Wow... I wrote you a book. I hope you're not too busy today!
I am 25 and my husband is 26, and we dated for eight months before getting married a year and a half ago. Almost immediately after getting married, we started having problems because he wants peace and harmony in the house at
all costs and I don't think you can get peace and harmony unless you go over and over and over what's bothering you and why and what needs to be done to fix it.
We went to marriage counselling a few times, but he spent the time psychobabbling at her (we met working in a treatment center... we can talk the talk) so I told him I wasn't going to go any more unless he was going to get serious. I sought counselling on my own and ended up on Prozac for several months. He went by himself for a few months and
things between us became lovely. I got off the Prozac, he stopped therapy, and things continued to be just lovely.
When my yearly doctor visits revealed that my thyroid was still functioning properly (I have a history of hypothyroidism) and my pituitary tumor was invisible on the MRI, we decided it was a good time to conceive. We were successful immediately, and almost as immediately things went downhill fast.
His grandfather was physically abusive, so his father is all about controlling yourself and spreading love throughout the world. This isn't bad, but my husband doesn't seem to have ever learned how to deal with negative emotions, as they were ignored or criticized in his house. In high school, his parents considered putting him in a treatment center because he was so angry all the time. In college, he was known as "The Evil One" and he carved "DEATH" into his forearm with a hot screwdriver. He's got some issues.
My mother tells me I've always had wildly swinging moods, even as a newborn, and I've felt out of control enough to seek therapy during three periods of my life, although nobody ever told me anything I didn't already know. I was
sexually abused by my babysitter's sons in kindergarten, and my family put me back into the house after I had told them and after I was hospitalized for a raging UTI that spread to my kidneys and bladder. I've got some issues of my
own.
Description of behavior during "honeymoon" phase and recent times: When my husband gets upset by work or by me, he reacts by "shutting down," as he says. I ask him to take out the trash or clean his pile from the table or whatever and he ignores me, so I ask him again later, and he ignores me, and after four or five times, I start getting mad, at which point he feels like I'm attacking him. I, of course, have an underlying horror of being ignored and not listened to, so this set-up doesn't work well for me, either. He also starts making snide comments under his breath all the time instead of talking to me. For example, I said to him, "Please try to remember to shut the fan off when you get up" for the 18 millionth time a few weeks ago. He waited until I was 99% out of the room, then muttered, "I don't remember
turning it on." He does this all day, but when I ask him what the deal is, he says "I'm just talking to myself."
The other day, I came home from school (I'm working on my doctorate in school psych) to find that he had been cleaning all day. He's a fire-fighter and had the day off. I commented positively on a few things he had done, then he
told me he wanted to move the kitchen table. We've got maybe two feet of room on each side in the dining room. I told him he could try it, but I was probably going to want to move it back. This irritated him, and he wanted to know why, so I answered him... we both ended up a little cranky. Then he told me he had moved some other stuff that he wanted to
show me. Just some drawers rearranged in the kitchen, no biggy. I was less than enthusiastic, though, and he wanted to know what was wrong. I told him I liked that he was cleaning the house, but that it was hard for me to be happy about rearranging the drawers when he still hadn't gotten out my suitcase from the storage closet so I could get rid of my too-small summer clothes or moved the dresser like I had asked several times. He shook his head, said, "I'll go get your suitcase, geez!" and started upstairs. I asked him why he was pissy, and he said he really didn't like it when I came home and he'd been working all day and I just started laying into him. I told him I appreciated what he had
done, but it upset me that he hadn't done the two things I needed so that I could clean up my messes. We ended up yelling at each other because I was attacking him and he wasn't listening, so I told him I was going to go away
until he was in a better mood and went driving for the next three hours.
During the course of my drive, I realized that I was going away until *I* was in a better mood and that I really had been pretty pissy with him, although I still thought he overreacted and I was still upset he hadn't done the things I'd been asking him about for a week. When I came back, the next door neighbors were there, so we chatted for a while. Then
they left, and my husband went to change loads of laundry. I got a bowl of cereal, and he said he was going to make dinner, and I said I was starving and could use some real food, too, and went upstairs to eat. (Our kitchen table is currently overrun with sewing projects to finish before his parents come next week.)
He came right upstairs and brought me a letter printed on the computer. I said thank you and he told me not to thank him because it wasn't very nice. It wasn't. "...it might be a good idea for you to apologize to me for your irrational behavior." True... but it gets better. "I haven't been sitting on my a** these past few days and all you can f***ing do
is yell at me because I didn't get your suitcase out of the closet...I think you need to pull your head out of your a** and start to treat me like a God Dam (sic) human being... This is bullsh**, you are wrong, and I am on a very short rope
right now and expect an apology for your behavior."
