Over a week ago, DH and I had - what I thought was - a pivotal, ‘shit really needs to change to save our marriage’ type conversation.
We agreed things needed to change in order for our marriage to stand a chance of survival, and straight after the chat, I felt (probably naively) quietly confident that I’d been heard and understood and the ball would get rolling regarding the things that had been mentioned.
One of the things was date nights. DH and I each have a small amount of ‘left over’ money after bills, food etc have been taken care of. DH went to a gig this month and spent a lot of money whilst he was out, that’s fine, I somewhat expected that. During our chat, I asked him if he had any money left to which he said ‘yes’. Great, I thought, he still has some money, and now that I’ve expressed the real importance of us having date days/nights he’ll put a small amount of it away for us to do something in a few weeks time, so that we can reconnect and have some fun. He got in from work the other day, and I noticed he’d bought himself something. When I asked if he had any money left after his purchase, he said no. So instead of thinking ‘I have this spare bit of cash which I could save for me and DW to use because she wants me to take her out and spend time with me after our conversation’, he instead chose to spend it on himself and now has no money for us to do anything until his next payday. I bit my lip, and I didn’t say anything else though I was obviously frustrated that once again, him buying something for himself took priority over us having money to do something together as we’ve had around 2-3 date days in the last two and a half years.
The second thing was therapy. DH has recently finished up 6 sessions of therapy to help combat his severe stonewalling which has been detrimental to our marriage in so many ways, but it’s evident the therapy hasn’t helped one iota, so I said to DH that he really needs more help and he agreed. He’s adamant he wants to learn to cope better with situations and conversations, and even said that his therapist had told him to contact her immediately if he felt he needed more sessions and she’d book him in for another 6 sessions if he wanted them. I mentioned that it was also a good idea for us to try couples therapy, and he should look for couples counsellors in our area.
This was all over a week ago. Last night I asked DH if he’d text his old therapist, or made a shortlist of couples therapists for us to look at, to which he said ‘no, he hasn’t had time’. I of course asked him how on earth he hasn’t had the time to spend 15 minutes on google or 20 seconds sending a text to his therapist, and he had nothing to say, just completely blanked me and kept looking at his phone (something I’m very used to but gets my blood boiling every single time he does it). I said that if I was in his shoes, I would’ve sorted this stuff out ASAP, but yet every single night that he gets in from work, he spends hours upon hours on Reddit, so yknow, priorities, right? He got up, angrily snarled ‘whatever, I’m going to bed’ (this was at about half 7....) and off he went.
Am I being unreasonable to think he would’ve had a few minutes in the last week to contact his therapist? Is it so crazy to think he should’ve been looking at couples counsellors for us after he said he would, has clearly had the time and it is crucial for us to see someone given our ‘this is make or break’ conversation.
His reaction last night combined with the lack of effort shown in the last week alone makes me feel like he’s just screaming that nothing is actually going to change and perhaps, I’m the one that’s asking for too much? That doing all we can to save our marriage comes second to browsing pointless memes on a phone all night or spending money on stupid shit that could be better used for a meal for us to enjoy together alone one evening.
I’m so tired of being the only one fighting for this marriage and acknowledging that we need serious help and commitment if we stand a chance of getting through our problems and coming out the other side a much stronger couple.