u/kjclovertwinsies

Context:

1. Married for 7 years, parents for one year.
2. Husband American, wife Indian, so big culture differences.
3. Husband is introvert, antisocial, paranoid, anxious attachment style.
4. Wife is extrovert, social, and avoidant attachment style.
5. Husband had no father figure, absentee mom, raised by grandma.
6. Wife was raised by abusive parents, and consistently judged, criticized and controlled.
7. We have tried couples and individual counselling.
8. All of the issues mentioned here have been discussed with my husband . My husband is aware of all of these concerns, except for my current dilemma about separation, or that I am posting this.

Story:

My husband and I have been married for seven years, and our first divorce talk happened in our second year of marriage. Why? Because when we first got together, my husband liked to have everything in his control. How we do our finances, how we live, where we live, what we do, when we have kids, etc. Every time I would suggest otherwise to what he wanted, we would have fights. Then he would blame my friends/family for those fights, saying that they are riling me up. We fought about which house to buy, which ultimately went his way, we fought about our sex life, which was also going his way, until I had enough and said I wanted divorce. He then promised to respect my boundaries, but he would still mention what he wanted here and there, until we started fighting about that.

With a lot of things being controlled by him, I had my second blow up 3 years into our marriage, where I was fully ready to leave, and we sat down and talked, to which he agreed that he would try to ease up on controlling everything and would also do things the way I wanted to. Some of these things are:

1. I wanted to live in our own house, not buy his grandma’s house and live in it with her, in the basement.
2. I had wanted a child 2 years into our marriage, not 6 years into it, like it ended up happening. And I also wanted to continue working, bot be a stay at home mom like he wanted.
3. I wanted a dog pet, but he only wants cats. We have two cats, but no dogs to this date. I adopted one at one point, but then became pregnant and had to give him up because I couldn’t care for him alone and my husband was consistently fighting me on this (broke my heart to rehome my puppy).
4. I wanted to buy my own car (would have been my first ever car I bought from my own money) but he wasn’t in favor, so he didn’t help me through the process. (Before that, I had a pre owned vehicle that I was having issues with)
5. Asking me to not have a separate savings account that he can’t access. Getting me to close my credit card, and use his (my credit rating was impacted because I had no debts)

After my second divorce talk, he sort of just shut down. Since then, any affection that he was still showing me slowly declined. He would still argue about things he didn’t want to do, like not wanting to have a baby (we’re not ready or the world is overpopulated anyway), not wanting a dog, me buying a new car (great, now we have more debt to pay). It felt like anything I wanted/did was wrong and impulsive, but anything he wanted/did was right and carefully considered.

When I mentioned again, that if he doesn’t want kids, I need to separate because I want them (which by the way I had clearly stated when we started dating, so there wasn’t a confusion), then he gave in and we became pregnant. He was detached, emotionally distant for most of the pregnancy. It changed a bit after we attended the prenatal classes, and he got a bit more caring for the last month of pregnancy and during labor.

Post partum, we started sleeping separately because of his work being too early and our son crying at night. Which is understandable, but our son is now one year old, and we still sleep separately. We haven’t been intimate for months. We don’t sit on the same sofa when we are in the same room. He doesn’t hold my hand, or kiss me, and when he does show affection (goodnight hug for example), its so awkward and sarcastic, it lacks sincerity and warmth. He could be saying goodnight to his guy friend.

In his free time (he has lots because he is working part time), he sits in his room to play video games, or is on his phone/tv). If he is not in his room, he is watching our son/playing with him, while on his phone 80% of the time.

He loves our son now, after the initial struggle in feeling a bond with him, because he followed his therapist’s advice to play with him daily to create that bond.

He is a great father, but as a husband he is falling far behind. We have no affection, no caring gestures, or romantic times. I could be talking to a friend, or I could be talking to my husband, there’s no difference. If anything, I feel more comfortable sharing my thoughts with my friends not him.

Everytime I feel like we would be happier separate, and mention this to him, he freaks out, cries and begs (has even banged his head in the door once). If I try to leave the room, he holds onto me (not hurtfully, just to prevent me from leaving), and just doesn’t want to separate. So I stay, and hope that we can work at it, and eventually become a caring affectionate couple. But it just goes back to the same old after a few days from such arguments. I keep hoping, only for it to be crushed over and over.

Right now, I don’t even trust his affection and care, because he only shows it when I visibly withdraw. I am contemplating separating (our son is not a concern as we will both be financially capable of providing for him), but I know he’s going to try to stop me again. He doesn’t want to let me go, but also doesn’t seem to want to work at the relationship. I am exhausted of explaining to him over and over what I want and need from this relationship. By explaining, I mean that I have instructed him to the point of ‘you could hold my hand, or give me a kiss, or we could sit together on the couch’. LITERALLY. I have had to give these exact instructions because he didn’t know what I wanted when I said ‘I need to feel close to you’.
I don’t know what else to try. Do you?
🤦🏽‍♀️