# Seeking advice



## overanalytical (Aug 1, 2013)

I’m in the process of trying to figure out what I want for my future and whether or not I want have my wife be a part of that and to continue my marriage. I’ve been reading a lot here and other places, but since every situation is different, I finally decided to try to write my own story and get input from others. So let me start by saying thank you for taking the time to read and consider my situation.

First, the (semi)relevant background from way back. This is my second marriage and her first. My first marriage was to my “high school sweetheart”. We had a child while still in high school and eventually got married when I was close to finishing college. The marriage ended within a year when I found that she was cheating on me. I have forgiven her and I am happy that she seems to still be happy with him.

A year or so later, I met my current wife at a new job and we began a relationship. We only worked together for the first year or two of our relationship. I’m now 37, she’s 42 and we’ve been together almost 14 years, living together 9 years, and married almost 5 years. We have no children together, but have had my daughter from my previous marriage living with us approximately half the time until she went to college a couple of years ago. We have 2 dogs and a cat, all of which are very important to both of us.

Lately, I feel like I have started to develop more self awareness and have started to realize that I am not very happy in our relationship. For a long time, I have just kind of been coasting along living my life without getting anything out of it. I also started to think that my wife may be feeling similarly. She began to complain that she is not happy with our house and won’t be unless remodeling projects start getting done to improve it – even saying once that if the house doesn’t start improving that she would start looking for another one. She also began to make comments that she is lonely. Now, I should point out that we really do not have any friends. We’re both pretty introverted and so we are really each others entire social life. But it has pretty much always been this way.

My biggest issue is that I don’t feel that we really have much in common besides running our household. I’m a night owl and she’s in bed as soon as possible most nights. I have a couple of hobbies and would like to pursue more, but she really doesn’t have any and never gets interested in anything I am doing. For example, I would like for her to either help me with the garden or at least hang out with me while I am working on it to be there with me – I asked for this for 3-4 years before finally just giving up and not bothering asking this year because I accepted that it just wasn’t going to happen. This is in spite of her greatly enjoying the benefits (veggies) of the garden. It basically feels like our life has become just trying to decide on what to have for dinner and what to watch for the brief time we have together each evening. And even then, we never seem to want to watch the same thing…

Another big issue is our communication. Now, I’ll admit that I didn’t really see this as that much of a problem until recently. I have an extremely difficult time identifying/understanding my emotions and needs – much less communicating that to her. So this is mostly on me. Even now, after thinking about this for months, I cannot identify exactly what I need from my relationship. Our communication is generally very shallow and basic and has not really been about our feelings and what is really going on for a long time.

I think that she slowly stopped communicating with me about important issues because I would either get defensive or I would try to “fix” things. I have a very hard time talking to my wife about anything that I think may hurt her or lead her to be mad at me – I’m a peacekeeper. I’m working on trying to understand the root of why I do this. It has caused trust issues because it has led me to not tell her about things that I was either embarrassed about or that I thought she would get mad at me about. For example, I used to smoke, but stopped. For a while after I stopped, I would sneak cigarettes when I could without telling her. Of course, hiding this from her hurt her a lot when she found I wasn’t being honest with her. I’m pretty sure there are still lingering trust issues related to this and a couple of other similar situations.

I also think that I have developed some resentment towards her due to her work and financial issues. I’ve avoided examining this for a long time, so I am still figuring it out. We both have college degrees and met in a semi-professional workplace. Since then, I have made some good decisions (and been lucky) and have slowly worked my way into a career that I enjoy and is satisfying to me. On the other hand, she has gone the other way. She made some career choices that have led her bounce around jobs, working for some really crappy people, and not being happy with anything she has done. Since we got married she has been unemployed for about two years and has bounced around a few part time jobs for the rest of the time. In some ways this is her fault and in others it is not. Regardless she has a pretty bad work history with few good references which makes it very difficult to find work. On top of this, some health issues have made her feel that she cannot or does not want to work full time.

I thought I was ok with this, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that I’m not. It has caused me to not have much of a retirement built up at this point. It causes me to stress over money a lot. For example, I’d like to take a vacation somewhere, but I don’t bring it up because I would not enjoy it due to the financial stress it would cause me. She would also like to, but when she brings it up, I get annoyed because of the money, but also because she has been on about four trips with her sister (without me) including 2 cruises in the past year. Then she can’t understand why her complaining that she is bored and wants to go somewhere would bother me… The money issue comes to the surface when discussing working on the house too. She wants for things to get done so bad, but won’t recognize that we just don’t have the money to do what she wants. When we bought the house, she was working a full time job. We bought before the housing bubble burst and are really paying more of a percentage of our income than we should at this point. We’re staying afloat, but could be doing so much better.

