I don’t really know where to start. I have been with DH for almost 20 years and married for almost 10. We had a lot of fun for the 10 years prior to getting married – travelling and plenty of going out. I’ve been with him since age 25 and am now 45. He is 11 years older but this isn’t an issue, he’s very youthful in many ways. We have two children aged 7 and 4.
Our relationship has many positive aspects – when we have time to hang around together we laugh and share the similar interests. There are no significant domestic issues in terms of housework and cooking. He used to do much more than me pre-kids and now I do probably more as I am at home more (work from home). The house is a bit of a mess but this is because of the kids and we both try our best so that’s not a huge issue even though there is the occasional argument about this I think it's normal.
To my friends who’ve moaned about their partners for other reasons (two have DHs who don’t do anything around the house) I have always said that mine and DH’s relationship is 80% good, not perfect but enough to keep us together.
Herein lies the problem though. The 20% bad has been his anger issues. He had had them from the beginning. Most of the males in his family had the same issues. He often gets angry for no reason. Getting ready in the morning is a particular issue. He will shout and stomp around and if the anger is directed at me can sometimes seriously intimidate me. He has never hit me but he has loomed over me many times and his face and body are terrifying. He’s 6ft and I’m 5.5ft so he has a height and physical presence that can scare me. There have been times this has happened in front of the children and the children and I have all been hugging and waiting until it passes. He’s a mental health professional (I know) so there are times when he has been able to keep this under control for a while (taking St John’s Wort helps) but there have been many times when he is angry and I feel like I am treading on egg shells. Sometimes this has been on a daily basis, particularly for a few hours in the morning, and has ruined a good part of the day. He is always sorry afterwards and he knows he is out of order. I am not perfect of course, but I am just focusing on DH’s anger issues. I am by nature, I think, quite a happy person but when he has one of these angry episodes it really plunges my mood.
Here’s the weirdest thing. In January he had two angry mornings in a row, nothing out of the ordinary, and on the second morning something just clicked inside me and I suddenly thought ‘I cant do this for the rest of my life’. My mood plunged and I entered a low depression from which I didn’t emerge for a couple of months and to be honest it is still bubbling under the surface and although I am carrying on with life as normal I am still quite emotional. This is very very unusual for me as I usually brush things off but it was like all the angry episodes over the 19 years we had been together just built up into one homogenous mass that has eaten away at me.
Whilst I have been thinking about an alternative future it has also given me feelings - unrelated to his anger issues - about whether I want to be with him for another 20+ years. It now just all feels like an awful long time. I have told him all this and we have had a couple of conversations about our future. The thing is since telling him how my feelings have changed for him he has kept an incredibly good check on his moods, not perfect but I am not saying I am either. But my low feelings and doubt about whether I can be with him for the rest of my life haven’t changed though and I find myself trawling the boards here trying to find some solution, researching divorce, researching people who have stayed together and not really knowing wtf to do.
It’s like I am in a quiet crisis, carrying on with day to day activities and life. We are abroad for the summer and he has gone back to the UK to work for a couple of weeks and I haven’t really yet missed him. This upsets me because like I said the 80% that was good meant we had fun together. We are lucky enough to have family to babysit and we can often go out. But the fact is I can’t seem to get over the build up of angry moods and a huge part of me feels the pull of freedom seems more and more attractive. I have emotionally checked out of the relationship and I don't know how to get back or if I want to. I can tell he knows this and he is trying his best but it isn’t making a difference at the moment. The thought however of tearing our family apart is also terrifying. I just don’t know what to do.
If you have got this far, well done! Any thoughts would be amazing.