Things needs to change, but DH strangely resistant.

[TheWeirdness]

I've nc'd for this. Sorry if things seem fuddled, but I am not exactly sure what is going on and I feel quite confused.

DH and I have been married for ten years, and together for twelve (I'm 40 and he's 38). Over those years, we've fallen into a very sedentary way of life. Things just tick along, and nothing much happens. My days are either spent at my job (which I've been doing for ten years), doing housework and cooking, or working on my project. If I work from home, there can be weeks where I don't leave the house at all, and I don't have much of a social life.

I've known for years that our set-up isn't right. I am very aware that the way we live, moreover the way I live, needs to change. I've tried to talk to DH about it in the past, but somehow there's a real resistance there. He just gets defensive and argumentative, or just listens but won't engage. When I have tried to implement lifestyle changes that, by default, involve DH, they don't last or don't come off somehow ... and it is back to the same old same old. What is strange about this is that when I implement changes that only require my own input, they work.

Anyway, things have now come to a head because I have now been diagnosed with depression. I'm finding it hard to do pretty much anything, even get out of bed. I just find myself staring at the wall for hours.

I know I need to get myself out of this situation by taking some sort of action so, this morning, I tried to talk to DH again about making some changes in the way we live. I'd like us to be much more active, and I'd like to have an idea of where we are going in life because I've really no idea anymore and, as such, I don't know how to make personal decisions or choices.

So I asked him, very simply, as a starting point, what kind of life he wanted in ten years time and what kind of things he would like to achieve. My idea was that he would tell me, then I would describe the kind of things I wanted to do and achieve, and with all this information out in the open, we could plot a path through and start living a bit more of a dynamic life.

The ensuing exchange turned into a disaster. Again. DH just seems unable to talk to me about what he wants in life in an open and honest way. Every time I spoke, his response was argumentative and defensive, even though I'd said nothing critical about him at all. By the end, I was left with a lot of pressure in my head and a mild headache, and I just felt gutted.

But I don't want to live the way we do anymore. It's staid, sedentary, boring and a very small world for me; it's like a never-ending groundhog day of either domestic or paid work, punctuated with a week's holiday every year. We are both now overweight and unfit because of the sedentary way we live, and DH's BMI has now reached "obese" (he's put on five stone in four years, and was diagnosed with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease a year ago). I also feel quite trapped. He gets a bit weird if I want to do something on my own, and I even stopped getting the train to work because he told me it gave him panic attacks (he has a fairly severe anxiety problem that he refuses to get long term help for).

I know that if I go my own way and sort life out for myself alone, and he continues to live the way he does, then in a few years, I will be a very different person and he will still be the same, and I can't see what would keep our marriage together.

I wondered if anyone had any insight into this situation at all, if anyone else had been there and had any advice? Moreover, I wanted to know what you all thought about this. I need some other perspectives.

His 'anxiety' over your whereabouts doesn't seem to bother him when he's the one out until morning, leaving you alone in the house. Do you ever go out yourself when he's out with his mates?

Thanks for all your responses.

I have been doing a lot of thinking over the last couple of days, and it has become apparent that my isolation has been largely created by DH's various "anxieties". The situation for me is now so suffocating that I have to break out of it.

There are a couple of interesting things that have really made me stop and think. The first is that, yes, my parents can be quite suffocating and my mother is controlling. I grew up in that climate, and I probably don't see warning signs as soon as I should.

The second is the model that DH's parents provide. His mother has spent all her adult life working full time and "on calls" (night work), as well as doing all the domestic work for a household of 4. As a result, she never had a social life and her time was spent either at work or in the home. It seems clear to me that DH thinks this is "normal". I also now see how his mother uses "worrying" and "anxieties" about her children to control them through emotional blackmail, and constantly associates this behaviour with the fact that "she cares". Controlling behaviour rewritten as an expression of love is a very clever little trick when you see it for what it is.

I'm not exactly sure what I am going to do. I suspect I need to build up my resilience before I make a big decision because I don't think I am in a good place to leave just at the moment (my GP has signed me off sick).

I think, in many ways, I have been brought up to put other people first, and this is probably why I just didn't see how DH's behaviour and attitudes affected me personally. All I saw was his acute anxiety problem that, to my mind, needed fixing for his benefit, rather than mine. I need to learn how to put myself first, and it's really quite hard.

I know nothing will change with DH. It's been so many years now of me banging my head against the wall. The signs were there years ago: the promises that were never kept etc. He likes his life the way he likes it, and the only thing he has a problem with is the fact that I want things to change.

He's gone out again tonight as well. It wasn't until he'd driven up the road that I remembered I wanted to go to yoga tonight. I told him that yesterday, along with telling him that I would like a bit more notice than a mere 30 minutes before he goes out so I can make arrangements for myself. Of course, he agreed, but then does it again not 24 hours later and dashes out while I am concentrating on something else and look! It's now pitch black outside, I have no car and the hall is a good hour's walk away.

He knows I've been diagnosed with depression. He knows I am trying to sort myself out and get out more and do more exercise. I told him I wanted to go out this evening. But my attention is just distracted for a moment and he slips in and subverts my plans.

And the joke is that I've only just noticed that this is what is happening.

Order a taxi and go anyway, sod the expense

As he demonstrates when you are depressed exercise is really really important, your health demands you exercise.

