Is it possible for someone to "check back in" after checking out?

[Unpoquitititoloco]

DH is very emotionally distant from me at the moment and not happy with home life. Gets easily agitated with the DC and also with me. Any question is seen as "nagging". He's had to deal with a lot from me over the past few years (I have written another thread about this somewhere) as I suffered quite badly with PND and he also had a loss in his family which hit him hard.

When pushed a few weeks ago he told me he wasn't happy. That he doesn't love me in the same way that he used to and that he dreads weekends etc as it's always so stressful. Two young kids means that we are just entertaining them and conversation is hard because they're constantly interrupting/demanding attention. He says we're like two housemates who just function day to day.

Since then he has withdrawn all affection. Since the birth of our second sex life has been pretty much non existent anyway mainly due to my PND. But cuddles and affection and pet names etc have always been there. This has stopped completely. Even down to he won't put an x on the end of a text message (I know that's silly but you notice these things don't you!).

He says when I cuddle him he feels "anxious" he says he's struggling to come to terms with the last few years of my mental ill health and worries that it will always be the same. I know I've not been the best wife. My energy has gone into seeing the children are not effected in anyway by my low moods /anxiety and I guess I neglected DH in many ways. He too was grieving he sudden and unexpected loss of his older brother who he was very close to and I tried to be an emotional support but I was probably crap and also I leaned on him a lot too which I probably shouldn't have done at this time. I often cried saying I needed help and I needed him to help me get help as I felt "stuck" somehow and unable to move but he would often get exasperated and tell me off. I TOTALLY understand why. He was dealing with his own stuff.

But now he's looking back on everything and explaining how he can't get past it. There's many things in our relationship that I've forgiven of him. But he seems to be unable to forgive me for when I haven't been perfect.

The last couple of months have seen me feeling much much better and I plan on having no more children as I clearly am prone to mental ill health/chemical imbalance etc etc. I would not put us through that again and just want to move forward now and bring our children up together happily. When I talk about improving our relationship (spending time together, spending time apart with friends, hobbies, exercise, communication) I'm just met with "but all this shit happened in past and I can't get over it". There's been no effort to though.

He's just not himself at all. He snaps at the children and regularly has little outbursts such as "no one listens to me in this family" or "everyone in this family just gets their own way, they go on and on at me until I have to give in". Apparently that's my fault. That's what I do and now the kids do it. But kids do that and need to be shown not to. And I admit I possibly do that sometimes because I haven't received an answer and something needs sorting. Yesterday for example I said to him "what do you think we should do about X" he said "I don't know". I left it until later that day and gently asked again. I was told I was nagging and putting pressure on him! It was something that needed sorting though!!

AnwAy I've clearly gone off on a major tangent. DH has started seeing a therapist recently as he seems depressed (although will often tell me he's not because he's happy at work) and are also going to go to relate. I'm scared he's doing it as a box ticking exercise so he doesn't look like the bad guy if he leaves. But what I guess I'm asking in a very very long and convoluted way is Is it at all possibly that I can get him back the way he was before? With work on our relationship and time and effort? Has this sort of thing ever been fixed for anyone?

Short answer? Yes, it's possible but it's certainly not easy.

When pushed a few weeks ago he told me he wasn't happy. That he doesn't love me in the same way that he used to and that he dreads weekends etc as it's always so stressful

I could have written that bit myself. Me and my husband had grown so distant from each other and I just couldn't work out why. We'd basically both checked out of the relationship, in my head it was over but then when he said very similar to the above it made me realise I didn't want it to be.

It's certainly not an easy process and like us, yours sounds like there's a lot of messy and complicated stuff. It CAN be worked on but only if you both want to. I honestly thought we were done for, even now I couldn't tell you 100% where we'll be in 5 years time but it's definitely better. For us the main thing has been improving communication. Sounds such a cliche but it's true. We'd stopped talking, we were just existing in the same house. It was really difficult to start talking again but we're at a point where we're honest with each other now about how we're feeling.

