My husband and I have been going through a lot these past few years, and just when I’m starting to heal, he wants us to return to an environment I feel emotionally unsafe in. Very long and very complicated story shortened to the best of my ability: Four years ago, my husband of ten years shattered my world and sense of reality, when he suffered what I now believe was an OCD breakdown. My husband came home from a two day conference with the mission of “cleansing” himself by confessing to me everything he had EVER done behind my back, and every lie he’d ever told (he had just joined a church, and he took the idea of repentance VERY seriously I guess). Not only was I not prepared for his unwelcome string of confessions (which seemed endless), but I had not seen ANY of it coming. He was my first boyfriend, the only man I’d ever been with, and I married him in college. Up to this point, I had thought I was living a fairytale, and I guess I relied on him to be the safe home I hadn’t felt as a child (I didn’t even have a license to drive yet, so I was even quite dependent on him). He’d never given me any reason to believe he would cause me heartbreak, or introduce chaos into my life. I cannot muster the strength to talk about the many things he confessed to me, as they still trigger trauma responses in me, but what I can say is that when he suddenly and instantly ripped my reality out from under me, I was devastated, confused, and the trauma caused me to have a severe nervous breakdown. I was so traumatized by the things he was telling me, I actually peed myself as he kept talking and confessing more things. Most importantly, I froze in fear. I knew I should leave him, but I couldn’t move. I couldn’t muster the strength to divorce him for his deceptions and betrayal. To make things worse, my family was unsupportive, and so I knew that without a family home to retreat to, without an anchor to cling to, I could not ride out this nervous breakdown alone. So. I stayed. I am still here.  I am still recovering.                                                                                                                                                                                            The thing that people don’t get is that my husband both shattered my world and my mental health, but he was also the only one willing to take care of me, when I couldn’t function. He has showed tremendous remorse, and though I really suffered the consequences of his OCD confessions, I can appreciate that he wanted to make things right (as without his confessions, I never would have known anything). I can also appreciate that he was having a breakdown himself, which is why I’m even still trying to figure things out with him. I just wish he had sought advice from a therapist before trying to handle it on his own, or you know, not hurt me in the first place. Anyway, now that you’ve got some background (told you it was complicated), I want to address the issue I am presently dealing with.                                                                                                                                                    During my husband’s OCD breakdown, he also began revealing secrets from his childhood (the first night he revealed to me that his father had touched him, he had a seizure and had to be rushed to the hospital…it was that traumatic of a memory for him). He also had begun telling me about his uncle’s abuses. This was a lot for me to comprehend on top of everything else, and so I thought he should talk to his mom about it, instead of just me, as I couldn’t process anything more. She wasn’t still married to his dad, so we thought this was safe. Wrong.                                                                                                                                                                     He wrote her a letter. In response, she flat out ignored that he told her, and wouldn’t acknowledge it. A few months later, he wrote to his dad about the abuses, and his dad wrote back insisting that he was lying, and that I had made him spread those lies. Which is obviously a super gross accusation to put on me, when I honestly was still just trying to survive my own trauma. Instead of my husband’s family addressing the issues that made my husband messed up in the first place, they spread the lies to his whole family that I randomly made my husband lie about his father and uncle. I’d stopped letting it get to me as my husband and I decided to cut this toxicity out of our lives, and we moved down south to escape it. We began to heal and rebuild several states away. Until now.                                                                                                                                                                             Jump ahead to today, my husband started missing his family. Though he told them that he’d not contact them anymore, until they start acknowledging the truth, they refused to give in and talk about things. So, he gave in first. Now they talk to each other all the time, they all pretend nothing is wrong, except his family still accuses me of forcing my husband to lie about them. Now, he’s taking a job with a different uncle, and will be fully wrapped in their world again, moving back to be near them. I’m scared because I don’t feel I can go back there and feel safe. I don’t feel like I could ever have children around these people. It hurts watching my husband victimize himself like this, and it hurts that he knows they unjustifiably blame me for “making him lie,” but he still wants them in our lives, and he gets angry with me when I resist. After everything I’ve been through with this man, I don’t know what to do anymore. I don’t want to demand they are out of our lives, as that seems abusive. Yet, I also know they harmed him as a child, and I want nothing to do with their family sickness. How can I ever heal with my husband, if he wants to return to the life that triggers his issues in the first place? How can I return to his family, knowing the truth about them, and knowing that I’m the scapegoat? How can I watch the man I love subject himself to that? Everything is so complicated, so confusing. I still don’t feel that I have a support network. I guess I’m writing here, hoping for some insight. Am I wrong to not want us to return to his family? Should I just let us return, despite everything that has happened? I’m aware I should probably just divorce him, but like I said, I still feel frozen and with nowhere to turn. I also love him and feel sad that he went through all of these things in his past, and don’t want to hurt him when he is otherwise trying to change. If I do leave, I’m scared of having another breakdown, with nobody to help me. Gentle advice, healing words and loving vibes would be so appreciated.

-G