Hi all
I am here looking for a shoulder and some serious advice. I am feeling very low right now.
Some of you might know some stuff about me. I will do the background bit.
I am in my thirties. I am married (six months) after being together five years. We have two children together (3 and 2) and I have two older children from my previous relationship (8 and 6.) That relationship (not married) I broke up after four years because he was more interested in drinking and partying than our relationship and being a father. The older ones were 3 and a baby at the time so I was a single parent until I met my now-husband.
As for me...? I am I guess an intellectual. Emotional. I have two degrees and have always thought of myself as academic. Not social so much, I used to be awkward and incredibly shy. I have broken that down over the years but am still "quiet" if you like. I think a LOT, analyse near enough everything. I am very empathetic and feel emotional pain a lot, and that of other people. When me and my husband had counselling (more on that later), the counsellor said I was very emotionally intelligent. In tune with how I feel and why. He often says I am really sensitive. I am. Sometimes this is an observation but others, a criticism. We are very different like that, he is very blunt and forthright at times. Sometimes he is like this with me without realising, other times I can tell he is dampening down what he is saying so as to not hurt my feelings. Since his EA (more about that in a min), I have often found he is editing his thoughts in order to "protect" me. This usually takes the form of him just not telling me stuff he decides would hurt me, or editing his feelings - a mild example is him saying that he doesn't notice other girls, just me. Being serious. You get the idea.
Why I'm on here...
I initially posted about my husband before we married. I wanted to get married but he had various reasons as to why he initially didn't want to or why we should wait a while. In retrospect he says he simply wanted to give me a nice wedding which meant waiting until we had the money to do so. Another issue was that he started to withhold affection. He had initially been the more affectionate one, but this dynamic swapped over and he would reject my attempts at affection, often in a quite nasty or blunt way. In hindsight he always had a reason and never felt he WAS being blunt.
A few months after, he had an EA with a girl he met at work. I knew all about her but trusted him implicitly. At this point we were engaged and had a five-month-old baby. There was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing on his part and after he decided he wanted to stay and work things out, he broke NC and I threw him out. He moved back in a week later and we went to counselling.
Fast forward to now... We got married six months ago. I thought very carefully and felt we had made enough progress to do this. I won't say everything was 100% better but I felt we had made massive strides. I wasn't planning on leaving so felt it was the natural next step and he got on board.
However... I am down. SERIOUSLY down. I realised last week I am depressed. I am in a bad spot.
I am seriously co-dependent. Horrendously so. I have been aware of this for a while and taken steps to work on it but it still plagues me. Just him snapping at me when I logically know he's tired from work and not really mad at me, is all it takes for my mood to dip right down. If I'm unhappy with us, then the world is bleak. If he's doing all the right things, I am on top of the world and life is great.
When I am down I don't want to go out. I don't socialise. My hobby is suffering because I rarely go anymore. I don't see friends much. A friend invited me out on Friday evening; I liked the idea of going but knew I would do what I always do now, wait til the last minute then cancel. My husband called me on this. Says I never want to go out without him. I explained I feel unsafe going out into town at night on my own (true) and frequently I am so tired I just don't have the inclination to (also true.) What I didn't say was that I feel resentful that he never makes plans for us to go out but happily goes out himself (long-standing issue.) Also, in truth, I don't want to go out for drinks, get drunk and put myself in a vulnerable position. I know I am VERY vulnerable at the moment and in that kind of situation I worry it'll only take someone being nice and supportive to me for lines to get blurry.
I am suffering with my self-esteem in relation to him. I worry he doesn't find me attractive. This stems from his EA and the attention he gave the OW. Outwardly he generally does little to show this. He says he does feel it. I have asked certain things of him yet he feels reticent to do them. I try hard to be reasonable with what I ask. He says he forgets. Or that I just want him to think about me ALL of the time instead of other things. I do not feel prioritised. I feel very much like he sees our marriage as a kind of separate entity that just runs everyday by itself, and that if he has to put any work into it, something is seriously wrong. He doesn't really comprehend the idea of putting effort in to maintain things. I often feel like the maid and the nanny to him, and his room mate rather than the wife he is proud to have.
I am desperately unhappy. I feel like a failure - we have only been married six months and it should be blissful. It isn't. I have had some very dark thoughts recently. I love him very much but feel stuck. I know I can't change him and I can change myself, but I HAVE changed myself and that hasn't made things much better. I just don't know what I can legitimately expect or ask for from him and what I should accept and learn to live with -and if so, HOW I do that.
I am a good person. I do a lot for him. He says this a lot. He says he doesn't want me to change anything and he likes me just as I am. But I don't feel, well, functional I suppose. I need help to deal with how I feel and how things are so if anyone can offer something I'm all ears...
