My wife and I were arguing this weekend and the Divorce word got thrown about. It’s not the first time she’s hinted that she’s thinking that way but it’s the first time she’s come right out and used the word. The last few days have been okay but it’s obvious that we’re not talking about it.
I’m not surprised; we have stressors on our marriage. My ex and the effect that it has on my oldest son is a big part of it. I’ve mentioned it on the board frequently, so I won’t rehash it now. The second is something I’ve never mentioned but will do so now as it may help you understand her side.
This time last year my wife was deathly ill. She’d lost nearly 30 lbs and was mostly bedridden before we figured out it wasn’t just some kind of flu. She was months recovering her strength. I spent the better part of the last year as nurse rather than husband. Thankfully, she’s better now, although for a while we thought the medication she took for her kidneys may have brought on kidney failure.
Now things are different between us. Our priorities have changed. She wants to take trips and go out weekends do more partying. As for me, I want to provide a stable pace for my sons and basically keep the plans going we had when we first got together. I completely understand how she feels or as mush as possible I think. Being that sick has to make her want more, I get it. At the moment we don’t have the money for any of it, medical bills has wiped out what savings we had and we’re not done paying for some things. We have insurance but out of pocket expenses still racked up the debt.
All of these things have sort of snowballed on us. She’s constantly moody and I can’t help but feel she’s getting resentful of my kids, not because of anything they’ve done but because their mother contributes nothing. We’re constantly arguing over trivial nonsense. It’s had a profound effect on our sex life, as it it’s mostly nonexistent. Not just because of the arguments but because I have a hard time even liking her right now.
Now I don’t know what to do. Do I suggest counseling? I’ve heard its process you have to believe I and I don’t. I’m not even sure if it’s fair to her or myself to even try and save it given we not want different things. Is it better to try and walk away now? I think things would have been much better for my sons had I tried not so hard to make it work with their mother. I don’t want to make the mistake of holding on to hard and making things even worse.
Find a therapist that you both can stand and start with the counseling. I have to be honest, it didn’t save my marriage, but it did give us a better shot than if we skipped the therapy.
If you both really and truly want to make it work somehow, therapy is your best shot. If one or both of you have already mentally moved on, it’s probably a lost cause.
I can relate to a lot of your story and I really feel for you. No matter what road you take, it won’t be easy, but you’ll feel a lot better when you come out from the other end of this no matter what the resolution. Believe me, I know that you feel like you’re in an impossible situation trying to balance the realities of what you need to do to keep things afloat and your wife’s fantasy life. There is no magic cure but a bunch of little steps can get you there.
Feel free to email me privately if you want to vent or talk in more detail.
If you didn’t have sons, then I’d say end it, but as there are kids involved, honestly I don’t think anything short of utter misery or abuse (which are things that only you can honestly define for yourself) should be grounds for divorce. I say that as a child of divorce myself.
At the very least, I think you do owe it to them to give counseling a try. If nothing else, to demonstrate to them that you are talking some responsibility for your decision and your relationship.
And no, I don’t think you have to “believe in” counseling like you have to “believe in” walking on hot coals for it to be successful. A counselor is simply someone who listens to both of you and makes specific suggestions for how the two of you can sort your shit out. If he’s a good counselor, he won’t take sides, but will help you two deal with your own stuff. What you’ve been doing obviously isn’t working, so maybe some new ideas will help.
Even if it does end up in divorce, at least you’ll feel better knowing you tried, right? I would, anyway.
As a many-scarred warrior of many years of marital conflict, I’ll offer the one piece of advice that has (1) kept my marriage together, (2) made it stronger while we healed and (3) has turned a hopeless situation into a life of love and mutual joy.
Live for each other.
True, those four words, without any context, are useless. Counseling provides the context. You mentioned an ex, which means you’ve probably been down that road before, and only you know why it didn’t work. A quick guess is that your current problems stem from the fact that neither of you puts the other first in his/her life. I know you love your kids – I’ve helped my wife raise two of our own – but if they are more important to you than she is, you cannot possibly give her the attention and affection she needs. Conversely, if lifestyle is more important to her than your marriage, it makes it very difficult to like her, let alone love her.
