This is a long one but I could really do with some advice, feeling desperate.
I’ve been with my husband J for 23 years, since I was just 16. He’s never been brilliant at talking about things, or facing problems, but this has got worse over the years, until recently I’ve felt that there is no emotional connection at all.
We’ve just come out of the other side of four years of financial hardship due to job loss, and I managed all our finances through this time, getting us onto a debt management plan when he didn’t want to speak to our creditors (and they wouldn’t talk to me as my name wasn’t on the bills), stopping us losing our home and everything. After this difficult time I expected our relationship to become closer but J became more and more distant/distracted and last autumn I encouraged him to go and chat with a GP. He did and was put on antidepressants, which helped in the beginning.
J has always had a different approach to things to me - I try and put 100% into everything, I work hard to make things special for others, I shop for all birthdays/Christmases, I research and book all our holidays and plan all our trips. I feel that J feels that only the minimum effort is necessary. He only ever does half a job and gets bored/distracted easily. He doesn’t bother with anniversaries or Mother’s Day etc and my daughter is now old enough to be upset when my birthday arrives and her dad hasn’t helped her to get me a card or anything, so I have to reassure her it’s ok while feeling hurt and confused myself about why he wouldn’t have bothered with a card. Each year I explain how upset it makes me feel but it doesn’t make any difference.
Things came to a head recently when I was feeling overwhelmed with work and tiredness, and I talked to J saying I felt I wasn’t coping and that I was completely overwhelmed and he said ‘maybe it’s the pollen’ and went off to work. I felt worse than before I’d tried to talk to him and was very upset, which makes it so hard to carry on with school runs and work as normal.
Whenever we try and talk about things like this J gets very defensive and focuses on the fact that what I’ve said has made him feel bad about himself. He just looks cross and shrugs, saying he doesn’t know what to say to me. He doesn’t seem capable of empathy or sympathy. I tried putting how I felt down in an email and J says he’ll reply but he doesn’t. If I confront him he says he’s working out what to say. He’s very good at talking about his own feelings but often talks about himself in a way that bears little resemblance to what he’s actually like. He says he’s a positive thinker but it feels more like delusion, like it’s another side to his personality of not facing up to things.
It was my birthday last week and again no cards and he hadn’t helped the children to get me anything so they were upset, and I just felt like something snapped. I can’t live like this, feeling like if I ever have a problem I won’t get any support or understanding from the person who I’m supposed to be closest to. I wrote another email saying I was hurt and confused, that I couldn’t carry on living in a world of cant-be-bothered when I’m working so hard. I’ve had no response expect for a ‘thanks for your email’ comment. J is pretending I’m fine and talking to me in a cheery way like nothing is wrong, and it’s actually starting to scare me, that I can tell him how desperately unhappy I am and he can pretend not to know. I’m worried about how things will be when our children are grown, when our own parents have gone, that it will be like growing old with a stranger.
Over Christmas J talked about how grateful he was for my support during his depression and through the time he was unemployed, but he doesn’t seem able to make the connection that I need that support too. I feel things very deeply and it’s my fear that I’m with someone who isn’t capable of feeling things in a normal way and expressing those feelings.
I’m desperately unhappy, scared and completely at a loss what to do. I’ve had enough of living like this but if J can’t/won’t talk about things without blaming me what can I do to make things any better? J won’t acknowledge that anything is his to change, the most he will say is that we both have things to work on and I honestly don’t see what more I could do.
Has anyone out there been in this situation please, or could offer advice? I’m buying bunk beds and moving into my daughter’s bedroom next week as I have no idea what to do to help. Any advice appreciated.
Thanks x