# Feeling smothered and wanting out



## Krimple (Aug 27, 2012)

Hello everyone, this is my first time posting here, so I hope I'm in the right place and my apologies in advance for the long post.

I found this site after obsessively googling things that I felt about myself and my marriage and almost every time, this site would have posts come up in the search results. Although I haven't really seen anything that I can really relate to on the site yet, I'm hoping that someone can understand what's going on and give me some advice, so here goes:

I am just about to turn 32. My wife is 26. We've been married for 6 1/2 years, knew eachother for 3 years before we got married and currently have no children. I don't know if I'm truly being honest with myself right now just because I am wondering if the emotions I am feeling might be jading my memories, but I don't feel like I was every really in love with her. Part of me is so confused because I hadn't really let myself admit that and had always told myself that it didn't matter. I had made a lifetime commitment and I was going to stick with it.

I don't know the exact point where I started to give in to these feelings, but I did secretly and they slowly became more and more prevalent in my mind. I'm not a strictly religious person, but I do consider myself to be a follower of the Christian faith and although I believe that there is grace and forgiveness for sins, I still try and follow biblical principals as best as I can. Because of this, I had never considered divorce to be an option and had resided to "put up with" my feelings and push through. Things weren't great romantically and I didn't really find myself attracted to her, but from the beginning we were great friends and I had been able to use that as my motivation to stay.

From the beginning I don't ever feel like I "needed" anything from her, emotionally. When we met, I could tell that she had some problems with self esteem and I had dealt with similar issues when I was younger so I always tried to make her feel accepted no matter what and it felt so good to be able to make her happy. I feel like I mistook the happiness I felt while uplifting her, for romantic feelings. There were lots of things that she would do for me, but for some reason I never really cared. To put it into an analogy, I felt the things she did for me were like getting hand drawn pictures to put on the fridge as a gift when what I really wanted was a brand new car. The gesture is very thoughtful and asking for what I really wanted felt like I was being selfish, not to mention that brand new cars are not something that people can just give anyways, even if they wanted to.

I had friends tell me from the start, "you don't act like you're really in love with her" but for some reason I was determined to make things work. I had wanted to make her happy and just didn't have the heart to let her down. I've heard people say that the butterflies don't last and having a good friendship is what will make things last forever, and that is what we had.

I really didn't have any major complaints during the first two years of our marriage. And it was kind of crazy too - we were literally together 24/7. We were always in the same room together, didn't really go out individually, and even worked in the same office during the day! We both had the same sense of humor, both liked doing the same kinds of things so it seemed like everything was going fine.

Not long after those two years, a better job fell in my lap. It was nearly double the pay and would finally allow us to buy our own house. It was around this time that I think I started to question my feelings for her. I would catch myself wanting to catch up with highschool crushes or thinking about asking female co-workers at the office out to have lunch with me. This was never anything that I actually did, but I definitely look back and see myself searching for something that I didn't feel like I was getting back at home. And again, she is still doing things for me and has always been a very considerate and loving wife, but for some reason, the things she did just didn't really bring much happiness.

Music has always been a huge part of my life and a creative outlet for me. I was in a band when my wife and I met, which is one of the things that she fell in love with. I was playing in another band not long before we got married, but I quit because I felt like the right thing to do would be to focus on the marriage. For a while I had decided that music probably wasn't going to be a big part of my life any more and figured I would just settle down, do the whole kids and the white-picket fence thing. Well about 6 months after this new job, I get a call from one of the guys telling me that they need me to play again. Because of the way I had been feeling, I really started to think that this might be exactly what I needed. I wasn't feeling fulfilled in the marriage so I thought this would be a creative outlet to let me experience that and still be somewhat happy at home.

So I go to ask my wife... She didn't want me to do it at all and told me not to. These guys were very serious and it would mean practicing twice a week and she didn't want me away from her that much. I was very upset and had felt like any time we fought about things like this, I would eventually give in just to keep the peace (this may not be 100% true, but it was the way I felt). So I decided that I was going to put my foot down. I needed this. After that, we had one of the biggest fights ever! We both probably said and did a lot of things that we shouldn't and I admit most of those things were me. The resolve was that we were sorry for the things we did during the fight, but I joined the band regardless of her not wanting me to. We eventually came to some "rules" that she was ok with. I wasn't to hang out with them and she didn't want them at our house outside of normal band activities. It was strictly business. I showed up for practice, or came to the shows and performed and went back home while they would stay later and hang out.

I was happy with the little bit of freedom I had, but every once in a while, I would ask for an extra practice or some more time to record and every time it was an argument about how I wasn't putting the marriage first. It was emotionally draining for me and actually started causing me to see being in the band as a negative experience. I was almost ready to give up and just make her happy. In the meantime I wasn't finding happiness in other things either. We could go on vacations, or go out and do fun things together and I just couldn't enjoy myself very much. The feelings I had about the marriage worsened but I was still not considering leaving. I had also never shared with her how I felt. She still has issues with her self esteem and I figured since I was "stuck" anyways it wouldn't make things any better to tell her how I felt.

Fast forward to a year and a half ago. The band is having some mild success, my career is moving forward pretty well, and things are still not great at home but other things around me helped "distract" me from the way I felt. At one point I did start to wonder if it was just because I wasn't putting in the effort. I hadn't been good at planning fun things for us to do, so I tried to put more into planning weekend getaways and doing things like leaving flowers and notes at her desk. She loved me even more for this and would tell me that what I did was perfect, but I still didn't feel happy. I would get home from work and when I walk in the front door, she would get very wide-eyed and run up to me and give me a hug. To be honest, this kind of creeped me out because the feelings weren't really mutual. It left me feeling very smothered.

