Are you taking any medication other than Xanax for your immediate anxiety symptoms. In addition to your therapy, which it sounds like you badly need, you might want to talk to your doctor about something effective for obsessions.
Are you taking any medication other than Xanax for your immediate anxiety symptoms? In addition to your therapy, which it sounds like you badly need, you might want to talk to your doctor about something effective for obsessions.
Our son is probably pretty confused right now but appears to be handling things well. He definitely is favoring his dad which is understandable. He’s a quiet kid and has been noncommittal about the whole thing. He has a summer job that he likes a lot, that has been keeping him busy.
As far as meds go I’ve been prescribed Seroquel but would prefer not to go the medication route if at all possible. I tried Celexa but noticed a slight uptick in my anxiety level, though that could have been situational. What I’d really like to do is address the underlying issues that have led to all of this. It may be necessary to give it a try if I don’t get some relief but first I’m going to stick with therapy. I also really need to get back to an exercise routine.
The dynamic here is definitely challenging to deal with. My husband has assumed more of a parental role and is also somewhat controlling at times. Understandable that he feels off balance so I’m trying to be patient with that. Today I had appointments and errands to run and he asked several times what I did, where I went and the times I was here and there, the length of time it took to do this and that, and so on. I think that once I do start to feel better it will cause the dynamic to shift again and will possibly upset him.
Well…you say he’s not emotionally communicative, but this sounds like he’s communicating that he cares about you. At the very least - he sounds loyal. Even if he’s a bit stiff.
That’s a normal reaction in this situation. One thing that y’all will have to do to work things in your marriage is to rebuild trust with each other. You don’t trust him because he failed you emotionally, and he doesn’t trust you because you went elsewhere for that need.
It can be worked past. Couples therapy would help a lot.
I am getting thsi weird vibe off of this thread that you are enjoying a sense of power and humilation that you are putting your husband through. I have seen it many times. If I were your husband I would put you out of the house until you made your mind up and most likley I would have moved on before that happened. At some point you will crash and burn before this come to a conclusion. I would get my sh–t together and try to resolve this mutualy.
For me, anyway, this is the whole thing and basically what it comes down to.
You’re emotionally weak and have seriously unaddressed psychological problems that led you to some juvenile man-child with whom you’d had an affair simply because you saw an image in your mind about how a partnership was supposed to work in an indefinite way. As though nothing were supposed to change. It sounds like while your ex-husband was unable to meet you half-way, you were unwilling to do the same with him. That’s just conjecture based on what you’ve written, though. I must say that I don’t really trust your side of the story completely and I don’t think that there is any reason to. You strike me as someone who would romanticize and dramatize the situation more than it needs to be. Your husband, on the other hand, sounds reasonable and supportive even if he may not share the idea of a soap opera marriage–or, if that’s too harsh, if he just doesn’t want demonstrative love for whatever reason but is still very obviously dedicated to his wife and family.
Anyway, people have offered enough advice with you in mind. I just find this whole situation to be selfish in a very ugly way to a lot of people and I’m not sure that I feel any sympathy at all. You had a lot of chances to do things very differently and you chose the worst possible route. No wonder your son is on your ex-husband’s side.
Tad–, that seems a little harsh. She seems overly needy, yes and she chose to marry this guy, true… but still, as a woman myself, I’m finding it difficult to judge her negatively when she’s been putting up with this for years:
I mean christ, maybe HE doesn’t need hugs, but if he doesn’t recognize that SHE does (because most people like to hug their spouses, for fuck’s sake), and hug her at least once a week, that is a serious problem. I’d be going absolutely nutso in that situation, no lie.
I agree that I definitely need to pull it together and that the emotional affair has been selfish on my part. My emotions took over and hurt a lot of people. I haven’t dramatized anything though, what I posted is the truth. A lot of things that were going on in the marriage left me feeling very lonely. Marriage counseling didn’t work. Telling him how I felt didn’t work. I never expected that it would come to this.
Every day I struggle. Emotionally weak? Right now, yes. It frustrates me that others seem to be able to handle more stress than I can. I brought this on myself and am very aware of that. The guilt is tearing me up. I feel even more guilty when I see my husband helping me. I alternate between grief, anxiety, guilt, depression ever day. It is raw and painful and nearly more than I can take. The rational, thinking part of me doesn’t seem to be working very well right now.
I don’t enjoy putting my husband through this. We may have our issues but intentionally humiliating him is the furthest thing from my mind.
For me, it depends on how clearly she’s been able to articulate her needs. If she just waited a month for a non-back-pat hug but never specifically said that’s what she wanted, then it’s kind of on her and maybe Tad– isn’t being so harsh. But if she’s had 10,000 conversations with him about it and he simply refuses to acknowledge her need and feels like it would be breaking his arms off to fucking compromise and give her a nice, warm hug once in a damn while, then it’s on him.
I also think she dodged a bullet with the emotional-affair-guy. He would have been much, much worse about demanding that she meet his needs with probably very little regard to hers. She would have only gotten warm hugs from affair-guy if warm hugs were something he liked.
The question to me at this point is: are both husband and wife willing to get counseling to work on their communication, trust and respect? Are they both willing to work really hard at getting back to where they once were? If so, then doing that work seems like it would be totally worth it for the child’s sake. However, if one or the other of them isn’t fully committed to working on the marriage, then it’s probably in the kid’s best interests for them to split up and figure out trust, respect, and communication on their own. Either way, I think the OP should avoid any other romantic entanglements of any kind until her business with her husband is sorted out one way or the other.
Sounds like it went further than just an emotional affair.
You weren’t very specific, but is that line Mark sticking his penis in your vagina?
IMHO, if you got physical to the point of kissing, that took it beyond an emotional affair.
This right here. Exactly.
Except that the point isn’t to “get back to where [you] once were”, because that place obviously wasn’t working very well or ya wouldn’t be here now. The point is to get to where you want and need to be to have an actual functional, satisfying, happy relationship.
I’m having a hard time mustering any sympathy for you, purple haze. Sounds like you’ve put your husband through hell and used one of your coworkers.
Thanks, I meant “get back to where you once were” in terms of liking each other again, and being committed to working on communication, trust, and respect.