daphdivorce

Well I did it. He was very shocked and couldn't believe it in the beginning. He said he didn't know where all this was coming from. He kept telling me I'm depressed and confusing my emotions. It just hurts me so much that he never understood how important things were to me, how bothered I was by certain behaviour. Now it came to the point where I don't even want to work on anything anymore. He set up a meeting with a counselor after we spoke, in a desperate attempt at doing something to save our marriage. I'm afraid it might be too late for me now. After we spoke on Friday, I went away to my sister's for the weekend, leaving him alone. We spoke on Saturday and got into a huge argument. I kept telling him that I can't do this now, I can't even have this conversation anymore, I have crossed my threshold. I said this maybe 4-5 times during the 1/2 hour of conversation. He kept going on, arguing, mocking etc. I ended up yelling at him and suddenly he listened. I hate to yell, but I'm so fragile these days and him trying to dissect things again (and mostly trying to prove he was in the right) was just too much. This is such a great example to show the nature of our relationship. I point out things that I have a problem with, he ignores me, gets angry, mocks me, then I end up doing some act of desperation and suddenly he listens. I can't go back to that anymore. Some time after we hung up I sent him a mail of apology for having yelled at him. I told him how sad I was for where we had gotten to and that it seemed no longer possible for me to speak with him. We decided to go to this couples therapist in a few days until which time we can both calm down and sort through our feelings. The therapy will either be the beginning of a period of working on things properly, no excuses, or it will be a civil way to summarize and end our relationship properly. I realize I have made mistakes with this marriage, I cannot possibly blame everything on him. The single biggest mistake we both made was not going to counseling before now. He says now that he's completely open to it and will do whatever he can to make it work. I am skeptical because I know how he works. All his cycles, his epiphanies that last a couple of months. I also feel no great love for this man anymore and I'm not sure if that's something that can change. Lack of love just takes away my commitment completely. In the meantime I go from crying and breaking down one minute to being fully functional the next. I thank God for the amazing support system I have-my family, my friends and my faith. That being said, any additional words of sympathy are more than welcome.

I'm going through a potential divorce now and I'm the one breaking the commitment. I would say, like others, that I have grown throughout my relationship and realized I needed something more from my marriage than I had originally thought. I also fell out of love and all the arguments became unbearable. You can only get so far when you have no desire to be with a person anymore. It's still extremely sad, but I realized that if I wanted to keep myself intact, I'd have to break the commitment.

That's what I'm wondering. Maybe a period of separation will help me clear my thoughts. And that way I can make it a little less harsh on him as well-although all my friends tell me that my compassion for him should not affect my decision. I can't even begin to imagine how people get out of marriages when children are involved-it must take such a huge amount of internal strength. Hats off to all of you out there who've done it.

We've been trying to "repair" from the first day we met-that's about 3.5 years. I've just about had my share. Am I to believe that I'm the only one with doubts and pain before a decision like this?

umm, ok. guess i should have expanded. i was in so much pain when I wrote that I forgot to write-you can see my other thread "fell out of love, feel lost" to see my story. just to briefly answer Desma214-this is not out of the blue, which you will see if you read my thread. He knows of the existence of our problems, he's been told many, many, many times how serious they are and I have come to a point where I'm realizing that I have begun to check out of the marriage because ultimately I do not love him enough to live with him for the rest of my life. And hardcharger-he's nice and sweetie, yes, but don't forget it's all a package and I don't want the package anymore. And don't worry, there's no money to take and run. If anything, financially he'd benefit more from a divorce than I would. my question is less "is my divorce decision justified?" and more "how do you deal with all the doubts and pain before making the decision?". hope that clears it up

I was so perfectly sure I wanted a divorce, for about a week. I didn't want to speak to my husband about it until I was sure, but it's been killing me. Then suddenly last night I started having doubts again. When I'm away from him, I'm very determined. When I see him, I can't hold it together. How on earth do people actually make the decision to do it? He's completely oblivious right now (he is totally not expecting this) and is treating me normally, all "sweetie" and everything. If anything he's called me so many more times than normal cause I think he feels something is up. This is just killing me. How do I do it?

