DH emotionally damaged - can our relationship survive?

[sosadNC]

NCed for this but am long standing MNetter

DH and I have recently started couples therapy as I have been getting increasingly frustrated at what I perceive to be his constant and increasing selfishness around protecting his own needs at the expense of family time and my needs. We’ve been together for 17 years, married for 7, two kids DD 5 and DS 3. I work full time, him part time. He’s 10 years older.

We’ve been exploring our pattern of behaviour (basically me the semi-martyr, him constantly wanting more alone time, not engaging w parenting) and through it have been having some very intense conversations about our childhoods. I am the eldest of 5 children (all of us born within 5 years), DH was brought up in a fairly classic screwy upper class British way - loveless parents, sent to boarding school at 7 etc. The conclusion of the therapist is that I have learnt to fend for myself and not ever ask for help/prioritise others, DH has (a) a reflexive need to hide away from the world as he has never had unconditional love and (b) zero model of how to be an engaged parent. So we’re in this cycle of me doing everything and then getting frustrated/ exhausted and him refusing to step up at that point.

All of which is fine, it’s great that we’re unpicking it (and should have done it years ago). BUT I just feel it is so hard and that DH is SO damaged by all this, I wonder if we will ever get to a place where I’m actually happy / he will be able to step up.

Does anyone have experience of this dynamic? It’s not childhood trauma/ptsd per se, just dysfunctional patterns. I am just not sure he can change.

Any advice? I am just so exhausted by the whole thing but know we need to keep going w the therapy.

Why are you not in couples therapy?

People change if they want to.

I spent 22 years with a man who had no capacity to change. I would cry, beg, plead, reason. I was thoroughly miserable. I (and he) constantly made excuses for him (his parents were awful snd he is a damaged individual).
I had therapy and she made me realise that he was never going to change. It is as such a relief to have permission to put myself snd my children first. That me being stressed and him being inflexible was not healthy for them.

I am in the middle of a divorce and I always thought we had an amicable separation. But he recently told me things that made me realise that he 100% thinks the demise of our relationship is my fault. And he is now being as inflexible with our children as he always was with me.

My advice would be to leave him, you sound as miserable as I was

This man wants more leisure time because, in his childhood, he learned the value that men are special.

The problem sometimes with individual therapy is that the therapist is all about the client. Re-inforcing the specialness.

It’s almost like you’re in a love triangle. Him and his therapist. And you.

Meanwhile your own life ticks by. Your kids learn from mum and dad about how men are special.

It’s all a bit grim. Been there done that. This is what divorce is for. Yes you’ll lose financially but what you gain emotionally (freedom) for yourself and your dc, is immeasurable.

Instead of all this naval gazing. Think about how you want life to be. And do that.

Couples counselling is not recommended when there is abuse of any type with the relationship.

He does not want to change, this works for him and he also does this because he can. He seems to also have an enabler in the shape of his own therapist.

I lived with a very similar dynamic, I tried and tried to get my EXh to engage, he also had a job that caused some emotional issues, in the end I gave up. We had been to therapy and the counsellor pointed out the harm one particularly callous incident had done to our relationship and it was only then that Exh saw how awfully he had been treating me/making me feel. I struggled with his lack of openness and emotion, from an extremely repressed upbringing he would always do what was right for him, not right for us. Nothing was discussed when he decided he was joining the police, just that it was happening with no concern for how I would look after our young child alone for 18 weeks while he trained, or that I would end up solely responsible for child care with the shifts involved, it was just not up for discussion. I was taken for granted there is no question of that, but added with the lack of affection and being told it was inconvenient for his career when I was diagnosed with a life changing illness, I’m afraid I was done with the situation and left. One of my friends even said she had never met such a cold distant person as Exh, he definitely harmed me emotionally but luckily I moved on and am now happily married to an amazing man.

We are in couples therapy @FirstTimeSecondTime and he feels very threatened by our therapist - he feels she is on “my side” and her perception of us is incorrect.

He is threatened by the idea of you guys being a team and working together.

I agree with what LatentPhase says

He sounds like a self important knob to me, 15 years of Jungian therapy and an ABSOLUTE need to have alone time despite working part time. Why are his self important wishes more important than yours? You are under reacting to his nonsense if you ask me….

@sosadNC we went to couples therapy and he didn’t engage at all, he only went because I wanted him to.

We would talk often about what we needed to do and he would admit the things that he would need to do but he never did them. I gave up a much loved career because he wouldn’t be flexible in the practical day to day things that our kids needed. For example, he wouldn’t cook dinner so I would get home at 6pm and then have to cook for the family, because his contribution was bathing the children and putting them to bed, even as they got older and didn’t need his help. He didn’t want to do anything in the evenings as he had been at work all day (so had I) and it was difficult to get him to do anything as a family on weekends as this was his ‘down’ time. So many things.

I realised that our marriage was over when we took our children on a holiday of a lifetime and he was exactly the same as he was at home, no flexibility with meal times for example. It was horrible for me, he says he had a great time and never understood why I hated it.

I got sick once, nothing serious but I was bed bound for a couple of days, and it never occurred to him to step up and do things that I would normally have done. That was when I realised that he was never going to change, he didn’t want to.

If he wants to work full time, what happens to his midweek alone time then? Does work count as alone time? Or will you then have to get home from your full time job for facilitate his alone time after hours all week?

