't have any close family (only child, only my mum left and she is not someone to discuss problems with) or close friends sadly. He is so subtle that I can't decide whether any of the things he does are deliberate or if they even exist but I feel all the time like I am going a bit crazy.
Backstory: I met my DH when I was 22 and he was 33. At that age, I was extremely immature, unconfident and insecure and only just really learning who I was. We were married 2 years later, and now we've been married for 15 years (I'm 40 now). We have two children aged 10 and 4. He's an amazing man, extremely intelligent, not from the UK, lived in many countries, speaks several languages fluently and several others well. He's a flamboyant and enthusiastic cook and makes friends with all kinds of people effortlessly. He was so different to anyone I'd ever met before and I adored him. We started out as friends but quickly fell in love and within weeks he said he was going to marry me.
I still love him very much and really don't want to hurt him. He's a great father (apart from one thing I write about below) and the children adore him.
And yet I feel like I want to get away from him because he kind of sucks all the life out of me. Currently I've been able to be a SAHM for a while I am very grateful for, but I'm now wanting to go back to work because I need some independence and interaction with other people.
The key issues:
- We haven't had sex for 4 years. Yes, YEARS. Basically the last time was when DS was conceived. The same happened after DD was born. We didn't have sex for years until it was convenient to have a second child. This makes me feel desperately unhappy to be honest. I've tried to talk to him about it but he says he just doesn't feel like it because he's overweight. He says he still thinks I'm attractive but he has no sex drive. That's the end of the discussion. We're basically roommates at this point and he's fine with that.
- He controls all our finances, even when I was the breadwinner for the family. When we moved to this country, he knew the country and the language and I was overwhelmed with my first baby, so I just left him to it. Until recently, my name wasn't even on our bank account. We now have a joint account but I don't have my own credit card, he controls that.
- He talks to me as though I am stupid. Very subtly and it's made out to all be jokes. But it undermines my confidence and I find myself becoming this dizzy chaotic silly person that he treats me like, even though I have a PhD and as I said kept the family afloat while he retrained. Because we live abroad, my career basically died and I haven't been able to find a job that I love, but I have slogged away and earned good money anyway.
- (This is a biggie for me): He talks to DD the same way. This slightly teasing, jokey but insidious "you are so stupid" tone. I really can't describe it better than that. He thinks that DS is "intellectual" (he's 4!) and DD isn't. I really dislike the way he speaks to her more and more. He is getting much worse as she gets older. He is a teacher and always talking about how ditsy the girls he teaches are and how DD is just like them. And he always seems to be picking on her, just finding something wrong to comment on.
- When I try to discuss anything with him, I always end up feeling confused and wrong. I can't explain it, but somehow it all turns around to where his point of view is the right one and I somehow had it all a bit wrong. I try so hard to stand up for myself and be assertive but I get myself all turned around and dizzy almost every time. I end up feeling guilty for even thinking whatever point I wanted to make. If he does concede he makes a big deal about how he is doing what I want.
- He's totally self-absorbed. He has an office in our apartment where he spends at least 80% of the time he is at home. Sometimes he is working, but equally often he's playing computer games or streaming TV shows. He's totally disinterested in buying anything for the children or taking photographs or improving our living situation. I had to fight for YEARS to buy DD her own bed. The only pictures I have of myself when I was pregnant last time are selfies.
- He has continuously refused to talk to me in the language of the country we live in. I have learned the language, even though I make a lot of grammatical mistakes, and have tried talking to him in the language. He always answers me in English, even when I ask him not to. This seems like a small thing, but I don't know if this is another way of subtly making me feel stupid.
- He used to be funny and misanthropic in an amusing way, but he is becoming more and more simply nasty. He is pretty homophobic and is always so rude about women on TV. And in front of the DCs. He swears all the time in front of them and to them as well (e.g. what the fuck are you doing? or what is this fucking shite you're watching?) This sounds AWFUL when I see it written down.
This is so long, I'm trying to get it straight in my head. Is any of this so bad? I don't know if I'm even describing any of this in a way that makes sense. This is the problem - it doesn't make sense. I can't get a grip on what is wrong or why I am feeling this way. Can anyone help me at all?