BeStrongBeHappy, thanks so much for your message. I was starting to feel very alone here. I thought maybe people were getting sick of reading too many falling out of love posts. Although I'm sure it really sucks to be left by someone who no longer loves you, it's really not easy to be on this side of the fence either. I'm constantly torn between feelings of guilt and doubt and wanting to be good to myself. I see what you’re saying about him not wanting to work on our marriage. He’s always big on telling me I should be completely open with him about any problems, but when push comes to shove I don’t necessarily feel he hears my side of things. I have to repeat everything a thousand times and only when I break down completely does he claim to see my point. Then he goes and does the same thing again. That’s why it seems like a good idea to go to counseling. I do think he’s probably scared to be told off by someone on the outside. The few times we had an objective person witness our arguments, he was criticized heavily, so I think on some level he’s trying to avoid that. Well, he’s gone and upset me tremendously in the process and drained all my energy. Recently cost excuses have been going on about everything-I have hobbies like baking, taking singing lessons etc. all of which I have put on hold because he believes we can’t afford it. In his line of work he doesn’t get paid very well at all (although he’s been very luckily employed in the last few years) so I can see where his paranoia comes from, but this also puts a big strain on me because I feel like I end up giving up everything I enjoy doing. And we can totally afford counseling, it just means we have to cut back from our future savings for a house. Well, I’d rather spend the money on working on us than a piece of property. What good is a house if we are unhappy inside it? As for the screaming, unfortunately he comes from a background of having to shout to get heard, so I think as much as he hates it, he kind of internalized that way of dealing with disputes. So I always have to be the one who has to be patient, stay calm and point out when things are getting loud. This can be very exhausting. It’s a constant struggle to be myself in this relationship and not get dragged down. I feel like we both have to be on our best behaviour 100% of the time in order to make our relationship work. I have to be very patient all the time, I have to be very assertive all the time, I have to be very calm all the time. There’s no human being in the world who can be all these things all the time and I don’t want to be walking on egg shells in my marriage. I sometimes wonder whether I’m being selfish. We’ve been through so much together. He’s had 2 surgeries during our marriage and another couple of hospitalizations as well. I never minded caring for him, in fact it even brought us together in a way. Stuff like this that life throws at me, I can live with. Being treated poorly by my husband, that’s a lot more difficult. Honestly, I do believe in commitment and working on things and I have been trying to do just that for a long time, but at this point I don’t value our relationship enough to want to spend more time working on it. I know how he will try to suck me in with various manipulations and well, been there done that. Emotional manipulations/abuse are so much more subtle than anything physical which makes it more difficult to recognize them and act upon them. I am always so full of self doubt with him. A person can only change so much and I want to go on with my life. He’s not a bad person, but he hasn’t been good for me.

Thanks for your response. I'm a bit confused, I had mentioned that I actually don't feel in love with my husband anymore, so I don't really understand your comment. Sure, I'm used to him and for the most part get along with him, but I'm definitely not in love with him and I'm very seriously contemplating divorce. Maybe my initial post wasn't clear? The issues I described are not new, they've been there since the beginning, we've discussed them since the beginning and tried to work on them. We've managed to get to a place where we recognize them, but essentially nothing has changed. I feel limited by him, I feel controlled, I feel ignored and undesired, I do not feel comfortable to be myself. He knows all this, we've talked about it a million times. He's doing his best, but unfortunately it feels lately like his best is not what I want. I feel no attraction to him, physically or emotionally. And I've been in this state for far too long. This inertia/limbo is killing me. How do I know what to do? How do I achieve certainty?

