He's changed, but I don't want to be with him anymore

[wilted]

I feel like I'm at a crossroads and I could use whatever guidance the community has for me. My husband used to be very emotionally abusive but in recent years he has changed. I've realized recently that I never loved him, but now he's disabled and in very poor health and I feel if I left I would be abandoning him.

 

 

I met my H twenty years ago. We were both 16. At first he was great, just the nicest guy in the world. His family was very chaotic, they yelled all the time and the TV was always on - completely different from my home life. In hindsight they were all very abusive with each other but I didn't really know any better at the time. He became more and more manipulative and controlling over the next few years, yelling, screaming, and threatening, calling names, pushing away my friends and family. I had never been treated this way and didn't know how to deal with it. He has a very strong personality where I'm a pretty passive person. I did try to leave several times but he would always beg, stalk, and harass until I felt like it would be easier to just have the relative peace of taking him back.

 

 

He has always been the type of person to get whatever he sets his sights on, no matter what the cost. When he started talking about marriage, I could tell that this was going to be one of those things. We were about 22 and by then I was resigned to feeling like he would never leave me alone, no matter what I said or how far away I tried to go. I was going to be the wife he had set his sights on. I refused at first and he alternately begged and threatened to leave, which I sincerely hoped he would, but he didn't and eventually he wore me down. I gave in to the pressure, lied to myself that I loved him and that I wanted to marry him, and we got married. By the time he started talking about having a baby and buying a house several years later, I didn't even bother trying to talk him out of it, even though I knew they were both terrible ideas.

 

 

Throughout all of this the yelling, anger, and belittling were constant. Anything I did wrong would get blown up into a huge fight. I handled our finances and if I missed a bill by one day, never mind that I was waiting for us to have the money for it, there was hell to pay. I felt trapped and worthless and like the most important thing that I could do was to keep him from getting angry. I wasn't perfect, I learned to yell and scream back so that if nothing else he would at least feel as bad as I did.

 

 

We had our child and bought our house. My one condition on buying the house was that he had to take over the finances. I wasn't happy about doing it but I was sure we wouldn't be able to keep up on paying the mortgage and I wasn't going to take the blame when things went bad. We lasted about seven years at the house before the finances finally caught up and we foreclosed and went bankrupt.

 

 

Getting the house and having a baby did seem to soften him a little but I still felt trapped and helpless. Losing the house had a big effect on him. He has said that he realizes that the 'American Dream' won't make him happy, that he had been going after what he thought everyone wanted, what he was supposed to want. He says now that he just wants to be a happy family. Over the past three years his behavior has improved dramatically. We've been to various therapists and marriage groups, we've learned to talk things through rationally without fighting, he seems genuinely concerned for my happiness. He doesn't yell or scream or call names or anything anymore. The only thing he does do is sometimes he'll get a little too angry, like if his computer isn't working he'll yell and swear at it, but he doesn't take it out on me.

 

 

I really do feel like he's changed, but I still feel trapped. My whole life now is built on the decisions I made and the lies I told myself while I felt helpless to stand up to him. I never would have married him or had his child if I could have just stood up for myself. And now, no matter how much he's changed, all I see is this life, full of reminders of how he used to be. I can't get away from it. It's like it happened yesterday, not years ago. As I've been reflecting on this I just want to go back to before we got married and tell myself to run as fast and as far as I can.

 

 

What really has me stalled is that his health has been deteriorating for the past fifteen years or so. He was diagnosed with bipolar disorder before we met and has always been prone to illness. He started having problems that after years of doctor visits were diagnosed as pancreatitis. Before the diagnosis the doctor visits became so frequent that he was not able to hold even a part time job. He ended up on disability for his bipolar disorder. Since then he has had a spine fusion and numerous other health issues. I have always been the breadwinner and I feel responsible for his well being. Without my income and health insurance I don't know what would happen to him. And he's changed. If I met him today I could see myself being happy with him. But I'm not, I'm miserable all the time. I don't even like to think it but really, I hate what he put me through, I hate what he made me into, and I hate him for doing it. I'm being treated for depression and anxiety and I feel like this is at the root of it. I also drink too much and I had a brief affair last year, which he doesn't know about.

