Sorry this is long.
Dh and I have been together best part of decade, 1 young toddler and 1 newborn. I love him and fancy him. He is a great father. I am a xahm, he works away for weeks at a time , fifo.
Its been rocky in the last 2 years, when we are happy its great but we both get unhappy with the other one and we dont fully resolve things and they fester. He never talks about his feelings or voices things good or bad. He had a traumatic childhood, i think this affects him but he will not discuss much. He always says he loves me etc. The year we had our eldest, 2 years ago, i slowly fell out of love with him, i told him this. I realised i did majority of housework and the mental load, i spent months trying to explain this it fell on deaf ears. I frlt like the housekeeper. I had ptsd from the birth- no longer have it- and he didnt know how to support me. His mother was very overbearing acting as if our baby was hers and made hurtful comments, dh was not there, it upset me but I continued to treat dmil respectfully. When i told dh he didnt believe me then said i mustve misunderstood. It chipped away my love that he didnt listen to me. I suggested counselling and he wouldnt go. Last year he did some with me but wouldnt continue as he thought counsellor was biased towards me.
At the end of that year, he began doing more in house and apologised that he hadnt been pulling his weight. We were up and down when I fell pregnant again. He told me some massive lies rather than takking honesty to me. Some of his family came to stay. We were both, he and i, quite contemptuous towards ine another. His family picked up on this, his sister made some rude comments to me when dh wasnt present, when i told him he didnt challenge her. There is ongoing friction there now.
Things were better right after dc2 arrived a few weeks ago but now ive found out more lies from dh. He has lied to my face various times and denied it. Its as though he cannot differentiate between lies and whats real. He was talking about something which happened last year and caught himself out exposing a lie. I was only just pregnant when his family stayed last year, he told me at time his sister had asked if i was pregnant and he told her no as he knew we both didnt want people to know early. Then this week he accidentally said that "they" all knew i was pregnant and that he had told him i had mixed feelings about it, something i had asked him to keep private as i felt guilty about feeling that way. When i caught what he said, he then backtracked saying not "they" but "she" eg he just told his sister, then he said he hadnt accidentally exposed a lie but had chosen to tell me.. i dont know if that makes sense but he just tells lie on top of lie and I feel like i cant trust anything he says. He shows no remorse about lying or hurting my feelings at all. Or he apologises then months later backtracks and says i overreact. He has little diplomacy or emotional intelligence, for example, the thing with dmil. Dmil and i are fine now for ages, she eventually apologised for being ott with dc1 and dh had a brief word with her and she stopped being so overbearing. Now dh tells me he wanted her side of it, so very recently asked her, not in my presence, explaining id felt undermined by her ( which id never said and doesnt explain how she made me feel) dmil was horrified apparently and so now dh says i was making mountains out of molehills and exaggerating, which i wasnt. Members of my family also saw what she was doing. I feel like dh invalidates any feelings i express.
We share a house, our whole lives are intertwined. I am fine on my own, i care solely for our dc 50% of the time. However the thought of splitting makes my stomach lurch. But as i feel at the monent, as easier as things would be in many respects to stay, it would be a sham marriage. Dh recently said he had fallen out of love with me but now says he was just annoyed at me. Our eldest loves him so much. He is away weeks at a time then home weeks at a time and im a sahm. I breastfeed both dc and theyre too young for overnights so i feel id end up seeing him lots anyway. But i just cant be his wife at the monent i feel like hes shattered who i thought he was.