It doesn't trouble me that he has these thoughts, but it does trouble me that after he wrote the letter, after I was gone for three hours, and after spending an hour visiting with the neighbors, he thought it was an appropriate way to express himself. He's back in counselling now to figure out more productive ways to deal with his anger, and I'll
be starting to go with him for couples work in two weeks, but I look at this letter and I see no hope. In a very related issue, he has this 33-year-old ex-roommate who used to have sex in front of him, once had a three-way with him (years ago) and told me all the details over the phone once, and responded to news of our engagement by saying, "Well, that's too bad... now my girlfriend won't be able to give you a blowjob for your birthday like she'd been planning." The guy is a worthless piece of poo who still doesn't have a full-time job, even though his girlfriend is 7 months pregnant with their second (his third) child. After many many discussions, my husband said the reason he likes hanging out with this guy is because he can be as big a jerk as he wants and nobody will care. After receiving the love note, my concern is that "jerk" is his underlying personality and that counselling will not help him deal
appropriately with anger, it will just help him remove the facade.
We have not discussed the events of the other day at all. I didn't come down for dinner and I slept on the couch because the only response I had for him was to tell him I wanted a divorce. We avoided each other all the next day,
and today he's been at work all day. Tomorrow we're headed over to my parents' house for my mom's b-day, and his parents are flying in on Wednesday. I'm feeling a strong desire to take a really, really long nap.
I feel movement in my abdomen and it just depresses me. What sounds most appealing right now is to file for divorce, give him full custody in January, and run. Several people on other boards have sung your praises, so I figured what the heck... couldn't possibly hurt, right? :)
Any thoughts, advice, or new ways of looking at this mess would be greatly appreciated.
Why did you marry HIM?
Why in the world did he marry YOU?
Your problem isn't your husband's grandfather, your husband's old roommate, or your husband's easy-going lifestyle. Your problem is YOU and that's the only thing you can possibly change, but it will require a huge effort, of which I doubt you are capable.
If there's to be any future in your marriage it begins with you and you've taken the first important step by writing down your whole sad tale of woe.
There is nothing in your letter to suggest that one moment in your marriage was fun or even slightly enjoyable.
Read it over again, slowly, considering how you have chosen every word to describe a loveless marriage.
You chose me because someone told you I often look at things differently and what you are looking for is some fresh way to approach your problem. So right away please realize that YOU are your problem.
School has taught you to analyze everyone's behaviour, looking for causes from other people's scholarly works. I wish you could take things more pragmatically, and I wish you didn't feel the need to judge your husband, or his family, or your baby sitters' children, or anyone else. And I wish you didn't feel the need to run to outsiders such as analysts, and take sedatives.
Unless you can stop all this negative behaviour right now and take a fresh look at what a good marriage can be, your best bet is to cut and run. Since you say you would give away custody of your child, I guess he or she would be better off with his/her father and those friends that you denigrate because they don't have a full time job and think sex is fun.
You're putting far too much emphasis on nonsense matters such as moving the table, or rearranging the drawers. As for your suitcase, what's the use of a suitcase that you can't carry yourself? And while your husband mutters under his breath as you're leaving the room, and writes down his griefs on the computer, I am absolutely sure that all your griefs are well expressed to him just about all the time, with gestures and body language as well as in the words you speak, your tone of voice and intonation.
If he were to write to me I would ask him to do the same. Read over the entire letter and then pack up and leave. Reading all your words over again will help you know that you two are not going to have a happy life together.
It's possible that neither of you will have a happy life with anyone else, or even alone, but you certainly are not
contributing to each other's physical, mental or spiritual health.
Sort out your own mind. Decide who would be the perfect husband for you, and then go out and look at the people of this world and see if there actually is such a person. If not, immerse yourself in a career as a school psychologist, pretending to know something about the world and imparting stuff from your psychology books to others, but forget about marriage.
Good marriages are not made in heaven. They are not a product of grandparents and baby sitters. They just happen when two people love eachother and find their happiness in making life wonderful for eachother. It also requires two adults to make a marriage. If you have to be forever "working" at your marriage and running off to analysts, you're missing the whole point and you're missing one of the most marvellous things that can happen to two people.
I would like to think you and your husband could patch things up and start over again. Possibly - just possibly - if you could be apart for a while and then come back together again, you could do it. But it would take one hell of a lot of love and caring and giving, and you'd have to forget all the nonsense from the past year.
But to be honest, taking into account your cavalier attitude toward your baby, your distaste for your husband's view of sex, your hatred of his friends, and the cutting and cruel things you say to him when all he wants is a little approval, I see not much hope.
If all the above has given you something to think about, good. If it has suggested a course of action, good. If you think I'm a meddling old person who does not understand your full problem, well, remember, you asked for my comments and I carefully read your long letter. Probably you didn't realize that I would know how cruel you can be. There is such a thing as verbal abuse. Think about it.
If I believed that you could change your husband and improve his behaviour, that's what I would suggest. But in this life there is no way to change other people. We can only change ourselves.
Start by reading your whole letter again before you mull over what I've written.
Truly yours,
GG
Return to Granny's Query index
