My husband and I are about to celebrate our 5 year anniversary. Well I don't know if you can call it celebrating. He told me the other day that he was unhappy in our marriage and wanted out. When I asked him why he said he doesn't know why he's unhappy but he is. He cannot tell me anything I am specifically doing. We have 2 beautiful daughters..We've bought a house in the last 2 years and filed bankruptcy in the last 1 year. He's a cop. He works opposite shifts as me. We have alot going on. But whatever happened to "through thick or thin" I am completely devastated. I never saw this coming. Yes we have our problems but nothing I thought was that horrible. He's going to go to counseling with me at least once but he thinks it's a waste of time because he says he doesn't know if he can give me 100 percent. He made the comment that "it's just old". I know this is rambling...But I don't know what to do. In a matter of one day, my life has been turned upside down. I feel like such an idiot. What can I do to convince him that our marriage is worth trying to save?
Location: Temporary Resident of Earth Lord Only Knows Where Next
Posts: 2,459
Re: He wants a divorce, I don't
First off your husband needs to understand that if the marriage is to have a chance to survive it will take time. One therapy session won't scratch the surface of the possible issues. Since he cant' even identify why he is unhappy the process will take time. Ask him to give things some time. Walking out with such short notice hardly does any of you justice, especially your children.
What other issues are there besides money? If he doesn't know what is making him unhappy, ask him what would make him happy. You are spinning right now and I am sorry but you'll need to look to gather information at this point just to start the reconciliation.
__________________
Amp
Confidence – Love – Patience – Faith Are the tools to help heal a marriage.
First, you don't have to agree to the divorce. You can drag it out as long as you need to, well, at least for quite a while, to give you chance to work on the marriage.
I would really recommend you putting a keylogger on his computer to see who he's talking to, and checking his phone/text records to see who he's calling, before you do anything else. Odds are good that, with all your issues, and with him working a different shift, he's found someone else. If so, you can stop that affair, and THEN work on the marriage.
Well, I don't want to force him to be in the marriage if he truly does not want to. I want him to be happy. He is a great man and deserves to be happy. I don't think he has actually cheated on me yet, but I do know he has confided in a female about our relationship issues which is too much if you ask me. He has called and spoke with her and also text messaged. From my phone records the calling and texting only went on for one day. But I do know they've spoke on Facebook before that. I don't think I could give him another chance if he had an affair. There would be trust issues and I wouldn't want to be paranoid all the time. I told him he needed to give it a chance and his response was "I've given it lots of chances..I'm tired of trying to fix things all the time" and we have had issues that we had to fix before, but we worked on them between us....I want to do counseling and get back into church....He says that's a waste of time and he just doesn't want to give me any false hope that these things will work. If there's even a 1% chance they'll work...I want to try. I have made alot of mistakes in the marriage. About 6 months after we got married...I became close friends with a male coworker. Nothing physical ever happened...It was more of a emotional relationship...It was wrong and I know that...But he keeps bringing that up...I also do not like to have sex...So most of the time...He has to beg...Which I also know if wrong. He shouldn't have to do that...I feel desperate...and I know I look desperate to him but I can't help it...I can't just smile and say "okay, lets end it and tear apart our family".
Well I'm not much one to talk considering I'v been in a similar situation and totally screwed it up. 'm talking close to staking him with my love. If a guy wants to go- he wants to go- especially with him saying things like its getting old and he doesn't want to give you false hope. And if he is relatively young and healthy he has needs that -even if you would now be willing to do- would just not do it for him anymore what with the history of having to beg- even if he wouldn't have to do that anymore. Guys get to a point sometimes were they just don't want to try anymore- they wanna move on to something else. It's like if you get frustrated with a certain job, one day you just can't bring yourself to go in anymore- It could have been the best job ever but if was to difficult for you for whatever reason you just can't bring yourself to even try anymore. Time to try something different. Odds are he is already window shopping. The only thing you really can do is try to change things up a bit- maybe go on a trip with him to have a good time and see if you can liven things up a bit. It don't have to be sex, just a good fun vacation trip for the two of you with no kids. If that doesn't bring him back to you I'd say its best to let him move on. Forcing someone to stay unhappily married is not a good idea no matter how much you love them.
That's a good question SFguy. There were red flags...But I never took them seriously...My mistake...But I want to try to save it because we have 2 daughters together & I love him with all my heart.
If he is willing to go to counseling 'just once,' make that one time the most beneficial - go to marriagebuilders.com and look for the phone counseling section. Dr. Harley works miracles with bad marriages; he cuts through all the crap, shows people what the real situation is, and gives effective assignments. It is worth the money, to save your marriage.
btw, that female he has 'confided' in - that's called an emotional affair. It's just as devastating as a physical affair to a marriage. He now 'knows' that there are other women out there willing to listen to him and commiserate - which he wasn't getting from you.
If you want to save your marriage, you have to become that person for him. I would start with getting on the same work shift, if possible. It's impossible to keep a marriage healthy if you never see each other.
He wants a divorce, I don't
