Unappreciated & future uncertain
Hi everyone..
just fighting hard not to fall into a depression and I really wanted others thoughts to help me through my journey.
I have been married for 6 years - my husband and I have been through layers of issues due to family and work for years which just finally unraveled last year when my husband basically had a breakdown and withdrew himself from everything. He became addicted to online games and just being on chats on his phone, and completely dissociated from real life. I was ignored and neglected, and when I tried to push for communication he decided he needed to leave for a while. This was all after talking much with a woman online who was herself in an unhappy relationship and basically lived online.
after a lot of therapy and effort I can say that after 3 months we were back in the same house and it’s been a year since that all happened. We have been doing well but it has been a challenge to get here. I am still incredibly hurt by what happened and how I was treated during that time. I don’t know if I will ever be able to move on from it.
my husband is going back to school for engineering, and a couple days ago he asked if I could get a ride home with a coworker so he could stay at school into the dinner hour with a girl from his class to study because she posted online looking for study partners. After last year where he was ignoring me to sit on voice chat online with a girl for months I have trouble being comfortable with that. I thought about it for a few days and looked for advice. I told him I loved him very much but at this time I would just feel better if he didn’t do that - if it were a man or if I was there it would be okay, I guess, but my insecurities were never properly reassured and I never healed from last time there was a problem.
being someone who has dedicated myself to my partner, I hoped to be heard simply for my feelings and consider this to be a common understanding. But for him he just got mad and upset. He decided to go home after our talk and post online on Reddit about this, saying I was limiting his study partners to half the population and it was unfair that he isn’t trusted, asking people online if he’d be an asshole if he just went and studied with her anyway regardless of my wishes or feelings. There was no consideration or information shared about how we got here now and why this is happening.
I guess I wanted everyone’s opinion of this. I have always tried to be fair to my husband and have been setting my feelings aside since we have been back together simply so he doesn’t have to deal with them. It seems like every time I feel anything he is just annoyed, so I got used to not having a right to my own sensitivity.
Are you guys still in therapy? Cos it sounds like you still need it.
I think it's a fair request considering the situation. Trust needs to be earned.
We were in therapy for quite some time but his dad also wanted him to go to therapy for years, and he has always been opposed to really getting into the process. So while I went for a long time, he went a couple times and said he really didn’t open up about much.
While i can see your point a study partner should be someone that is his choice and most of the time IMO is someone you feel able to connect with..... learning styles or ability to absorb material well
in many times when i was learning new things and spent time with peers some simply could not relate material in a way i could absorb and some were good at relating things in a more impressionable way
Most of my best peers/ study were men and if my spouse would have limited me in my study....Trust is IMO earned and if your spouse does not trust conversing with the opposite sex then how can they trust you in any situation.
I agree with you and I didn’t mean to limit him in how he spends his study time at school, it’s just a sore area that I have never been able to forgive and forget. I made this clear in our conversation too though. I told him it’s not that I would have any issues with him working with women or taking classes with them or anything like that. It’s just that this girl was part of the same chat groups he’s been addicted to since last year, they just happened to end up being in the same school. So I was not comfortable with the idea, especially at night over the time we usually go home and have dinner together. I agreed with him that I shouldn’t have to worry about this sort of thing, but that’s just not how it feels right now since my trust was never earned back or considered in any special way after it was lost.
I’m sorry you went through all of this, once trust is lost it is difficult to regain it.
I think that if your husband had acknowledged your feelings instead of turning to Reddit then maybe you two would have been able to discuss what other options might have been available. Whether that be the classmate studying at your home or speaking over zoom, etc but no other options were explored due to lack of communication.
My partner recently broke my trust too and lashes out like that, it hurts a lot so I understand your pain :/. Since the incident we both booked therapy sessions to try to save our engagement because we know our current way of speaking to each other isn’t working. I agree that therapy would be beneficial for both of you if you’re not still currently attending.
I’m really sorry to hear about you and your partner. I hope that you find your way together. Sadly my partner never liked the idea of therapy so I went all in but he just wasn’t interested. And I did suggest that too actually! I said zoom or coming over to our house would be fine. He had a bunch of things to argue with me no matter what I said, so I think it’s more about whatever he feels he wants to do at that moment to be honest, and the idea of not being able to do it.
