# So Confused



## ConfusedIL (Jun 4, 2012)

This is going to be a long post, so I don't blame anyone if thye choose not to read, but I didn't know where to start my story. I am hoping that people will still read because I need some advice as to what to do. People keep telling me that it seems as though I have made up my mind, but if I have, why is it not that clear to me???

I am not sure really where to start because I am sometimes at a lost for where the issues actually began. I guess I will start in the beginning of 2006. My boyfriend (now husband) and I had been together for 2.5 years and decided to finally move in together. I broke my lease and moved into his condo. I was 26 he was 29. 2 weeks after moving in together he lost his job. We just so happened to work for the same company, but in different divisions. So, needless to say, I started picking up all the slack with the bills. A few months went by and he found a job, but not what he wanted. To be honest, all of the job losses kind of run together now because there have been so many. On top of that, a couple months after moving in together, my father passed away. I am the ultimate Daddy’s girl so to say I was devastated would be an understatement. 6 years later and I still cannot think of him without crying.

We got engaged in 2007 and started planning a wedding. I never really wanted a wedding, but I was doing it for him. However he never helped with any of the planning and since we were paying for it ourselves, I really didn’t get help from anyone. We started building a house after we got engaged and we put his condo on the market. We were supposed to close on the condo and the house on Halloween in 2008. 2 weeks prior to close our home builder lost their line of credit and couldn’t finish our house. We had two weeks to find a place to live. We got married and were able to close on a house the next month. Four months after, he lost his job again. So now we are in this huge house and our income is essentially cut in half. He was out of work for 10 months and we struggled. He had lost his job every six months to a year from 2006 – 2009. I told him at this point that I think I made a mistake in marrying him. We stayed together and made the best of the situation. There was a point that he was not being diligent with his job search and we had yet another talk. He started working somewhere in 2009; however he was making 16K less than he was 3 years prior. He felt like he needed a job so he took it even though it was barely more than unemployment. 
So, we continued to struggle. Since the house we purchased was new construction, the property taxes were “estimated” for the first year and soon went up and caused our mortgage to go up by about 600 a month. We were struggling before the increase so this obviously made it worse. Well, when throughout the years of him losing his job, he slowly lost interest in anything at home. How much the mortgage was, any of the bills were, cleaning...ANYTHING. So not only was the burden of trying to keep us afloat all on my shoulders, so was everything else. With all of that, our sex life started to suffer drastically. We have talked and talked and talked about our sex life until we were both blue in the face and have made promises to change some things…but nothing ever change. On either of our parts. It slowly because the “norm” not to have sex and I don’t think that is normal at all.

We started going through infertility testing once we were engaged. It was determined after our first IVF failure that I was peri-menopausal at 28 years old. So having a child with my own eggs was less than 5%. We decided to do donor eggs; that failed. We decided to do donor embryos; that failed. All together, we did a total of 8 rounds of IVF. I truly believe Infertility may be one of the hardest things I have ever gone through (with the exception of our current situation). I think it takes a toll on a couple even if they are successful and takes a bigger toll when they are not. We have one failed adoption attempt under our belts as well. 

Throughout the years my love for him has changed. I know that love does change, I am not that naïve, but I don’t think it is supposed to change so much that you are second guessing if you want to be married. 

Earlier this year I got transferred across country with my company and we decided to make the move. That meant him voluntarily leaving his job, which in turn meant no unemployment. So, the only job in that passed 6 years that he has held down for longer than a year and he has to leave because of me. Although I had felt that our relationship was on the rocks prior to moving, I didn’t mention it. One reason is because I couldn’t think that if I was feeling this strongly about the direction of our relationship that he wasn’t on the same page. The second reason is because I thought that the root of our problems were due to the financial stresses and with the cost of living being drastically cheaper where we were going some of the burden would be lifted. The agreement was to always have him take his time and find a job that he truly liked and wanted to be at. I think that has always been a problem in the past. He took positions that he was not comfortable with or didn’t want simply because he felt the need to be employed. Considering the only reason that he was out of work this time was because of me, I figured the least I could do was afford him the time to find something great, which I did. I never harped on him about finding work. About a month after the move we had a “discussion,” which turned into me confessing exactly how I was feeling. The conversation ended up going extremely different than I expected it to go. I thought that once I bared my soul he would agree with what I was feeling. However, I bared my soul and he was completely caught off guard. He couldn’t understand why I was feeling the way I was (am). Which then confused me more as I could not even begin to comprehend how two people living the same life can be on polar opposite sides of the spectrum?

I explained to him the reasons I believed that I was feeling the way that I was (am). I explained how although I am a 21st century woman and fully believe in a woman being able to support herself; there is still a part of me that believes a man should be able to support his family. Considering we are not talking about 1 job loss here, but 5, I had lost all confidence in his ability to ever be able to do that. That all of the job losses not only affected the confidence I had in him, the confidence he had in himself, but it also affected how I view him as a man. That bearing the weight of everything in the household, i.e. making the money, paying the bills, cleaning the house, cooking, doing the grocery shopping, etc. in addition to making sure that I stay gainfully employed (not that I was ever concerned about that) was really starting to takes its toll. As if the financial burden wasn’t enough; being unsuccessful with the infertility treatments and adoption, the loss of my father, my cousin, my grandmother and 3 friends all in 2006, the loss of his two grand fathers a few years later. He seems to think that going through all of this should bring us closer together, not tear us apart. I tried to explain to him that any one of these things in its self would be enough to tear a marriage apart so lumping them all together is even harder. Again I cannot fathom how we are not on the same page. 

