Where to begin?
Like my title says, where do i begin?
I 40f have been married to my husband 42m for 11 years, together for 13. We have one daughter together 11F and i have a son 17m from a previous relationship. I have been struggling with our marriage since 2020. In late 2020 i discovered him inappropriately texting a childhood “friend” whom i had never even heard of. Obviously i blew up and confronted him. We went to couples counseling for a little while. I don’t know about everyone here but i cannot do the virtual sessions. We ended up stopping because my husband felt the counselor was a man hater. We laid out boundaries during these sessions that i thought were working. I thought that the year after this we were doing so great. But then the same pattern popped up again. My intuition was screaming something is not right! He would omit that a female coworker was picking him up from the airport and dropping him at his hotel. He only referred to this coworker by her job title never her name. Phone records show conversations happening at 10-11pm while he is in her area for work. Phone records also showed that he was calling me from her town, not the town his hotel was in. It was always communicated to me that this coworker doesn’t work past 5pm, doesn’t have a laptop at home. So why the calls at night? After he rushed me off the phone after 7 minutes because he’s exhausted and is going to bed an hour before her call? Lies after lies.
Anytime we have a conflict there is never repair. Never an apology. Never a how do we move forward? It’s all oh well you need to get over it.
I cannot bring up hurtful things he has said or done. If i do it gets flipped around on how i am failing. Never addresses my hurt or my anything. He is always defensive. Always. I’m terrified to bring anything up ever because it turns into a fight and then yup you’ve guessed it, no repair after said fight. I’m never right y’all. Never. Not my opinions. Not my emotions. But he loves me and thinks I’m amazing right?
The past 2 years i have been asking to sit down and put together what our finances look like. What bills is he paying vs what bills he’s paying. Where can we save. Where can we splurge etc. I’ve been told yeah sure but when it comes down to it, he doesn’t want to. He went though his side and shared oh i found this i could cut out. But still never addressed what i am actually asking for. Well i sat my happy self down and wrote it out. My paycheck covers 95% of the bills. His covers that other 5%. When i brought this to his attention he flipped out on me. Accused me of being angry and coming in and being so mad i couldn’t talk. I wasn’t angry. I was anxious because i KNEW it was going to be a fight. And because i didn’t choose my words carefully he blew it up into another universe. Because i stated MY money is paying for all of the bills and i don’t have anything extra for myself. He took that as me being the worst partner and im not on the same page. I view it as my money and his money And this is what the problem is. The problem was not me saying MY money. But that’s what he made the problem out to be.
Do i trust him? With my heart and my emotional safety, no. With our daughter, yes.
I have suggested marriage counseling but it always comes back to me finding them and scheduling them. No effort on his end. And honestly, it’s difficult to get a call back and it’s difficult to find someone who you feel like will have the life experience to help and not shove their religious beliefs down our throats.
I don’t know what i need here. Someone who can listen and tell me I’m not a horrible person? I don’t know if i want to continue to work on this or leave.