Emotionally, I'm already gone

[How to communicate after a contentious divorce...]

I started out on the staying board but have moved over to undecided. Emotionally, I feel like I checked out our relationship a year or so ago when my husband encouraged me to see other people and then come home and tell him all about it. Since that day, I have a really difficult time plugging into the relationship. I keep telling myself that maybe I can check back into the relationship IF my husband were to show a little bit more interest in dealing with his own issues. He is stuck at step 4 of the 12 step program for sex addiction. He hasn't really gone to counseling and I feel like he is just going through the motions. Then I wonder if perhaps I am projecting and I am the one that is just going through the motions.

How can reinvest in a relationship where I feel like my husband has never made me a priority? Early in the relationship, it was porn. Then it was work or music or computer games. When he was in a position to take his mother's side or protect his wife and kids, he sided with his mother. He has told me that he is bisexual and had a bisexual encounter. He has since retracted that and says that he is straight. I don't know how I can continue to love or trust him. If it weren't for the kids and finances, I think I would have left a long time ago.

Is anybody else in this situation? I feel like I should be able to put the past behind me and put on a smile and take whatever he gives me. I feel like a failure because I don't know how to radically accept him without completely compromising myself.

[vortex of confusion]

I started out on the staying board but have moved over to undecided. Emotionally, I feel like I checked out our relationship a year or so ago when my husband encouraged me to see other people and then come home and tell him all about it. Since that day, I have a really difficult time plugging into the relationship. I keep telling myself that maybe I can check back into the relationship IF my husband were to show a little bit more interest in dealing with his own issues. He is stuck at step 4 of the 12 step program for sex addiction. He hasn't really gone to counseling and I feel like he is just going through the motions. Then I wonder if perhaps I am projecting and I am the one that is just going through the motions.

How can reinvest in a relationship where I feel like my husband has never made me a priority? Early in the relationship, it was porn. Then it was work or music or computer games. When he was in a position to take his mother's side or protect his wife and kids, he sided with his mother. He has told me that he is bisexual and had a bisexual encounter. He has since retracted that and says that he is straight. I don't know how I can continue to love or trust him. If it weren't for the kids and finances, I think I would have left a long time ago.

Is anybody else in this situation? I feel like I should be able to put the past behind me and put on a smile and take whatever he gives me. I feel like a failure because I don't know how to radically accept him without completely compromising myself.

[Lost23]

I felt like this for the last 2 years of my marriage. Sorry to hear you're going through this. Kids and finances do make it difficult. I wish I could tell you it gets easier if you go, but I've yet to experience that myself. Been out 6 months and still dealing with almost daily backlash.

[vortex of confusion]

I felt like this for the last 2 years of my marriage. Sorry to hear you're going through this. Kids and finances do make it difficult. I wish I could tell you it gets easier if you go, but I've yet to experience that myself. Been out 6 months and still dealing with almost daily backlash.

Thanks for responding! I can itemize the pros and cons of staying and going and I know that neither is going to be easy. What kind of backlash are you dealing with?

I know that leaving would really hurt the kids because he is finally starting to at least put forth some effort into his relationship with the kids. The kids have said that both of us are okay when we are not together.

[Lost23]

I felt like this for the last 2 years of my marriage. Sorry to hear you're going through this. Kids and finances do make it difficult. I wish I could tell you it gets easier if you go, but I've yet to experience that myself. Been out 6 months and still dealing with almost daily backlash.

Thanks for responding! I can itemize the pros and cons of staying and going and I know that neither is going to be easy. What kind of backlash are you dealing with?

I know that leaving would really hurt the kids because he is finally starting to at least put forth some effort into his relationship with the kids. The kids have said that both of us are okay when we are not together.

Endless guilt trips, FOG, on the kids now too. Just the same patterns but moreso. The reality that the crap in the relationship was more stable than the crap out of it is harrowing. Sometimes I think it would be easier to go back just to stabilize the fallout, but I've been down this road before. Things don't change. It would be a matter of months, at best a year or two, before the lying and smearing began again. That's the worst for me. I can only handle what I can see. I can't control what she does or says to others and I can't live like that anymore. At least out of it I can be less emotionally affected by it. In it, you don't know it's happening until it's too late and there is an army of people validating her lies because they don't know better. She convinces other people she is the victim of some horrible relationship, then they feed it back to her because they don't know any better and it just perpetuates itself. A snake eating its' own tail.

[thereishope]

I am very interested in any thoughts posted here as well... .Each day I am riding the same teeter totter... .weighing pros and cons, etc... .Very very tiring.   

[Gimme Peace]

Every time he dysregulates, I'm steps closer to leaving. In my mind, I'm gone, not as easy with the heart. Right now things are

"good" but it never stays that way for long. The list of cons continues to get longer.

[thereishope]

Every time he dysregulates, I'm steps closer to leaving. In my mind, I'm gone, not as easy with the heart. Right now things are

"good" but it never stays that way for long. The list of cons continues to get longer.

I feel this way... .Like I'm living two lives... .One when he's home, walking in the dismal darkness of his serious, critical persona, and one when he's away at work... .burdened yet lighter because of the peace of his absence, researching why I feel like running away... .

