Sorry you are going through this.

Hi JustJackie,
So sorry you are having such a hard time! Do you have ANY idea why he wants a divorce after only a couple years of marriage (per your other post) and you have only known each other 5 years? What does he say, what is his reason? Was he like this the whole time (think back and look honestly) or did something change just recently?

Have you suggested marital counseling? If he won't go, you could maybe do individual counseling for yourself. I understand you feel this is the end of the world, but I promise you it isn't. Hugs.

It's time for you to get into therapy. It is also time for you to stop trying to make your needs small, to dance on egg shells around your H, and thinking he is your world. You cannot make someone love you. His treatment of you shows he does not love you. ouch I know that hurts, but you know this already.

You need to invest in yourself and know that you can be happy just being you. You do not need someone else to complete you. You are already complete.

The way you get your power back is not to tell him you will be seeing a lawyer and a therapist. Stop with all this attention you are giving him. Note to everyone: if what you are doing isn't working, STOP.

Once you know your rights, thanks to the lawyer, sit down with your H and tell him you have made a plan for your life and you are leaving him. That might give you some satisfaction.

He is treating you this way because he already has a plan, and it's not you.
I know that all sounds so harsh, but what you do want? Lie to me now or lie to me later? I think you need to get busy moving on. Just because he doesn't love you doesn't mean you are unlovable. He's a jerk. A decent man would sit down with you and talk with you! He is acting out. Ask yourself Why? I say it's because he has someone else.

If you really know the key to a happy life, you'd already be Buddha or something! Nobody knows the answer, we just keep doing whatever that makes us happy. And we're human, we don't just settle. So we keep searching and searching. That's life.

I'm sorry for the bad relationship you're facing right now. It sounds like you're trying your best to hang on to it while he's ready to let go. I may be wrong because I'm only reading your side of the story, and not his. Is he willing to put in effort to save this relationship? If so, he must be willing to talk about it. Divorce is a big step and there is no turning back from it. If that is really what he wants, there is nothing you can do to change his mind. When the love is gone, you'll only be hurting yourself if you hang on to it. It's like trying to save someone from falling off the cliff, you're trying your best to grab hold on him, but he's not making any effort to pull himself up. In the end, you both fall.

I really hope you both can have a talk about what to do next. And whatever the decision is in the end, I hope you will have a closure to it so that you can move on. I wish you the best in the outcome.

Hugs

Thank you so much zeezee ... it’s a very fragile situation .. he says he still loves me but he can’t live like this anymore ... I have a really hard time dealing with life when it doesn’t go exactly how I feel it should go ... I have been very critical of him and how I wish he would do more than what he’s doing. I want to be a better person but I feel like he’s different. I’m trying so hard to connect with the person he used to be. I have a constant heavy feeling in my chest ... my anxiety is always so high. So many changes coming and I am so afraid of what will happen. Thank you though for your insight .. I appreciate you

I agree to get into some therapy if you want to try and make it work...… You wrote that you're really critical of him and that would really wear you down quickly.... Do you think this is about control?

If you hold a lot of anger maybe some anger management as well … His feelings may be changing if this is what's happening

Therapy can help people work through what they need/want to in order to get to a better place.... Big hug...… I wish you well

"I’m trying so hard to connect with the person he used to be."

There is the problem.

How about trying to connect with the person he is now?

Yard_Eggs hello ... I’m trying so hard to connect with the person he is right now but that’s not the person that made me believe in forever.... he’s a good man now but he’s become so complacent... almost lazy when it comes to showing affection... he used to be so loving and attentive and now he gets lost into his phone playing a game ... he will lay down and roll over and not say good night ... all those things hurt me because I miss him being Loving and affectionate.... I’m so heartbroken all the time and when I cry he stays away because he says he doesn’t know what to do... I don’t know if he will ever go back to the way he was but if he stays this way I know we have no chance and that scares me the most ... I can’t live without him

I am sorry you are feeling this way. It must be horrible to be so emotional tied so someone that you feel that you "can't live without him". Such emotional dependence is very unhealthy and I concur with others - professional counseling would be most prudent.

We all know the old saying "Don't but all your eggs in one basket". We don't want to be left without eggs should the basket be shaken, tipped, tossed or dropped. That applies well to relationships also. We don't want to be left without emotional support (love, support, affection) when life gets up shaken, tipped, tossed or dropped.

When we put all our emotional eggs into one person as you do (basing this from your other posts), we become emotionally stunted. We can not foster essential personal growth in ourselves when we completely focus on the needs of another in order to assure they remain "happy" with us and aren't tempted to leave.

An emotionally healthy person is able to "stand alone" without benefit of a partner to lean on.

Imagine two young sapling pine trees growing next to each other. They have to ability to grow tall and strong side by side, together, protecting each other from the storms and winds with their own individual strength. Now imagine if one sapling starts to lean onto the other for support. The leaning tree weakens and has difficulty righting itself so it can grow straight and tall. The other tree becomes overburdened by carrying the weight of the leaning tree and eventually gets weaker and no longer continue to grow straight and true. A prudent treeman knows to give the leaning tree additional support by staking it upright and away from the other tree. Both trees once again can continue to grow straight.

