I stumbled on this website and immediately bought the book and read it in 1 day! My husband and I have a 3 month old baby and a 5 year old. When the new baby was three weeks old he told me that he didn't think he wanted to be married anymore, it was too much pressure with work and having kids and a house, he's tired of making joint decisions, he wasn't sure if he loved me anymore and he thinks he just wants to be alone and focus on his career. Through my whole second pregancy he shut down, I could tell something was wrong but he wouldn't say... just kept saying it wasn't the right time to talk about it. We haven't had sex in a year.
We have been married for 7 years but were basically high school sweethearts and were together for 10 years before getting married with a few breaks here and there. Our marriage has had a lot of difficult things to deal with... oldest child has special needs, my family living far away, my husband had a pretty significant binge drinking problem, he had an emotional affair a few years ago, busy hectic lives from working and graduate school, financial difficulties, but we have gone to therapy several times and the last time we went, about 2 years ago, it seemed to help a lot. Things were going great, I had worked through a lot of my anger from his drinking and the emotional affair. He's saying now he's just tired of trying and doesn't see any hope anymore. We can't really afford for him to move out and get an apartment, we were stretched thin as is with mortgage, cars, tuition for our daughter who goes to a special needs school and daycare for the new baby, so he would probably have to move back with his parents or other relatives. He is saying there is no other woman, and that he has no intention or desire to leave and start looking for another relationship.
He has pretty much stopped talking to me. He can hardly spend more than 5 minutes alone in a room with me. Just about all communications are through text message even if we are at home together. He feels guilty and embarassed about wanting to end the relationship and has not told anyone in his family but his parents, that he is planning on leaving, and I had to convince him to tell them. I don't even think he has told his friends. We have a lot of mutual friends from being together so long. He sleeps in another room and we haven't had sex since we conceived the 3 month old. He always goes into periods where we would not have sex, sometimes lasting months, but this is probably the longest.
In my heart I don't really believe that he doesn't love me anymore or that he would be happier being 35, not seeing his kids everyday and living in his old bedroom at his parents house. I have tons of letters and emails from him from a couple years ago when we were in therapy after his drinking binges got worse and he had that emotional affair, basically saying how much he loves me, our family, our daughter and how he was so happy that I took him back and how much therapy was helpful and how committed he is to our marriage. So unless all those emails and letters were lies, which I don't think they were.
I read DB and I have a good understanding now of what I have done to contribute to our patterns. But I don't know what else to do. Is this a mid life crisis? Is he really not in love anymore? I don't want to give up but he is telling me he's made his decision.