It turned out my husband was depressed and it sounds like yours might be too. If that's the case, he really needs to get help for that too.

I would say marriage counselling is pretty much essential for both of you by the sounds of it too. We've started it and it's definitely helping. Again though - you have to both want to. Ask yourself honestly, do you want this to work? Can you see yourself being happy with him in 5/10 years time? Then ask him the same question. Both of your answers will guide you on where to go from there. Good luck.

We are working through things. He has totally changed but it’s hard. I’ll never trust him, and luckily the day I found out was a turning point for me personally to realise that I had lost myself completely, and have turned my life around the past few months. I will have no hesitation to end it if things go back to how they were. I stopped making him my everything and focused on me completely. OP- I would recommend having therapy for yourself too. Your situation is hopefully not an affair like mine was but it’s hard when someone checks out whatever the reason. Therapy has helped me see that I can’t control how he feels or acts and I’ve stopped worrying about how he’s feeling.

It's hard to live with someone with depression. Man or woman but he's still here because he loves you.
Yes you have distance between you but you can bridge that.
It will take work though.
Good luck x

Two young kids means that we are just entertaining them and conversation is hard because they're constantly interrupting/demanding attention. He says we're like two housemates who just function day to day

Yes, small kids are very demanding for a few years. It's hard. So he wants to leave you to cope with them alone and just see them for short periods does he? That's nice.

He mentioned that a professional contact he knows vaguely has split up from their wife and have a lovely relationship and have gone on to have more children and a de great friends and it's all lovely

So did the professional contact bugger off when faced with living with his new set of children too?

The past few years have probably been all about you and the kids. Has he had any time to process the PND and the stress that brought to him? It is not easy living with someone with PND and having to walk on eggshells all the time and it’s even worse when your own needs / wants get ignored. Give him time and space like he presumably gave you during your PND - let him go to counselling, let him seek all the individual help he needs, and if he checks out of your relationship for a little while let him provided he is still involved with the kids. He needs time and you must now give it to him, regardless of how it all ends.

Thanks for replying @PrimroseDot That sounds hard and I wish you lots of luck. Was it a work colleague? I've definitely questioned whether he's having some sort of an affair. He's denied it. He's only at work and at home and honestly there's no one at work that I feel that he would be interested in (or would be interested in him!) He's not gone anywhere else (ie the gym etc). But I'm not naive to the fact that he's on LinkedIn and has a lot of professional contacts on there. None that he actually sees in real life regularly though but I guess an inappropriate friendship could have be struck up. I've asked him though and he says no. I have to believe that. I'm not about to snoop.

I was struck by your lists of things you have told him he needs to do in order to feel happier being in a relationship with you. That would piss me right off.

@TowelNumber42 why? I made some suggestions to him as to what might make him feel better? Why would that piss you off? That's odd.

Reading the paragraph back, it sounds like I was being prescriptive and genuinely I'm not/wasn't. I just feel that these are the things he enjoys and he's not been doing them so by doing them he will feel better in himself

Does he fancy couples counselling?

@Unpoquitititoloco yes it was a colleague- he only met at the Xmas party had a ons and it started from then. It was all on ‘work time’ when I thought he was working late, or having drinks with colleagues, or stayed away overnight for work. I asked him if he was seeing someone after he told me he didn’t love me, didn’t think our family was working etc and he swore he wasn’t. But he finally admitted it 2 weeks later and it was like a lightbulb moment for me. I had spent so much time trying to make him feel better, become more involved with the kids, suggested hobbies for him to make him “happier” but I couldn’t change anything he had to. The moment he told me was a realisation for him that this life he thought he could have without a family/wife wasn’t what he wanted and he promised to change to be fair to him he has.
I do think people can check back in- I think it has to come from them though. It’s so hard to make time for a relationship with a family, but I could see that these years are short and time together again would come again eventually but to him he couldn’t see beyond a chaotic family life where the kids come first. Looking back I bought parenting books- he wouldn’t read them, tried so hard to get him involved with kids daily lives but he didn’t want to work together at anything- I could feel him slipping out of our lives to an extent. Work on your own happiness- don’t forget yourself. Best thing I have learned from my counselling.