Now imagine you and your husband are the two trees. You have been leaning on him for support so long that you have now weaken him. Providing constant reassurance of his affection, love and attentiveness for you has become very draining. He can no longer the strong man and husband you knew back then because he is bearing the weight of your emotional dependence. Individual counseling for yourself will serve as the additional support or "stake" to get you growing true and straight once again. And once that burden is removed from your husband, I feel certain you will see that he becomes his old self again.

I often feel rather callous and unloving when I think about life without my husband and best friend because I know without a doubt, that should he be taken away from me (either be leaving of his own decision or as the result of a tragic accident), I will be able to go on without him. My life won't end, I will be able to live without him. His love and support of me has given me the opportunity to establish strong and deep-reaching roots that will be able to support me long after he is gone.

Another reason I will be able to "stand alone" when I no longer have my husband with me is because I have my emotional eggs in several baskets. I receive support, love and acceptance from friends, my immediate family (parents and siblings), my grown children, co-workers, my church family, my hiking buddies, my community. Because I don't focus all my attention and efforts into my marriage relationship, I am able to foster healthy relationships with many other people. I feel confident I can turn to many others in my life should I need to. Healthy external relationships are essential in maintaining a healthy sense of self worth and self esteem, which in turn are essential for being able to be emotionally strong. I am not strong because I rely on others, but because I value my relationships with others, their positive feed-back to me provides me with internal self-reliance.

I may have read your situation all wrong, and I may be just preaching to myself, but if you don't find my words beneficial, maybe another DS member will.

God Bless.

Please get professional counseling for your co-dependency and anxiety issues if you truly want your marriage to get better and stronger.

Infatuation, Love, and Obsession all three are the same emotionaly and yet all three have differing attributes. I'll be back to explain my thought.

Hmmm .... actually all are strong emotions but I think the similarities end there. Two are unhealthy and rooted in distorted thinking. Those have nothing to do with love.

Justjackie, people generally don't just change. They are who they are, and we project our stuff on them about who we want them to be or hope for them to be. That's what happens when we put our happiness on other people. That never, ever works. I don't know why your husband wants a divorce but I suspect it has nothing to do with him changing and more to do with your relationship dynamic and his reaction to it.

I think you may need professional help. I understand being upset about a marriage ending. It's reasonable to feel lost, anger, sad, confused, scared, etc. What is concerning is the disproportionate reaction, ie.: can't live without him, can’t lose him for fear you'd literally die of heartache. To me, and this is just my opinion, when an adult says these things, it sounds nothing like love and more like dysfunction.

It almost seems like he has a motive to bring up divorce. Your relationship has hardly begun. If he won’t work on things with you and also refuses marriage counseling, you should still get counseling for yourself. This is too painful as a situation to be trapped alone with your thoughts and fears. Thoughts of suicide need to be discussed with someone you trust, a counselor/therapist, or a healthcare provider. You are not alone. I joined this group bc of horrible heartache.
It’s awful and there’s no telling when the hurt goes away. Welcome to the site. You are strong! You are just having a hard time rn. It will get better, eventually.

JustJackie, I'm so sorry to hear all that you are going through. I'm so glad you reached out. You are not alone. The pain of not feeling loved is one of the most painful experiences in the world, in my opinion. I have been there, too. My ex-husband treated me this way as well. And I responded the same way you have... by walking on eggshells and trying to be the perfect wife so that he would love me. Unfortunately for me, it didn't make things any better. The trouble with this response is that it says to our husbands that we are desperate and we cannot live without them. And often times that makes things even worse and instead of feeling love, they start to lose respect and pity us. Rather than pity you, you want your husband to respect you. You can't have true love without respect. You said that you want to take some of the power back. You can do that. You can't have power over him, but you CAN have power over how you react. Power is not necessarily saying to him, "F you for giving up on me." That is still putting the power in HIS control. Instead, it's confidently saying to YOURSELF, "There have been times when I felt like I couldn't live without him. This season in our marriage has been very hard on me, but I know I'm going to make it. I am a strong woman and I can cope regardless of the outcome." If you want your husband to learn to respect you, you have to appear calm and confident. You may not feel that way. It's hard to see the forest through the trees, as they say. But I believe you do have it inside you somewhere. You already used that power when you reached out for help. Talking to a counselor on your own might be beneficial for you. They could help you learn how to be tough but still loving. Although my marriage ultimately ended, finding a counselor was one of the best things that happened to me. Although I don't think I would have actually gone through with it, I also thought about ending my life because the pain was just so intense. I realized later that it wasn't reallydeath that I wanted, it was just relief from the pain. JustJackie, relief IS possible. It may not feel like it, but it is. I promise you. Keep holding on. I will be praying for you.