Scared

[Fourhorses]

My husband and I are separating. We talked tonight about preparing the house for sale. Our marriage is dead and I feel like I’m going out of my mind. I’ve seen a therapist for a year and I still cannot trust my feelings. I feel like I’m going out of my mind. That I’ve made the whole thing up, that I’m destroying everything. It’s like me life since marriage has just been surreal. I am so scared.

It’s like we have so much going for us, but it just won’t seem to work. I am having such difficulty accepting our reality. Terrified of the future and so worries for my kids.

I’m sorry you’re going through this. It’s good you’re speaking to someone! I guess it will taken time for it to really sink in that this is happening.
Sometimes you can have everything in common but it just doesn’t work and all the effort you both put in can turn to resentment.
Are you both on the same wavelength with separating- I’m assuming it’s maybe him suggesting it? Sorry if I’m wrong.
It’s only natural to feel worried right now but please keep talking to your therapist. Do you have a good support group around you so you can confide in them?
Your kids are resilient, it will be tough for them but if you are your husband remain amicable with each other then your children will see that even though you loved each other, the love changed but you are both still there for them and love them more than ever.

What do you mean, you can't 'trust' your feelings? Feelings are like the weather; we have no control over them. Otherwise we'd all choose to love exercise and hate chocolate and wine.

All we can do with feelings is the same as we do with the weather: protect ourselves when they're rough, and try to be in places where they're nice. If your feelings don't feel nice in your marriage, that's fine, but you have to remove yourself. On paper you might have a lot going for you, but do you really think you'd be compatible with everyone, who, on paper, you had strong, on-paper compatibility with?

Thanks for the replies.

No it’s not him, it’s a truce. Although underneath it all I feel it’s me, well at least me calling it so to speak. We are both miserable, pretending for so long. We cannot seem to connect, it is at least 4 years of nothing. Bulk of our marriage really. I think I find it all so hard to fathom as it’s only 7 years since we married, how did we both get it so wrong. He’s a good person and so am I, but we cannot seem to gel at all since getting married. It’s like we get further and further apart. We have been trying and pretending for so long - it’s unhealthy. Do all married couples pretend to be happy??! I honestly have no idea what marriage is or should be anymore. Circumstantial stability but no emotional connection. That’s why I feel sorry for the kids, how could their parents have had such poor judgement albeit with the best of intentions. If there was a lever I could pull or a switch I could flick to steer us the right way I would but i don’t know how.

I have a good solid network of friends, old ones saying it’s time to call it a day and newer one saying he is such a lovely person are you sure. He is, but there’s no friendship or intimacy or connection, just politeness, lots of obliging and goodwill. Should that be enough?

No joy, just the motions. And I know it will always be the case with us, it’s not a phase. Why can’t I trust myself it’s the right thing to do. I know he would bury his head in the sand if he could.

I'm really sorry this is happening in your life. It's a huge change and it will of course hurt a lot but you both wouldn't have landed on separation without a reason. Keep up the therapy and take care of yourself, I really hope you find some peace.

If you truly feel this way then in some ways it's a no-brainer – just trust your gut.

Feelings can sometimes be hard to pin down by putting them into words, but they can also be easy to rationalise "away" by coming up with reasons that you "should" feel differently (ie it looks good on paper, but it doesn't feel right). Trouble is, feelings don't actually go away just because you tell them to.

However, I do have to say that your posts have a surprising absence of detail about the actual problems in your relationship. Particularly surprising given you've been in therapy for a year. Maybe that's because you're deliberately not sharing details for privacy reasons, in which case, fair enough. But it seems like you really don't understand the issues yourself.

It's possible you have a bad therapist who's not helping you make any progress, and you could stand to try a different one. Or maybe you have an unusual level of difficulty in understanding/expressing your own feelings. Has your therapist said anything about that?

That I’ve made the whole thing up, that I’m destroying everything.

Although underneath it all I feel it’s me, well at least me calling it so to speak.

I know he would bury his head in the sand if he could.

