Reply to Husband says he’s been unhappy for a long time

Forum Index » Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)

Reply to "Husband says he’s been unhappy for a long time"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]My husband said this too. It turned out he was having an affair. He also began drinking 5-6 drinks every night in an attempt to cope with the stress.

After discovery of the affair, we briefly went to the marriage counseling, but it wasn't all that helpful because it wasn't a me problem. He's been in individual counseling ever since (the last 9 years) and that has made a huge difference. He's learned how to cope with stress, how to address his needs, etc.

He was highly conflict avoidant before therapy. I didn't realize it . . . I always say my piece when I have an issue. I did notice that sometimes when I was addressing a small issue, he'd suddenly unleash a barrage of big issues. It felt like he was trying to deflect and turn things back around on me, but what was really happening was that his conflict avoidant brain said, "Oh, we are talking about bad things now, I'll throw all my bad things on the pile." He had to learn that talking about hard stuff doesn't have to mean conflict and that he should bring it up calmly when it's bothering him rather than letting it build up.

I hope you get some clarity on what is really going on with him. We marry people with different strengths and weaknesses than ours. I always thought the golden rule was to treat others how you want to be treated, but sometimes people operate differently than we do. The real trick is to treat them how *they* want to be treated. And that takes communication and effort. Hopefully you'll have a good therapist and can get to the root of these things.[/quote]

Very similar. The midlife crisis/self unhappiness, affair, increased and secret drinking due to extreme stress from doing it and then regretting/trying to get out w/out blowing up life.

All pretty much a shock 16/17 years in. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics