[Jasmine06]

Hello,
I am new to the site and am feeling stuck- not sure what to do. Here is a review of my marriage. My husband and I began dating June 2010 fresh out of college, and we were in a committed relationship a few days later. He said "I love you" after a month or two, and I felt obligated to say it back. We were jokingly looking at rings 2 months after that, and he asked my father's permission to marry that Christmas. We were engaged 8 months later, and married 4 months after that. Yes, we were young and it moved much too fast. He had never been in a relationship before, and I thought he was perfect.

I should mention that our relationship was greatly accelerated due to his job in the Army- and an overseas assignment that requires the couple to be married for sponsorship. After our wedding, we decided to try to start our family (this probably sounds crazy to people unfamiliar with how quickly tends thing to move in military relationships.) I got pregnant 6 weeks after our marriage and it was VERY planned.

We were living overseas at this point, and my husband was deployed to Afghanistan when I was 8 months along. He missed the birth and the first half of our son's first year. Not having him there to help with the baby was very difficult. I had post-partum depression and PTSD from the birth, and a baby who woke up every two hours for 4 months.

Since he's returned, I've grown apart from him. I am no longer in love with him, and honestly I'm not sure if I ever was. Things moved so quickly that I think I was just in lust- excited to find someone who loved me so much and made me feel great. I know that he is a good man and a good father, but he is far behind his peers in maturity, even his friends who are not in a relationship or have a family. He acts like a teenager and only takes initiative when I make it very clear that I am unhappy with his behavior. Everything he does bothers me, and in the beginning of our relationship we never fought. The thought of sex with him disgusts me, and I wince at his touch, although he is very in shape. Once we moved in together when we got engaged, I suspected I made the wrong choice. I seriously considered calling off the wedding or at least delaying it, and discussed my feelings with him.

Now, we have an almost 1yo and we have to continue living overseas for another 2 years. My family and friends are 5000 miles away and I have put serious effort into making my own friends and finding my own hobbies. I have a Master's degree and haven't worked since we got married. I've applied for 6 jobs. At this point, I am convinced our marriage is the problem, not the military lifestyle. I feel trapped in that we spend all our free time together and I'm at home alone with the baby all day during the week. We have gone to marriage counseling and I didn't feel like I could be totally honest in therapy because he is on a totally different page and still loves me very much (even though my frustrations in the marriage have led me to being very nasty towards him.) I don't know what to do. Do I stay in a marriage that I don't think should've ever started with someone I don't know if I ever loved? Do I get out while my son is still too young to remember much? Please help.

 

[skb]

Your right about your son. A divorce now vs later will be much easier on him. You made some bad choices. Make the correct choice and see a lawyer, get your divorce started.

 

[EleGirl]

You are in a bad situation because it's not right to deprive your son of his father, nor his father of his son.

By not being honest in counseling, you made it impossible to repair your marriage. So now you have what you have.. a very broken marriage.

Do you have friends who you can do things with? You say that you are alone all day with your child. Surely there are other military spouses who are home during the day. Do you social with them?

Is there some other guy who you are interested in now, who is paying more attention to you?

There are ways to rebuild your love for your husband if you are interested in working on it. Two books that would help you are "His Needs, Her Needs" and "Love Busters". They talk about how to restructure your relationship and rebuild your feelings of love.

When a person is in the place you are right now, we tend to rewrite the past. We do not remember the love and the deep feelings we had for our spouse in the past. It happens all the time. With the right kind of work on a relationship it can all come back.

How many hours a week do you and your husband spend together doing date-like things, just the two of you?

 

[northernlights]

If your husband's immaturity is your biggest complaint, then I'd say keep working at it for a while longer. Your husband is what, 23? He's little more than a teenager, and probably won't fully mature until he's 30, maybe even 35. It's my observation that parenthood propels women into adulthood faster than it does men. It's a big cause of conflict in marriage.

You have to be honest with your husband. A marriage counselor could help him grow up a lot.

My grandparents have always been very honest about the fact that their first 5 or so years married were very rocky. They were young, he was fresh out of the war, and they had 3 boys very quickly. Now they've been happily married for 66 years.

 

[cdbaker]

Yeah I think you might owe the marriage just a bit more time from what I am reading here. You have to be 100% honest in MC, or else you are condemning it to fail and it's just a waste of time. If not finding a job is a problem (as you have indicated the marriage must be the problem, not the not finding a job) then perhaps you and your husband should consider exiting the military lifestyle instead? Especially if you already have your masters degree, as I imagine you should provide a great income while he finds a new career or goes back to school. It seems very possible to me that you just might not be cut out for being a stay at home mom/homemaker and/or military wife. You didn't really mention any clear cut problems with him, so I'm inclined to think that your unhappiness has more to do with the lifestyle and living arrangements you are presently in. What do you think?