I should also say that these sentences really jump out at me as red flags that you could be in an abusive relationship where your confusion is based in the fact that he is pathologically lying to you, gaslighting you and manipulating you in covert ways.

This kind of abuse can be maddeningly difficult to detect as the source of your relationship difficulties for the simple reason that you can simply not bring yourself to believe that your husband, who you expect to love and care for you (and indeed, he insists he does) is actually lying to you and hiding things from you at a truly frightening scale.

It looks like you've done what many people do: got married, had kids, then fallen out of love.

Why do you see this as being pathological or destructive? You're dramatising a perfectly standard situation, and unless you think you 'should' be in love with all lovely men, there's no reason you 'should' be in love with him.

You need to accept that you feelings have changed, and act accordingly. Why is it pathological for you, when so many other people go through exactly the same process without it being pathological?

I know it’s simple right. We’ve fallen out of love. It’s made me question how we married at all, maybe that’s why I am doubting myself this this extent.

I knew my husband was a very self contained person when we met. I admired this before marriage, how he just rowed his own boat. But since his self containedness has led to a real difficultly in emotional intimacy and everything else as a result. He is a pretty serious and passive character. Again maybe I perceived this as reliable, kind or what now seems dutiful and go with the flow. However these traits are maddening now. Interesting comment above (thanks) re abuse - he is not abusive however I think he is extremely emotionally repressed/ undeveloped, not at all curious and lacks opinions (passive, go with the flow). I have found the complete lack of adult conversation and banter and laughter really hard and have become very subdued as a result. He just doesn’t rate these as being important, I took it for granted he would as up until I married everyone I knew did. Having a meaningful conversation with him is my bringing up and issue, discussing it in a monologue way, no reciprocation, then checking in with him as to how he feels and him essentially parroting back what I have said or going into his shell. I wondered about ASD, he got very stressed a few years ago and went to the GP, I tried to encourage him to talk and not just gloss over with me or his mum or anyone. He went to see someone and was diagnosed as having strong schizoid traits and on a high functioning asd level. It’s the lack of reciprocation that has killed me. Let’s say his is dutiful and obidient, lacking initiative to initiate anything, fun, chat, sex, thinking of the future. I never wanted a relationship like this and I cannot believe I didn’t see any red flags. When I read the traits of a schizoid, I realised how each of them is the polar opposite to me. It’s like I have been living in a different culture, I hoped I’d fit in but haven’t. He has an ability to mask in a sort of guest at a dinner party way, asks very basic questions, repeats things back to fills the gaps, laughs sort of unnaturally. In terms of gaslighting, yes he does but doesn’t know he’s doing it, I raise something gently or vulnerably and he quietly makes a steady exit to the door. Annoyingly these are things no one who isn’t a day to day partner would notice, so getting validation from my family has been really hard. He is such a harmless nice guy. My good friends see it though. It’s like a hugely important layer of life and how I see the world has been removed and it has thrown me.

My therapist is very good and has patiently spent a lot of time trying to get me to trust my feelings. I have wondered do I expect too much from him. We have been through a lot, family health and challenges in how to make babies in this respect. Difficult parents etc. He had a fairly happy but repressed upbringing, he didn’t witness a happy marriage and I think he thinks ours is how all marriages are. Maybe I started to believe that too.

I have an extremely strong network of friends who are all gently coaching me towards a break up.

What’s making me pathological, which really made me think - I could dance around it but it is fear. Fear of missing my young children by going, fear of living in a dead environment with them as a family if I don’t. Fear I won’t manage on my own when I have to (I don’t think I’d have been as scared of that before the last few years which have eroded my confidence and sense of self). Frightened I am making a big mistake.

I want to wake up and be calm and content when I get out of bed, I want to look forward to walking into the kitchen in the morning to a sense of some lightness. When I am in his presence now I wither and sink, in ways I think as I am not coping that my reaction to him is irrational, he’s a nice guy after all and a good dad.

Sorry I read some of that over and it’s a burr jumbled hope it makes sense. Would love your thoughts.

