We’re married 16 years with two kids ages five and seven.
In the last five years we were overspending greatly, which resulted in long office hours for myself. My wife also started to work full-time.
The future was just starting to look good, when my wife said she’s not in love with me anymore. She felt that during this difficult period of time she hadn’t felt me closer to her and more concerned about her emotions.
It’s true, I’d focused on our survival and forgot the emotional side, but I never missed a birthday and was always home to help.
Now she wants some distance to find herself and doesn’t want to discuss our issues and try to work on them. She’s web-chatting and focusing energy on an old flame (before marriage), talking about old times and his present issues.
We’re seeing a marriage counsellor but without progress as she doesn’t want to open up.
Any ideas?
- Pushed Aside
She’s escaping through this contact with her ex, and may even have a foot halfway out the door. It’s time to deal with realities as well as emotions.
Tell her that you regret having been less aware of her feelings, but that you truly love her and want to work on your marriage. Gently introduce the fact that her distancing herself is raising the possibility of a separation, and that there are legal consequences you must both consider: financial splits, mutual debts, child custody and support. These issues are as hard to work out as some marital issues can be, and she can’t continue to hide from them through an emotional affair.
Ask your counsellor for help in raising this reality check with your wife; you’ll need to stress your desire to at least try to resolve the past hurts between you, rather than go down the rocky road to divorce.
I’ve been in a relationship with a man 12 years my senior for a year; we both deal with depression and troubled family lives.
But because of the issues he deals with, he has anger problems that emerge when he gets drunk. He’s never resorted to physical violence nor do I feel he will, but he’s been verbally abusive.
I have trouble talking to him about his alcoholism because I drink a lot too. I don’t know whether I should risk continuing with a person who resorts to alcohol to deal with past emotional wounds.
I want to help him without hurting myself in the process and I don’t know how.
If he stopped drinking, most things in his life would improve (socially, financially, physically) and I wish he could see how his drinking problem is affecting his world.
Is there hope?
- Uncertain
There’s more hope for you on your own. You, at least, recognize that you drink a lot, and that alcoholism has a negative impact on many aspects of a person’s life.
I’m hopeful, too… that, having mentioned your own excess, you’ll start taking stock of the consequences, worry about your own health effects from drinking, and even consider that your choice of a partner started with drinking together, rather than with mutual respect.
Stop making excuses for his anger and abuse - it may be verbal now, while you’re still only dating, but as his drinking increases, so can his comfort at lashing out at you.
Leave him. It may trigger him to stop drinking. Or it may just save you from worse abuse.
My mother is verbally vicious and loves nasty name-calling. She badmouths my husband and me when she talks to our children, making them uncomfortable.
My father has to live with her wrath so, he doesn’t say much.
She’s been interfering with my parenting of my son, 16. When I grounded him for good reasons, she invited him to stay at her place.
She didn’t speak to my brother for three years and I fear the same treatement.
She’s already called me a “b….”
- Stressed
Your mother’s a bully, so show your strength. Tell her that badmouthing you to your children is unacceptable; warn her that by adding stress to everyone in the family, she’ll end up losing access to all of you, including her grandchildren.
If she continues her bad behaviour, stop all contact. Call one month later and offer to re-connect, IF she’ll respect her limits.
Repeat as necessary.
Tip of the day:
Escaping a marriage through a fantasy affair only brings “distance” until the realities of divorce hit home.
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