My husband wasn't honest with me about it when we were first dating, he made it seem like it was an only occasional problem, a non-issue. It wasn't until after I fell in love with him and knew I wanted to marry him that I realized the truth, and at that point I felt like he had kind of trapped me. But I loved him, wanted to marry him, and thought we could fix it. (Dangerous words).
I realized at that point that the problem was solvable cause I did a lot of research on it. Unfortunately, my H was never willing to do the, admittedly, difficult work it required to solve it. He just wanted to be able to go to a doctor, and get a magic pill that would cure him. No such pill exists, but he tried to find it. He was in denial, wanted to continue to see it as a non-issue. We would have flare ups of me being angry, talking about ending the relationship if we couldn't at least work on this thing, and then things would go back to normal. His issue was extremely painful for both of us, as I explained in the post I linked to.
But it really came to a head last year when we wanted to start trying to have children. I had been disappointed before at times, but it became almost chronic disappointment and pain then.
I did so many things wrong. I couldn't accept him, I made my love conditional, all based on the frustration of wanting the issue to be solved or at least worked on, wanting to stop feeling so hurt over it, wanting to have children.
The bomb came after a few months of us feeling extremely distant, especially him towards me. He had just started going to a new doctor who helped him a little bit with a detox program for body toxins (the detox could have added to this whole thing, too. I guess it can change your personality).
Just going to a new doctor had a temporary Dumbo's feather effect, he was happy and then terrified that I would get pregnant while he was feeling this way towards me and our marriage. As he struggled to understand why he was feeling like he did, he finally attributed how he felt to hurtful things that I had said to him over this issue 4 years ago. He came home crying, and told me he was leaving. That he was angry and indifferent to our marriage. He said terrible things like, our marriage was a mistake, that he always knew that deep down, that neither of us understood the first thing about love and committment. I asked him if he still loved me, and he said, "Can you love someone and resent them completely at the same time? Then I guess I still love you."
Since then, I've apologized in many ways for the hurtful things I said, and told him that I will accept him even if the problem never changes, that I love him unconditionally, but he doesn't believe me, thinks I'll be better off without him, that he ruined our relationship (when he's sad) and when he's angry thinks I am a b+&%# that he hates.
I feel like standing with him, loving him, being his friend, despite everything, is the only way I can show him that I love him unconditionally. I haven't done a very consistent job with that so far, what with the lying and cheating he's done in the last 3 months, and me reacting to it. (He had told me that he wasn't going to see anyone else, that he didn't want this to be about anybody else, that he would be honest with me--that was our agreement, and he broke it with a LDEA and the recent hotel kissing incident.)
But now that we are heading towards legal S or even D, I can hopefully resign myself to complete detachment: no snooping, no being upset if he starts seeing someone else, because we are dissolving our marriage. I have no claim on him anymore.
I think that I can be a good friend to him, and I owe him unconditional love and friendship, and a chance for us both to heal.
It is in the shelter of each other that people live.--Irish proverb
