# Is it over?



## janus23 (Mar 20, 2009)

I am American, my husband is French. We've been married for almost 7 years, live in Paris, and have three beautiful children (4, 2 and 8 weeks old).

When I first met my husband, who is 7 years my elder, I was a university student working on my master's degree and had big plans to do my PhD. Very bright and intellectual, he was attracted to my 'intellectualism' and shortly after we started dating we came to a point where I either went back to the US or we got married and I stayed in France. To be honest, I'm not sure that we would have stuck together and gotten married had he come back with me to the US.

We did have some great times those first couple years, but I soon realized that I didn't really 'know' myself at 24 when we met and that I was just content doing 'whatever' in my life and that I didn't need to have pretentious academic conversations to be content in life. In fact, I learned that I was really split between my love for literature and literary analysis and the 'arts' and a new love for 'domestic' tasks such as cooking, knitting, sewing. When we had our children, it seemed as though my life became much more domestic and that most of my attention became focused on managing the house.

My husband despises the image of the 'housewife' because to him, a housewife is not 'of the mind.' On the other hand, I do EVERYTHING around the house and feel that if he doesn't help me, then of course, my role has been defined as the home manager. I am also a junior high teacher, on maternity leave at the moment (go back to work in September) and I think staying at home everyday with the newborn has changed my husband's image of me. He also despises anything having to do with the daily grind of life, but when you have kids, you are forced to be in that daily grind. He says that my mind is only there, in the daily tasks, and not elsewhere.

I'm also completely worn out at night and have little or no sex drive. And, the time I do have to myself, I spend doing just that- something for me. It's true that I've allowed our marriage to drift apart since our kids have been born. I feel that we are in two separate places. I don't even know what it's like to touch my husband anymore.

He wanted 3 children and would have 10 if he could. At the same time, he doesn't like the domestic person I've become with the children. He says that I lied to him, that he thought I was an intellectual and that in reality, all I am is the dumbest housewife. He gets upset when I talk with my American friends, saying that our conversation about 'silly' insipid and worthless stuff, that my blog is the dumbest housewifely content he's seen, that all I care about is knitting and mindless activity and that he's bored. In some ways, I don't feel like I can be my true self around him.

Since our little girl was born 2 months ago, things have been going way downhill. Twice this week my husband has said that the only reason we're still together is because financially, we wouldn't be able to support our 3 children alone but that he refuses to make any more efforts for me, for him, it's over. He also refuses to go to marriage counseling. 

Several people in my family dislike my husband and even his own mother says that she doesn't understand how I can put up with so much from him. We have definitely drifted apart and I realize that I didn't know myself enough when we got married to give him a genuine impression of myself- deep down under, perhaps I am more mindless than 'of the mind'. Perhaps I do love silly conversations and to laugh and joke about trivial things- perhaps I could imagine sitting in my PJs the whole day watching TV (if we had a tV). Sometimes, I think that if I were married to the right person, he wouldn't try and change those things about me but would accept them. And, sometimes I wonder if we should even still be together. We're both young, we both could probably be happier with another person, or is it possible to find happiness again between us? It would be a catastrophe for us to divorce- the children are so attached to their daddy. But, is it in their best interest to see their father sleeping in another room and to hear us fighting often? My husband has invited me on several occasions to start the divorce proceedings, as he will not initiate them, but I just don't have the strength to, and we definitely do not have the money to go through a rough divorce. He also changes his mind about the custody of the kids- sometimes he says he'll fight for it, other times he tells me I could even go back to the US and he wouldn't fight for it. I probably would stay in France, but still, I just don't know what is best for the kids and I couldn't imagine losing them.

On the other hand, I made a committment of marriage and I do feel that it is possible to find each other again. But, can we? 

I am at my wit's end. My poor third daughter doesn't even have a birth announcement because of all the tension at home- my husband refuses to do a birth announcement. Can we live our whole lives 'harmonious' to the outside world but so broken at home?

Please let me know what you think, I really don't have anyone to talk to.


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## Blanca (Jul 25, 2008)

janus23 said:


> He says that I lied to him, that he thought I was an intellectual and that in reality, all I am is the dumbest housewife. He gets upset when I talk with my American friends, saying that our conversation about 'silly' insipid and worthless stuff, that my blog is the dumbest housewifely content he's seen, that all I care about is knitting and mindless activity and that he's bored. In some ways, I don't feel like I can be my true self around him.


Your H has an inferiority complex. I bet he feels like an idiot and hates to think that his 'true' self would ever show. He shuns what he sees from you because he cant stand it in himself. This is really about him. I dont know how big his ego is, but if you confront him, in a nice but very direct way, about his inferiority complex, he might start to think. You can play his game if you want. Let him know that even a silly house wife can see that he may aspire to be an intellectual, but if he really was then surely he'd be able to see his own inferiority complex. If he was an intellectual, it'd be very obvious to him that he has a low E.I (emotional intelligence). 

The more you can see that this is not about you, the more you can be comfortable with who you are, the more he will start to see that this is really about him.


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