I’ve been with my wife for nearly thirteen years. I really love her despite what I'm about to write - she means the world to me. We have two daughters together whom I adore.
We’ve had our share of difficulties and at one point, nearly divorced. I developed anxiety as a result of our relationship issues and had professional help to get me through.
Despite having a better paid job, I felt controlled financially. My wife would regularly threaten to leave when we argued and I became resentful. Eventually, I called it by saying I was ending our relationship because I'd enough and refused to continue feeling how I did 'because of her'. This seemed to trigger something in my wife and she herself sought professional help for her own issues and battled depression shortly after.
Although it was a difficult time, I felt we came out stronger and more united. However, recently I’ve noticed I’ve become more content with my own company. My wife and I are bickering again, being blunt and snide with each other. Recently I became so irritated with her I told her to f*** off to bed and she did. No arguments, but this worries me more than if we had a massive row.
I’ve noticed this now for some months now. I long for the time when it’s just me and I don't know why.
I know I act without caring how she feels. Is this is a way of protecting myself? Previously I felt so scared that I wouldn’t even buy myself a shirt in case she scrutinised my bank account and then threaten to leave me. Which she did, often.
I will not go back to that. I will not allow her that control over me again and make me feel so worthless. Yet I do love her very much.
Am I sabotaging our relationship?
Sounds like you have a real battle going on.
On the one hand you love your wife very much. On the other, you’re clearly resentful of the pain and suffering you’ve experienced and I’m thinking you may be right - how you currently feel is one way of trying to keep yourself safe from it all happening again.
When there have been significant problems in a relationship, it can be really difficult to trust that real change has happened. You tell me that you both got professional help. That’s good, but it's only so far along the road to recovery. After the professional intervention comes the anxiety that although things seem to be different, they could so easily slip back and take you to the place of fear and misery that you so eloquently describe.
What comes shining through is your determination not to feel controlled by your wife ever again. It needs to be said that no-one should ever feel their partner consistently has the upper hand. Given how you understand yourself behaving towards her I’m hypothesising that there's a part of you that’s practising out loud, so to speak, to make absolutely sure that she gets the message that you won’t be put in that position again. Sometimes you behave indifferently towards her and sometimes you’re more strident. I’m guessing that she may be feeling quite upset and disconcerted by all this and is possibly wondering what on earth is going on.
This may well be the case for both of you. Unless you both get to the bottom of your relational issues, this is likely to get much worse. Being on your own increasingly is of course one way to deal with what’s going on. But while at some level it might suit you, my guess is that it's also causing you pain because deep inside it’s not really how you want things to be. I suspect your wife may feel the same.
So what can you do? You could continue as you are. The ‘dance’ you’ve established is meeting some needs because it maintains distance between you which, at many levels, probably feels safer. Let's be clear: being safe, whether physically or emotionally, is definitely the better option and you should think very carefully about opening yourself up to any of the earlier behaviours you tell me about. But that said, my take is that you could really benefit from spending time in couples counselling. This is because you need to work out what’s possible and what’s not with someone who is (I suspect) as wary of you as you are of her.
But that wouldn’t be an easy journey. In couples counselling, things can often feel worse before they feel better, as each partner peels back the layers of what and why things have happened and whether being together is really a good idea. Often, it’s possible to forge a new understanding of what each needs from the other and then find ways of meeting those needs as far as possible. But I guess you may decide that even suggesting couples' counselling to your wife might give the impression that you definitely want to stay with her – when actually you may feel very conflicted about this. That’s a very understandable position to be in and I understand that while you ‘adore and love her’ you’re equally afraid and angry about what’s happened in the past – with no intention of going back there.
On the flip side, you might suggest counselling and be turned down flat. If that were to happen you could still get some individual support to help you make more sense of your current feelings. Perhaps it would help you to make decisions about the future that prioritise your emotional wellbeing, which ultimately might mean prioritising this over love. It’s complicated isn’t it? Loving someone doesn’t always make us feel secure safe or happy, but we want to stay with that person nonetheless. Only you know what’s best for you and however you go about it, I hope you get to understand exactly what these contradictory feelings mean and what you most want to do with them.
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Ammanda Major is a sex and relationship therapist and our Head of Service Quality and Clinical Practice
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