# I want to be happy again.



## catcumberland (Mar 18, 2013)

Hi. I'm new but I wanted some help. I have been married to my husband that I met on a blind date, and it was love at first sight for both of us, for almost 27 years. For the first several years, I was very happy. I had a son who was 8 from a previous marriage when we got married. He loved his new daddy very much and the feeling was mutual I believe, which was wonderful since his biological father didn't have anything to do with him and he wanted a daddy. I have to admit, he was at times, a very difficult child, he was diagnosed with ADHD. My husband had always been so gentle and he did have permission to discipline my son if he needed it and he had put him in time out and had spanked him before. But one night on our way home from a shopping trip, my son was being a little obnoxious and my husband open hand slapped him very hard on the upper mid section of his back and called him stupid. That hurt me so much that as soon as we got home, I locked myself in the bathroom and cried my eyes out. That night I told him that for the first time since I had met him, I didn't feel close to him anymore. This was at about three years of marriage. We all go to family councelsing and things get some better, but not all the way, and he refuses to go anymore. No reason, just won't go.

Go forward a few more years. Before we got married we discussed having children. I told him I had always wanted more, he confessed that he did not want any until now but thought that it would be nice to have children together. OK, we have a new house, things are great between us again, we are trying to have a baby for a long time, then finally, one time I miss my period and take a home pregnancy test and it is positive for the first time! We are all overjoyed, but it was short lived because before we could even tell his parents, I lost the baby. Just couldn't get pregnant again. My doctor wanted to do tests to see what was happening. My husband refused to be tested. He said he didn't want to know if either of us couldn't so there wouldn't be any blame game. OKKKK. Issue of trying to have a child was closed. I wanted to adopt. No, he didn't want to adopt a child for it to only turn on us when it grew up. I wanted to foster children even on weekends if he would. We signed up, was ready for training classes and on the evening we were scheduled for our first class, he tells me, I have changed my mind, I don't want to foster either. I wasn't happy with his decision but did not force the issue. Wish I had because now I have no more children. We attended church regularly and I believe in the power of prayer. When the minister said he had a word from God to couples that had tried to conceive and couldn't. He asked us all to come forward so that he could pray for us. I got up to go. He would not go with me! That hurt so much. I went anyway, thinking maybe he was just shy about it. He has always been a bit shy. I went up for prayer several times alone. All he ever told me was if I could get a baby through prayer, then good, but he wouldn't go for any testing and obviously he didn't want anything to do with getting one with prayer either. And obviously the Lord knew his heart and maybe he really didn't want a child, because even with all my prayers, I didn't ever get pregnant again. I was heartbroken, not just because I didn't have a child, but that my husband refused to even pray with me for one. 

