Hard Times in Good Relationships (Long)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I admit it, in our twelve years together as a couple, Sr. Weasel and I have been spoiled. Being with him has mostly been easy, and natural, and deeply satisfying. With very few exceptions, not anything we had to work too hard at. I think anyone who knows me would say it’s evident that I worship the ground he walks on, and I can’t really deny that. It’s true that I might be biased, but it’s worth saying that nobody who knows him personally thinks he deserves anything less.

Things are getting hard now. He is in his 7th and final year of a Ph.D. program in clinical psychology. The whole thing has been really difficult for both of us, as we’ve been living far from friends and family, and have moved 5 times in the last 7 years, so I’ve had to change jobs a lot. I will not get into the details of his professional life but sufficed to say the whole process has been highly stressful for him. Enough that it can alter his personality.

In June we moved to another state so he can finish his internship and get the degree completed. I started a new job, a dream job actually, and I got pregnant because he finally decided he could handle the stress of raising a child now that he was almost out of the woods with his degree. We came here in a very hopeful state of mind. And we were both super excited about the baby. Since I’ve spent many years waiting for him to be ready to have a baby, it was wonderful to see how engaged and excited he got about the prospect of being a father.

And two months ago, everything just fell apart. My new dream job turned out to be horrible and I was sick every day while pregnant. I became very depressed as a result of the job and was worried about the baby. It finally got to be too much, and I walked out on the job. It sucked to lose the job but being pregnant made me realize I wanted something more flexible anyway, so I decided to start working on contract from home. Then not even a week later, we lost the baby. No heartbeat on the 10 week ultrasound and after carrying my dead baby around for a week I chose to have it surgically removed. I have not by the wildest stretch of the imagination led a sheltered life, but this was one of the worst things I ever experienced. I thought the first three weeks, the just endless losing my shit crying like a little kid, was the worst of it, but that’s not the worst part. I’m not spending my days crying anymore, or even thinking about it much, but I feel such profound apathy I don’t even care about fixing it.

So this is arguably the hardest time we’ve ever faced in our marriage. I’ve handled the whole thing mostly by shutting down and staying out of his way. I’d say my empathy meter is about 30% full right now, and it’s usually at 100%. It’s NaNoWriMo so I’ve been working heavily on writing fiction while I wait for my first contract to start. I spend my days at home writing, socializing online, and fantasizing, and then when he gets home he complains about how unhappy he is at work and I feel nothing but hopelessness and resentment. What is the fucking point of sacrificing so much to support someone in their dream when all that dream ever does is make them miserable? I’ve tried to talk to him about what’s on my mind and nothing comes. It’s usually so easy to talk to him but lately all I can think of to say is completely negative and unconstructive.

Okay, so that paragraph above is how it was at its worst. I think we are making progress now. We are making plans to move closer to family, and settle down permanently, as soon as his internship is finished next year. We had a fight this weekend, which is good, because I was forced to admit that I’ve been completely disengaged. I said I can’t engage without saying some hurtful things but I don’t know how else we’re going to move forward, and he said that was okay and we are both trying to figure out how we can make the other feel more supported. I feel like we are moving closer together, through some concentrated effort, and we are slowly healing. The last couple of weeks we’ve been talking more and arguably being more proactive in problem solving.

But I also know I have a lot of resentment. A lot. And judging by the two paragraphs I just deleted, we’re going to have to hash it out to get to the bottom of it. It’s going to be ugly but that was part of our discussion this weekend - it’s better to just get all the ugliness out knowing it’s going to hurt in the short term, then to let it fester and destroy everything.

Folks who understand what it’s like to have a beautiful relationship, throw me a freakin’ bone here. Tell me about your hard time and how you got through it.

2

((Spice Weasel))

No advice, just best wishes.

3

I’m sorry Spice Weasel. But it’s good that you are talking about it now. It’s when all communication breaks down that you really have a problem.

I will say that the stress you’re experiencing is just as legitimate as his stress, and you need someone who will listen and support you just as much as he does. It sounds like counseling (solo AND together) could really help. Just my .02.

4

Spice, you two have been through so much. I agree that some counseling is in order. Also, I wonder if you’re having some hormonal fluctuations. You sound clinically depressed, and it might be something akin to post-partum depression.

I’m so sorry all this has happened to you and your husband. A dear friend of mine is always saying, “This too shall pass”. It sounds trite, but it’s so true. You two will eventually get to a new “normal”. Try to remember that underneath all this emotional turmoil you DO love him - it may just take some time and effort to unbury that again.

HUGS.

