Reply to Husband suddenly not interested in being a parent or spouse

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]BTDT, OP. We were married 15 years with two kids. He had a massive midlife crisis. He didn’t have an affair but did a lot of other cliche things. He went from being dutiful and on all the time to not giving a crap and talking about his new needs. He was extremely angry and hostile. Basically, under stress his childhood trauma and other issues came out, and he cracked.

I agree that you need to mentally prepare for divorce. Get a lawyer and a therapist. He is no longer your partner. We wasted time with several couples therapists and though I wouldn’t have done it differently (had to feel I tried everything) it was pointless.

My theory is that he was always pretty self centered and for a short time identified his “self” with having a family/ being a husband, but when he realized it really involved un-selfing and being there for others he couldn’t hold it together. [/quote]

We had other issues, too. He had been in therapy for years with anxiety/OCD/ attachment issues. Big jealousy about my career and friends. I think he never grew up.[/quote]

Nothing your said here is about "we" at all but it is all about your evaluation of his character and core personhood. You think he is an awful creation of human being but you demand him to "love me I need it!". Those of us on your husband's end of this know what this is like, someone telling you that you are crap and in the same breath telling you that you don't love them  enough. [/quote]

PP here. You’re projecting. The anger and hostility, along with the midlife crisis, was escalating for several years. He blamed me for everything he was unhappy for in his life. It culminated in a major mental health break. He accused me of trying to persecute him, kill him, control him, had hallucinations of me chasing him when I wasn’t. There was no “we” by the end. It was all eclipsed by the symptoms of whatever trauma and issues he had, and this is why several of the therapists we saw just told me to get out of the relationship.

What’s funny is he would say things like you’re saying. It was part of the symptoms consistent with a personality disorder. I never said anything about needing him to love me. That’s all your stuff, you need to work on it instead of dumping it on strangers.

My point to OP was just that sometimes people do radically change or reveal things inside that they no longer have the capacity to hide under stress. Her DH’s issue doesn’t sound as severe as my XH’s but there is almost certainly a mix of mental health/ childhood and relational trauma/ midlife crisis going on when relationships start to break in this fashion. It’s good to be realistic about where it might be headed and the fact that you cannot control what meaning someone else wants to make of their life.[/quote]

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