We decided to go to therapy, which has been interesting to say the least. I have felt totally ganged up on and I know it’s because I am the one that is confused about where I want this marriage to go and he is the one that knows for a fact that he wants it to work. I do not really feel like therapy has been helping me come to any conclusion, but I am not sure I ever thought that it would. I think I just thought it was a good place for us to be completely honest with one another and get everything out in a controlled setting. There have been a couple of blow ups by me in therapy and I haven’t been back in a few weeks because I have needed to cool down. I am going to attend some sessions alone. The problem with my husband is that he is so analytical. He has got to find SOMETHING, ANYTHING to put his finger on as to why things have gone south. Again, I have tried to explain that it’s not one solitary thing, but a culmination of things. He cannot seem to come to grips with that. I recently told him, “People don’t spend a lifetime building a strong relationship for a feather to make it crumble. If it crumbled under light weight the foundation wasn’t strong to begin with. That is not the case here… we have been through hell and back. What you fail to understand is that there are different out comes when people walk through fire. Some people can walk through and come out unscathed, some can walk through and come out burned but recover and become stronger than ever and others will simply turn to ash. There will never be way to determine WHY and that is something that has to be accepted. Sometimes striving so hard to find the WHY in a situation can create a barrier to figuring out the answer to the question that really needs to be answered… “How do we move on from here”? Regardless if the moving on is together or apart.”

My husband and I spoke about some hurtful things that were said by him the other day about my not being able to have children. He "clarified" what he meant, or tried to at least. I did tell him very early on that I may not be able to have children. It’s just always been a gut feeling of mine. He said, “When you told me that, it was a HUGE deal. Even though I didn’t want nor was I ready for children at that time I knew I would eventually want them. So I had to make a decision right then and there, Do I want to continue the relationship because I think it can go somewhere or do I want to move on and be with someone else.” He said that he used the word compromise and it just happened to be the wrong choice of a word to use. That he should have used the word chose. I CHOSE to stay regardless of the ability to have children or not. He tried turning it around on me like I provoked him to say it. Saying, “This is exactly what you wanted me to say, isn’t it,” so it makes it difficult to believe his “explanation”, but I guess I have to give him the benefit of the doubt because I truly do not know what he meant to say. So although that doesn’t really make me feel a ton better, it is VERY different than what I thought he meant. Still, I don’t want to be a consolation prize. 

I told him a couple nights ago that I don’t want him to later resent me for not being able to give him children. Which with his statement the other day I don't feel is too far fetched. I also have not been very nice to him over the past few months; to be honest I have been downright mean. He said last night that the last thing in the world that he wants is for our marriage to end, but that he can also not go on feeling the way that he does. He thinks that I am just waiting for him to say he wants a divorce; the sad part is I am not sure he is entirely wrong about that, but I don’t know that he is right either. I did tell him a couple nights ago that I have been thinking a lot about a trial separation. That it might give me the space that I need to make a decision. He said he really doesn’t like the idea, but he also thinks it would give him the space he needs as well. I was going up for bed and he was going for a walk to clear his mind or to think further about it (I’m sure). We gave each other a hug (which is not typical anymore because I just don't feel like being affectionate toward him) and he whispered in my ear, “please don’t leave me” and I about broke down. Being in his arms felt safe, but I am not sure if it feels that way because it’s familiar. When I think of him not being in my life, it hurts, A LOT. I do love him with all my heart, I am just not sure that I am in love with him and I don’t know how to determine what exactly it is that I want. I also don’t know how much longer I can be unhappy…Hell I don’t know if I am unhappy anymore because of the situation I have caused and not knowing how to reverse it or if I am unhappy in the relationship. There are a lot of times where I feel, where I know, that he deserves better than what I have been giving him, better than I can give him right now. When I told him this last night he said he doesn’t think he can get better. That there was never a doubt in his mind and there still isn’t a doubt that he wants to be with me. 

We have not made a decision to separate, but I think it’s on the table. Yesterday I changed our cell phones from a family plan to an individual plan. He has been checking the phone bill and has lost trust, even though I haven't given him a reason too. This goes back to him needing to put a finger on something. He feels that there has to be something else going on because there is no way that what we have been through could make my feelings change. I couldn't take feeling like I was a kid again with my daddy checking up on me. I was thinking that it was going to cause a fight yesterday whe I told him what I had done, but it didn't. He said he know feels like I am trying to hide something (even though I have been totally honest with him), but that there is nothing he can do about it. Then he proceeds to tell me that he opened a bank account of his own and he is switching his direct deposit to that account and only putting the money in our joint account for "his half" of the bills. To ME, both of our actions speak volumes. It seems like we are starting the separation of our lives. I can honestly say that I was not hurt by this at all. Although he tried to emphasize that he does not want to separate everything, I think underneath (or via his mothers coaxing) that he is protecting himself. He has every right to do that so I will never be mad about it.

Any insight would be great.

Thanks.


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## alwaysoverwhelmed (Apr 24, 2012)

I agree with what you stated about y'all beginning to separate your lives. It really does sound like you have your mind made up in regards to the fate of your marriage. Your husband wants to stay together, but you don't. Maybe y'all could do a trial separation first?


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