5

When you look at those lists of the most stressful life events…well, it seems that you’ve been through ALL of them in the past few years, and in some cases multiple times. It’s no wonder you’re going through a hell of a rough patch.

Agreed with the above posters as to a course of action. Hang in there.

6

The fact that you guys are talking about it at all is half of the battle to getting to the other side, so there’s that to feel positive about.

7

First of all, I am really sorry about your baby. This same thing happened to me (at 17 weeks) and it is really, really hard. And it’s a strain. I had children already, and I later had another one, so this doesn’t mean you won’t ever have a baby.

As to the other thing, it’s also temporary. It’s a really hard thing when you’re already both stressed and can’t give each other support, but hang in there. Get through it and your bond will be stronger. Time is a great healer (but as some have said, a lousy beautician).

8

Honestly, I got through a lot of it because I have a short, convenient memory.

My first marriage was to a man I adored. He was generous and kind and smart and hilarious. And he took shitty care of himself and spent our entire marriage on a rollercoaster of emergencies and recoveries, with each recovery being a little less recovered. He spent our entire marriage dying. I never knew him when he wasn’t dying. And our marriage survived and thrived because I would conveniently forget. And get that terrible little shock with every new emergency.

I don’t really recommend this as a strategy. When he died, I finally realized how much stress I had internalized. It was not a small amount.

I think my best advice, which isn’t necessarily even relevant, is to realize that you can love someone, and they can be a great, amazing person, and they can have your best interests at heart, and they can be widely admired by you and everyone who knows them, and they can still be jerks or twits or smug bastards you want to Hassan chop into next week at times. And I think every relationship has some resentment in it. Because every relationship involves some sacrifice and sacrifice sucks. And when someone doesn’t seem to appreciate the sacrifice? Then they suck, too.

I think it’s harder, sometimes, in a really good relationship to allow the one we love to suck on occasion. And it’s harder, sometimes, in a really good relationship to allow ourselves to say that we’re unhappy. Because we should be drooling rainbows or something. So something makes us angry and we don’t feel like it’s fair to be angry with someone so awesome. And then we suck because we’re angry and that must makes us jerks, because only a jerk wouldn’t be drooling rainbows while in a relationship with such an incredible person.

My second marriage is also to someone incredible. Still not drooling rainbows. Still finding things to complain about. Still having hard times on occasion.

Well, I read over that and think it fairly pointless, but I’ll post it in the hope that something will resonate. I hope things get better.

9

Not pointless at all. In fact you articulated pretty well the conflict I’m feeling right now. And it’s harder to talk about, especially with people who know and love you both, because the general feedback is, ‘‘Oh, you have such a wonderful relationship, I’m sure you’ll work it out.’’

And while that may be true, it’s not terribly helpful. People seem to think of it as not that big a deal when in reality it is feeling like a pretty big deal.

10

I’m definitely depressed. I have a therapist but am now completely off all medication, and I’d rather stay that way. We’ve talked about grief counseling but even scheduling the appointment became an issue, because he sent me this incredibly complicated list of all the conditions that had to be satisfied in order for the appointment to be made (in terms of his schedule + only certain people in certain networks can be seen because he’s a psychologist and paranoid about confidentiality.) I sent it back to him and said, ‘‘This is overwhelming, I’m sure you understand your needs better than I do, please schedule the appointment and in exchange I’ll do something else to compensate your lost time.’’ And his reaction was, ‘‘Fine, but I have no time to schedule this appointment so it’s going to be weeks.’’

So as you can see… there are issues.

11

That’s a pretty huge problem. Did your therapist send the list, or your husband? I think that you need to see the therapist or a counselor on your own. It sounds like you’ve been through a lot in the last few years and you both need some sort of break.

That sounds like my version of hell. I don’t really have any advice for you, but please take care of yourself.

12

Speaking as someone who has struggled with depression for the last . . . at this point, I don’t even fucking know anymore. Just that it’s finally getting better, and my biggest worry is how much of my life can I repair before the next one hits. At any rate, speaking as that person, I’ll say a few things:

  • Make hay when the sun shines. When you’ve got the resources - energy, brain power, time, et cetera - get done what you can get done, and make some part of it nonsense, unimportant fun stuff just for you.

  • Find some outlet for your Golem. It takes a lot of resources to leash him in the basement and keep his nasty ass whining from being heard by others, and a lot of times those resources are in short supply. So throw the little bastard a bone. Lock yourself in the bathroom and draw dicks on pictures. Have a little fire in the hibachi and burn something symbolic. Just don’t scare the neighbors or get arrested.