When I read your first post, I wondered whether you might both still be overwhelmed by grief. But the more you post, the clearer it becomes that he is controlling you, and using every method at his disposal to do that. He isn't nervous or anxious over your whereabouts, it's a convenient cover to keep you on a leash. What would happen if you got a taxi to yoga?

It's interesting that you mentioned the angle of being an extra in a film, because your thread has brought to mind The Truman Show. For a long time, you've been persuaded that the people around you are loving and protective, when in fact they are trapping you.

It is odd you say that, inertia, because for a long time now, I've had the feeling that people think I am "vulnerable" and that I need "protecting" from the harshness of life. And this isn't just family, but quite a few of my friends as well.

And the weird thing is that when people have treated me as though I am vulnerable and in need of protection, I have somehow internalised it and become vulnerable, even though I am not a very vulnerable person at all.

It's strange. And screwing with my head. I remember a year ago DH making a comment about how I didn't go out because I was mildly agoraphobic and I thought ... no, I'm not agoraphobic at all. I'm not scared of outside. I have no anxieties about leaving the house. I am just stuck inside the house by some sort of invisible force field that I can't figure out. And the force field got smaller and smaller over time and with the grief of the babies that it became the size of my bed.

But now I am starting to see it. It's the layering, over and over, of DH's reactions to me driving, going out for a walk on my own, talking about traveling to see my friends, the times when he has turned up early to pick me up from a work's leaving do, of me moving round the house during the day. All of that has sunk into my subconscious and created prison bars.

The thing is that I know if I ever said any of this to him, he'd tell me I was crazy.

My family do that to me too. I was just thinking of Henrik Ibsen's The Doll's House actually.

My family is a bit like that too, or they try to be. They kind of undermine me with their concern that I will fuck everything up

"if I said any of this too him, he'd tell me I was crazy''

This takes me back. I mentioned in a PM to you already actually! but you will need to find dripping tap techniques for shutting down conversations.

There is no point telling him what he does that you can't live with. He'll obfuscate, twist, tell you your faults........... you'll get nowhere

Think about what cannot be argued with.

I can't continue in this marriage.
I am not happy.

There will be no point criticising anything he does.
There will be little point telling him how you feel because you are not allowed to feel! It's all about his feelings right!

Talk in absolutes.

This is not for me.
I want out.
I don't want to be with you.
I don't look forward to a future with you.

Even these, he'll argue with but repeat them, ad nauseum, dripping tap style. Don't try to sugar coat it. He will act so wounded but pity about him.

OP. So glad to see your update. You have insight into your situation, now you need to plan your exit.

Remember, he is not your friend. He does not have your best interests at heart. You cannot discuss this situation with him. You cannot hope to reason with him. He will not acknowledge anything that you say.

He will most likely question your sanity, your motives, your ability to live independently without him. The truth is you really cannot continue to live with him. What he has done to you is wrong in every conceivable way. You owe him nothing, not even an explanation.

He may pull the panic attacks card on you again. Perhaps depression, self harm, or even suicide. It's all posturing. And if he does go down any of those paths, that's his choice. He won't, but it would be nothing to do with you if he did.

It looks like you know now that your parents cannot support you in leaving. In fact I think they'd be an obstacle, they'd enable him in trying to make you stay.

Have you any thoughts as to what your next step might be?

OP, are you an Archers listener ? A lot of what you're saying about the gaslighting sounds so like the Rob and Helen story brought to life.

Wow, OP! You have come so far in your thinking in such a short space of time. Well done!

Now to figure out how to get free of him.

I am so about you missing your yoga class. What a selfish idiot.

The scales are falling away from your eyes quickly now. You are seeing things for what they actually are. That must be quite shocking for you. Be kind to yourself. Take time out to go for a daily walk.

"After the situation with my pregnancies, my employer bumped me down to part-time for the foreseeable future" - I found this quite shocking. The implication was, I think, that you had little say in this decision. Is that correct? Can you, would you like to, increase your hours again. Could you spend more time actually in the work environment/office?

Do you have anyone in real life that you can talk to about this?

you're doing amazingly.

you do need to leave though. you're signed off sick - because of your situation with your dh. so staying is not doing you any good, it's prolonging the depression. start making plans to leave and the stronger your plan the stronger you are.

i agree with agathaF, get back to work if you can.

I couldn't just read this and run. Your husband is shockingly controlling and your parents have colluded in this - they had primed you for such a relationship before you ever met him. Please build up your support network and get a counsellor on your side, because once you take steps to leave this suffocating marriage, both families will lay pressure on you to stay. Be prepared so you can be strong and resolute in the face of this. Your true self is screaming to be free.

Can you leave easily? Do you have the money to rent somewhere (I don't think you should stay with your parents given what you've said about them)?

Wow. Good luck to you op.
A truly terrible situation and a big hug for your lost babies.
You are doing great . Can't wait to see your update in a few years time.
I think it will be awesome.

I have to agree with the rest. This will never get better.

Hi OP - I'm sorry you're going through this.

Neither of you are well and as such are not best placed to be helping each other. It sounds as though you're in a better place than your DP. I think you should try to focus all your energy on getting yourself better. All we can do really is look after ourselves. When you are stronger you will have a different perspective on things. Don't worry about the future until you're there. Good luck