How to go from surviving to thriving in life

[Margo3791]

I was thinking about this a lot lately. It seems as if I'm stuck in surviving mode and haven't felt like I'm thriving in a long time.

I have two DS's, aged 11 and 7, work part time and have a husband who spends most of his day at work or connected to a screen.

I feel very mentally isolated, though I have friends in the area, and meet up with people. Last week my husband went to the pub four nights a week and felt running away from it all. There's not worse feeling that being alone in a relationship,

Please don't jump into LTB kind of advice. My situation is complicated. I'm from another country and I don't have in me to live off taxpayers' money. I can't afford to live in this country otherwise. And going back to my country is not an option right now.

it is not right that one of you feels alone in the marriage but I would not see that LTB should be the first response either.

Does your husband know you feel like this?

Is it possible that he also feels he should be living more and chose to go to the pub for that reason - not in a malicious way, but with the mistaken assumption you are happy with the way things are?

I often spent time in one room watching tv or browsing while the DW was in another on the iPad or phone to friends.

I left her to it, thinking that she needed her own space and that I would be seen as being needy if I encroached on it.

I got to the point where I could not stand it much more and told her I needed us to spend more time together.

Being a man some of it came out wrong but once I reassured her I was not talking about sex we found we felt pretty much the same way - albeit in different aspects and to varying degrees.

We now actually spend more time together even if it is just sat in the same room having occasional chats about what we have seen online, tv or had as a msg from a Friend

Is there a joint interest you could do? One of his you could get involved in or vice versa?

Sorry, long post to essentially ask whether you have let DH know how you feel

To get from just surviving to positively thriving means planning your trajectory OP.
Health is number one. Are you fit and fab or could you make some improvements to get there? Then there's money. Do you have a disposable income? And if you have, is it yours or is it joint and if its yours, can you use it to do something just for you? Maybe a hobby, a bit of regular pampering, travelling, studying or re-training for the career of your dreams.
Once health and wealth are sorted, then look at friends, family, relationships, environment, activism, anything really that has the potential to float your boat.
I think its an inner thing, thriving.
Once you get past issues of health, education and finance. Its about wellbeing and its very, very individual.
One of the things that I did on my journey to thrive and not just survive, was to look carefully at my relationships. At the time, I had several people in my life who regularly took advantage and were negative, sneery, judgey sorts. I gradually filtered them out of my life and that made a huge difference to my self esteem and self confidence.
I used to get very anxious socially when I had to meet them and now, couldn't give a toss if they're in the room or not.
I reckon you could call that one example of thriving.

Thank you so much for your kind replies.

Zero, the bottom line is that I think my husband is a functional alcoholic and some weeks it can get really bad and his behaviour makes me feel really depressed and lonely. This has been something I noticed when we first moved in together, 13 years ago. i spoke to him about it millions of times, sometimes out of anger and desperation but others in a calm way. Things might change for a while but there will always be those weeks when alcohol seems to take over. it's good to hear you and your partner seemed to have found a good balance of being together without necessarily next to each other all the time. The problem for me is that I feel disrespected and disconnected when he goes into that mode when alcohol seems to be his only pleasure in life.

Palla, your advice is spot on. Thank you. At the moment, my financial situation is not great as i work part time to spend more time with my children and London being such an expensive place to live, i have to rely financially for a lot of things on my partner. Your are so right to point out about relationships. I agree with you entirely that we need to be selective and stay away from people who don't help us flourish. The saddest thing for me at the moment is that I'm beginning to think my own husband is one of those people and I need to distance myself from him to keep healthy and strong. It's a very scary place to go since, as i said earlier, I don't feel confident I can support myself and my kids in this country.