At the beginning of September my husband of eight years blindsided me by asking for a divorce. He said he’s been unhappy for a long time, and he’s wanted a divorce for a while. He said he tried communicating the issues to me, but I honestly had no clue that the marriage was bothering him. To further complicate things, my husband suffers from combat-related PTSD, and I think I mistook his communication with me as PTSD symptoms—he was very depressed before BD. So instead of taking time for myself, I was trying to give him space from the kids, etc..
As far as I can tell, the major issue is my pregnancy weight gain. We have three kids between the ages of three and six, and I gained about 100 pounds through the three pregnancies. I’ve lost about 45lbs since my youngest was born, but it’s taken three years to get there, and half of that is since BD. I always knew my weight bothered H, but he never really said anything, and I never prioritized myself. The last I heard about my weight was right after the youngest was born, and I thought I was making progress. I was also overweight when we first started dating, which makes things more confusing.
I did not take the divorce news well, and initially did the wrong things, but have completely backed off since about two weeks ago. It seems to me like H has rewritten our entire marriage in his head, and has gone as far as to say he doesn’t like how I do stuff, thinks I’m controlling, etc. He says he likes me, but doesn’t love me, and is not attracted to me.
I actually knew he wasn’t physically attracted to me—he said he was attracted to who I was as a person. But the stuff about me being controlling is baffling. He would never give me any input on anything, just said, “whatever you want,” whenever I tried to talk to him about something. In hindsight, I think he was just agreeing to agree, but perhaps resenting me for agreeing.
We did discuss marriage counseling, and he said he would go, but I got the impression he’s just agreeing like he’s done in the past, so I backed off on that. I kind of think it would be better to go if/when he’s a little more emotionally invested. (He said he would go to give me closure and thought it was a waste of time.)
H does have a (male) best fried that I felt like he was having an emotional affair with—basically reaching out to the friend to discuss marriage issues instead of talking to me, and ultimately doing a lot of stuff with the friend instead of with me. Anytime H needed to run to the store, he’d take his friend (he lives next door), movie nights, bonfires, board games, etc. I wasn’t invited, but the friend was. I would always watch the kids and they’d go next door. This only started two years ago, and got worse as time went on. I told H it felt like his friendship was affecting our marriage, but he’d always laugh at me.
As far as other women go, at this point I don’t have any reason to suspect an affair, but I do think H might be infatuated with someone, based off of a few clues I’ve picked up on. I don’t have solid evidence, but a lot of things line up. His friend had also told me that H felt guilty about being attracted to someone, but didn’t elaborate.
So anyways, about a week after BD, I moved out. H has been the stay home parent since the oldest was a baby, and I did not want to disrupt the kids lives. He was going to move if I didn’t. Since then, I’ve bought my own house about ten minutes from him. I actually got keys yesterday and am working to get stuff for it.
Because of the kids, H and I are still seeing each other all the time, and to be honest, our communication has improved immensely. It’s mostly about kid stuff, but he does occasionally open up about what he’s got going on at the house.
H is also being very kind. He even took the kids to get me a birthday cake and presents. Right now he’s helping me get moved out and is still talking about paperwork, etc. He agreed to file legal separation instead of divorce, but I’m not sure if he’s just agreeing, or if I should take that as sign he’s not 100% out the door. He still wants a divorce, as far as I can tell. He already went to get laser treatment to remove his wedding ring tattoo.
I’d like to think this is fixable, but I’m not finding many success stories related to walkaway spouses. My situation seems slightly better than others I’ve read about, with open communication and such, but I don’t think that means much. He did make a few statements to suggest MLC, but so far none of his actions seem to back that up.
Obviously I need to GAL and work on myself and not care about him... But I’d love advice or insights, if anyone has any. I have more stuff to add, but this is enough for now.
