My husband doesn't love me anymore. :(

[Seraphim]

The thing is unless you're prepared to push your point he's not going to change. If you're too afraid to want to put a boundary in place he's just going to take that run with it.

 

The difference is now that he's gone home to live he's hanging around with the brother. I can pretty much guarantee you that that's 90% of the problem. The brother is telling him to be dissatisfied. This won't work unless you guys move back in together pronto.

[lavenderdove]

Honey, to be married, you have to live together eventually! If he continues to be footloose and fancy free and living with his parents and hanging out with 19 year old garage band buddies, those influences are going to pull him further away from you not towards you. He's returned to the womb so to speak, stepped back into his irresponsible teenage days where you don't fit in at all. He needs to rejoin the adult world of marriage and working on a career/future rather than slipping back into he past where you are not. That is why you should be living together, because you are married and he needs to be working on the marriage rather than living like a teenager.

 

I'd suggest being very honest with your counselor and getting feedback on how to handle this from them. But the first thing you need to do is to recognize that as much as you want to be married, if he REFUSES to be married and wants to be a kid again, you can't stop him, and you shouldn't tolerate that forever or it will be torture. So go to counseling and really try to work on it, but don't slip into the mode where you feel powerless and terrified because you WILL be fine even if that happens. You're working on getting an education and are only 22 years old and will have many many years to find someone more suitable for you if he is not the right one for you.

[DN]

How often does he hang out with his buddies? It's all very well to cast that in a bad light but he (and you) are allowed to spend time with friends so long as it isn't so often as to be unreasonable.

 

Is it true you have been sad and depressed this week? It is understandable if you have been but both of you need to get in a frame of mind where you at least make the attempt to be happy and upbeat around each other.

 

There is a lot of negativity on this thread, particularly directed at your husband in very pejorative terms. The way that some people have described him would prejudice any attempt at a reconciliation. It has been hugely depressing just reading it - being one of the principals, you must find it very hard to be positive at all.

 

But if you are to save this marriage, you and by 'you' I mean both of you, need to rediscover the reasons you married one another in the first place, not be looking for reasons to divorce. Of course you must learn from the past, especially the recent past, but if you allow that to dominate the process and define the relationship it will end.

 

So don't be overly influenced by the tags that have been placed on him by people who don't even know him and are ignoring the things you say about him that are positive. You love him, loved him and want to continue loving him.

 

That means you (again, both of you) need to eliminate the negative and accentuate the positive. Attitude and demeanour are highly important here - ideally you should be so much fun to be around that he doesn't particualrly want to spend time with his friend - because you will be his best friend.

[Firiel]

The plan has always been for me to move there in May, with the possibility of him moving to Boise in December if things got too rough. The problem is, he doesn't believe that the distance is a factor at all. Obviously, these issues were there before-- I'm not denying that-- but being distance makes it so much tougher, I think.

 

Should I drop out of school to move back to be with him?

[Seraphim]

I think distance is definitely a factor.

[DN]

Should I drop out of school to move back to be with him?

I would strongly advise against that. There are better ways to fix this, unless you can transfer schools.

[Seraphim]

The plan has always been for me to move there in May, with the possibility of him moving to Boise in December if things got too rough. The problem is, he doesn't believe that the distance is a factor at all. Obviously, these issues were there before-- I'm not denying that-- but being distance makes it so much tougher, I think.

 

Should I drop out of school to move back to be with him?

 

No ,I don't think you should drop out of school.

[lavenderdove]

I think before you make any decisions about moving or not, you should sit down with him and ask him point blank, what do you think would need to change for you to be happy in this marriage and get your feelings back for me?

 

That is a round about way of saying, what happened that caused you to feel alienated, and let's NOT do those things anymore and DO do the things that make him feel closer to you.

 

If he doesn't even mention the distance as being a factor in changing his feelings for you, then i definitely wouldn't drop out of school because long distance is not the sticking point. If he does mention that as a factor, then i'd try to get him to move to be with you in Dec.

 

Get that list of things he says are making him feel alienated and like he doesn't love you or want to be with you, and look at it reasonably to see what you can change and what you can't. If many of them you can change, then start working on those. But if all of them revolve around things you can't work on, then that means this is a personal choice about how he wants to live his life, and he wants to live it as a single person and not be responsible to another person in a marriage.

[redrose85]

It doesn't sound like he has ever truly been in this marriage. First the room-mate and now his family/his brother. He is hiding from becoming a proper family with you. Just my two cents.

[Firiel]

Last night, he just broke down. He finally just broke down and sobbed for probably 45 minutes. The poor guy is hurting so badly through this. I felt terrible because I recognized the way he was crying-- it was incomprehensible devastation. Heck, I've cried that way several times this week. He doesn't know how we got here either. He's hurting just as badly as I am. He wasn't removed from me because he had already given up like I feared. He was removed from me because he's hurting so badly he doesn't know how to deal with it. I hated seeing him like that, but it really broke down a wall between us, I think. I'm still so scared, and I still don't fully understand, but I'm not really struggling with anger towards him anymore. It's impossible to be mad at someone so devastated. For the first time this week I've cried FOR him, not because of him or for us, but for him because I feel so badly about the pain he's in right now.

 

After that, we actually were able to just sit in bed and have fun watching YouTube videos for awhile, and it was the most relaxed I'd felt all week around him. We had a meeting with our therapist today, and it went really well. He still isn't sure we will be able to make it through this, but he said he's feeling better about us. She told us it was really good that he broke down and showed me his emotions, and she encouraged him to let me comfort him, despite the fact that he's feeling so hurt by me right now. He agreed to try. I asked if we had any homework this week, and she said to just keep doing what we are doing because it's working. So I guess that means things are looking good? I guess maybe it's supposed to get worse before it gets better.

[OptomisticGirl]

It's always darkest before the dawn.

[Fudgie]

It's always bad before it gets better. It's like with infected wounds. You need to spend time painfully removing the debris and dead tissue before it can heal. You have to apply the stinging antiseptic and clean the area at its core before you can heal fully. If you don't dig down and find solutions for the big, painful issues, things will never get better.

[redrose85]

I'm glad to hear that things are moving forward bit by bit now. It's a really good sign that he let you in.

[Kalika]

Firiel,

 

I too am keeping my fingers crossed for you. I am sorry you're going through this.

 

After reading your threads, I feel like your boyfriend does a lot of things in theory - like get married - but not really in practice. You said as much yourself that he is fickle and still unsure of where his future lies and what he wants to do. That is precisely the point in one's life when they should ABSOLUTELY NOT get married.

 

No one is really "for divorce" but the fact that he's already allowing himself to go overboard over your mutual female friend, and chatting with his ex, shows that he is not ready for a commitment like marriage. You have been married two years and he is already telling you that he doesn't love you the way a husband should love his wife. Pushing a mariage on him that he is not ready for, and it's pretty obvious he's not ready for it, may really end in misery for you and for him.

 

Being married is a huge commitment and his wife should be his partner and his confidante above all others. He also needs to be more realistic and practical about how to support himself and his new family but it sounds like he is more interested in being around his family (ie. the "kid" role) rather than being a husband, and having fun with his friends and his hobbies, rather than focusing on his relationship. Honestly, it sounds like you were perhaps more ready for the marriage than he is.

 

I am glad to read that things are going better, but please.. REALLY think about whether he is ready for this or not. Him being in emotional turmoil does not mean that he can jerk you around this way emotionally. Right now you are his wife in title only. If he is really not ready for marriage, but you continue to try to push this, you will end up riding one hell of an emotional rollercoaster.