"Walkaway Wife"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is OP. Thank you so very much for all the thoughtful and insightful comments. To try to answer some PPs:

Yes I do feel like something died inside early last year. Each time I shared my needs over the years and he brushed them off — more quality time together, more help with the kids (both logistically and in an engaging in their lives kind of way), more sharing stressors and feelings instead of turning inward — it was like a smalll cut, a small betrayal and abandonment for me. (It took me a couple months of my own therapy to even use those words to describe it). Additionally there were some larger injuries that also felt like abandonments peppered in there. Then when we had the last major conversation about me needing more of his participation and support and he literally said “I can’t give you that” it felt like a bomb just dropped and squashed a part of me, the part that had suffered these smaller cuts over and over. How do you heal from that?

We are both very logical, grounded people and that is helpful for many things in life but not sharing your feelings!! We have come so far. In my own self improvement I have recognized that I thought I was being a great communicator all those times I brought up my needs but that in hindsight I rarely used strong language to describe what I was feeling. I am better able to do that now — we both have more language to articulate our concerns and fears and feelings now and we both recognize that will serve us well no matter what happens.

I agree that maybe this is about trust. Being able to trust that he’ll continue to step up his parenting, his family engagement, his setting work boundaries, and his openness and communication with me. He has been doing better at all of those but maybe I need more proof over time that those will “stick” which can help re-build my trust in him as a partner.

This week I specifically said what I need from him right now is that he get into his own individual therapy. He’s done a lot of personal improvement on his own but I think it’s plateaued and I think what I may be missing is a stronger feeling that he is accountable for what he contributed to this situation. One of his mantras has been “it’s a two way street” and while I do truly believe that, I do blame him more for the situation we’re in and unless he can see that and acknowledge it I think that will be an obstacle. I told him this and I hope he can spend some of his own time navigating that concept. I had suggested it a few times but only this week did I specifically say I need him to do that. He already found someone and is going to initiate.

We are still going to continue with couples but we did move from every week to every other week since we have been consistently able to talk to each other openly at home outside our sessions. But I hope that as he explores his own therapy that those sessions will continue to be productive and create breakthroughs.

I am also going to start building out some of my time to do other things that are important to me, which I hope will be not only personally rewarding but will help me sift through some of my wants and needs for our relationship.

It’s very difficult to strike a balance between him giving me space and us spending time together and being intentional and choosing love actively. At one point we discussed possibly separating and trying that out but we are both concerned it will make it too easy to slide into the next phase and divorce.

I like what some PPs said about what a true transformation might look like — he has genuinely said that if I chose not to stay together and we divorced, he would completely understand why. That gives me some reassurance that he can see my perspective unlike before, and he understands his role in how we got here.

We are trying to make sure that if we quit this we do it because in the end it’s not right, not because it’s just hard.

Bumping this post - any update OP?

[Anonymous]

I think she just doesn’t trust him.

I understand and I wouldn’t right now either.

20 years of patterns can’t be undone in a few months.

I would cautiously stay married for now and start pursuing some of your own interests while he is managing the house/kids. See what happens/how he reacts when the responsibility becomes his. Right now, it seems like the self improvement hours (meditation therapy) are more revolving around him, not OP. Take some hours for yourself and see how he steps up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I hear you saying he has changed but your feelings have not. Two things: first, you choose your feelings (they are created by your thoughts which are under your control). They are not just something that happen to you. Second, it’s hard to turn around a cruise liner. You were caught in a loop of (justified) negative thoughts for a long time. It’s unrealistic for you to expect to change your thoughts/feelings easily just because circumstances have changed.

Thank you. I have tried to give myself that grace and he has also been very understanding about giving me time to heal. It’s taken him awhile to understand that this went on for years from my perspective compared to his emotional injuries which were more or less confined to my being emotionally absent last year. We’ve unlearned some dysfunctional patterns which is great, I just struggle with how long we should tolerate this painful limbo before deciding it just won’t change. I guess your point is it can take a long time for those potential changes to happen and for a full deep love to return.

I agree that’s true but it’s not a passive thing on your part. You have to choose to love him again. It’s not going to “return” you’re going to choose to make it your reality (or not).

How many of us who believe in - and have experienced - falling in love would describe the initial "falling in" as a choice, though? I understand, in part, what you are getting at, PP, but in practice and in concept, I think this is a hard idea for people who have married "for love" to grasp.

Right, the initial falling in love happened before the years of emotional neglect. Maybe somebody deep down doesn’t want to fall in love with a person who has harmed them. Not just because of that hurt, but then you know that person is capable of that. How do you know that when you work at it and do fall back in love, your spouse isn’t going to go back to doing the same things they did before?

I don’t know, this is hard. I’m sorry you’re dealing with this, OP.

The bold was it for me. Now ex DH showed me who he was with his behavior. Yes, he tried to make it up to me once he realized how serious I was that our relationship was over. From his perspective, he was doing all the work and was really serious about the changes. From my perspective, it was too late - my stomach would literally turn when he touched me. I tried having sex even when I really wasn’t interested in him because it felt like I owed him because he was trying so hard, but it also felt very rape-y.

OP, my husband’s ling term behavior was very unsafe and unhealthy for me and no amount of ostensible change was going to shift mg gut judgment about him bourne out by years of experience.

He behaved awfully to for 20 years, and he has changed for 1 year? No surprise you are uncomfortable sleeping with him.

