Tinydoc's first post, 5 months in.

[Vanilla]

Tiny I hope you also had new bedding.

Comfortable mattress and comfy warm or cool sheets whatever works.

V

[TDball]

Tiny I hope you also had new bedding.

Comfortable mattress and comfy warm or cool sheets whatever works.

V

I did! I got new linen sheets, which he never really liked or appreciated.

[TDball]

I dropped off our dog to his new apartment this evening. Normally I would have him pick her up, but I decided to do a 180 and offered to drop her off. It's a long walk (45 minutes), and I'm not sure how we're going to keep doing this. Then I asked him how to get to the subway so I could get home, and he gave me directions. It made me a little sad, because he knows I have a terrible sense of direction, and he doesn't live in the safest neighborhood, and it was dark out. The old him would have never let me walk alone, but he just doesn't care anymore.

Isn't it crazy how we once stood in front of family/friends, looked this person in the ey and promised to love each other forever? It baffles me.

His new neighborhood is kind of desolate, and far from his work. I know his financial situation and he has to be struggling, or accruing significant debt. Yet he is still happier, and I feel empty.

[Azzork]

Yet he is still happier, and I feel empty.

Tiny! No! Dont fall for this trap.

He is convinced that YOU are the source of HIS unhappiness. Isnt that preposterous? Well, eventually, he will come to realize thats not the case. You were never in control of his happiness, so you cant possibly be the cause of his unhappiness.

Just because he APPEARS happy to you doesnt mean that he IS happy.

Now, back to you. What do you have planned for this week?

[V2pt0]

Tinydoc,

Just wanted to post and say hello. I know how grueling a higher level education can be on your M. I am sure that it had many ramifications on your M that would have been hard to prevent. I think it takes more developed R skills that most of don't naturally have at the beginning of our M. I know my H's schooling was hard on our M. I don't think we had a strong enough foundation by the time he started to help us through. We both dealt with things in an unhealthy way. His OW (she is finishing up her PhD and is the HR manager at his office) was so kind when he started working there in January to give him a print out of how those getting PhDs have a higher D rate. I can just hear the conversation. Sickening.

Did your H ever say what his issues were? In many ways, I could have been the one to have an A and walk out on my H. For the last 10 years my emotional needs have not been met, even when I specified what I needed. But I didn't because I thought the villian was his school and that was never an option for me. My H was always gone at school or field work. When he was home, we didn't focus on us. It was always what project needed to be done op around the house. Building a deck or other large manual labor job does not necessarily bring out the best in you when you are already starting to disconnect.

Also, I can see if your H was underemployed and having a W getting her medical degree might cause him to question his worth if he was already insecure in some way. Obviously, there is something going on underneath it all for him to deal with things the way he did. Just curious if he has given you anything to work with as far as changes you need to work on for you.

I have read a few success stories on here with the LBS filed but they still R. Starsky is one that comes to mind.

[Vanilla]

Great insight BT.

This was my new question too.


V

[TDball]

Did your H ever say what his issues were? In many ways, I could have been the one to have an A and walk out on my H. For the last 10 years my emotional needs have not been met, even when I specified what I needed. But I didn't because I thought the villian was his school and that was never an option for me. My H was always gone at school or field work. When he was home, we didn't focus on us. It was always what project needed to be done op around the house. Building a deck or other large manual labor job does not necessarily bring out the best in you when you are already starting to disconnect.

Also, I can see if your H was underemployed and having a W getting her medical degree might cause him to question his worth if he was already insecure in some way. Obviously, there is something going on underneath it all for him to deal with things the way he did. Just curious if he has given you anything to work with as far as changes you need to work on for you.

Hi BT, thank you for stopping by.
He did say, he had quite a few issues. The first one was that I yelled at him. And I did. I would get angry when I came home from a really long day, or a 24 hour call, and the house was messier than when I left yesterday morning. Or knowing I worked 14 hours a day, and he worked 5, and I still had to do so many chores. So I got angry. I hated yelling at him, but I did. On the other hand, I knew what would set me off, and I would beg him to not let me come home from a 24 hour call to a sink full of dishes.

Looking back this makes me so sad. I know yelling made him feel unloved. And in retrospect, yelling about dishes sounds so silly, but it really made me feel awful. I wondefed how someone could love me and still want me to spend my 1 hour of free time a day doing the chores, when he had so many more hours of free time during the day. I conveyed this to him many times, calmly, and it didn't change. I know I should have just accepted that I married someone who didn't like doing chores.

My mom also yelled a lot, it resolved when she went on antidepressants, which I've done. It has helped some, but it's too late.

He says I never wanted to go out with his friends. I really regret not going out more, but I was always so physically and emotionally drained. Now I'm in my last year, and only work one weekend every 6 weeks, and don't take weekday call. So the obstacle has been lifted already.

There are more issues, but I need to take a break from typing them, because this makes me really sad. I miss him so much.

One thing that kills me is that we we were together through the worst of my training, and we were just about to get to the good part, where I have more time and we have more money. I took our relationship for granted because I felt my training was just a temporary obstacle. I did t realize that we wouldn't make it to the other side.

Also, I really fail at divorce busting. I think I'm too angry at him, I have so much trouble controlling my responses to him. And yesterday he said "sorry our relationship didn't work out", which was just so cold. Isn't that something you say to someone before you exchange vows?