Your discription of your devotion to her during the time of illness sounds less like a labor of love than the discharging of an obligation. On the other hand, it is an exhausting and emotionally wounding vocation to care for a loved one whose illness turns into weeks and then months. You need some recovery time of your own, and she needs to help you with that. Going together to a marriage counselor or therapist is one way she can do that.
Ultimately, only you know whether your marriage is worth saving. But you can’t possibly know that until you talk to a professional counselor.
Some marriages are salvaged, some are not. Mine wasn’t, but the therapy helped immensely and today I consider my ex a friend. That’s a very good thing since he’s also my sons’ father.
My current husband says that therapy also helped him acknowledge that his first marriage was over, and got him a long way down the healing path. I don’t think he would have said he “believed” in counseling either, but today he’d tell you how much it helped him.
Get counseling, it can work if you both open up and agree to listen to him/her and each other. Together.
Go to the book store and get some material regarding relationships. We found some excellent stuff at a Christian book store. The material need not be religious in nature to be helpful, of course. Videos, tapes, cd, dvds, there is tons of material out there to guide people through tough times and to better help understand one another.
The common theme among popular authors these days is the Love Tank and mutual Love and Respect for each other. Men need more respect than love and woman vice-versa. Chapman is a pretty good author to start with.
Get thee to a library if you don’t want to spend the coin.
We also found that going to a therapist can be very insightful. You can either go alone or with your SO or a combination of both.
Woman’s needs are different from men’s needs and when you guys loose sight of that fact you become resentful and things start to fall apart. Once you re-open your eyes to the love you had when you first met you can re-kindle the fire. It’s working for us, it can work for anyone. We were on pretty thin ice just a few weeks ago, the D word got tossed around some too.
Of course you should try to save your marrage. Whether you can or not is another question but you have to make the effort. So I will echo the suggestion that you get a professional counselor and I must also say that I am not a great fan of the mental health field in general.
What a counselor does for you is help you say the things that need to be said with a minimum of misunderstanding. Rather that yelling “I hate when you do that”, a counselor can help you say what you really mean and can help your spouse hear it. They can help you get your message across.
I also get the impression that your wife is a step-mom to at least one of your kids? There are all kinds of step-parent issues that rarely get talked about, and that non-step-parents will never understand, that a counselor can help you work through.
Thanks for the response so far. I just wanted to respond to a couple of things.
Whynot said:
The kids are mine from my first marriage. I’m not sure if that matters much.
Sunrazor said:
That really rang a chord. It didn’t seem like work at first but it was harder as it persisted. I think I’m more bothered that I feel like I didn’t get the same woman back that I went into it with, if that makes sense.
Uncommon Sense
Neither of us is religious, but I’d willing to ready to read anything you’d suggest. Is there a particular book you’d recommend? Do you have a first name for “Chapman”?
Count me as another vote for trying to save your marriage. It may not be possible–especially if your wife wants out–but it sounds like you’ve gone through some very stressful times in the not too distant past, and reacted differently. This is natural. Talking to a counselor might give you both a better understanding of where each other is coming from.
My friends just went through a similar thing (one spouse being ill) and it wrecked their marriage too, to the point of the guy sleeping on a floor in some other house for a while. It ended up working out but I think it took about a year.
There’s no denying that her illness changed BOTH of you - you as the caregiver and her as the sick person. You just changed in different ways/ended up with different outcomes.
That stuff might all be on the “outside” tho - not your core feelings about your marriage. A therapist will help you arrange those feelings in the right order, get to the bottom of things, and most of all, communicate. You guys both need to feel empathy for eachother and that’s a hard thing to do while you’re also both feeling bad inside.
If you just give up now you might regret it later. If you go to a therapist and then decide to give up, you might not feel any regret because you know exactly why it had to end.