The truth is that if he wants even a sliver of a chance to come back to a loving relationship, he has to be the one to accept the short end of the stick, potentially for years. Not as punishment, but as reality. A truly loving husband would accept that.

[Anonymous]

This is OP. I just read through this, having essentially forgotten I’d posted it months back. Also it’s hard to believe this was only four months ago! Every week feels like a month.

In summary, we are still married and it’s going better overall. It’s been a bit of an odd and circuitous route — we actually got to a point where I pretty much said I couldn’t bear to be dealing with all these negative emotions about our relationship, that when I thought of all of the injuries and things that have accumulated it makes me want to split up, and he was sad, and suggested we work on building some structure as if we were going to live apart. We basically built a custody arrangement with the kids, where a certain person is responsible for everything with the kids the same weekdays every week, then alternating weekends.

However, we both still wanted to try to be together, like a reset. So we still continued to live in same house and in the same bed and spend time together (no matter whose “day”). For example if I had the kids on Saturday and I planned to take them to the zoo I might ask if he wanted to come with us. There’d be no pressure to join but if he wanted to he would, and vice versa. So we weren’t separated and we weren’t seeing other people.

But at the same time this took away any question of who would be responsible for the kids on a particular day, which 1) gave me more of my own time to use how I wanted, 2) allowed him to have to draw boundaries on work commitments on his days, and 3) in a really strange way brought us closer together. We also clarified a bunch of stuff about what a divorce would look like — how we would do the house, how we’d split finances, how we’d commit to coparenting, etc. We did that more because we thought that’s where we were ending up, but knowing we didn’t want that fully.

I think the schedule has helped me to build more trust that he has changed and was really in this fully, and made me feel like he could better understand my perspective of what it’s been like to do the child rearing for so many years. We also continued couples therapy and have continued to make dramatic improvements in our communication with one another. Since we basically discussed and agreed upon many divorce logistics, we have been able to get past the fear of the uncertainties and actually feel safe opening up more about the emotional injuries without worry that that would be the thing to split us up.

I feel more love toward him and we are affectionate with each other. I can actually envision us being together in the future which I really could not before. I am holding onto that. We have many ups and downs still, and some days it feels like it won’t work. But now we can share that with each other without fear and anxiety (mostly!) and that helps us get past it. We are definitely not there yet but things are moving in the right direction I think.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is OP. I just read through this, having essentially forgotten I’d posted it months back. Also it’s hard to believe this was only four months ago! Every week feels like a month.

In summary, we are still married and it’s going better overall. It’s been a bit of an odd and circuitous route — we actually got to a point where I pretty much said I couldn’t bear to be dealing with all these negative emotions about our relationship, that when I thought of all of the injuries and things that have accumulated it makes me want to split up, and he was sad, and suggested we work on building some structure as if we were going to live apart. We basically built a custody arrangement with the kids, where a certain person is responsible for everything with the kids the same weekdays every week, then alternating weekends.

However, we both still wanted to try to be together, like a reset. So we still continued to live in same house and in the same bed and spend time together (no matter whose “day”). For example if I had the kids on Saturday and I planned to take them to the zoo I might ask if he wanted to come with us. There’d be no pressure to join but if he wanted to he would, and vice versa. So we weren’t separated and we weren’t seeing other people.

But at the same time this took away any question of who would be responsible for the kids on a particular day, which 1) gave me more of my own time to use how I wanted, 2) allowed him to have to draw boundaries on work commitments on his days, and 3) in a really strange way brought us closer together. We also clarified a bunch of stuff about what a divorce would look like — how we would do the house, how we’d split finances, how we’d commit to coparenting, etc. We did that more because we thought that’s where we were ending up, but knowing we didn’t want that fully.

I think the schedule has helped me to build more trust that he has changed and was really in this fully, and made me feel like he could better understand my perspective of what it’s been like to do the child rearing for so many years. We also continued couples therapy and have continued to make dramatic improvements in our communication with one another. Since we basically discussed and agreed upon many divorce logistics, we have been able to get past the fear of the uncertainties and actually feel safe opening up more about the emotional injuries without worry that that would be the thing to split us up.

I feel more love toward him and we are affectionate with each other. I can actually envision us being together in the future which I really could not before. I am holding onto that. We have many ups and downs still, and some days it feels like it won’t work. But now we can share that with each other without fear and anxiety (mostly!) and that helps us get past it. We are definitely not there yet but things are moving in the right direction I think.

i'm a guy that posted in your thread months ago and am so happy to hear this. gives me some hope for my own situation. thanks for the update

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have you read His needs, Her needs? It's a little old fashioned, and extremely gendered, but it talks a view that different people need different things to feel in love. It also has a concept of a love bank - that we each have a love bank where withdraws and deposits are made. The author would say your love bank is depleted, and that is possible to fall back in love, and your partner has to help you fall back in love with him by making deposits in your bank the meet your individual needs.

Again, crazy old fashioned, very gendered, but yet the concepts can work and you can take some insights from this book.

Here's a website page:
https://www.marriagebuilders.com/the-love-bank.htm

Essentially, you're asking "can I fall back in love with my husband?"

The answer might be yes and it might be no. As someone says above, love is a verb. I'd change up what you've been trying and shift into thinking - what did I love about this person? What can I love about him? Focus on romantic love and see if the spark can reignite.

This can also be helpful re: the "deposits" and what they may look like for each of you.

https://www.5lovelanguages.com/