[V2pt0]

I know it must be really frustrating for you seeing that you were almost to the other side. What I will say is that you don't know if that would have changed anything. Your H's coping skills are what they are. My H graduated and was only working in a temp job until beginning of January. He was in school 12 out of the 13 years. He applied for his current postion in September of last year and started the job in January. I found out in April that he started a PA in October, not even a month after he was offered the job. Talk about anger!! I have told him we had just gotten through this and have the time and money to work on us. He just does not see it.

I am not sure how long you have been in school/residency, but maybe hearing how things were for me on the opposite end might help you empathize and relate to your H more. I think that is a key aspect of DB. It can be hard to do that when you know there is an A. You need to find a way to not express anger and coolness toward him. I did not do the best job with this after finding out the A was going on in my home.

So, here is my perspective...

I felt a great deal of pressure on me to keep everything running at home and to be the primary income earner. There was a great amount of limbo when H's masters and PhD took longer than expected. I had no idea when he was going to graduate. There were many times that I felt trapped in an unsatisfying job because we could not afford for me to take a lower salary. Then, after he graduated, we were not sure if he would find a job locally, so we had to be prepared to move. I did not want to take on a new job and then turn around and quit. That went on for 7 years!!

There was also a lot of time spent on my own. I felt like I got married to just be single. My H always told me I would come first, but as soon as schooling intensified, that was not the case. When he was home, he was very grumpy because of stress. Overall, I no longer felt special or important to him. I held way too much of this in because I felt guilty. I knew he was busy, so I just chalked it up to his schooling, but my resentment grew. Not feeling important and resentment I have come to find out are horrible for your desire for sex. Here I was supporting him to better himself, but I was stuck at home busting my butt for him and he was ungrateful for what I did do and would just focus on my negatives. He did not focus on my needs at all. I whole heartily admit I went about things wrong by withdrawing and not communicating better.

My point is that he may have been very lonely on his end and did not feel like he had a wife for many years. His emotional needs probably got lost in your schooling as well, yet there he was being supportive of you accomplishing such an amazing personal and professional goal. That does not mean he communicated that to you in the right way or at all, but he probably thinks he did. I am learning now how easy it is for our wires to get crossed as far as why we are actually mad at our spouses and what we actual communicate. I did not even know there was such a difference in emotional needs and how what I was and was not doing was killing the emotional connection with my H. Most men have admiration on their list of top needs and yelling and criticism are killers for that. If your physical relationship suffered as well that was extra salt in his emotional wound. He was probably already feeling low with his job or any other self worth issues he may have had prior to your M.

I know reading that might be extremely hard and make you feel like (censored). I only shared it to help you see how hard it can be to be for the spouse on the other end of an advanced degree. Maybe try to keep those thing in mind as you DB. It will help you find some compassion for your H when you want to be hostile. You want him to start seeing a new and improved Doc.

[TDball]

Thank you so much for all of that. It is hard to hear, but I know it's true. and i know that underneath his anger is so much pain.

I know I neglected him, and I was selfish about my needs. I feel really sad about that. He told me early on that he needs lots of praise, so I did make an effort throughout our relationship to praise him for many things. He did a lot for me, but I feel sad I didnt make him feel loved or appreciated enough. I wish I could give him so many hugs right now.


I didn't mention this in my first post, but I was also supporting him financially for the majority of our relationship. We moved in together 9 months after we started dating, and he was fired the following month. After that he spent a few months on the couch due to depression, and then had some unsuccessful career attempts after that. We were never able to have a real discussion about this (although I think I tried), and I just kept paying the rent for both of us, for over a year. By the time we got engaged he owed me 10,000 (we live in NYC), which his parents paid back so that we could start off our marriage on equal footing.

it wasn't until the last year that he started to find his way, career wise. Even now, he can just about cover his expenses. And he now tells me that he would have left me a long time ago if he could have afforded it, and I can see how he felt trapped. On the other hand, the fact that I was in residency and we were guaranteed some degree of financial security is what allowed him the freedom to find a career that works for him,

I know his emotional needs weren't being met, I take responsibility for that.

I do have a hard time understanding how one's emotions can be so worn down that there's no hope for recovery. I know this is what happens all the time in dying marriages, but I have never experienced it from his perspective. so I just can't wrap my head around the fact that he doesn't love me anymore. Even now, after writing all of this, I want to call him and apologize and tell him how much I love him and want this to work. That if only we could go to marriage counseling, we could get through this. But I've learned from. experience that it's now futile, and he is done.

[TDball]

Reading this over, of course I haven't even addressed how I'm going to be a new and improved doc.

Our communication is now down to a bare minimum, but I'm really going to have to try to keep my emotions Iand hostility n check. Thank you for helping me see it more clearly from his perspective.

I'm learning the hard way that It really is a marathon, but I think I things by pretending it was a sprint.

We did make progress a few months ago, and now it's just steadily downhill, When this all started, he said something about reevaluating 5 months from now, and I thought it was unrealistic to think we would still be in each others lives in 5 months. I was so naive.

And then a few months ago, when I found out there was someone else, I told him that having second thoughts was no longer an option for him because I would never take him back. I regret saying that too, even though Im not sure my feelings in that have changes.