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Feeling a little hopeless…..

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  • April 21, 2018 at 2:42 pm #203509
    Katie
    Participant

    I’m hoping that just letting some of this out will make me feel better.

    Myself and my husband have been together for 10 years, married for 6, and we have a 4 year old little girl. I’m currently 27 weeks pregnant with our second little girl. Our relationship has been up and down for the last 3 years I would say, culminating in us separating in December last year & me moving to my Mum’s for a time with our daughter.

    We’ve been attending marriage counselling since January, and I recently moved back home. I’m feeling like not much has changed on his part really – all his attention seems to still be directed towards his business, and I feel lonely when we’re apart, which feels like a lot of the time, but also lonely when we’re together. He says all the right things in the therapy sessions about still being in love with me, wanting this to work, appreciating me etc etc, but it just doesn’t translate to me outside of the sessions. Before our issues began, we used to cuddle up on the sofa, hold hands when out and about, and generally be a lot more tactile than we are now. I’ve expressed so many times that I need to see some signs of this physical affection returning as its what I feel I need to feel loved and secure, but he keeps seeming to consciously withhold this, and then tells me that I’m expecting the world too soon and I’m being negative and need to be patient and focus on the positives & the fact that he’s started helping around the house more. I appreciate things can’t go back to how they were overnight, but I’m really struggling to stay sane in what I see as a loveless marriage, when it has been this way for so long, and at this time in my life I just want the person I love to sometimes put his arm around me & make me feel like it will all be ok.

    I’m so confused about whether to stay or go. Sometimes I feel like by staying, I’m trying to put off short-term pain, when I would potentially have long-term gain. And as I sit here for the 3rd Saturday night in a row, crying over all of this, I wonder whether the short term pain of being alone would be any worse than this….

    Apologies for the long post!

    April 21, 2018 at 3:36 pm #203517
    Mark
    Participant

    Katie,

    Sorry for your pain.  I am wondering what does your marriage counselor say about the state of your marriage?

    Do you think that some of your sadness and pain is coming from the changes in your body because of your pregnancy?

    I can understand the need to have your husband as a companion who emotionally supports you and being physically affectionate the way you want it but for whatever reason he is not doing so.

    I can only offer a suggestion to look for other ways and other people to comfort you, to keep you company, to feel love from.  Your mother, your daughter, your close friends…

    Was it better when you lived with your mother?  that he did not take you for granted?  Maybe going back to your mother is a short term fix for now until you deliver?

    You can only change yourself, not him.  You can make request or demands or pleas but ultimately he will do what he wants to do.  You can shift the focus from him as the problem to focusing on finding ways of taking care of yourself without depending on him.

    Mark

    April 22, 2018 at 6:26 am #203539
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Katie:

    You are considering short term pain vs long term gain. You are already feeling the pain, have felt it for a few years during your marriage, and anticipating more pain if separated, followed by a hoped for gain.

    In this consideration of the future, think of the past, before your marriage and before you met the man who became your husband- were you lonely then, a lot (outside temporary comfort here and there)?

    Did you experience a lonely, loveless childhood, in your home of origin?

    I am asking these questions because it is your early experience with love, or lack of, that is likely to return if you do separate from your husband. Let me know, if you would like to, that is.

    anita

    April 24, 2018 at 2:11 pm #203929
    Katie
    Participant

    Thank you both for your replies, it lifted my spirits a little to know that people had taken time out of their day for me. 

    Mark, our marriage counsellor has always been positive about our marriage & our ability to work through our issues. She has said she sees no red flags that would indicate otherwise. Every time we leave her office, I do feel positive about our future but this is always short lived. I think that my hormones at the minute can’t be helping the situation, but I feel pretty much the same as I did about all this before I fell pregnant, except that now I’m not able to numb the pain by occasionally drinking a little too much and reverting to smoking the odd cigarette when I had given up 10 years ago. I appreciate these aren’t ideal “solutions”! 

    I feel like I may have withdrawn from my friends a little, and I’ve become embarrassed at how up and down my marriage has been, and that I’m saying one thing one minute & the complete opposite the next, that I’ve just kinda given up being honest. I think if they knew how dire our situation can still feel for me, then they would want me to just step up and make some decision or take some action. Our counsellor said that if we couldn’t make it work under the same roof at the point where we were at, then myself and our daughter should stay in the family home to prevent any further disruption to her, and he should go to his parents. Part of me wants to make that call, but the other part of me thinks it will be the final nail in the coffin. But then again I’m not sure what I’m trying to save?! Again I’ve been in floods of tears tonight because he’s been cold and dismissive with me, and keeps doing the complete opposite of everything I’ve said I need. It’s just silly things, like I told him he has this knack of making me feel like the dullest person on the planet, and then again he’s made several “jokes” today about something I’ve been telling him, that I need to start repeating it when he’s in bed and needing something to help him nod off. I don’t know if this would probably come off as trivial to others, but when it’s things like this, and so much more, and it’s sustained over a long period, I feel like this relationship has really eaten away at my self esteem. I’ve said I don’t expect everything overnight, but I would like to see a small step in the right direction, and I don’t. I do need to focus more on me and what I can do for myself – you’re right. I have a midwife appointment on my own tomorrow and I guess I should speak to her about any support I could get. Thank you.

