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female
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anonymous
writes: Bottom line I been married for eleven years now and the children are 4,7,10 years old. I have lost both confidence in my feeling for my husband and confidence in how I feel about myself in this relationship. Having had really bad experience about love from a abusive mother, I am not prepared to suffer people's indifference of me. So I shut down never letting anyone one get close to me. Both my husband and I are not getting along. I'm too critical about this and he's now showing me with indifference. This is made hard because we have three children. Both of us love the children but couldn't decide whether to break up for good or just keep things ticking along until things change between us. We have now outside friends and I lack confidence to rely on others from prejudice I suffered at the hands of some neighbour five years ago and racial prejudice from his family which I have now disowned. Help Help Help Help
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reader, becky05 +, writes (20 July 2005):
I think a lot of your problems are being helped along by your insecurities, perhaps you should consider counselling (either alone or with your husband) this will allow you to sort out your feelings and begin to change the way you think about things.
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reader, schlottjl  +, writes (20 July 2005):
 There is soooo much going on for you! I'm sorry things are tough and I know a lot of what you must be feeling as I too have been in a near 10-year relationship where for no reason I was disliked by his family and he treated me indifferently. Let me also say that I'm glad (so far) that I decided to stay and give it another try. Even though I thought that I had already tried everything and thought that it wasn't fair that I was the one to do all the work I tried the following ideas and revived the relationship to a spot better than I could have imagined!
Psychology teaches that much of the unhappiness and conflict in relationships were supposedly due to childhood baggage which is transferred from parent to spouse. Also, we learn that if we leave, we would not solve the problem but pack it up and take it with us. Then, we find another person who would give us yet another chance to deal with the baggage which we would still been carrying.
I think you might already know this since I noticed you mentioned your mom in this context. Seek help to get through your first family or family of origin issues. It makes it so much easier and also much faster to wrap it up and dump it where it should go! It might be that you are still seeing your mom when you are treated indifferently, particularlly if he treats you the same way. Whenever someone treats us in a way that reminds us of a parent, we do not react fairly. We will rebel or have a fit like we would to the parent when we were kids.
Next, I noticed that you gave yourself two choices. Leave and start over or stay and cope with the new unpleasant reality. May I suggest a third and fourth? How about adding in stay and make a plan to see if you can woo your husband back and Stay but insist on counseling for you both? Let me also suggest, nothing will just change between the two of you unless you change it. You have to do it because you are more miserable. Treat this like an experiment and a drama home work assignment.
I am a Christian, but you don’t have to be to understand some basic life principles or life laws that will never change. There are two scriptures that stand out as true for you. The first is “As a man thinketh, so is he.” In other words if you keep a thought in your mind, you become it or it comes true like a self fulfilling prophecy. So for you, act in love, and you will fall back in love.
The other scripture outlines my strategy for getting your marriage back to where it should be. It is from Revelations 2:1-7
How to overcome starts in 2:5 . . . “Remember therefore from whence thou art fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place . . . “
So you need to: 1) Think of what you did when you were first in love. Remember your hottest moments, your greatest times, and your future dreams. 2) Ask forgiveness for your part (and you do have a part if you are alive.) This will model good behavior and toss water on any fire fights. 3) Act as if . . . As if you couldn’t love him more, as if he is the man of your dreams, and as if when he is indifferent or dismissive, that he must be preoccupied. Assume the best.
If you fake it till you make it you will be surprised at how quickly things turn around. He may even join you in this if you are serious and he notices a change in you.
Finally, keep your eye on the prize. Why not take the high road and not allow racists to have any excuse to hate? Compromise on the ending it with his parents idea. It is horrible to have parents like that and what is worse is he can’t help but love them. . . no matter how bad they are. But if you hate them, he will have to defend them or if he doesn’t, he will feel a pull subconsciously that will render him unable to deal with you and keep him preoccupied trying to excuse or defend or any other activity to heal the rift. If you support him as their son, (and you married him knowing who he was) and choose to never say a mean word about them, it will free him up to not transfer his baggage with them onto you!
Good luck, this is not easy but a womans life is never easy.
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reader, anonymous, writes (20 July 2005): Indifference can be the cruellest thing to deal with and no one should tolerate it. It's sad to hear of marriages that suffer with indifference from both or one of the partners. When flowers are not watered, they die. The same is true of marriages. When a partner become indifferent - when they become dull to the other's mind, spirits and bodies - the marriage is deprived of life-giving water. As a result, it withers. However, husbands and wives do not have to succumb to the devastating effects of indifference. It can be turned around. You must look at each other and find the love and respect that brought you together in the first place. You must spend time together. You must grow together instead of apart. Create more joy experiences. Have you lost the art of enjoying life? Many of us apparently have, since thousands of couples allow their marriages to get in a dull rut. This is unfortunate because there is great potential for the marriage relationship to be one of the most joyful experiences in life. How can you make joy happen in your marriage? One way that joy and vitality can be added to your marriage is so simple, yet so seldom practiced. Sit down with your spouse and list the things you both enjoy in life. Then ask yourselves how often you actually do these things. Make an effort to increase these fun things in your life. You will find as you seek for different ways to make each other happy that you will add to the beauty of your marriage and to the pleasure of your life. Another way to strengthen your marriage is to renew it. Sit down together and decide what you do and do not like about your marriage. Make a list of the behaviors you would like to change and those you would like to do with your husband. One of the quickest ways that you can improve your marriage relationship is by getting genuinely interested in your partner.. Show a keen interest in your partners work. Encourage each other to talk about situations that are of great concern to you. Ask questions which will let your partner know you are interested in his or her activities. Above all, be an attentive, interested listener. There is no better way to fill a person's need for respect than by being a good listener.
There are many sources of support to help you with your problems. Heading straight for divorce could increase your problems. If you think that you had communication problems in your marriage, you can multiply these a hundred-fold if you suddenly decide to divorce without trying to find a way forward in your relationship. A better way of moving forwards is to reach out and ask for help. In everyday life, you continually seek out professional help from experts. If you need a mortgage, you take expert financial advice. When your marriage is in trouble, what do you do? Well, most of us just muddle along, burying our heads in the sand and hope that things will somehow get better. But seeking out a professional counsellor or other support could be of enormous help. I wish your marriage well..keep it happy.
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