I am going through hell with my husband...
This is my story, if you're interested in reading it, I posted it in general discussion a few weeks ago.
So, fast forward to now. He told me three weeks ago that he was leaving his home in Canada, not telling me where he was going, an basically that I had turned him into a "monster" because I was such a monster myself, so I better pray we never meet again.
I heard nothing from him then for three weeks except one very strange e-mail wishing me a Happy Valentine's day, with a thinly veiled threat involved in it, too. I'm not sure if he meant it to be threatening, but after how unstable he had been and all the horrible things he said to me, I was kind of scared of him.
Then he called me Friday night, basically singing a whole new tune of wanting us to work out. He insisted that he would agree to almost anything, if only I would agree to work things out with him, and come back to him. He insisted he loved ME, he wanted ME (one of the things we had fought about in the past was how dismissive he was of me and how often he would indicate I was a disappointment to him, and that I was nothing special...he often would launch into detailed fantasies about asking other women to join us for a menage a trois, or just having other women around for when he got tired of me), and that he had changed and wanted to put the past behind us and work on things for the future.
I had been preparing myself for this phone call because I knew it would come, I knew he was most likely not truly gone for good, but I had hoped that when he called my path would be made clear to me, that either I would be certain we had a hope of working out and that I should try again with him, or certain that we had no chance and I should tell him to eff off.
But nothing was clear to me at all. He begged me to please just trust him one more time, to just try one more time. He acted very sincere (though even now he sees us as having equal responsibility in destroying our marriage, and that I have to promise to work as hard at changing as he does, and it's really hard for me to judge how much responsibility I have in it, but everyone who knows the situation insists that he is the one that screwed things up), and I told him that he was talking a good story but I simply could not trust him that he was being sincere. He asked me what he would have to do to earn back my trust, and I felt just awful because I honestly didn't even know what to tell him. Now, in retrospect, I have an idea, I think, of what it might take, or at least of what his only chance would be, but at the time, I said I didn't know.
He got so frustrated, and devastated, and would not even allow the conversation to end. We talked for hours, and eventually stopped talking about us, and just started talking about other things, and actually were having a good conversation. So thats when I decided things had to end. I was going to get sucked back into chatting with him about common ground, and the temptation was going to get strong to forget about the bad, and forget about what brought us to this place, and tell myself things weren't so bad. And maybe that's what I should have let happen. Maybe my fear of him, maybe my misery while with him was overblown. Maybe I am just being selfish in wanting to get away from him. Maybe it is my duty as his wife to go back even if it means giving up so much of my life and myself. I am someone who has always believed that marriage won't always be a picnic, that you have to make sacrifices for your spouse, and you have to stick by them even when the easy or fun thing to do is tell them to take a hike.
But I also know the reason I am in this situation is so often I told myself our problems were just normal husband-wife problems, and that I was the one being irrational and overreacting.
But the truth? Since marrying him and trying to live with him, I lost everything that I was. It wasn't just about making sacrifices. He put me down and made me feel worthless so often that I came to loathe myself. I became suicidal, wishing often that I could die instead of feel so much pain. I started cutting myself. I lost any love for life, or for people, and I lost any motivation to do anything with my life, and I stopped caring about anything.
I don't know how much he did on purpose, and how much is just who he is, but he destroyed me with his constant criticisms, condescensions, the constant feeling I had to compete with other women to keep his attention, the feeling that he disliked almost everything about me, and expected me to love him so much I would become an entirely different person so that he would come to love me as well.
He claimed he truly does love me, no matter what, even if I didn't change at all. But can you love someone and treat them the way he did? Maybe, but I simply coudln't take it anymore.
So I told him no, we can't try again. He told me he would wait for me if I could tell him there was a chance I would reconsider in 6 months or a year. Maybe I should have said yes, give me time, call me in 6 months. But instead I said no, it's unlikely anything will change. I kept saying no, no, no. My gut kept being repulsed by the idea of trying again with him, scared and horrified of it. And finally I hung up on him, as he was starting to cry.
I feel absolutely horrible. From a rational perspective, I know that everything I thought is true. If we tried again, nothing would be different. He might be sweet to me for a couple months, but then he would go back to who he is. We've been through this twice before. He doesn't change. And in the three weeks we haven't been speaking, he hasn't magically changed.
But that doesn't mean I don't feel horrible and that there isn't a part of me that thinks if only I had agreed to try, maybe things WOULD be different. There is a part of my heart that breaks over and over again remembering how I said no, don't wait for me, there's no chance. I hung up on him because we were just going to go around in circles for hours more, and I didn't want to let myself get weak and agree to something I thought was wrong, but I will never forget that I hung up on my husband while he was starting to cry.
And then there's the horrfying uncertainty about my future now. I have rejected the man I was to spend my life with. For the first time in 10 years, I don't have him, or anyone else that I can use as a replacement for him (something I did a couple times in the past when things went south with him...and no,I'm not proud of it, but I understand why I needed someone else there to make me strong enough to stay away from him). I am 26, expected to have a husband now and some kids if not now, then very soon. Instead I'm still playing the single game. For who knows how long? I don't care that I'm single now, being single is even a lot of fun, but I am scared to death I will be alone for life. I am scared to death that thing I want most....a family...is never going to happen. I'm scared that in a year or two I will be wishing desperately that I had agreed to go back to my husband, because even being kicked around by someone is better than being utterly alone and rejected by everyone else. That's what I'm afraid the future holds for me. Lonliness, rejection, and then hiding my misery at being unloved and childless by adopting a hundred cats.
Basically, I am just a total mess right now. I have no idea how I am going to heal from everything. I can't even believe this has all happened. How did all my grandest dreams come to this?
3Likes
Friday night he called me and I was forced to make the most awful decision... 