    Anita, I guess I did feel lonely before I met my husband. I hadn’t had a serious relationship before him for many years, and instead I became too fixated with a series of people that ultimately were bad for me and didn’t want the same things I did. I was always just trying to find love, in totally the wrong places! My childhood and home life were a bit of a mixed bag really. My biological father and my mother split up when I was 6 months old and he tried for full custody but had no reason to be granted this, and so he decided if he couldn’t have all, then he would have nothing. I reached out to him by letter when I was 9 / 10 (I think) and we had a brief “relationship” whereby he would come to our flat for visits, but he just stopped coming one day after him & his wife bought tickets for a pantomime a little far from home, and I at short notice, decided this was too much too soon for me, without my mum. I guess he then couldn’t be doing with the hassle of me! I met him again when I was 16 and we had another unsuccessful attempt at a relationship, but ultimately I decided this man brought nothing good to my life and I cut contact at 18 and haven’t seen him since.

    My mum always tried to do her best by me, but I seem to recall her struggling with anxiety and depression on and off when I was young, and she had a series of dysfunctional relationships over the years. I guess I don’t want our children to remember me in this way, or for me to perhaps pass this on. Maybe there’s always been a bit of a hole within me, and currently I’m looking to my husband to fill it, and getting nowhere fast. Thank you for your interest, and if anything, it has been somewhat therapeutic getting all this down. 

    Katie 

    April 25, 2018 at 5:08 am #203991
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Katie:

    You wrote about your husband: “he’s made several ‘jokes’ today about something I’ve been telling him, that I need to start repeating it when he’s in bed and needing something to help him nod off. I don’t know if this would probably come off as trivial..”

    What specifically were you telling him?

    Depending on what it was that you told him, his “joke” can be anywhere from ineffective communication to a red flag (what your therapist since January said she didn’t see yet in the marriage).

    anita

     

    April 27, 2018 at 2:11 pm #204591
    Katie
    Participant

    Dear Anita:

    I can’t remember the specifics I’m afraid – I think one example was me telling a story of something at work – nothing too long or detailed, and another might have been to do with a couple of taxi rides I’d had to take that day. It just tends to be normal, conversational stuff – he says I take too long to “tell stories” & lets me know how he would have told something, which is basically in one short, sharp sentence. I’ve tried to explain that I’m not him, and we all talk differently, but to no avail. He will happily talk on and on about his work, which is his passion, to me, and I sometimes wonder how he would feel if I implied I was bored, or brought to his attention that he was repeating something he’d already talked about, but that’s just not me. 

    Katie 

    April 28, 2018 at 6:16 am #204633
    Anonymous
    Guest

    Dear Katie:

    I will be summarizing your account on this thread as I understand it:

    You have been in a relationship with your husband for 10 years, married for 6, and you have a four year old daughter, currently seven months or so pregnant. For three years the marriage was up and down, temporarily separated December last year, reunited and attending marriage counseling since January this year.

    You feel lonely living with your husband, lonely when you are apart and lonely in his presence. You don’t feel that he loves you, that he appreciate you etc. He says so in therapy but you don’t believe him. You are frustrated by a lack of physical affection on his part, and see your marriage as “a loveless marriage”. You are “so confused about whether to stay or go”.

    Every time you leave a marriage counseling session you feel positive but that feeling is short lives. You feel that you have withdrawn from your friends. You seem to be crying a lot, “in floods of tears”.

    You wrote: “I feel like this relationship has really eaten away at my self esteem. You wrote about your marriage: “I would like to see a small step in the right direction, and I don’t.”

    You wrote about your history before the relationship with your husband: “I was always just trying to find love” You reached out to your absent father when you were 9 or 10, he visited you a few times then stopped one day. You met him again at 16,  a few more visits, and nothing after 18. Your mother struggled with anxiety and depression on and off and had a series of dysfunctional relationships over the years.

    You wrote: “Maybe there’s always been a bit of a hole within me”.

    Your husband complains to you at times that you take too long telling stories, stories about work, taxi rides and such. He told you that he prefers you tell him these stories in a short, sharp sentence. On the other hand, he talks on and on to you about his work.

    This is my understanding at this point: you had a difficult childhood with a mother who was not emotionally available to you because of her anxiety and depression and you had a father who was not there physically and who didn’t care to be in contact with you. This is that “hole within me”, that you mentioned.

    That hole always caused you pain but in the last three years, this pain has intensified into what I see as depression. I don’t think you are able at this point in your depression to see or evaluate your marriage correctly and to make thoughtful choices about your marriage. I think you blame your husband and the marriage for the pain in you that was caused long before you met this man, your now husband.

    Like your therapist, I don’t see red flags about his behavior toward you. He may be unaware of going on and on about his work and it may bore you, so you may need to ask him to  not go on and on about it. And you may want to make an effort to tell him trivial stories in shorter accounts or not tell him at all if there is no value in him knowing.

    I think that you need individual, one on one psychotherapy so to look into that hole-within, that intense loneliness experience of your childhood, an experience that you keep re-experiencing through adulthood, on and off before, on for three years.

    The marriage counseling can go on in addition to the individual therapy.

    anita

     

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