Forward to when my son is a teenager. My husband began to seem to resent him and any time I spent with him. I started staying gone more because of his coldness when I did get home. Then he started to do side jobs with his best friend to make extra money. He was gone all day on his regular job, then would work and not return home until bedtime, five days a week, then stay gone all weekend, the same amount of time. I never saw him that he wasn't dead tired or asleep. I would beg him to please spend some time with me. No answer, just gone the next day. He started to really turn away from me and wouldn't even let me touch him. He would actually hide his privates from me in bed, between his legs, so I couldn't touch them. When he told me where he would be working, he would always be right there if I decided to go see him to take him lunch or a snack or just to SEE him for a few minutes. I finally stopped going, though, because he never seemed to be glad to see me. I used to visit him at his regular job too, but it got the same way, so I haven't been there in so long I can't remember the last time. 
He didn't acknowledge my birthday for years and would only run to Walmart to get me a Christmas gift on Christmas Eve. No thought put into it at all. I would plan things for months for his birthday and make cakes and have parties, and Christmas. His lack of even a little time put into my gifts really hurt me deeply. We were not doing good in our marriage at all and I was about ready to call it quits when all things just turned around and got better. He quit working all the time except for his regular job, but I found out later that it was mostly because his friend he worked with lost his mother and felt bad that he had spent all his time working and now he couldn't get that time back and decided that family was more important. Knowing this now, I wonder how things would have been if his friend hadn't decided not to do side jobs anymore. It hurt me too that he was building new rooms and decks and garages and porches etc for other people and our own house began to fall to pieces because of lack of maintenance. If I mentioned something that needed to be repaired I always got a blank look, a loud sigh and if I pressed the issue it might get fixed but I would get the silent treatment or he would say that he did that kind of work all day and he didn't feel like doing it when he got home. I am not good at long story short, forgive me, Here is trying. My son has married and moved out of state. He has a little son, that I don't get to see much. Have missed most of the major milestones in their lives because they live a long way from us. I want to retire there to be close to them. My husband says if he retires anywhere, it will never be there. I feel split down the middle. If I want to see my son and grandson, I have to be without my husband and vice versa. My husband who used to hold me a lot, got to the point that I got what I call 5 second hugs. He was the first to pull away. Always. If I asked why he wouldn't hold me he would always just shrug and say I don't know. Which is the answer to most all the questions I have for him about us. I had resigned myself to the fact that I would die craving to be held but would not remember how it felt to actually be held in a man's arms. Sex was OK but only on one night of the week. Like clockwork and like a sleeping pill. And on trips I would see something that I would love to stop for a minute to see and he would just drive on by. If I wanted something to eat, he wouldn't stop to get it. I rarely let anyone see me cry because I have hardened my heart to not let anyone make me cry anymore and if they do they won't see me cry. One day I was crying because someone had really hurt me. He knew the situation and I was leaning on my car just crying my eyes out. He just looked at me and walked away with the dog for a walk. I went in and got me purse and was intending to drive until I just ran out of gas and never return. I didn't get far. Was already almost out of gas and when I stopped at the station, learned my wallet was at home in another bag. I went home and he was there and I told him that I came home to get my purse because I was tired of everything. The distance between us and the hurt and loneliness and just everything. He held me for a while and told me I didn't have to go. I stayed. Forward a few years. I had told him that I wasn't getting any younger. Will be 60 this year, have a lot of diseases in my family history and want to live some because i am not promised tomorrow. I want to do it with you but if you don't want to, I will do it alone. I really seriously didn't want anyone else. Just wanted to live life and be happy, with or without him. I became even more independent of his thumb. He never changed his attitude about holding me or consoling me in times of trouble. I just didn't feel close to him any more. Two years ago, I went to a funeral of a relative and there I met a man I went to school with. Something in me just clicked. I loved everything about him. But he was married. We exchanged several e-mails over time and then lost touch when my computer went down and I didn't get it fixed. We never talked about anything other than friendship issues. Then and I don't even remember how, we found each other again on another social site. He didn't seem as happy in his marriage as before and I was even more unhappy. I was feeling too much for him and I wrote him a long letter one day and told him goodbye that we couldn't let it get any deeper even though it was breaking my heart to let him go and I was crying my eyes our as I wrote it. But he wrote me back and told me no, we will just slow down, take it slow, He told me it broke his heart to even think of me crying but it broke it more to think of letting me go. I agreed to keep writing. But still we kept it all innocent until he decided we had to meet and talk face to face. I didn't for a long time, but decide finally why not? We met one day for about 30 minutes half way between where we both live which is a long way. We talked quite a bit and then we looked at each other and we kissed. He held me so tight. When I tried to pull away, he would just hold me closer and tighter. I cannot describe how that felt to me. It was wonderful. Like I had come alive again. I can still remember his heartbeat against me. That is all that happened. I swear. We met a few more times and kept in touch every night and a lot of times during the day over the next few months. We never had sex and never touched each other in private places because I wouldn't allow it. I was already falling in love with him even when I didn't want to. I knew enough to not give my all until I knew he felt the same way. We were very close, I thought all those months, and then he and his wife took a vacation together and it all seemed to go downhill with us. We didn't contact each other as much. And we didn't see each other. I decided that no matter what happened with us, I was leaving my husband because I was definitely not happy there either. I left home with no intention of returning. I took my dog and went to a resort. I ignored my husband's calls. I took a call from the other man. We saw each other one more time and all seemed alright and we came so close to making love, It was so hard to hold back but I did not give in. He told me later how so very hard it was to leave me that day. OI told him that I felt like I was seeing him for the last time when he left. He asked why I felt like that and I told him it was a preminition of my heart. Then next day we talked and he said that their trip had accomplished one thing and that he and his wife were getting along better. This time when he said that maybe we should slow down, I wasn't sure what he meant. If he meant it like before, or if he meant it because he would try to work things out with her. But I was afraid that I was going to be pushed out of his life eventually. Maybe I was wrong, maybe not. I will probably never know. I told him it was over and that if he was doing better with his wife, then there was no way that he could be growing in our relationship. He begged me to stay. Swore we were OK. But I broke it off. Broke my heart too. I went to my father's grave and laid down on it and cried and screamed for an hour. I went back to my husband eventually because I just didn't know what to do. I still loved the other man. But I knew it might be hopeless and didn't want to get started again. I thought that I might be able to work things out with my husband and not throw away 25 years. He told me he would retire sooner than he had planned and we could do stuff together and he promised we could move out of the house we were in because I had hated it there for so many years. At first I thought it would be ok, but he eventually changed back. I am still living here in this house that I hate, in the neighborhood I have hated for years, close to my in-laws that watch my every move. Almost two years have past. I want to leave. I am so unhappy. Don't know where to go. Close to my son? Back to my hometown where I own land that maybe I could put a small house on? How can I take care of myself? I have a very small retirement from the business that I worked for for ten years. I could get some kind of job maybe. But I have tried before and noone wants me with the kind of disabilities I have I suppose. I have a few thousand dollars that my Mom left me. But they won't last long. I just know that to maintain my sanity, I have to leave here. I love my husband so much, but just not like a wife should. I love him like a friend. I don't want to have sex with him anymore. I have lost all that feeling. I have had because i don't want a confrontation. But I can't do that any more either. I want a new house, but with the way I feel, it wouldn't be fair to him to buy a new house when I might not be happy there either. Recently, or actually over the years we have had leaks that resulted in mold in our home, which I am HIGHLY allergic to. I could always tell when it was growing because I would get sick. I was trusting him to spray it with bleach to kill it. He told me that there wasn't much there and it only took a little to get rid of it. I went under the house one day just to see because I was so sick and had been for so long. I was in shock at the amount of mold there. I scrambled out. Then our washer began leaking a few months ago. Finally he decided to check and see if it was damaging the floor. The floor was covered in mold under the covering and underthe tub and the sink too where there were leaks. We began restoration. I couldn't do much because I couldn't stand to be in the mold. I did however find a new leak over the window and found a lot of mold in the wall under the window. He was not happy that I ripped out that part of the wall. I had been having to go to the laundry matt and was late getting home three days that week and I discovered that one of those days, whether it was because he was angry at me or what reason he had put foam insulation into that wall that was covered in black mold. I had seen it out on the porch and then it was gone and that wall was closed. I asked him if he used it. He said yes. I asked him if he didn't know about the mold, which was so obvious that he had to, and he said no. I told him it would have to be removed and asked why he would do that. He told me he would remove it but that I had to remove the mold. What? Why? why should I have to clean the mold that I am hightly allergic to? I donned a mask and gloves and cleaned it but started thinking about his reasonings behind all this. I told him how much he had hurt me. That he might as well have put poison in my coffee cup. He apologized later but I asked him what if I hadn't seen the foam to start with, would he have felt bad and removed it on his own. He didn't answer me. Just walked away. What do you think? And, Yes, I do still love he other man. My heart has not had one day that it has not hurt in the past two years. No, I do not have any kind of contact with him nor would I try if I left my husband. That story is over. He is settled into his life as a husband, father and grandfather and I love him enough to never cause him any problem. I just want to be on my own with my dog and my painting and enjoy myself and do what I want to do without hurting anyone else in the process. But I don't want to hurt my husband by leaving. I have been torn literally in half for so long it seems that I think I am willing to endure poverty over being where I am now.