We have booked relate. He booked it. I hope he's not going it as a box ticking exercise

Does anyone have any experience of this sort of behaviour?

Your relationship is very much like mine but roles reversed. I felt for much of our relationship DH hadn't treated me well and I started checking out a few years ago, not realising it, but very slowly.

I finally raised it about 18 months ago. But I was already gone. Yet I didn't have the courage to say that. I was hoping for him to meet me half way so I wasnt the bad one - to be completely honest. He hasn't and we have been "working on things" but both of us quite half heartedly.

I finally found the courage to get to make or break a couple of weeks ago. The DC's were away so I told him I was leaving for a week to get some space where I didn't have to see him. He felt the issues were all mine because my feelings for him have changed and he's done what he can to improve things. So it was down to me.

Turns out that week was rather huge for him. He recognised he had made some serious mistakes. And I mean, stuff going back years and years that he had always buried his head about.

I decided I needed to be able to look my kids in the eyes and say "I really fucking tried" if we were to split up. So we're trying again. And actually making an effort. And I'll be honest, I don't want to do it to be with him. Or for me. I'm giving it six months for my kids. He and I get along well and don't argue. We laugh at times, but the love has gone for me. And this last week I've seen that maybe I could get back to where we were years and years ago. We are a very long way off being there, but for the first time in years there may be a glimmer of hope.

So what I'm saying in all this rambling is, have a very frank conversation. Be prepared to hear the worst. Both of you lay it on the line. If you can manage some time apart, do. Get some space to think before you implode.

And pick one or two things to work on. I could list a million things that annoy me about DH (yes, I'm in that place) but tackle the bigger things. So at the moment, we are working on sharing finances better and having some time to get to know each other again.

He's given two awesome pearls of wisdom over th years - first when we had a temporary split ywars ago - "if we decide we shouldn't be together then it will be sad but obviously the right thing" and .ore recently "we used to enjoy each others company before we knew each other well enough to love each other, so let's try doing that again".

I hope there's something useful in all this rambling. Your situation just seemed very similar to ours.

God sorry that went on forever!!

Thanks for the reply. I really hope he works at this and gets back to where we were. I just don't understand why he would consider leaving his family when they children are still so young and it's naturally the hardest stage. It's like it's all going to get so much easier now as they become less dependent on us and my mental health improves. He says he wants a simple life. So surely working hard on your marriage and making sure we all stick together would be the most simple option.

What's the alternative? - leaving, starting all over again with a new partner, running two households, seeing children every weekend/fortnight, having the added pressure of whether or not your partner is going to like your children, having the baggage of TWO failed marriages (DH was married previously!). I just do not understand why he would even CONSIDER this? And the most important fact is we could happily bring our children up on a loving and supportive home with stability if we just WORKED at it.

I think it's probably over, I'm afraid. I don't think it's an affair but there may very well be depression, the signs are very definitely there.

Sometimes, life just overwhelms us. It's not anyone's fault, just too many big things happen at once and it's too much for us to cope with. It must have been awful for you with PND and the usual stresses of having two young two kids. But at the same time he was dealing with your PND, the usual stresses of having two young kids and his brother's death. Living with someone with depression (PND or otherwise) can be emotionally draining and I just don't think he has anything left to give. He has clearly struggled with his brother's death and probably never full dealt with his grief if he was also coping with your PND.

You say he's fine at work. That's not because of an affair. It's because it's his escape. At work, he was able to switch off from coping with your PND, his brother's death. Maybe even talk to a few colleagues about how he was feeling over his brother's death because he couldn't talk about it with you because you were not in a good place with PND and he was expected to be there for you.