My DH is not as bad, but came from a family with a lot of controlling behaviour and emotional abuse. It's awful, I'm not minimising it- but it's also not a 'get out of everything' card or an excuse for being a dick. It's harder though, because you rightly feel sorry for them and your instinct can be to protect them because that's not what happened in childhood. But they're adults, you married an adult, you expected a partner. Your needs should be 50/50 with each other. It sounds like it's 90/10

I would cancel any joint therapy sessions going forward, go on your own instead. This person should not be seeing the two of you in such sessions anyway.

I had one like this too, OP. He also had YEARS of therapy, at great expense, and was beyond selfish- almost no contribution to the home or family life, but expected to be "facilitated" in his lazy selfish behaviour.

I had counselling & discovered I had co-dependant traits - it was life-changing for me.

After biding my time till the kids were at school, I told him it was over.

He was a nasty, controlling bastard & punished me for daring to leave. Threatened to go for 50/50 or sole residency (made false allegations). From the man who hadn't done a single nursery drop off & worked away during the week (to avoid family life).

I'm now in my own with the kids & my life is so much better.

OP, have a read at the "Demand Man" in Lundy Bancroft's book "Why does he do that"

I

blame my husband, he’s wired like that and it makes total sense.

While I agree it's not about blame, I would stop short of giving him an out because of his childhood and upbringing.

We are all the products of our background but we also have free will Once we see the pattern, we don't have to continue inside it.

When you consider your future, please bear in mind that, as an adult, this is who he is choosing to be. He could act differently. Likewise, you are not stuck in this pattern. You can choose it or decide against it. Just don't hang on, hoping that he will change. People only change when they want to do so.

@Ivyonafence in theory we will split everything 50/50 and he will push some of it back on me and/or outsource a big chunk of his stuff to our nanny and other babysitters while moaning that he is exhausted (this is what happened for the first couple of years of kids while he was FT). I think that’s preferable to the current situation though!

@AttilaTheMeerkat why would you stop? I’m finding the couples therapy incredibly revealing for me - don’t know if it’ll be effective for us as a couple but it’s been amazing for me to see some of these dynamics revealed.

I don’t know if he would go for 50/50 access if we split. I genuinely don’t. My issues are more around me being away from my country of origin, a divorce would tie me to the U.K. in a way that staying together doesn’t.

I’m only suggesting you stop having joint counselling sessions with your husband If you find therapy useful this is great but I would still suggest you go on your own.

@sosadNC

We are in couples therapy *@FirstTimeSecondTime* and he feels very threatened by our therapist - he feels she is on “my side” and her perception of us is incorrect.

This is a(nother) red flag

But you know that

But why @AttilaTheMeerkat? I am finding specifically the couples therapy the most useful and actually am using a lot of the insight from the couples therapy in my personal therapy.

I just feel there is nothing that either I, or life in general, can give him that will truly make him happy

Well, what are you waiting for?

He can still be a father if you separate. Staying so you don’t have to share your money, whilst understandable is not going to achieve anything, plus get a SHL before you do ANYTHING. Jungian therapy imo is great - I did it very short term a couple of months for a specific issue and it was amazing - but it does seem so much is about him and less about you and the children. The whole row about him stepping up to do more childcare when your nanny had covid is clearly ridiculously selfish.

My advice: keep doing the counselling if it’s helping you but make a few appointments with a couple of SHLs too. You don’t have to do anything but it’s good to know where you stand.

I am in a similar situation - husband and siblings sent to boarding school/distant parents/nanny in house at all times as parents both at work constantly.

I too deal with selfishness and a lack of flexibility. He can’t just go with the flow and he really struggles to deal with any of our emotions- if a child is crying, he sees that as the problem, rather than finding out the reason they were upset..he has definitely got worse since kids came along. He would, at least, feel bad/worry if I were upset before. He struggles with any empathy and his family joke that this is a family trait..
I am also hoping he’ll learn how to deal better- he’s great with organised days out etc..just not the day to day mundane activities.
Hoping you get some change/answers op.

I'm not sure why you're more tied to the UK if you're divorced. I think it's probably the opposite. Obviously, if you divorce, the chances are he won't agree to you taking the kids to live in another county. But I assume while you're married he's not going to agree to that either?

f you're getting value from the therapy, great. But I tend to agree - couples therapy in this instance is not really helpful for you as a couple because he has no intention of changing. I actually sympathise with his desire and need for downtime and alone time daily. I feel similar. The differences between him and me are that 1. I don't expect DH /DC to facilitate that by working even harder and 2. I accept that sometimes the demands of family life and work mean that it can't happen. because I'm an adult and understand that life is full of compromises.

Basically I think he’d be a bit of an arsehole.

I'm so no sorry. It seems as if you can either have him living with you and leaving everything to you or living elsewhere and being awkward.

Reading this thread with Hope in my heart that OP can find a solution that makes her content with her life.

Tara336, I read your post and had to check that I hadn't written it! My situation 45 years ago exactly. I went a bit further in my life changes and I am now in a Civil Partnership with a lovely woman.

My ex husband's attitude and actions ruined hie relationship with our children, though he went on to have children he adores.
How he could do that I really do not know.

I send my blessings for future happiness to all of you in these difficult relationships 💐

@BlingLoving it is better for me to be in a marriage because (ironically) I think he is much more permissive of me taking the kids away for longer periods when we’re together. Eg I took them to my home country for 8 weeks last summer without him - I doubt that would be possible with a divorce and contact schedule in place.

One of the purposes of couples therapy for me is to find out if he does have any intention of changing. We’ve had 7 sessions. It’s early days.

@Michellexxx sympathies. The description of child crying as a problem to be solved is v resonant. Wired differently.

Why doesn’t he work f/t if he’d be happier doing so?

Long story but basically he cannot make a decision about what to do. A whole other thread in and of itself!