My World Is Collapsing (by a husband)
First off, let me say my heart goes out to everyone on this board and the issues you are going through. So many of these stories sound familiar. I wish all of you happiness and hope with all my heart that you can work through things with your spouses/partners.
I apologize for the length of this, but have been journaling as I work through things as my current emotional issues are multi-faceted and I am really struggling to work through each of them separately as one issue keeps yanking the carpet out from under other issues as I try to process them.
For the first time in my life I have went to a counselor (starting 6wks ago). I guess I had a mini-breakdown this October that had been building for a few months. I wasn’t sleeping well, a diet turned into a semi-permanent lack of appetite and I was losing interest in things that were important to me. My wife and I decided separately it was time for me to go to a counselor after laying in bed one weekend just staring blankly at the ceiling.
Background: I am a 35yr old man. I have been married for 9 years with two kids (5 & 7). Our family could not be happier and nothing else is more important in my life. Family life is normal, kids are doing well in school and we were one of the lucky ones that made it through the economic downturn ok. My wife tells me all her friends are jealous of the dad and husband they see me as (only recently learned this). In hindsight I realize maybe I have sacrificed too much of my happiness for everyone else and this is a re-occurring behavior in my life.
Childhood : I was sexually abused by an adult cousin as a 8-12yr old. I never really thought it was abuse as at the time it felt good and I thought it was something I had decided to do. As I got to an older teen I realized it was wrong and my stomach would turn upside down everytime I got near that cousin. So I guess I knew it was wrong at that point but did not have to see him often so I never dealt with it and it drifted off into the past. I never told anyone about it and lived with it my whole life until I met my wife and told her. I don’t think this has any effect on me now but the way I dealt with it (or lack there of) started to form the ways I dealt other things in my life.
High School (88-92): My high school years were pretty normal for a small town. I enjoyed drinking on weekends, worked a job through high school to have some financial independence and kept up my A’s. Looking back I realize I always seemed to make good decisions & achieve success despite being surrounded by friends who were at the opposite end of the responsibility spectrum. I had a few intimate girlfriends in high school. First two were very short awkward physical relationships just trying to figure out how things worked. The third was a real emotional & physical relationship only ending when she had to move (a sad day but I got over it).
College (92-96): Fell for a girl in my first weeks of college in our co-ed dorm. In a stupid night of emotion a few months into my first semester she got pregnant and my world fell apart. She immediately dropped out of school and moved out of state to live with her sister to hide it from her family and friends before placing the baby into adoption. We stayed in constant long distance communication through the process ultimately falling in love and got engaged after the adoption. Of course this did not last long… and ended up with her leaving suddenly with little/no explanation. I beat myself up for this so badly… for ruining someone’s life that I cared about. I was convinced I was a scumbag and should never get physically involved with someone. I started to believe physical relationships led to bad things and no relationship should have physical intimacy early in the relationship. I started to believe physical relationships were a bad thing and got in the way of true emotional happiness. I went through this whole ordeal alone as well and buried myself under 21hrs of engineering classes keeping A’s to keep myself so busy that I would not feel so much pain. I now realize this reinforced the guilt, isolationism & other defense mechanisms I have always carried from my childhood abuse. This event in college had a huge impact on my adult life and is a significant contributor to who I am today.
Rescued (2000): After living 8yrs in emotional & physical isolation, not dating or being close to anyone (yet my heart was crying out for help)… friends introduced me to my eventual wife. This was a great thing as I would have never asked her out on my own. We fell in love quickly (or at least I did). She is a wonderful girl and has become my best friend. We immediately started having kids (wonderful also) and our lives have been great since then. My family is the most important thing in my life and I would give up anything for them.
Years Later (2009 June-Aug): The kids are finally both in school, mom is feeling like a girl again and we spend more time focusing on us and our sexual relationship. Mom wants to get a post pregnancy overhaul (implants and a tummy tuck) and now looks even more beautiful than she ever did. As we explore our fantasies one night we decided to watch an adult movie. As we watched, I was a bit ashamed watching it in her presence but she got really aroused especially by the women. She has never had a problem expressing her sexuality and whereas I am the opposite. We go out to the strip clubs a couple of times and it was so much fun (her idea… I was not allowed to go to them for bachelor parties as she felt jealous). Shortly after this she realizes she has been having bisexual feelings for sometime. She knows several girls in the past she probably had romantic feelings for and really wants to explore those feelings with another woman.
She initially tells me should would love to meet another couple so the wives could go ‘play’ in another room. When she realizes I am uncomfortable with her doing this without me she tells me I can watch. When she realizes I feel neglected in this scenario she finally makes me an integral part of this fantasy. I am not mad at her for this as it was still a fantasy and she was working through a lot of new feelings. She backed off trying to make this fantasy when I finally had my emotional breakdown below but she said if an opportunity fell into our lap she would like to pursue it.
As a guy I find this highly erotic, but I have come to figure out through recent events I am too sensitive about relationships in my adult life to ever get involved with someone strictly physically which makes me feel like a social failure and a failure as a man when I see how my wife is able to keep physical and emotional needs separate and pursue experiences to satisfy each of them.