  • Be as honest as you can bear with the people around you about what you’re dealing with. It sucked like hell to tell my boss that I was having difficulties separating the depression-spurred paranoia from reality-based worries about my job performance, but I got the reassurance I needed that if I do screw up, she will actually work with me on it instead of firing me with no notice. So, you may have to say “I’m feeling irrationally paranoid/resentful/insecure” to someone whose respect you value and take the risk that they won’t understand, but chances are that they will, and it will remove some of the burden you’re feeling.

  • Come back here and vent. We love you. Many of us have had to deal with depression and grief. There is a ton of life experience on this board, and it is valuable as hell.

13

I know that whenever things get bad in my relationships, someone telling me “Oh, you’ll work it out” makes me want to taser them. And when the relationship is in that “This should be awesome!” category, the fear of it falling apart is extreme.

Being in a relationship with a great person is like owning a house with a solid foundation and nice layout in a good neighborhood. Just having these good attributes doesn’t mean the house isn’t ugly. And even a beautiful house can look like a tornado hit it. My husband and I have a beautiful apartment and this morning the sunlight was gleaming and sparkling… on all of the cat hair in the hallway. :smack:

You might consider a grief group or something similar. I did that when my first husband died and it not only gave me an avenue for talking about myself, it also let me feel like I was not alone and that I could help others. Helping others can be a great way to feel connected and not so hopeless. We can see ourselves in a different, and better, light when we are reflected in other people.

14

Not pointless because I am stealing that line; I love it.

Not every therapist works for every person for any number of reasons. If scheduling an appt takes weeks, I’m seeing that as not working for you. I’d look for someone else who works better for you.

15

I have nothing to add but I want to let you know I’m rooting for you! You seem like the sort of people who are worth rooting for.

16

[QUOTE=Spiderman]
If scheduling an appt takes weeks, I’m seeing that as not working for you. I’d look for someone else who works better for you.
[/QUOTE]

Just to clarify, my husband is the one who said it would take weeks for him to schedule the appointment if I left it on his plate, because he doesn’t have the time.

My husband sent the list after I agreed to make the appointment. He is a psychologist (student.) Pretty much any time we do anything medical he worries about his colleagues finding out about it. He’s a very private person. I am… not, to say the least, I actually try to be somewhat of an advocate for ending the mental health stigma, in fact the whole reason we got together in college is that I was a member of a mental health advocacy group with an open panel on mental illness that he attended for extra credit. So we couldn’t be further apart on that spectrum and it’s hard not to take his deep-seated need for secrecy as a personal insult. He’s just hunky dory talking to people about my depression, but it would be the end of the goddamn world if anyone ever found out about his problems. Actually he had a confidentiality-related panic attack about a personal issue I was having and trying to get treatment for, to the extent he wanted to write a letter to the clinic treating me asking them to make sure certain colleagues of his didn’t have access to my personal information. Now a part of me doesn’t want to bother. It’s difficult for me to think of this as anything other than him being ashamed of me. In fairness to him, psychology as a field can be pretty fucking ruthless about stigmatizing mental health professionals with mental illness. In the twisted world of academia his concerns have a certain logic.

Right now he is really overwhelmed with work stuff, putting in way more time at the office than he wants to, and now on top of that is looking for a job or postdoc position near the town we anticipate moving to. He feels overwhelmed by the amount of stuff on his plate. I agreed to take on a lot of extra stuff to help him get through this - more chores and more of the miscellaneous crap he doesn’t have time to deal with. I’m also handling the apartment hunting aspect of the move. I’m supposed to feel bad for him being overwhelmed, but I don’t feel bad for him. I am just going through the motions of a supportive wife while feeling resentment. When he sent me that list of requirements for the grief counseling it kind of hit an already existing sore spot.

The fight started because I told him from the beginning of our relationship that I wanted to adopt and he was totally cool with it and for years he told me he was totally cool with it. After waiting for years for him to feel ready for parenthood, he decided he was only ready for it if I got pregnant (vs. adoption.) So I agreed to do this because I am tired of waiting and personally didn’t care much about method relative to my desire to have a baby. One of the many reasons I wanted to adopt is I knew pregnancy and the whole process, going off the pill when I need it to control endometriosis and PMDD, all this stuff would be a fucking mess. And it was a mess, before the miscarriage even happened. It was a complete and total disruption to my life, and in the end we lost the baby so it was a disruption for no good reason. So I am back to square one, facing down the difficulty of life without the pill and trying to get pregnant. I brought up adoption again, and again, he’s not ready for that, that would be too difficult for him to deal with right now.

So basically what’s difficult for me doesn’t matter at all. He told me I have two choices: a) wait until he is ready for adoption or b) start trying to get pregnant again now. I once again chose option b, because, once again, I just want a kid.