I’m so glad to have found this site. People really seem to care and offer a lot of good advice, so here goes my story... I apologize in advance for the length. I met my husband 3.5 years ago. We have been married for 2.5 years now. I’ve spent about 2 of these feeling like it won’t work. I don’t even know why I married him. Probably because I loved him and thought that we could cope. I should also point out that at the time I met him, I had very low self esteem and had some unresolved problems which were making me feel very depressed. I have since been in therapy and feel much better about myself. From the beginning we always had huge arguments, they would last hours, sometimes days. This would happen about once a week. Over time, we have gotten used to each other and we have come to recognize (or rather I have) when an argument is about to start and so we can avoid it from getting too big. The frequency is also much lower now, thank God. He has a bad temper and so do I. We can get to very high decibels together and once our neighbours sent the police over because they heard him banging the furniture. There has been no physical violence-I would have left eons ago if there had been. We don’t have any kids-I wanted us to be in a stable state before we tried. It hasn’t been easy to stick to this, but I have argued long and hard to ensure it. I have wanted to go to couples counseling for a very long time, he never believed it was necessary, claiming that we are a normal couple with normal problems and could work through them on our own. Finally about half a year ago he agreed, after I pretty much threatened to divorce him (he always needs to be shaken badly for me to get through to him). But then he had a new condition-I had to stop getting my therapy because we couldn’t afford both (we can) and it wasn’t fair to him (he had his own therapy which he decided to give up, so I don’t see why it’s not fair). I refused to give up my therapy and pretty much got into the stagnant state that I am in now. After 3.5 years of struggle, I think I just don’t care anymore. I don’t want to be struggling anymore. I’m sick of having to fight to get everything that is important to me. What are the problems you may ask. Some of them may seem very trivial, but if I have learned anything from my therapist, it’s that these things are very subjective and if something matters enough to me, then it is legitimate to feel it. Where to start. Ever since the first day of our marriage-and we were both virgins by the way, him at 28 and me at 27 (religious reasons), we have had sex an average of 2-3 times a month. Sometimes it’s once, very rarely 4 times. Some of my friends have told me this is enough reason to divorce him. The reason is mainly because he has been tired (most frequently the reason), ill or not interested. He very rarely initiates it. I got so fed up with getting rejected that I stopped asking. I thought at least at the beginning of our marriage that he would be all over me. We’ve had many arguments about this, he could never get why it made me feel unattractive/not desired. He has also claimed that I have unrealistic expectations-one of his favorite expressions-in all honesty, am I exaggerating this? While we’re on the subject of exhaustion-he has short term cycles of activity when he functions well. Most other times he has no energy for things. Doesn’t want to get out of bed, go out, wants to go to sleep very early, can’t be bothered to go on a walk. He’s like a 70 year old in the body of a 30 year old. Now I’m the exact opposite, I have to keep moving all the time. If I slow down, I get depressed. I walk, I get out, I exercise, I hike etc. etc. I love to be active. We cannot go on a vacation and enjoy it together. He wants to rest all the time and won’t “let” me do things on my own. There’s another one of the problems-him thinking he has control over me. I can’t buy clothes-too expensive, I can’t go to visit my parents on my own-he can’t be left alone, he acts like I have to get his permission for many things. Whenever he feels like I will do something that will upset him, he starts to question me and sort of expects me to justify what I want to do, almost never giving me the benefit of the doubt. He criticizes everything and is very hard to please. I’m not a little child and I resent being treated like one. He has been known to change his mind because I know by now that most of his controlling behaviour is due to various fears, frustrations etc. but I’m not sure that knowing this makes it any better. It’s still a long struggle until we get to the root of the problem and the process is exhausting. I often feel he doesn’t hear me. Often when I want to have a discussion, it takes me ages to get his attention. He’ll be with his computer, reading something, watching something and he won’t stop doing it until I’ve mentioned it a few times. He has claimed that I have unrealistic expectations about this as well-so it’s too much to expect my husband’s attention? If I actually gather up the courage to talk to him about something that is important to me which I know he won’t be happy about, he’ll mock and ridicule me and if he feels he can’t “get through” he will start to yell. And from there things escalate. All this leads me to feel very insignificant. He has very few friends and most people who like him don’t warm up to him too easily. He can be arrogant, wants constant attention and he doesn’t respect people’s opinions in an argument if he happens to disagree with them. I am sometimes embarrassed to be in public with him. Now all is not bad, there are some very good things about him. He’s very affectionate verbally and physically (hugs and kisses, not sex). He loves babies and he is great with domestic chores-although that kind of comes at a price too. You know, it’s not even about “what is wrong” anymore. I think I just came to the end of my patience and maybe even love. I’m sick of fighting to get everything, of having to justify everything to convince him. Things are ironically much calmer these days, but I’ve also grown further away from him. Or maybe things are calmer because I’ve grown further. It’s like I don’t care enough anymore to fight so we have this fake calm. The long and short of it is-I’m not sure anymore if I want to spend the rest of my life with him. I feel like children would complicate matters even more. Recently I feel like I’ve “fallen out of love”. If he’s there, I don’t necessarily mind him, if he’s not, I don’t miss him. Does this feel familiar to anyone? I’d love to hear your opinions.