TL/DR: We’ve been disengaging now for 3 1/2 years and fully separated for the last 4 months, now she says she wants to work on it again. I love her but this is starting to feel more like we have a never-ending breakup instead of a marriage. How long is too long?
We’ve been together nearly 2 decades but only married the last 7 years (no kids), and for the last 3 1/2 years things have been really pretty bad.
For me, the worst of our problems began when she had an emotional affair, which I never have fully believed wasn’t also physical. Either way, I tried to set very flexible boundaries to allow her to have a friendship but allow me to be comfortable, and she literally broke all of them immediately. There were, no hanging out at his place alone, not letting him force drinks on her (this was a thing he did) not talking badly of our marriage, and setting clear home arrival times so I wasn’t worrying. Literally their next “date” she came home late after she went back to his place because she was too drunk to drive. Then she hid that from me until some details meant I caught her on it and she was forced to admit it. She actually went back to his place several times while I said this was not acceptable to me. There were some other even bigger betrayals in there with this guy. They’re still friends though it has cooled off significantly. She’s never admitted fully that there was anything wrong with this and minimizes it still today.
Anyway, I’m an idiot so I stayed to try to work it out. Really, the affair wasn’t the problem, it was the raging midlife crisis it set off, with bouts of spending, weird behavior and alternate spells of prolonged dark depression.
ANd that’s when severe controlling behaviors became more common, with her witholding physical affection, sex, and even giving me the silent treatment for weeks at a time.
Basically, at this point not many things function in the marriage.
We haven’t had sex in well over a year (About 6 times in the last 3 years) we live separately, we have strictly separated finances because of the control issues, and no real discussion or intimacy. And we don’t really do activities together.
So, last summer when we officially decided to separate, she seemed pretty ‘meh” about it to me. I mourned at that time pretty heavily. In October I told her I was going to try to start dating a little. ”Meh.” In November I started seeing someone, mostly just as a friend at first, and BANG! She became interested in working on things! Now she’s in therapy and after years of saying no to therapy, we’re seeing a marriage counselor, too. But this was under the guise of “helping us in conscious uncoupling.”
Now, she’s asking me to recommit to our marriage. And it’s brought back all the feelings I went through separating with her this summer.
But I feel like I’ve given it my all for YEARS. For YEARS I’ve been in a hostile toxic situation with someone who didn’t seem to want to be married to me.
And now the only interaction we really have is talking about our marriage, which is not really joyful. And it takes so much time and emotional effort. When do we get to be like other people who have lives and go and do fun things instead of just having drama suck up all their time?
I still love her in a way, who she is, what we used to be, but how long is it healthy to stay in a neverending breakup? How long is too long?
Submitted January 31, 2020 at 03:36PM by Ohgothrowaway https://ift.tt/2vH5gCf
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