We had a marriage session today and it ended with me feeling terrible, so I need to work it out here.
I brought up how I was mad at my wife for doing this. And that I understood that she was mad at me too. She said she was mad because she asked me to make the changes I was making several times and I didn't. She felt the breakthroughs in my understanding of myself and my depression, we had talked about before, and that I clearly hadn't been listening to her. She broke down a few times in the past few years regarding our marriage and the things I needed to work on and felt I dismissed her with the idea of "she would get over it". I think I did to some extent. My wife is extremely emotional. Perhaps more emotional than I am capable of handling. This was my first major relationship and I didn't have the experience or skills to handle it. My friend made the metaphor that I went into this relationship with her knowing long division when I needed to know calculus. I am a sensitive person and she basically exploded on me from time to time about things. I became small when she did this, this was my learned pattern from childhood. And I think I lost the message with the emotions. When the emotions were calm again, I felt safe again and forgot about the message.
Me cowering from her emotions made her feel abusive and she will not forgive me for making her feel that way. I also cannot help but think that her emotional volatility made me withdraw from her in many ways. I had an idea of the type of husband I would be and I didn't live up to it. We went through several major life events in the span of 2 years: engagement, buying a house, wedding, and a baby. The stresses added up and I don't think either of us handled it well, and not together as a couple should have. And that is our downfall. I tried to do my best to make things easier for my wife for sure, in regards to errands, cooking, cleaning grocery shopping, but I didn't do enough after that. I had nothing left to give after dealing with my anxieties of having a new baby, a volatile wife and a job that was not going well at the time. For my own sake, and health I think I need to talk about this in our next session.
I'm feeling pretty down on myself. I have let her down in a way I cannot fix. And our marriage is going to end. I think I am accepting that now. She will not change her mind. I cannot change it. I can only focusing on becoming the person that I want to become as that will set me up for the rest of my life. I am so sad that it will not be with her because I will always wonder "what could have been". I am trying to focus on the positives that will result from our marriage ending. This feels wrong in some ways, but it is helping me cope. I now get to reinvent parts of myself and my life in ways that I may have not been able to do so in our marriage. And I will have the opportunity to look for a partner that I will be more compatible with. I think I could accept this all much easier if we didn't have a child together. I mourn what he will miss out on having parents that are together. But I cannot control that.
