“My husband and I have our three-year anniversary this month. Our son is 9 months old. Two weeks ago he decided to drop the bomb and said that perhaps he doesn’t love me, doesn’t want to wake up in 20 years and be miserable, that kind of stuff. It was so sudden. We hardly ever fight and our baby is so perfect and beautiful and we have been so happy for these years. I don’t understand. When we talk about it he goes farther with saying that perhaps he never really loved me and maybe he had these feelings before we even got married. What? I saved myself for him. I gave myself to him. I made sure he was the one. We both agreed that we did not believe in divorce. This is too painful to even think about. He is not even acting like he wants to save the marriage. I don’t understand. I’m terrified. This is not what I signed up for.”

This is a crucial time for the three of you. Your feelings of desperation at his divulgences become directly proportional to his feelings of being trapped in eternal misery. Until you “unhook your wagons” (separate your emotional and psychological enmeshment) both of you will descend further into realms even less attractive than what you both currently are experiencing.

Your husband’s misery now, or in the future, is his issue – don’t try and rescue him from it or take any responsibility for it, or, and here is the tough part, let it take you down.

There’s great hope for this marriage but it will not emerge until you get out of his way and he does what he needs to do to solve his own problems.

If he avoids this fabulous dilemma (he is not the first person to face it) by walking away, he will be much more miserable more quickly than he ever imagined.

If he faces it well, he will grow up, and to boot, have a chance at even being somewhat happy, you will have a man for a husband and your son will have an adult man for a daddy.

Posted on May 4, 2011 at 5:28 am in Betrayal, Children, Communication, Difficult Relationships, Family, Family Systems Theory, Grace, Therapeutic Process, Triangles, Victims, Voice, Womanhood   |  RSS feed |   Reply   |   Trackback URL