I am starting to feel the walls closing in on me however and decide that I care less and less about who she says I can or can't hang out with. There was one night in particular where I went out to hang with the guys and had a little too much to drink. The dam bursts and all of the things I'd been holding in come out with these guys about how I feel about my marriage. I was out until 4am and my phone died so my wife had been calling, trying to find out where I was.

When I get home, I'm still feeling pretty tipsy and she's yelling at me for being irresponsible (and I don't disagree) but in the heat of the moment, the dam bursts again and all of the things I'd been feeling come out straight to her face. At some point before this happened, I had actually crossed the mental line of wondering what it would it be like to divorce her and that comes out too.

I agreed to see a marital counselor for a few months and didn't really feel like it was helping, but I didn't know what else to do so we kept going, but after a while I guess we weren't seeing "results" quick enough so we start seeing counselors at a church she used to attend. This makes things worse for me. Instead of really looking at what's going on, it's all a bunch of "should"s and "should not"s and at this point my entire motivation for even coming and listening to these people is just to make everyone around me happy. I dread going every week and the more I talk about how this makes me feel, the tighter the clamp is on me. Her and her mother have been all over me, telling me that the way I feel is because I'm not following God and that I need to get right with Him. I had my wife tell me that I'm going to hell because what I'm doing is sin and if I were to die without repenting, that's where I would go. Her mother has been texting me, telling me how awful I am, and that I'm a theif who has stolen their daughter and that I better get right with God.

The anxiety I feel from all of this has worsened. I feel like a zombie, doing what everyone tells me is the "right thing" and trying to please everyone. The more I do it, the worse about the marriage I feel. I have felt so much judgement from her and her family and I cringe at the very touch from her hand, and also haven't been sleeping well either.

I've found that sleeping in a separate bedroom has helped, but eventually she comes in, telling me that what I'm doing is wrong and tells me to come in the other bedroom. I get so upset and just don't want to have to deal with her or her family that I go back and try to sleep with her again but one night I was feeling really tired and decided I didn't care.

She came in, upset as usual and I told her nothing would change my mind and that she needs to give me some space because me trying to force this isn't working. She still continued to press on and I felt like an animal trapped in a corner. I felt logic shut down and I just became very angry, telling her a bunch of things that I shouldn't have. Anything to get her to just leave me alone and let me sleep.

The next morning, I woke up and felt really bad for what I had done and tried to apologize. She then told me that she knew I wasn't really sorry for what I had done. When I asked her why I would have apologized if I wasn't really sorry, she told me "because you don't want to admit to yourself that you are wicked".

It was right then, that I knew I had to get out. At least for a little while. I don't want to be living with someone who thinks that about me and will judge me like that, and forcing myself to stick it out is turning me into something that I'm not. I'm normally a very kind person and very forgiving.

I have been living out of a laundry basket and sleeping on a fouton for the last several weeks at a friend's house. It's felt like a breath of fresh air. I'm still paying all of the bills for the house and going there at least once a week to do things like mow the lawn and take out the trash. We've had dinner together a few times which was an overall positive experience if we weren't talking about what's going on. We were able to still joke and talk about things we liked. But when I think about coming back, I start to cringe again and feel myself getting angry.

I really don't know what to do. I don't want to go back. I am afraid of what will happen if we divorce. I hate the idea of hurting her and her family, but I feel like going back will be painful for the rest of my life. She doesn't have a great job and probably would not be able to afford to live on her own which makes me feel "stuck" more because I feel like I'm responsible. I'm enjoying my space, but I still know that I can't live like this forever and will have to make a choice one way or the other.

I'm not sure what to do and feel like there is a mental line I've crossed and can not come back from on my own. I'm not making any claims to be right or perfect in any way but it feels like staying is going to make things worse for both of us.

Any advice would greatly be appreciated!


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## norajane (Feb 7, 2012)

Well, if I were married to someone who was claiming I was "wicked" and MIL was texting me to get with God, I'd feel smothered, too. That alone would make me livid.

If you really can't stand it anymore, it's best to cut the cord sooner rather than later. It doesn't get any easier the longer you wait. And if you're still having sex, you can end up with a lifetime commitment you don't really want in the form of a child.


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## CorkonAFork (Aug 12, 2012)

Currently going through a LOT of what you experienced. With the help of a good marriage counselor I found that I was stuck in a co-dependent relationship. 

It became extremely apparent to me once I'd read up a bit on co-dependence. You feel like you're negotiating/compromising more and more of who you are, until finally there's so little left, then BAM. You explode, show off a bit of anger, but then...fall right back into the cycle again. 

You sound a lot like me in many respects. I just started an 'in home' separation this weekend because of all this.

I can't begin to say how important its been for me to see an IC (individual counselor). Otherwise I would have still been in the dark, and repeating the same pattern over and over. 

I'm not a suitable judge, but if I read right, I think we're both also on the same page as far as 'detachment' goes. It's not unhealthy.


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## CorkonAFork (Aug 12, 2012)

Oh, um, I hate to read, but I'm reading 'codependent no more' by Melanie Beattie. I haven't gotten far in it yet, but I'll recommend it anyways as you'll probably have a dozen other people here also do it. I'll let you know if it helps me.


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