Reply to My therapist thinks I need a divorce, and I would rather kill myself than be alone again.

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Reply to "My therapist thinks I need a divorce, and I would rather kill myself than be alone again."

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[quote=Anonymous]OP, I am so sorry for your loss.  I am sure it is a big part of your pain right now, but as someone who has been in an emotionally abusive relationship, I can tell you that the abuse is an even bigger cause of your unhappiness.  You need to focus on getting away from it -- either your husband agrees that he is being abusive and seriously commits to getting help today or you leave.  I'm sorry to tell you those are the only options.  Sometimes in life we only get to choose between sucky options.

I am concerned about the way you speak about the abuse -- "occasionally" and that it alternates with ignoring you or being sweet to you.  This is the classic abusive cycle that keeps so many in relationships way too long -- as it has you.  Every time the sweetness comes back the abused person thinks that is the "real" person and that if the couple just works hard enough on the "relationship" then things will get better.

In retrospect, I wish I had seen the abuse in my relationship earlier.  I wasted years with an abusive person and that is time you recognize that you don't have.

l am now a single mom with two kids.  Having to raise kids with a difficult co-parent (either in or out of a relationship) is even harder than when I am just on my own with the kids.  We are a "family" even without a Dad.  And, as my kids grow, I expand that sense of "family" to include other relatives and good longstanding friends.

I do not know why you say, "if I leave him I will never be a mother"?  There are plenty of options for conceiving outside a relationship these days.  Are you saying that you can't afford financially to do it on your own?  If so, then given the way you describe your current relationship, you should probably reconsider whether conceiving in the relationship is a wise idea.

Your therapist is absolutely right about the effects of maternal depression on children.  But, a big part of your depression sounds situational -- both due to the pregnancy loss and the bigger picture that you know your life is not going the way you want it in important ways, i.e. the abuse.  I think if you focused more on what YOU could do to change YOUR life to move it in the direction that you want to go, you would find the depression lifting (possibly with the help of medication).

IME, a major consequence of the abusive relationship is a kind of loss of "agency," i.e. the feeling that one has any control over one's life.  I think in domestic violence writing this is called "learned helplessness".  When one starts taking steps to get back "agency," one feels better.

Please do some reading on emotional abuse and the abusive cycle.  [/quote]

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