I think have behaved awfully to my DH and destroyed our relationship and I don’t know how I feel about it to process why I have acted the way I have or what to do with regards to the right thing.
About a year ago I realised I was getting frustrated with my DH. He wasn’t looking after himself, gained loads of weight and was disengaged and prone to moods, silent treatment, snappiness at me and others. I tried to jolly him on and get him motivated but he was stuck in a rut. I tried to encourage him to speak to someone about it but he is very adverse of talking about his feelings and kept insisting nothing was wrong.
During this time I found myself getting bored of his company and I suppose drifting away, and less attracted to him. I was busying myself with other hobbies and work.
Up till then we had a normal marriage with love between us.
A few months ago it all came to a head over something or the other, and I confronted him more decisively to say look something isn’t right here, what’s going on? He took this very badly and exploded at me nastily, turning things back on me to deflect and lots of resentment and accusations. I was hurt by this and I think this was the snapping point that I emotionally disengaged from him. I also suspect I was bored of the situation and had little motivation to continue to put the effort in to see no change.
He continued to push and snap at me which made me feel further away, and I stopped making any effort to make things better. I felt confused about whether I loved him and whether I wanted to continue our relationship. I told him I was unsure and confused and that his behaviour wasn’t helping the situation. I didn’t leave him but I felt distant and I stopped supporting him emotionally. I told him I wasn’t sure I felt I could trust him because he still kept reverting to shouting and blaming me for things and twisting my words. A load of old resentments came up from years back and I found myself telling him all about them to try to make him see how much I had invested in us before things had started to disintegrate and he has ruminated and picked all of these older incidents apart.
At this point he had some kind of mental breakdown and has started therapy. He has desperately tried to rekindle our relationship and apologised for his behaviour repeatedly, but I just can’t seem move on from what’s happened because I am afraid he will go back to those behaviours. I’ve given him loads of chances to show me he isn’t going to but then he does, and he says this is because I am gaslighting and manipulating him.
I have felt very torn and close to taking him back, then when I see nothing has changed, I will pull away again. He will sit and cry for hours in front of me and say that he’s sad I won’t hug him and I’ve abandoned him. He is right I do just sit and watch him, wishing he would stop crying and I don’t have any desire to hug him. He hugs me and I just don’t hug him back. He won’t leave me, he says I have to leave him. But I feel like I can’t leave him when he’s in this state.
He has tried lots of different ways to get me to change my mind but none of them have worked, and he says I am stringing him along and punishing him. He says he’s always supported me and now it’s my turn to support him, I’m being selfish. I do see what he is saying because I do just sit there passively and I don’t engage with him and I have just emotionally abandoned him. We find it hard to have any normal conversation. He says my lack of engagement makes him feel worthless and rejected and it’s cruel. It is true he did support me. He hasn’t always been a bad husband. I am afraid I have just got bored of everything and seeing nothing improving and I’ve given up and that seems to be a shitty reason to end a marriage this way.
In my heart of hearts I am torn because I know he can be amazing and I miss him. I know I could just try to pretend none of this ever happened and move on. I know we could try to rebuild it. I am scared I will regret my decision to disengage from him. All I really want is for him to be strong and come show me he’s worth taking a leap of faith on. But that’s him proving his worth to me, and it is that he feels worthless which is destroying him.
He has told me that I am destroying him by keep testing out whether things have changed and not committing back to him because he is fully committed to me and he doesn’t know what else he can do to show me he’s worth it and will do the work needed to change
I don’t know if I am being emotionally abusive to him as this is what he is now saying