fairmindedNorth8553 Member Profile

...See more I've no idea if i'm even going to post this, but i need to get it out and off my chest. We've been married 9 years, and together for 17. We've no children. We were best of friends as well as husband-and-wife for a long time, everything was great. I work, he doesn't - after losing his job a lot of years ago, he temped for while and then we settled into a routine where he played house-husband, and also gave him time to help his mam, who wasn't in the best of health and lived alone. Then in the last couple of years, everything has changed. I can't remember know what happened first. I think the first sign was that he stopped being unable to 'perform'. And he's not a very confident person, so that was difficult for him, and when he finds things difficult, he gives up. So our sex life died. His mam also began increasingly ill, and increasingly demanding, which put a pressure on our relationship as he spent more and more time there (even when she was in hospital, which was fairly regular, he'd often pop round to see to her cat). Our 'noisy' neighbours triggered his anxiety and depression, and he became a nervous wreck, eventually prescribed pills which took the edge off but aren't a "cure all" so he was still not entirely himself. The more things became pressured, I got resentful and moody, which wouldnt' have helped but i didn't know what to do and just got angry. His mam passed away last September. In March he tried to committ suicide twice. His depression and anxiety took over and the man i'd married vanished into the distance. He's on medication again now, but he's a shadow of his former self. He's no job, no family now, and rarely speaks to his friends - they have to contact him, and that'll stop eventually if he doesn't make efforts. When we talked over our relationship, he said he hadn't realised how far apart we'd drifted and how hard things had been. He pointed to me being moody and bad-tempered, and said that he'd become frightened of me because he never knew what was gonig to upset me. He didn't like asking for things in case i got annoyed with him again. And he asked me to "cut him some slack" for his shortcomings in not seeing how things were affecting me. And yet, here we are. I have to remind him, repeatedly, to order his next prescription. He won't leave the house without me (a few weekends ago, i went away for a couple of days to visit my family - when i got back, he told me we'd run out of catfood, but instead of going out to buy more, he cooked up some of our chicken from the freezer and we could go out together to get some more when i came back!), and rarely leaves the house with me. I count twice in three weeks (and one of those he felt 'shaky' during our walk and i could tell he wasn't really enjoying it - there was a flash of the old man when we saw something to make him laugh, just a seconds flash and it was gone). We've no phycial relations as a married couple (2 years now). When i get days off work, and spent them at home, he always says "you know i appreciate having you here", but then we don't do anything except watch DVDs and play the PS games. I love him, i really do, but i feel like a carer not a wife. I've thought about moving out - staying married, but living separately, to give me some breathing space - but all i can think of is how upset he'd be and how badly it would damage him when he's already struggling. It hurts me so much to think about how much he's suffering. I've always told him i'll support him and we're living together as we always have, so it feels like a lie to do anything else. I just want to undo the last few years and have my husband back, not the shell he is now. :-(

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