What's wrong with me??!!!

[Lidale]

Me and dp's relationship has been very complicated and up and down for the whole nearing 5 year duration.

A couple of weeks ago I had a week were I felt extremely close to him but soon after that passed it was like someone hit a switch and now I'm struggling to stand him.

I feel really uncomfortable around him, don't look forward to him coming home. I stay up late because I prefer the sofa to sharing a bed with him. His touch literally makes me jump out of my skin. I suffer with bad anxiety and a hug from my partner used to calm me but it just makes me feel off.

I have no idea what triggered this (other than our obvious past flaws) but it did feel so erratic and random. Dp cried over the sudden change and called me bi polar. We have spoken about it and I've explained I can't quite place why I feel like this but I am trying.

I can see dp is trying now (be it maybe a bit too late) he has finally sorted us out a date in months and is bringing me home nice treats like he used to. But I just feel so frustrated and deflated with it all, as does he. We thought we was making progress after that good week and this feels like a giant relapse.

I am really trying to force myself but I can't make myself feel what I don't and its exhausting. It doesn't help that we live with his family and I feel like our relationship is on show and everything has to be perfect. His mum effectively told me our happiness is hers and that put a giant weight on my chest.

We have dc so it's not like I'm going to up and leave. We are due to be married next year too.

Help!

You know you can’t marry him, right?

@LividTwunt nothing has been planned yet we just agreed we would start sorting it for next year. We are engaged. Our marriage has been on the back burner whilst we have been in couples therapy

Whats made it complicated? Relationships should be easy at the beginning. What kept you hanging in there? Do you have one or more DC? You haven't given much info to go off. Why are you living with his parents? Did you fall pregnant early on? Are there plans to get your own place, I think you should do that first before wasting money on a wedding. It sounds like your plans are either backwards or have no clear plan at all, which you need now you are a family.

If it's been complicated for the whole five years then it's never going to get better than this. Dont get married. Leave.

You shouldn't have to try to like someone. If you aren't comfortable with him, then he isn't the right person for you.

It could be that the years of problems have diminshed your feelings. It could be your 'gut' is telling you there's something wrong.

A relationship that's complicated / up and down for its whole duration wasn't right in the first place.

Please don't walk in to a marriage that you know isn't going to work. When you're with the 'right' person, you know. Even on off days when one of you is ill or worried or irritable, you know that you love them.

It doesn't have to be anyone's fault...it could just be that you aren't compatible.

Sounds like you don’t want to be with him and the reaction is because you’ve decided leaving is a hard no.

@Opentooffers got pregnant unexpectedly in my early 20's. At the time I wanted to leave my relationship but i was young, scared and it was in the thick of lockdown so isolated from all my family and friends. Made a go of it because I didn't see any other alternative and was hopeful.

I don't regret my dc. But I do regret the life style I've cornered myself into. Dp has major debt and can't afford crap all. My money is constantly be drained and he doesn't pay for most of dc's stuff unless I ask. There are things that he was meant to be dc and when it comes down to him he just doesn't.

I have my own job but it's not enough to live off. I have no where to go ( cbb to explain but I genuinely dont) and I hate how little choice I have over my life and circumstances. Whenever I express my feeling of suffocation in this lifestyle and quite literally in our housing sense he reminds me very quickly that I have no other alternative and this makes me feel more trapped to him.

I feel like my life isn't my own and I'm just here to appease everyone, dc, dp and his family. I feel so sapped and don't know who I am anymore. I try to make effort by my Job, gym when I can, seeing my family/friends when I can but its not enough. I'm only in my mid twenties and feel like my life is on this black and white path that I didn't make or chose and it feels dead end.

I think of the type of life I will live with dp, when can we move out when he literally has no credit scoring, what place would we be able to afford, what will our wedding look like when we can eventually afford to get to it. And although I am a strong believer that its not anyone else's job to provide the life you want for yourself, I feel like being with dp seriously limits all these future visions.

Also dp's mum wants me to have more children and ridicules me for not wanting any. She is very old fashioned and believes women should have children. This is ironic given when I was pregnant she showed nothing but disdain towards my pregnancy and thought I was ruining her sons life. After a traumatic pregnancy that was very much not celebrated by anyone and a traumatic birth I do not want anymore and don't appreciate being made to feel any lesser for it!

There's more but I don't want to list everything as its long, outing and personal. But I hope this gets the picture across.

I'm just tired

What do you get out of this relationship now?.

Why are you already in couples therapy?. The two of you need to be apart and now, not together in some codependent based bind leading to marriage (divorcing him would be inevitable so I would save yourself that whole lot of emotional anguish) .

If you do not love him you do not love him.

It is also unfair of both he and his mother to put pressure on you as they have done. And you certainly cannot remain in this relationship for the supposed sake of the children because the sincerity of that statement needs to be questioned. Whose sake have you stayed for really; theirs or more likely your own because its somehow "easier"?.

