Am I being unfair? Thinking of ending my marriage because I don’t love my husband.

[Tuttiker1955]

I have been having this thought on and off for a few years, I am seeking help and therapy for past and present trauma but I can’t stop this niggling anxiety around my marriage. We have known each other 12 years, been together 10 and married for 8 years.

Just to outline my husband is a lovely person, he is a great father, he has never hurt me physically and I do love him but not as a partner more as a friend. I am actually unsure as to whether I have ever truly loved him.

He has qualities that as time has gone on have started to get under my skin, these are things that I have approached him about over the years but it gets better then we fall back into the pattern. Some of the things have been a mild form of emotional abuse (I use the term abuse lightly).

As time has passed I think I latched to my husband as we were close friends (best friends almost) when we got together and at the time I had been through some serious losses in my life and was approaching 30 with the whole not where I thought I would be going through my head.

I changed a lot of myself as my husband had a lot of issues and I hate confrontation and found it easy to bury parts of myself to alleviate his needs.

I turned 40 this year and have been stressing over this a lot as I really don’t want to spend the rest of my life just going through the motions.

has anyone ever just fallen out of love and ended a marriage because of it?

"Some of the things have been a mild form of emotional abuse"

@Tuttiker1955 You say you use the term lightly, but are you able to explain a little more about what you mean, or give an example?

Yes what do you term as "mild emotional abuse"? Because also, you say that you've changed a lot abotu yourself to suit him? What sort of changes? Because that would be mor ethan mild emotional abuse.

I'm not sure how someone can use the term 'abuse' lightly.

But I am sure that when people ask if they need to end a relationship that it isn't the first time they have asked themselves the question and it really does spell the end, because the doubt will always be there.

Whatever the reason, if you don't love someone the fairest thing to both you and them is to let them go. I firmly believe this - more than you know actually - you absolutely cannot spend the rest of your life going through the motions, that's a miserable existence and you deserve so much better.

no, don’t go yet. Was married for 48 years and many a time I felt I couldn’t go on. I was fortunate enough that my husband worked internationally and when he phoned up from where - ever I realised how much I missed him. He annoyed me because he believed I would stay young and good looking. He would say, you should have seen etc… until I had to tell him that at he was no longer the gorgeous looking man I married. We change and we battle but if you can get over this hurdle first see how you feel. The world is a strange place out there. Those who will feel you should leave should think about who will take care of you emotionally and physically if you are alone. We are not perfect…. Think of the good times!!

Apologies - I suppose I don’t want to associate the word abuse to my situation, but that may be me in denial and my husband is a good man.

At the beginning my husband had massive trust issues (caused by previous relationships) and due to this it caused some problems in our relationship. When we first got together I was fun, laid back (relatively), happy, funny, friendly with people (female and male), and generally just enjoyed life and was almost always positive.

Due to his issues, I retreated certain parts of my personality into myself as didn’t want to cause problems/issues in our relationship. There was the moving in, then “I will feel better once we are engaged”, then “I will feel better once we are married”, and I think the only reason we were good is because I WFH so apart from occasional nights out I don’t socialise much.

Emotional side will be things like:

telling me how I feel
interpreting how I feel and makes assumptions
buys stuff (that I haven’t asked for) and then says he can’t afford something due to the stuff he brought almost making it feel like it’s my fault
plans a surprise and then tells me as he assumes I won’t like the surprise
gets upset/hurt if I don’t laugh at a joke that I am tired of hearing

I have this issues where I have to make other people happy even if I am unhappy in the process. I don’t like confrontation and I don’t like upsetting people.

The thing is... after having spent years and years with the drip, drip, drip of minor things, they all mount up and you are so accustomed to it (and have changed your behaviour to accommodate it) that you just don't realise that it is abuse. You have been conditioned to accept it, and you think it is normal.

Boiled frog, they call it. Put a frog into a pan of hot water and it will jump straight out. Put it in cold water and heat slowly - it won't notice what's happening.

You are absolutely minimising this.

Im surprised to hear you say you are a people pleaser, as this was all about YOU. I think you should consider the consequences of leaving ie the effect it would have on your children, your husband’s life and wider family. If he is a good man why throw that away (coz it’s easy ?). Try working harder at your marriage it’s not all sunshine and roses sometimes it’s hard. Are you thinking someone will come along snd love you snd your children more, treat you better. What exactly are you looking for in a husband? What do you think being a wife looks like. Perhaps going to couples therapy might be a first start instead of giving up.

@Freeme31 Read the room, and once you've done that, get back to the 1950's.

Emotional side will be things like:

interpreting how I feel and makes assumptions
buys stuff (that I haven’t asked for) and then says he can’t afford something due to the stuff he brought almost making it feel like it’s my fault
plans a surprise and then tells me as he assumes I won’t like the surprise
gets upset/hurt if I don’t laugh at a joke that I am tired of hearing

I know lots of posters will be along to tell you he sounds awful but I always try to remind myself that we are only hearing your side of things. And to be honest none of what you have said makes him sound bad at all. More just that you've fallen out of love with him.

He plans surprises but then tells you about them? I do that all the time because I doubt myself and worry that the person won't like what I've planned!

Interpreting how you feel and making assumptions? Me and DH do this constantly. "Have you had a bad day?" or "You don't seem very happy, are you ok?". Surely that's just part and parcel of spending your life with someone?!

Buying you gifts then saying he can't afford something else? Well that's probably true... You are making the assumption he's blaming you but it may just be a fact!

Being upset / hurt if you don't laugh at his jokes... Surely you can see that's not his fault? If he's trying to make you laugh and you're outwardly showing you're tired of him then he probably is pretty upset!

None of this is emotional abuse OP.