 

 

I did tell him about some of this last week. I basically told him that because of how he had treated me I can't trust him on an emotional level. He cried and was apologetic and I felt terrible for causing him pain. And whenever I'm with him, all of these feelings just...vanish. I think it's that mistrust that just makes me automatically hide everything from him. It makes it so hard to talk about this with him because I shut down and then I don't feel anything and I just don't want to hurt him and have to feel his pain.

 

 

I don't know what I'm going to do. If he were healthy and able to handle his medical expenses on his own I know I would leave. But I can't live with just abandoning him and I don't make enough money to live on my own and support him. I just wish I knew the right thing to do.

 

 

Thanks for reading and if anyone has any advice I would like to hear it.

[Downtown]

Wilted, I suggest that -- before deciding to walk away from your H -- you go see a psychologist to find out what role you played in the marriage. It is important that you start taking responsibility for your contribution to the toxicity in the marriage. A toxic relationship will last 20 years only when BOTH parties are willingly participating in it.

 

Hence, although he was abusive, the toxicity was not something HE did to you. Rather, it was something you BOTH did to each other. Of course, his contribution (i.e., the abuse) is easy to see. Yours, however, is more difficult to see because -- for all that while -- you were the enabler who allowed him to treat you that way. Importantly, by enabling him, you likely were harming him by destroying any opportunity for him to be forced to confront his issues and learn how to manage them.

 

Apparently, however, you started enforcing your own strong personal boundaries when you lost the house -- with the result that he was compelled to greatly changed his behavior. If so, it is a grave mistake to attribute all your anger and resentment to his actions earlier in the marriage. Part of your anger likely is due to your awareness that, for all those years, YOU allowed it to happen.

 

Your refusal to take any responsibility for your own behavior is especially apparent in your unwillingness to even acknowledge being responsible for the decision to marry him. You claim that, although you did not love him and did not want to marry him, you nonetheless did so because "he wore me down." Really? A young woman will give in and eat at a restaurant she doesn't like when her BF "wears her down." And she may agree to see a dull movie for the same reason. No rational woman, however, agrees to get married because it is too much trouble to say "No."

 

A good psychologist can help you see what your motivations were for marrying him and what your contribution to the toxicity has been. I don't know what that is. If I had to guess, however, I would say you likely are an excessive caregiver like me who -- at a young age -- set out to find someone who desperately needs you. That likely was why you fell in love with him and, more important, why you continued to stay with him when he quickly became abusive (as I did with my exW). If you are a "fixer" and "caregiver" like me, it is very difficult to give up and admit defeat. And it is very difficult to see how we contributed to the problems because we are so convinced we were "only trying to help."

 

In the same way that your H learned how to overcome the bad lessons he had acquired in childhood, you can learn to overcome your own issues too. I therefore believe it may be worth your while to find out what those issues are before terminating a marriage that already seems to be half-way fixed.

[wilted]

Thank you, everything you've said makes a lot of sense. I have an appointment with a psychologist set up for next week. I am definitely angry with myself for allowing all this to happen, I realize that didn't really come through in my post.

[summerdowling87]

What about putting him in a nice nursing home or assisted living facility?

 

Perhaps if you can do that you can also get help for yourself and child.

 

My mother was emotionally abused as a child which lead he to marry my abusive father.

 

And I honestly believe if she got help she never would've put up with my for as long as she did.

[jennaflorrie]

I understand the regrets and the feeling of being trapped. My H has been diabetic since he was 8 and now he is late 40's I too feel responsible for looking after him, his health is ok at the moment, but leaving him would prob have bit implications on his health.

 

But as others have told me, this is his problem. He is responsible for his own health.

 

I think like me, you should prepare to live by yourself, but don't plan on divorce yet. Just live in different house to him. Go over with meals if you have to, help him as a FRIEND, visit if he behaves.....I think thats what I will end up doing.

 

I will leave H and live witout him, but try and be supportive like a friend would be.

I could just turn my back on him, but feel as the father of my children I cannot do this.

 

So my adivce - as someone who walks in your shoes - is to live by yourself. Be a friend to him. But accept that a marital relationship is just not possible.