I am here looking for a shoulder and some serious advice. I am feeling very low right now.
Some of you might know some stuff about me. I will do the background bit.
I am in my thirties. I am married (six months) after being together five years. We have two children together (3 and 2) and I have two older children from my previous relationship (8 and 6.) That relationship (not married) I broke up after four years because he was more interested in drinking and partying than our relationship and being a father. The older ones were 3 and a baby at the time so I was a single parent until I met my now-husband.
As for me...? I am I guess an intellectual. Emotional. I have two degrees and have always thought of myself as academic. Not social so much, I used to be awkward and incredibly shy. I have broken that down over the years but am still "quiet" if you like. I think a LOT, analyse near enough everything. I am very empathetic and feel emotional pain a lot, and that of other people. When me and my husband had counselling (more on that later), the counsellor said I was very emotionally intelligent. In tune with how I feel and why. He often says I am really sensitive. I am. Sometimes this is an observation but others, a criticism. We are very different like that, he is very blunt and forthright at times. Sometimes he is like this with me without realising, other times I can tell he is dampening down what he is saying so as to not hurt my feelings. Since his EA (more about that in a min), I have often found he is editing his thoughts in order to "protect" me. This usually takes the form of him just not telling me stuff he decides would hurt me, or editing his feelings - a mild example is him saying that he doesn't notice other girls, just me. Being serious. You get the idea.
Why I'm on here...
I initially posted about my husband before we married. I wanted to get married but he had various reasons as to why he initially didn't want to or why we should wait a while. In retrospect he says he simply wanted to give me a nice wedding which meant waiting until we had the money to do so. Another issue was that he started to withhold affection. He had initially been the more affectionate one, but this dynamic swapped over and he would reject my attempts at affection, often in a quite nasty or blunt way. In hindsight he always had a reason and never felt he WAS being blunt.
A few months after, he had an EA with a girl he met at work. I knew all about her but trusted him implicitly. At this point we were engaged and had a five-month-old baby. There was a lot of to-ing and fro-ing on his part and after he decided he wanted to stay and work things out, he broke NC and I threw him out. He moved back in a week later and we went to counselling.
Fast forward to now... We got married six months ago. I thought very carefully and felt we had made enough progress to do this. I won't say everything was 100% better but I felt we had made massive strides. I wasn't planning on leaving so felt it was the natural next step and he got on board.
However... I am down. SERIOUSLY down. I realised last week I am depressed. I am in a bad spot.
I am seriously co-dependent. Horrendously so. I have been aware of this for a while and taken steps to work on it but it still plagues me. Just him snapping at me when I logically know he's tired from work and not really mad at me, is all it takes for my mood to dip right down. If I'm unhappy with us, then the world is bleak. If he's doing all the right things, I am on top of the world and life is great.
When I am down I don't want to go out. I don't socialise. My hobby is suffering because I rarely go anymore. I don't see friends much. A friend invited me out on Friday evening; I liked the idea of going but knew I would do what I always do now, wait til the last minute then cancel. My husband called me on this. Says I never want to go out without him. I explained I feel unsafe going out into town at night on my own (true) and frequently I am so tired I just don't have the inclination to (also true.) What I didn't say was that I feel resentful that he never makes plans for us to go out but happily goes out himself (long-standing issue.) Also, in truth, I don't want to go out for drinks, get drunk and put myself in a vulnerable position. I know I am VERY vulnerable at the moment and in that kind of situation I worry it'll only take someone being nice and supportive to me for lines to get blurry.
I am suffering with my self-esteem in relation to him. I worry he doesn't find me attractive. This stems from his EA and the attention he gave the OW. Outwardly he generally does little to show this. He says he does feel it. I have asked certain things of him yet he feels reticent to do them. I try hard to be reasonable with what I ask. He says he forgets. Or that I just want him to think about me ALL of the time instead of other things. I do not feel prioritised. I feel very much like he sees our marriage as a kind of separate entity that just runs everyday by itself, and that if he has to put any work into it, something is seriously wrong. He doesn't really comprehend the idea of putting effort in to maintain things. I often feel like the maid and the nanny to him, and his room mate rather than the wife he is proud to have.
I am desperately unhappy. I feel like a failure - we have only been married six months and it should be blissful. It isn't. I have had some very dark thoughts recently. I love him very much but feel stuck. I know I can't change him and I can change myself, but I HAVE changed myself and that hasn't made things much better. I just don't know what I can legitimately expect or ask for from him and what I should accept and learn to live with -and if so, HOW I do that.
I am a good person. I do a lot for him. He says this a lot. He says he doesn't want me to change anything and he likes me just as I am. But I don't feel, well, functional I suppose. I need help to deal with how I feel and how things are so if anyone can offer something I'm all ears...