my OH has just dropped a bombshell, i dont know where to go from here.

[Booooooooooyhoo]

my OH is away at the minute(navy) and i had noticed his contact becoming less frequent and really just pleasantries when he did get in touch.

today i asked him about it and he said that one of his friends had an accident and has been paralysed from the waist down and that his wife has left him as she couldnt cope with it. OH told me he thinks if the same happened to him, i would leave.

i'm completely gutted by this. we arent married but we live together as if we are, we have two boys and i see him as my husband. i thought he saw me as his wife. i have no doubt in my mind that we will be together forever the same as if we had taken vows. i dont understand why he doesnt think the same.

ive said all this to him, but it was an online chat and i told him i needed space to digest this so i dont know his response.

he just seems so insecure in our relationship. there have been a few times when ive noticed insecurity on his part but never anything like this. ive told him i dont want to have to spend everyday reassuring him of my love and commitment to him. but i dont know how i can make him see that i am committed 100%.

i think our past might be at the root of this but my OH's interpretation of what happened is very different to mine. OH developed a drug habit when i was pregnant with ds1. for the first few months i begged and pleaded with him to stop, he promised he would but, being an addict, always went back to it. i realised that he wouldnt ever quit while i was still there and i couldnt bring a baby into that situation. i left 8 weeks before our ds was born. OH was still using for about 18 months afterwards. we became estranged and it was during this time he joined the navy and got himself clean. then last year he got in touch and we decided we wanted to be a family. however when we discussed the period when we split up, OH believes i abandoned him when he needed me most. i have explained to him that i had tried for months to help him and that i had to put my child and myself first. i told him that i knew he wouldnt quit if he thought i was going to accept it. he said he could see it from my point of view but that he still felt i could have helped him more.

could this be why he is insecure? i know addiction is an illness, is he worried that if he falls ill that i'll leave again? i will be having this discussion with him, i just need to hear other opinions. how do i get him to see that i am here for him? i need him to be confident in us. confident that he has my support, that he can depend on me.

he's back in exactly one month. we're counting the days.

How did he get over the drugs? Was it through counseling? If not, he probably needs some, because not being able to see the drug/ baby situation from your point of view and lumping it all together under the heading of insecurity is not really fair to you. If he thinks unconditional love and togetherness is possible in reality and thinks your very reasonable setting of boundaries (for instance while he was doing drugs) is going to cause him misery in the relationship, he needs a bit of growing up.

no counselling math.

weve been emailing today. he seems to see now that i had no choice but to do what i did. i asked him what he thought i should have done and he says he doesnt actually know. i think the idea that i abandoned him is something he settled upon at the time and never had any reason to rethink it until now so it has been his 'official' explanation if you like. he does now see it from my point of view.

I think that's hopeful, because he maybe understands that there are consequences to his actions, and you're not operating in a vacuum, just abandoning him because you got a notion in your head to do so. I'd still recommend a bit of counseling, just to make sure he really gets it.