So I supposedly have all of this extra time while I wait for my next contract to start. My sleep is completely disordered at this point I’m going to bed 4-5 hours later than he is but I have no external structure forcing me to wake up earlier. I never leave the house and I don’t want to. We never really got the chance to develop a strong social network in our new town before all the shit hit the fan so we have some friends here, but not people we have a ton in common with. I’m content to socialize online and really just counting the days until we get the hell out of here.

I am seeing a counselor, was seeing her before I lost the job or the baby. I haven’t talked to her about the relationship problems yet, though. I know I am depressed. It’s just not the kind of depression I’m used to. I am used to depression that makes me feel desperate, depression that physically hurts. I don’t particularly feel desperate or hurt, just not inclined to do much of anything, just sort of comfortably numb. Comfortable being the key word. My marriage is falling apart and I am just watching it happen from a distance.

This is the first time I have ever articulated any of this, and it’s horrible. It makes me feel horrible. I feel like if I sat down with him and enumerated the many ways I’m feeling resentment it would just be really, really bad. I feel like I would just never stop criticizing.

17

I’m so, so sorry you are going through this. It will get better, but I’m sure it feels horrible to fight your way through it.

Derek and I have been together for 13 years, married for five. In our relationship, we have gone through multiple rough times and only now are really hitting our stride. We started our relationship when he was working in oil and gas and was away from home for two to five weeks at a time. At that time, I started dealing with anorexia and bulimia, and then shortly after I started to get a ‘handle’ on that, alcoholism. In the midst of my issues, he left oil and gas and was accepted to the fire department. Two days before he started training, he fell and broke his arm. He was unable to work and we had to sell our house to make ends meet. He did eventually start training (~6 months later), but through the years he’s had multiple, unrelated surgeries (He’s accident prone, what can I say? Shoulder surgery, and ACL replacement most recently), that had him off work for 6 months to a year, and caused him to get depressed due to inactivity (he’s a very active guy). I was still dealing with my alcoholism and relapsed a number of times - at one point doing a three week outpatient treatment program. Once we felt we had this all sorted out, we decided to start trying to conceive. As you might recall, we couldn’t, and went through a number of IUI’s, an IVF, six early miscarriages, and no baby. And then I decided to do my Masters.

We have broken up twice, he’s threatened to leave me on a few occasions (relapses), but we struggled through it,* with the help of a psychologist *we’ve been with for almost 10 years, and here we are. We are much stronger for it, and have a solid, strong relationship. Most would have given up long ago.

My advice to you is to, instead of pushing each other away during this tough time, look to each other for comfort. Be honest with each other - this one is tough and we’ve only recently reached the point where we can be truly honest. I strongly believe that those going through these tough times usually need a mediator (i.e. therapist) to facilitate productive communication, so I encourage you to keep looking for one that works for both of you. And if your husband is unable to commit, go yourself.

Stay strong. Good luck.

18

That is a ton of things. Those are big issues, not just little, nitpicky things that someone should pooh pooh, but really big issues about decision making, support, and autonomy. So, please don’t allow yourself, him, or anyone to minimize what’s happening.

I fear that the reason you feel you’d never stop criticizing is that you don’t really feel able to criticize regularly. If it gets bottled up with no free discussion, then lots of things swirl and compound and intensify each other. So potentially some of the little things might really disappear if some others are spoken of.

19

Yeah, I kind of feel like I have the choice to remain at a distance or engage at the cost of some major unpleasantness. Like tonight he’s going to come home, he’s going to be exhausted from work because he always is, and we will have one hour together before he has to go to bed. During that hour we’ll have a choice between watching some stuff on Netflix so we can move with minimal disturbance to the next day, or talking about some really heavy shit so we can eventually start feeling things again. And I want to protect him from all the heavy shit because even if I don’t have feelings, I still have a rational understanding that feelings matter. I don’t want to make his situation worse. Which is why I don’t feel panic or anguish right now, but I feel the need to keep this from sliding off the rails because at some point I know there will be a lot of panic and anguish if I don’t get my shit together.

So maybe I should just try to figure out his list of requirements and make the appointment myself. I think he should do it his own damned self but I care more about the relationship than I do about having that particular bit of my feelings validated.

20

Well, it’s true that we can all sacrifice some parts of having our feelings validated, and we can all probably be less petty in general. But I’m not sure in this case if this is really about having your feelings validated. It seems more like an issue of someone putting up barriers, ones that feel a bit artificial from this perspective, to your getting resolution and care. It feels like an attempt to push away and deprioritize and not get fully on board. That’s troubling.