# Hello All...



## Onarollercoaster (Nov 7, 2019)

My name is Jess,

My marriage is currently on life support. Hoping to get some good advice here!

Thank you!


----------



## Yeswecan (Jul 25, 2014)

What's the story?


----------



## Onarollercoaster (Nov 7, 2019)

I started a thread about it in the "Seperated" forum. A quick summary is that we are separated and he wants a divorce. No signs of another woman. He stated some reasons for wanting divorce, but I think it might have more to do with him having untreated PTSD than anything else. I actually left most of the PTSD stuff out of the post to focus on the other aspects of our marriage, but I could write an essay about the PTSD angle of things. Since we've separated, things have gotten better between us, but I think we're still getting divorced??? Nothing is filed. We've been separated for about eight weeks.


----------



## Tilted 1 (Jul 23, 2019)

Onarollercoaster said:


> I started a thread about it in the "Seperated" forum. A quick summary is that we are separated and he wants a divorce. No signs of another woman. He stated some reasons for wanting divorce, but I think it might have more to do with him having untreated PTSD than anything else. I actually left most of the PTSD stuff out of the post to focus on the other aspects of our marriage, but I could write an essay about the PTSD angle of things. Since we've separated, things have gotten better between us, but I think we're still getting divorced??? Nothing is filed. We've been separated for about eight weeks.


Hello, you should put it all out there if you can. Please if you could in your words tell us why you want to stay. And why he wants the divorce. Lay it on us!


----------



## Onarollercoaster (Nov 7, 2019)

We've been married eight years. Because of his PTSD my husband will sometimes cycle into isolation periods. Over the summer I thought he was in one of his isolation phases. He was spending a lot of time in the yard, garage, etc. He would stay up late and come to bed long after I'd gone to sleep. Then he started hanging out (playing Dungeons and Dragons) at the local VFW--this was fine with me, but one night his best friend let it slip that they were playing with some other women. This in itself wasn't concerning to me. However, I sent my husband a text to inquire about the other players, and he LIED--he said they were playing with some guy they just met. I asked him about the women, and he drove home right then, told me in person that they were lesbians, and then he left. He was home for maybe five minutes... 

Three days later, my husband came out said he wanted a divorce and that he'd wanted one for a long time. His friend (the same one from before) told me that my husband was feeling guilty about being attracted to others. My husband denied any cheating when I asked. I felt pretty blindsided by the divorce speech--I knew something was bothering him, but I thought it was PTSD related. 

My husband's reasons for wanting divorce are that he "likes me, but doesn't love me," and feels numb towards me. (The feeling of numbness is actually a PTSD symptom.) Then he said I was making his PTSD worse, thought that I was controlling, didn't like anything about me, he wasn't attracted to me, and thought we had a terrible marriage. In a later discussion, he made it seem like the only reason was my pregnancy weight gain--I had three kids in four years and gained 100lbs. I will admit he's been asking me to lose weight for a while, but I was overweight when we started dating. I had no reason to think my weight was a deal breaker, and I've lost about 50lbs since the youngest was born--that's taken me three years. I also work full time while he stays home with the kids--it's been difficult to make myself a priority. 

It really feels like he rewrote the entire history of our marriage. He's even had a bit of a personality change...honestly, it sounds a lot like other stories I've seen of cheating partners. Except, not only can I not find much evidence of another woman, but after I moved out, my husband disconnected his cellphone and only has a landline/VOIP now. He can still get text messages, but he needs WiFi. He's also made some strange changes to the house. For example, he messed with the plumbing so now everything has cold water except the shower. (This is one of the many strange changes he's made to the house.)

At this point, no paperwork is filed, but we are close to filing legal separation. I'm not interested in staying married if it truly makes my husband miserable, but I'm very concerned that he's having a mental health crisis, and I'm just a scapegoat. My husband told my dad he called a veteran's crisis hotline after I moved out. However, the therapist they sent him to actually dropped him after a single visit--they said he needed care outside of the scope of their expertise. (My husband sent me the message.) My therapist said that's not an uncommon response when a therapist feels like a patient is a treatment liability.

To further complicate the issue, we have three kids between the ages of three and six. My husband is the primary caretaker. He's a really good dad, and I believe the kids are safe with him. However, after his one therapy appointment, my husband was so out of it that he couldn't watch the kids at all, and I had to miss two days of work. He's seemed fine in the wake of this appointment, but it's hard to really know. 

We separated pretty quickly after the divorce talk (at the beginning of September) and he was initially very cold and uncaring...but in the last month or so he's been nice and normal, and has even gone out of his way to be helpful. I would go as far as to say things are better between us than they were before he asked for divorce, but there's no intimacy--we're in solid friend-zone territory. I think our marriage can be saved, but I also know that he needs to want it too. He's my best friend, so this is very difficult.


----------