Also, it’s perfectly acceptable to go to couples’ counseling without the determination that you’re going to “save” your marriage, as long as you are upfront about it. Obviously it would be better to, but it might not be the right thing for you two. If you really don’t know what to do, you should definitely go to counseling together.
Suburban Plankton and I just had our first marriage counseling appointment this morning. He didn’t “believe in” counseling for a very long time. He recently started going on his own as a precursor to join counseling. Not that he’s been, he sees the value of it. We both really like our lady and she was recommended to us by some very good friends who went to her.
Also, if you go to someone and you don’t like her. Go see someone else before giving up. Oh, and feel free to PM or email me if you want.
Absolutely do that. But beware of a trap inherent in that. It may be that as you shop around, you’ll sense that everyone you see is either on your side or on hers. In fact, the therapist is neutral, but neither of you will see it that way. That will give you just one more thing to fight about. I think if you know about that trap before hand, it will help.
Uncommon Sense, what’s a Love Tank? Is that something like a gas tank, but for love? It sounds pretty fascinating.
I read this book many years ago. I’m not a fan of most “self help” books, but I found this one to be right on in letting me understand why men and women do the things they do in a relationship and why they often misunderstand each other. If you can find a copy I would highly recommend it. I also agree w/ counseling, but it’s important to find a counselor that you’re both reasonably comfortable w/, so if it doesn’t work first time out, keep trying. It sounds like you want to save this marriage, but maybe you think she doesn’t, so you’re kind of reluctant to try. I’d go for it.
Rubin, Lillian B. Intimate Strangers: Men and Women Together. New York: Harper & Row, 1983. This intriguing book is a compilation of case study interviews conducted by the author. Using a combination of cultural factors and psychoanalytic theory, Rubin offers a fascinating explanation for why male-female relationships are difficult to manage. Differing male and female perceptions of intimacy are explored in detail.
One more vote for counseling. Even if it doesn’t save the marriage, it can help make the break-up less painful and help you and your wife reach an amicable divorce. Other than that, I don’t have any advice, just good wishes. I hope everything works out for the best, whatever “best” might be in this situation.
I’m not Uncommon Sense, but here’s a blurb about the love tank (also the five languages of love):
From the article:
After the first or second year of marriage, when the initial “tingle” is starting to fade, many couples find that their “love tanks” are empty. They may have been expressing love for their spouse, but in reality they were speaking a different love language. The best way to fill your spouse’s love tank is to express love in their love language. Each of us has a primary love language. Usually, couples don’t have the same love language.
It is. Gary Chapman (The Five Love Languages) is the author and he notes that couples have reserves of ‘love’ credits that you acquire as you develop a relationship. There are many ways to earn/lose these credits and there are different types of ‘love’ credits that you can earn also. Very interesting read. Men and women speak in different love languages and often times we don’t understand each other. Very true. I’m still reading the book so I can offer more later once I’m finished.
I got that from the OP. As to whether or not it matters, I don’t know. Do your sons love and respect her? Will they view your leaving her (after, presumably, leaving their mother) as a signal that when relationships get tough, you leave? Do they have a loving and nurturing relationship with their biological mother? Do they dislike and/or resent your wife? Would they be relieved to see her go? Would they feel like they or their behavior caused (another) relationship of yours to disintegrate? Would that make them feel guilt or unhealthy pride?
I don’t know your kids, and you don’t have to answer out loud. But I think they’re things to ponder. Whatever you decide to do, it will affect more than two people here: it will affect four people (you, your wife, your boys) immediately, and innumerable others (your boys’ girlfriends and wives, their children) eventually.
ETA: I think I’m going to order that Chapman book for myself. Thanks!
It sounded a little like some stuff I was checking out a while back, but not quite the same. Is the tank a personal one, or a shared one? How many tanks in a relationship?
The stuff I was checking out posits 8 tanks: Ethics, intuition, left brain thinking, right brain thinking, nurturing, confidence, anger, and anxiety.