Having said that, if you want to end your marriage because you don't love your husband anymore then that is absolutely fine. You are well within your rights to do that!

@Freeme31 the reason I am in this situation and headspace is because I have never put myself first and am now seeking the help I need to work on myself and my thought and feelings about my marriage.

You don’t know what I have been through and nor do you know me enough to tell me what I have and have not considered. As a child of divorce/separation I have considered the possible outcomes and as adults if I was to separate from my husband I would make sure that my children were affected as little as possible (as my parents did with me and my sister).

I am not even seeking another relationship, I am not having an affair or looking to replace my husband.

As for my wider family it really isn’t their business, I am not spiteful and if my marriage was to end my husband and all my wider family would still have access to my children but otherwise it is none of their business.

You have basically just told me to people please regardless of how I am feeling, this is not something I am treating lightly and I spend everyday feeling sick to my stomach with the conflict that this causes in me.

Do you know what? I know a few older couples (I'm in my early 40's, they're in their early-mid 60's.) They are still married BUT I've noticed one thing in common with long-term successful marriages - they don't spend all their time together. In fact, one couple, the husband is rarely at home (out and about doing building projects) one spends half the year in his house in France and the wife stays here and has time to herself. Then the last couple - she still works and he is semi-retired but works from home. She has admitted she couldn't be around him all the time as it would drive her mad. She's clinging onto work as long as possible - she has good friends there, a nice social life.

So people do probably get hacked off with one another in the long run, but they just find ways of having their own identities whilst remaining in the marriage. This obviously only works if you have a "friendly" marriage, because, to be quite honest most people do end up tolerating one another as friends, who may or may not occasionally have sex.

That's my take on it - a bit brutally honest but that's it. The ones who divorce, well they were just incompatible anyway, they were never going to make it into the long-term friendship/occasional sex type marriage.

Don't think about this in terms of fair, or unfair. You should be in a relationship because you choose to be. If you choose not to, you can leave. That doesn't make you a bad person.

It does feel, however, that you are looking to frame things in terms of who's good and who's bad. I think that's why you framed your husband's behaviour as 'abuse', when it obviously isn't abusive.

I think you want permission to leave, and validation that you are leaving because of your husband's faults. The truth is that what you have described as problems is simply the work involved in making a marrage work. Of making grown-up love work, if you like.

You don't seem ready or able to do that. Don't blame your husband for that.

You mentioned past trauma - I'd focus on that.

Hmm it's difficult to tell how bad his behaviour is tbh, whether it's within the realms of flawed human, or straying into something unacceptable.

If I was you, at this stage I wouldn't worry so much about whether I'm in love/lust with him. Do you want to fix the marriage? If you do, I suggest couple's therapy if you can afford it. If not, communicate. Clearly state the issues you have, ask him what his issues are with you, and agree a plan. Support each other in changing things. The elements of your personality you've buried need to come back for a start. If he's not accepting of this, THAT'S a deal-breaker really isn't it. But I would give him a chance.
If you can both make changes and tackle the actual problems, and invest in quality time together, you may find that you start feeling more loving towards him. If not, at least you have given it your best shot.

So, you have subsumed your naturally socialble and intractive personality because he was insecure? That's not minor, that's hug.

It's also not weird for this to be coming up as an issue now. I think it often happens that when the children are small, these changes to routine/behaviour/personality that a woman makes for someone like this don't feel as onerous because you've got a lot of other stuff going on in the context of young children etc etc. And then the children get a bit older and you start waning more and suddenly either the abuse ramps up or you start to feel like existing shackles are more restrictive than you realised. But to you, it feels like you're just falling out of love or that these are "minor things" and you shouldnt find them difficult.

This.
Is it an equal relationship @Tuttiker1955 do you both work and pay a proportionate amount to the household?
Do you equally share household and childcare tasks?

I'd also try a couple of "tests". Tell him you want to start going to the gym. Or that you've been invited to drinks/dinner with some women you've met (perhaps through the DC) and see how he responds.

He won't like it.

How about the effects of her staying as well losing herself in this what does that tell her children about a healthy relationship

OP you need to find herself and work out if that person can be in a relationship with your husband if at all possible

@NellieElephantineit is an equal relationship.

We both work full-time from home, we both contribute equally to all bills and share the household and childcare responsibilities.

well personally I do feel that marriages take WORK. He sounds like a good man, and life isn’t a romance.

Agreed

But…. If you’ve worked on it… and things keep repeating the same old pattern….., and you’re not happy….. then you don’t need anyone’s ok.
You do you.
Life is too short to be unhappy. To live waiting…..

I think it’s actually unfair not to end a marriage if you don’t love them and don’t believe relationship counselling will be a workable solution.

Do you have to work from home? Is it not quite suffocating to always be together in the same place?

If you can afford it I would really suggest going for personal and/or relationship counselling to work things through before making such a huge decision.

I’m partway through divorcing in similar situation but without any DC and it’s no cake walk even without children involved so you owe it to yourself and everyone else to make sure you are making the right decision IMO.

Blimey, all the tradwives are coming out to play today.

@Tuttiker1955 You are unhappy and you don't love him. You are not being unfair. It is totally understandable, because it seems to me that he has done nothing to boost your self-esteem, your morale or a general feeling of being loved for a very long time. You are not in a loving, happy relationship. Only you know whether this is something you want to save or not, and before anyone else suggests joint counselling - don't do that. Joint counselling is never recommended when there is any suggestion of abusive behaviour, however minor it appears on the surface. Maybe go and talk your feelings through with a counsellor on your own. That will empower you with the ability to decide what to do.

You say yourself that you have buried parts of yourself to alleviate his needs. That is not a healthy thing in a relationship, and if it is now having a negative effect on you, then you need to consider whether you want to find the real you again.