So there are the biggest issues/obstacles in our relationship. There have never been any issues of infidelity or even an emotional affair for either of us (although I could see myself being very tempted if someone began to show me attention, this thought scares me). No verbal, physical, or emotional abuse either. There are a lot of more minor issues. Pet peeves that I used to easily forget now wear on me. Her negativity is really starting to wear me down. She complains (loudly and often) of being hot and cold - even at the same room temperature. She dreads getting older and the issues that come with that – she has issues with living in the moment and is often focused on either the future or the past. End of July and she’s already dreading winter and the mild seasonal anxiety disorder (I think that’s the term) that she gets from that. I often feel unappreciated and like I’m just the local handyman that gets told to do stuff. She rarely apologizes for the hurtful things she says, where I’m probably too quick to apologize, even when I shouldn’t. She has a very hard time empathizing with me and seeing situations from my point of view. She doesn’t laugh at most of my jokes any more and we don’t laugh together much in general. Our sex is not frequent, but it’s ok. I could go on, but I won’t

A while back I set up counseling for myself (without her knowledge) to help me figure out how to talk to her about this, basically to help me get a game plan. After a couple of counseling sessions and a brief meeting with a lawyer to get details on what to expect legally, I finally got the courage to talk to her about it. Of course, she was pretty devastated. She was very upset that I brought this up out of the blue and that I did it without showing much emotion. Her first response was that I must be gay… I wish it were that easy, but it’s not. There’s part of me that just wants to lie and say it’s true to make this easier. She went through some self hate/depression – she has dealt with depression since before we met has been seeing a psychiatrist for a few years now. Also, since we have no friends, she really didn’t have anywhere to go. Her only option is her parents, but she refused to talk to them because she feels that they “like me more than her” and that they would not be able to deal with us separating.

After a couple of days of her trying to run away and avoid talking, she finally said that she does not want us to be apart and she is going to fight for us to make it. To be honest, this made me feel a little better and gave me some hope because I thought she was pretty tired of dealing with me. I told her that some changes would have to be made by both of us for this to work out. 

I had another individual counseling session and the therapist suggested that we both come to her to start figuring out how to communicate. So last week we went together, and I thought things went fairly well. I felt like I had worked myself into a corner on my own where I saw getting out of the relationship was the only option. I felt a bit of hope that there were other options that I had not considered. At the end of the session, the counselor had one rule – while we are in counseling together, we are both trying to improve the relationship and can’t talk about splitting up. I was OK with this.

However, the next day, she was pretty upset over a couple of the things I said. I know that I have to be honest for this to work, and this just reinforced my reluctance to hurt her by expressing how I feel. She also said something about being unsure if she can deal with our relationship and then that she was “embarrassed that she had nowhere to go”. This made me feel terrible and that she feels trapped. I felt like she was breaking the rule of not talking about splitting up. It caused me to pull back and begin to hold my feelings in again, to see if she is really willing to work on the relationship. Well, it’s been a week and we have not worked on any of the homework the counselor gave us. She said she wanted to yesterday, but since I was working at home, I had a couple of things to wrap up before being able to give her that time. After about 20 minutes, I said I was ready, but she seemed mad and said she doesn’t feel like it any more. 

So at this point, I’m starting to feel like she just feels trapped, has nowhere to go, and doesn’t want to be separated from our dogs (I think that would be worse for her than being separated from me). I think I will bring this up when/if we finally sit down to talk together or at our next counseling session. She says she is just really overwhelmed right now and is having a hard time dealing with all this and she knows she needs to work on herself. I understand that and agree, but at this point, I don’t see her putting forth the effort that it will take to save the relationship.

I just feel like I don’t have a partner in life right now, more of a roommate (she’s expressed similar feelings). And if I don’t have a partner to share in all the little things in life, I’d rather just be alone. I want more out of my life and I’m having a really hard time seeing that possible with her. I’m starting to crave the freedom of having nobody to answer to – to truly do what I want, when I want to do it. I think I would be fine alone, but I’m truly worried about her well-being if we were to separate. 

I’m pretty sure that I do still love her. But my feelings go up and down. When she tells me she loves me, I say I love her too, and I do. But other times I’m anxious around her – I’m stressed and guilty for the negative thoughts and emotions. When I think about her when we are apart, it’s generally pretty negative and rarely positive. At this point, I just don’t know what to do and I hate being so conflicted all the time. I’m not sure if I am willing to give the counseling 100%, especially since I feel that she isn’t at this point. We’ve got another counseling session next week, but I’m starting to wonder if it’s even worth it if we don’t do any of the work we were assigned before then.

So that’s a lot of reading and I apologize if I went into too much detail. It’s just that I think it’s important if I am seeking good advice to get a lot of history out there. And with no friends to turn to, I hope this can be a substitute for the advice a friend can give. Thanks for your time and consideration.


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## Corgigirl (Aug 12, 2013)

Hi Overanalytical. I wish I had some really good advice for you, but I don't. But I do give you a lot of credit for seeking out counseling and really trying to analyze yourself and admitting to things that you feel may be unfair. Maybe your wife feels embarrassed so she is defensive. You mention health problems and work issues - maybe she is just insecure about this and feels like it is a burden to you. You may be unknowingly and unintentionally feeding those feelings she is having. Sometimes it is really difficult to be supportive when you are miserable as well. Also, you mention a lot of things you do and get no appreciation for, but is your wife doing a lot as well and also getting no appreciation? Maybe you both need to take a step back and really realize what the other is doing. Personally, I am guilty of never giving my husband the credit he deserved but from my point of view, we were both taking care of our respective duties and I never thought to thank him every time he took out the trash or mowed the lawn. Maybe she just doesn't realize that you need that appreciation. Once my husband expressed that to me, I made a point to thank him (although it didn't really help my marriage but that's not the point).


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