I am usually very good at expressing myself, everybody says how personable and articulate I am when I chat about things (not sure I’m doing a great job here!). However I think this is where my issues come into play. I didn’t realise until i married what an influence my mother has been on me particularly given I was such an independent character. But my therapists suggest I have a sort of emotional block as a result, like her voice as to what to do is buried deep in me as always gets the last day.

Right now I can’t even see what the future could possibly look like and that’s what’s frightening me.

And maybe that externally it looks like I have dumped this lovely man and I am a horrible person for doing that to him and my children.

I think I find it all so hard to fathom as it’s only 7 years since we married, how did we both get it so wrong. He’s a good person and so am I, but we cannot seem to gel at all since getting married. It’s like we get further and further apart.

Why all the angst? Your marriage was ill-advised, so what? It turns out that you aren't suited for each other. Big deal. Call a truce with your husband and talk with him about being friends and great co-parents.

You're divorcing and it's the right decision. Both of you will be perfectly fine and much better off.

I know a couple of middle aged women married to men like this - schizoid/ASD behaviours. They have stuck with the marriage because they hope for change, they love their houses, they think divorce would be bad for their kids, on paper he's a nice man, hasn't done anything bad enough to deserve divorce (both women were raised to be people pleasers), it is selfish to end a marriage just because they're unhappy, they have desperately tried everything including couples therapy and nothing has worked. In one case the man's diffidence/low emotion/rigidity has created such a dysfunctional atmosphere and alienated a child so much that the child left home at 16. In the other, the woman has gone through cancer treatment with a partner incapable of providing any level of emotional support or of doing anything practical without her instruction.
They resent their husbands to the point of hatred and their talk sounds toxic. To meet his demands one of them has sex that she doesn't want. They each prevaricate continually about ending their marriages and have done for 20 years (and one of them recently fantasises about suicide), they're just heartbreakingly unhappy.
The denial and numbing of your own emotions will take a dreadful toll. It might not be intentional on his part but it has effects that are as bad as abuse.
Don't be a woman who ends up seeing suicide as the only way to escape from your marriage. There is a good life out there for you.

There is something called Cassandra syndrome, which is something that comes about when you having been with someone who doesn’t give back in a real emotional way or someone with schizoid asd traits for example. I think this is part of the ‘angst’ or pathology.

‘ When a neurotypical woman is married to a man who has the behaviors associated with autism spectrum (ASD), several things typically occur. Over the course of her marriage, she experiences herself as gradually disappearing. In the place of her former self emerges a person she barely recognizes. She is so lonely. So hurt. So … angry. She feels isolated, as her social connections have gradually diminished. She feels misunderstood by everyone who knows her, so she has learned not to talk about her “problems.” She starts to feels crazy. She also feels guilty, because her husband is a good man.’

My goodness. I know this will be me. This is an eye opener, THANK YOU. It’s happening I just think I need to push on an speed it up.

That comments was for you @Grimsknee

How old are you ?

40

You see, as a woman a decade ahead of you, I see some of what you write as peri menopause.
And I felt some of what you write.
I very nearly left my DH, and after I had a coil fitted I realised that PMT was the cause of a lot of my problems. I can see that the problems escalated at certain times of the month.
I’m not saying that my marriage is perfect now, far from it, and I still question us splitting occasionally.

Oh god I didn’t need that comment! It’s been my whole marriage so I’ve ruled that out and for precaution I went to get my bloods done. I am not peri menopausal, it is not my hormones fault. I haven’t made this up.

But I am very sorry you’ve struggle with the decision of your split. Keep looking forward x

@Fourhorses

That comments was for you *@Grimsknee*

I'm glad it resonated. Honestly in these couples, I feel most sorry for the woman (because I'm closer to them) but I also know it must be horrible for the man. Unfortunately these men put their wives in the position of making EVERY significant decision about their lives, including ending it. Each woman wishes fervently her husband would leave her, but he never will. Thus they are trapped by their beliefs about being nice and not rocking the boat.

Oh my god that’s exactly it. Which is another reason for its being so hard to leave.