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## ku1980rose (Sep 7, 2010)

It sounds like you have a lot going on. I hope you are finding some answers. Good luck to you!


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## catcumberland (Mar 18, 2013)

Ok, I do have a lot going on. I suppose my thread is too long because I only have one reply to it. I was really hoping that there would be someone that would have at least some advice for me. I am having a very hard time coping with this life.


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## catcumberland (Mar 18, 2013)

I am teetering on the edge of leaving and staying. My husband and I seem so far apart, like we don't even know each other anymore and maybe we don't. Anyway, the promises that he made to me when I left him and then came back, two years ago, have never been fulfilled. He is right back to the same old person he was when I left. What should I do? What would you do in this situation?


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## animal 2011 (Aug 9, 2011)

Go live with your dog near your son and grandchild. If your husband wants to come along, great. If not, go anyway. He's caused you enough pain. Go be happy.
_Posted via Mobile Device_


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## PBear (Nov 16, 2010)

Is there a condensed version, preferably with paragraphs? It would help for people trying to understand the situation.

C


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## Lonely so long (Mar 25, 2013)

Just wanted to send a message that I feel your pain.
The indecision is the worst and after SO many years in a marriage it is almost impossible to leave, isn't it?
Sometimes I feel like leaving H will be like cutting off a limb, even when that limb is causing pain, the decision to cut it off is one that I don't know how one makes.......


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