What do you want to teach your children about relationships and what are they learning here?. Do not continue in your own ways to teach them such damaging lessons about relationships.

It is much more challenging to come to terms with our own circumstances and face our fears than it is to hide behind them as we stay together “for the kids.”
Do not ever be afraid to move on with your own life and take your own responsibility for happiness. Living in such unhappiness is failure.

@AttilaTheMeerkat I really wish I had the balls and courage to take this leap but I don't when I know what the alternative is (which is homelessness).

When we did discuss my detachment towards dp I told him we need to break up as the hurt I was causing him plus trying to juggle my own feelings was too much for me. But he literally ignored me and has gone on like everything is normal and I can't ever speak to him because either dc is around or his parents. I'm worried he will either start crying again or shouting at me like usual and it will distress dc and his parents.

Crikey Moses. Make a plan and walk away.
Don't, whatever you do, marry this man (and his family) or have more kids. Don’t dig an even deeper hole for yourself to get out of.
You probably have more freedom than you realise. Look at the tiniest things you can do to extricate yourself from this suffocating situation and build on that. Small steps begin the longest journey do have courage and run with it.
Good luck OP.

Please speak to Womens Aid. They help all women who are trapped. They can signpost you to groups that can help.

Please get out, you sound mentally beaten

Is that really the case; homelessness if you and your child move out?. Have you reached out to your local council, Womens Aid and or Shelter here?. I think you would find he is wrong and that there are alternative options open to you. You'll be further emotionally suffocated if you remain with this man and his overarching mother and that will have a knock on effect on the kids.

He crying and shouting at you is both emotional manipulation and abuse. You are still young and you have your whole life ahead of you; do not waste it on this man and his parents.

Where are your own parents here?. Would they help or are they the sort who would say well you've made your own bed now lie in it?. I sincerely hope it is the former.

It sounds like the only thing stopping you leaving is homelessness. Reach out to Womens Aid. They'll signpost you in the right direction. You have agency in your own life, take it. Do not marry him and don't get pregnant.

@AttilaTheMeerkat is he emotionally abusing me?

@AttilaTheMeerkat my own parents aren't able to help due to their own personal reasons. I am and have been very much alone since my early twenties and I've just come to realise how much this has added to my suffering and struggling. I feel really abandoned by my parents as they pretty much left me to it when I got with this guy and was too fixated on their split to care.

He shouting at you is emotionally abusive and your children certainly notice.

I have spoken to women's aid before but dp told me he wont allow me to take dc to a refugee place and dp told his mum who again ridiculed me by saying I don't need that help, that they won't want anything to do with me. That it's for women that are going through much worse.

I know they will help me as I've spoken to them. But dp has guilt tripped me multiple times about doing what's best for dc and what type of life that would give them. His option will always be the superior one. And apparently living in his poverty of debt is better than living in poverty of homelessness.

Stop falling for his and his mother's constantly applied guilt tripping; neither of them have your interest or those of the children at heart here. Neither of them are your jailer either although they are more than happy to act as one. He certainly cannot stop you from leaving and taking the DC to a refuge place and I personally think you'd be far better off in a refuge. You are an adult with agency.

Womens Aid will help you leave if that is what you want to do. You've already spoken to them and they will help.

I wish I could but I just feel so deflated and beaten. I know better than to let these things get to me but I feel like I have nothing left.

I am always used to just doing things and being complacent to keep the peace and make people happy. And now that's been my major downfall

Speak to womens aid again. DO NOT TELL DP OR MIL ANYTHING!

DP cannot stop you taking the kids to a refuge as you would already be in one. DO NOT TELL HIM YOU ARE LEAVING! Let the Refuge staff handle DP, you won't need to do it.

DP is telling you nonsense, do not listen to him. Listen to womens aid or shelter.

Anxiety comes when you don't have your own back. The strongest form of self-disrespect is to try to silence your own feelings.

What do you think feelings are for, @Lidale ? What's their purpose?

Read this back.

You have been completely passive in this relationship! You talk as though everything has just happened to you and, in a way, it has but only because you haven't taken any agency in your own life.

Don't end up married to him for the same reason.

The point of a refuge is that you up and leave when it's safe to do so without telling anyone. Not that you discuss it with your 'partner' beforehand! He can't stop you from going to one. Or from taking the children.

I won't go into details of own story but I was homeless with a newborn baby. I had 47p in the bank and a fiver in my pocket. I lived in a mother and baby home for 10 months until I was given a HA flat in a crappy area...

I went on to go to university, got a first class degree, a Masters and a professional career. That baby is now 24, has now also graduated from university and has a good full time job.

Your life doesn't have to look the way it does. It's only your inaction that is going to mean it doesn't change for the better.

Start living your life!

@Watchkeys that's a good question. I don't know. No one has ever valued my feelings over their own so I guess I'm just doing the same?

I had a lifetime of it in my childhood. I put everyone else before myself and that was how I got validation.

I guess my feelings feel so worthless than even I ignore them