Aug 2009: During her discovery process she made male and female friends with strangers via facebook and boards, not mentioning much to me about the details her online activities (I was the one who suggested she use the internet to do research about what she was feeling). When she mentioned she wants to get together with a group of girls from the bi board just to meet and discuss their lives I am a bit shocked and monitor her internet activities (she decided not to go when she saw I was conflicted about her meeting with them). Within 24hrs I witness another chat with another man on the internet talking about their unique sexual interests which in hindsight was just a person she was using for research about all these new feelings (I personally think he was trying to find a third person for himself & his girlfriend). I also learn she had posted her profile on a board to meet bi girls for relationships trying to find someone for ‘us’ (which probably means her) but that never really panned out. My heart is now broken, my trust is gone and I feel isolated & alone like I did in college. She has not physically or emotionally cheated on me… but some thought & motivation was there. I have no homophobia (surprising all things considered) and have gay friends and coworkers so that is not an issue.
I realize this may make my wife sound bad but she is a sweet, wonderful and considerate person whom I love dearly.
Anxiety Accelerates (2009 Oct-Nov):
At the end of October, 25yrs of emotions were approaching a breaking point and one evening I asked a few to many questions about my spouse’s past as I was trying to process everything and understand her better as some things just did not make sense to me. I learned the shy/awkward girl she always told me about who struggled socially and who I thought only had a few boyfriends had actually got asked out often in college and she usually took men up on it as she saw this as a good opportunity to learn about people and figure out what she liked. She usually always had a person she was involved with. I also learned that her definition of dating involved sex so she had physical relationships with many of these guys. 12 guys in 5years total that she can remember… she had initially ballpark estimated 20 guys until she sat down and wrote out a list. She said they were always dating relationships (not one night stands). Two-thirds sound like there was not much of an emotional attachment or chemistry. I am at a total loss how someone could date and have sex without having strong emotional attachment or closeness to that person first. I understand this might happen a few times but this seemed to evolve into her status quo. I now question if I was just another one of these guys and the only difference I had from these guys was that I was responsible, successful & capable of taking care of a family. I now question how much she even loved me when we got married.
This new information finally broke me and I started having trouble making it through the day. I managed to find a councilor within a few days whom I could talk to. After the first session I went from not being able to sleep and sick to my stomach constantly to feeling lost/numb/disconnected/empty. I even started distancing myself from my family which is terrible but I was too numb to feel any guilt about it.
Now (2009 Dec):
I am now cycling between light to heavy anxiety every few days although my wife does not realize it since I contain most of it. There is always some trigger somewhere setting me off. The most recent was a guy ‘she never really dated’ who facebook friended her and she asked my permission to be friends since she wants to be extremely honest/open with me right now (and I told her it was ok). She said they never dated but said they fooled around in her first months of college. ‘Fooled around’ started giving me more anxieties since dating=sex in her book I was not sure what fooled around meant. Turns out it meant oral sex since he did not believe in pre-marital sex (oh yeah, she dislikes doing that to her hubby). She feels she has to be honest with me as she does not want to deceive anymore but it is so hard to process this type of information.
My spouse is being super supporting, kind and trying to show lots of love as I work through this but my perception is that this is a mechanical response trying to help me out of this funk. It just does not feel genuine. I have always been the more emotional & affectionate one and in hindsight have probably felt some missing needs here. Our sex life has been very healthy the last couple of years as she pulled out of the young child years which took its toll on our physical relationship as anyone would expect. However, now it feels like sex, not love. For instance she does not like to kiss passionately (never initiating passionate kissing) as she is more of a peck on the lips person. To her the way to demonstrate love is taking good care of the house and family which I respect but it does not fill emotional needs.
In the last week I have also started physically shuddering/spasming when I am near her. I am so ashamed of this. I told her I was just cold but she has figured out this is another symptom of what I am going through. I still love her and don’t see how my body can react like this. The night before last I could not sleep or stop shuddering and put on a raincoat to go walking in the middle of the night in the cold rain just to try to clear my head. I wanted to run away but had nowhere to go.
I am now very worried if I will get past all of this. I know the majority of this is due to my issues and my wife’s past does not matter but yet I feel jealousy and am threatened by it. I am not sure which issues I have to work through and in which order… I am not sure what I want to do at this point... Do I get mad? Do I forgive (do I even have anything I owe my wife forgiveness for). Will I still love my family the same? Will I be happy again? I feel like I have lost my youth and now everytime I see my wife that fact is rubbed in my face. I also feel like my wife has probably had a lot better lovers than me since they had more experience.
I don’t want to leave the family as I know I could not go on living alone again. I won’t hurt myself but if a bus hit me I wouldn’t necessarily mind right now.
I want to get better, but not the same way I did in the past by burying things and isolating myself. I also think getting better will help me raise my kids to not have the same problems with intimacy, isolationism and all the other screwed up ways I deal with things.
I just want to feel and love again…
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