I'm not excusing any behaviour but I've had depression and it can seriously mess you around. I've also lived with someone with depression and seen it from the other side. I've also been through severe grief and the person who should have been there to help me through it wasn't.

So couples counselling can't help us?

OP I'm going to be a bit blunt here.

You've had several threads about the state of your marriage over the last two and a bit weeks.

On 27 July, you asked if your husband was depressed.

On 28 July, you wanted to know how to find out if your husband has had an affair (which you categorically state on this thread would be impossible).

On 30 July you had an AIBU about suggesting he goes away on holiday because "he is depressed" as a statement of fact whereas on this thread you say he only seems depressed but he is seeing a therapist.

On 2 August you had an identical thread to this one in AIBU.

On 1 August is yet another thread, you casually drop into conversation that you've been in "conflict resolution". Yet on this thread your DH has only recently booked you both in for Relate counselling.

With the best will in the world, OP, repeatedly asking us the same questions every couple of days isn't going to give you different answers or necessarily the answers you are looking for. The only place you can get them is within your own marriage.

He’s lost his brother? Were they close?
Even if they weren’t, this will have hit him really really hard and I suspect he’s looking back on things with a different lens.

I know I’ve been like this with my dh and it’s because I’m not happy - and I look back and think WTF.

I think you should do couples counselling - he’s initiated it - because at the very least you can hope to understand where he is.

Iggly The OP says her DH and his brother were very close and his death was sudden and unexpected.

Honestly OP, I think your DH is very depressed. He has all the signs- no social life, stopped hobbies, stopped gym/self care, isolating himself (emotional distance).
He is probably feeling as bad as you did with PND.
Expressing a desire to leave is depression giving him that flee impulse, to just run away and keep running. It’s the illness talking, not him.

Lots of people can be severely depressed and able to go to work every day and act normal. I had one young troop like that who shot himself in the base gyms locker room one day. A friend’s husband seemed distant and irritable at home, fine at work and then just stepped in front of a train one morning on his commute.

I am glad he is trying to get help, please continue to support him. He was there for you and now needs you to be there for him. I think his lack of excitement for relate and such is probably skepticism about whether it will actually help or not, not box ticking.

@ShatnersWig well done for searching my username and listing my threads 👏 Didn't really need to do that though did you because I know what threads I have started. Wasn't for my benefit was it.

And the old "why ask a bunch of strangers on an Internet forum" line. it is human nature to ask others for experience and advice. In a situation like this it's much easier to ask anonymously and receive anonymous advice because people done tend to be quite so open in real life. I have every right to ask what I like on here as does everyone else that starts a thread. That it was it's for. And users who suggest otherwise are not helpful.

I'm very aware of how much I've asked on here. I'm very aware of all the stages my head has gone through in the last few weeks. I'm genuinely shocked that my DH has started behaving in this way. I'm still hoping beyond hope that things can be resolved. I fully take on board all the failings I've had as a wife and want nothing more than to improve and make him happy. I hope he can do the same. I'm will to forgive him of this behaviour because it just seems so out of character for him. I would never have had children to bring them up on a broken household. Ever. But nor would I stay in an unhappy marriage. I just truly believe our marriage can be happy.

At the moment I am incredibly worried and anxious and am attempting to make sense of it all when I'm alone and able to message on mumsnet as there is always someone there to talk. It doesn't matter how many times I've started a conversation about it. You don't need to nit pick at language and insinuate that I've have changed the story.

@AngelasAshes thank you. I will definitely continue to support him. I'm giving him as much space as possible. I think he doesn't see light at the end of the tunnel at the moment and I'm hoping he'll start to get glimpses of it. He's a decent man and a very sensitive one and has been almost too nice in the past.

Sorry I missed that bit.

Either way, losing a sibling at a young age will be a shock and one of those life adjusting moments where you really reassess what is what.

Have the counselling with him OP, it’ll be a good start.