My wife and will be married 20 years next week.
The last few years have been rough. I read the book. A lot of it rang true. I'm the one with ADHD.
A bit of marital backstory. We have had a great marriage overall, at least that is what I would have said before truly understanding what she's been living with. A recurring theme has really been around connection. She's wants, I sporadically give it. For the better part of our marriage I was not on meds, and not in therapy. She begged me to do therapy. I went sporadically. It always made me feel incredibly uneasy. I think I always felt that I was misunderstood or that she really was overreacting, or that "these are the little things why is this always such a huge argument", etc. So therapy became this chess game of me trying to get to a place where I could really believe that I was the one at fault, and reporting back to her in a way that would somehow get her past the recent disconnection. I truly didn't understand a lot of the time why I was disconnecting, and I knew in my heart it wasn't out of non-interest in my spouse. I just did. We used to go out for dinner, and after the meal was done and she just wanted to continue to connect and finish her wine, I would want to leave. Sitting still at a table was agony. I felt terrible about this. But I just couldn't hide it. We mostly got past things like this for the most part. The meds help. I've gotten a bit better at some of the things that cause disconnection but I know it is cumulative pain.
But over the years, she has had to manage a lot. 2 kids, one with some very serious ADHD and another with a mild case. She's had to manage me. She's carried 90% of the executive function weight in the house. I saw it sometimes, most of the time I didn't. I do all of the finances, my fair share of work around the house. I have even at times thought I was contributing beyond my fair share, but I enjoy being busy, and it didn't bother me unless she brought up how I again have been ignoring or not participating in some process in the house designed to help all of us. I would often get resentful because I would get scolded for doing something wrong 20% of the time. I didn't see the non-stop mental work she was putting in. I didn't understand how painful it must be to be trying to help someone and they resent you for it.
Things would be ok, then deteriorate as I would get hyper-fixated on some new project etc, and she would hit rock bottom and blow up at me or the kids. I always thought these were indicative of her having a bad temper, or not being able to manage stress or whatever. Or that this was still from some residual anger at me. I understand why now. I hate it.
Over the last few years I have become more reactive. I have been drinking more. Mostly to just not feel like shit that we aren't connected. That doesn't help with reactivity obviously. Being on the outs with her is always a an emotional nightmare for me. I go through waves of resentment, sadness, then wakeup hopeful that things are in my power to fix this, but when I see her look at the kids and laugh and such, then immediately go cold to me, it is really, really hard. It has recently caused me just to avoid her at times because being "shunned" just has become too painful. I have been reading about RSD, not sure if that is something that I might have but I can say when I am stressed about our relationship, it is hard for me to react in ways that take in the perspective of others. I don't have a fear of failure or anything, in fact I'd say overconfidence is more of an issue. But when I am scolded by her it nearly impossible for me to not react.
For a long time I wasn't honest. I lied about therapy. I lied about how I felt. I lied about not being resentful. I felt like if I was truthful she was going to just be even more upset, and I wanted to get back to being in love. I wanted to get it over with. When it was, I just couldn't bring it up to really resolve the underlying issue because I was so afraid not being connected.
The thing is that I WANT to be the one in the wrong. That is so much easier. But it is SO hard for me to see that sometimes.
We went on vacation this past week, and had a very long and hard conversation at dinner where I did fess up to a lot of this. I think it hurt, but I was hopeful that maybe a corner had been turned. She mentioned that she wanted to get a post-nup so she could feel safe in our relationship. Because I never would ever consider about screwing her over in a divorce, I agreed to look into it. We both had drank a bit by that point.
Yesterday she asked about moving forward with it in an email. It sent me into a very dark spiral. I just can't see how working through asset splitting isn't going to make everything way worse. I sent a flurry of emails basically wondering if she even loves me any more, and communicated I am very worried that maybe this is already over. It kills me to think she has been living with similar thoughts for so long. I don't want it to over.
There was an incident last night that was largely driven by the stress of the emails we had exchanged, that put my wife into a bad place and she had a panic attack this morning. I left the house immediately to give her space, and she called and said if I don't sign a post-nup in two weeks she looking for a legal separation. I don't blame her at all. She has gone through too much.
Here is the thing though, I really feel motivated and hopeful that I can now be 100% honest with her about everything, and am excited to start on some additional treatment. I have told her she needs to not be my therapist and that I am the only one that can fix this. I am going to further pursue maybe an SSRI and plan to look into doing some CBT and/or DBT.
The real issue at this point for me is that the post-nup she wants me to sign effectively asks for 80% of our assets and over 50% of my salary. She asked for numbers and said she doesn't trust me not to hide it money. It immediately sent me into tears. I will do anything to save this marriage but I feel like I also need to make sure I am not jeopardizing my future as well and that if we actually start "negotiating" when we are both so raw from breaking things down, it really going to be counterproductive to the healing process.