[Lost23]

Every time he dysregulates, I'm steps closer to leaving. In my mind, I'm gone, not as easy with the heart. Right now things are

"good" but it never stays that way for long. The list of cons continues to get longer.

I feel this way... .Like I'm living two lives... .One when he's home, walking in the dismal darkness of his serious, critical persona, and one when he's away at work... .burdened yet lighter because of the peace of his absence, researching why I feel like running away... .

I remember when I was with my xBPDw I would look so forward to the times she was away, even if just a few hours but then when they came I would spend it anxious. I'd do something I wasn't normally able to do, even if it's just some relaxing, all the while knowing even if I cleaned the house and had dinner ready there would still be something I SHOULD have done. Yet if I ever expected or asked her to do something I had better prepare for a verbal beatdown.

[vortex of confusion]

I can so related to looking forward to times when he is not home. I love it when he goes to bed early so I can enjoy the quiet.

I was at work last night and he sat and emailed back and forth with me the whole night. I have been sick. He complains that he can't get any housework done when he is caring for the kids. The kids were in bed the whole evening yet he did very little. He reported to me everything that he did and I felt compelled to tell him how much I appreciate anything and everything he does. It makes me so angry to feel like I have to praise him for every little bitty thing he does. He is an adult. I shouldn't have to ask him to do things around the house. When I first started emailing him while I was at work, I asked him if he could cook something for me to eat when I got home. Then, when it was about time for me to get off work, he asked me if I wanted him to cook something. I just said no because I knew that if I asked he would get whiny. While I was sick, he did some of the night time parenting but it felt like he found reasons to whine about different things.

When he was gone on a trip for a couple of days, things were so unbelievably peaceful. I want that peacefulness all the time!

[Lost23]

Yeah, pretty much same ^

I would come back from work and the house would look like it had been raided and it was supposed to inspire pity about how hard her life was. But if she went anywhere and came back and it wasn't spotless she would be livid. And the praise needing validation for anything done, and the refusal to do anything unless asked which of course incites hearing what she HAS done and what I HAVEN'T. All too familiar.

A year and a half ago I had a family member die and the day before the funeral I asked if she could bake cupcakes for my family since she is a good baker and it could be a way of showing care since she wasn't attending the service with me (social anxiety, awkwardness with death). She agreed then got caught up doing whatever else and fell asleep. I drank a bottle of vodka and baked them myself at 2 am, crying alone. Awesome... .

[Gimme Peace]

Feels like I have to try SO HARD so that he won't flip a switch, but I can't expect him to do anything or to be supportive.

It feels like I'm living with a five-year-old boy in a man's body. He wants everything done for him, he doesn't want to have any responsibility, he overreacts to anything serious or emotionally charged because he's too immature to be able to deal with it, just like a child. He "won't clean his room" (the house), because "he doesn't like to" (and I do?). If he gets sick, he expects the world to stop turning, but if I'm sick, then he gets irritated because I can't do everything anymore and he ignores me, won't do anything and just plays on his phone for hours on end, leaving more dirty dishes in the sink and the laundry piles up. 

I'm supposed to just accept it's like this because I want my marriage to work? *long sigh*. I'm too smart for this.

Just writing this down makes me feel like a chump. Ridiculous situation.

[vortex of confusion]

Feels like I have to try SO HARD so that he won't flip a switch, but I can't expect him to do anything or to be supportive.

It feels like I'm living with a five-year-old boy in a man's body. He wants everything done for him, he doesn't want to have any responsibility, he overreacts to anything serious or emotionally charged because he's too immature to be able to deal with it, just like a child. He "won't clean his room" (the house), because "he doesn't like to" (and I do?). If he gets sick, he expects the world to stop turning, but if I'm sick, then he gets irritated because I can't do everything anymore and he ignores me, won't do anything and just plays on his phone for hours on end, leaving more dirty dishes in the sink and the laundry piles up. 

I'm supposed to just accept it's like this because I want my marriage to work? *long sigh*. I'm too smart for this.

Just writing this down makes me feel like a chump. Ridiculous situation.

Sending you a great big hug! 

I know exactly what you mean. He will talk about doing something for days but not actually do it. It is so frustrating. I have been sick for the last week. He took care of the kids for a couple of days but everything still falls on me. The kids actually stepped up and the bigger ones were helping the little ones because in their words, ":)ad is a jerk."

He has a stiff neck and keeps talking about it and tells me that I need him to get something on his way home I will have to send him a message via social media. I sent a message back and asked him what was wrong with his phone. I know it was a ploy by him to get attention. I have had terrible sleep because I can't stop coughing yet he now has a stiff neck and it is making his life miserable. He will get to do nothing while I take up the slack and get stuff done.

It is so difficult to be emotionally invested in a situation like this. Like you, I feel like a real chump because he has gotten away with so much crap for so long. And we have friends that tell me, "Oh, he just needs you to take care of him." Yeah, whatever. He is a grown man that chose to father 4 children with me. If I am going to have to do so much on my own anyway, what is the point of staying with him?