My husband and I are on the verge of divorce, mainly because the relationship became emotionally draining. He shuts down, avoids communication, gives one-word answers, and always responds with “I’m fine” or “I’m okay” no matter what. He finds my emotional needs “too much”. Over time we became more like friendly roommates than loving partners.
Before we got married we would talk about anything and not get tired of each other, which is why I chose to marry him.
Recently I realised he may be a much more internally unhappy person than I thought.
I snooped through some chats he had with ChatGPT (I know I shouldn’t have), and he mentioned that before marriage he used sleep as an escape and would withdraw from the world when overwhelmed. He also mentioned getting stress-related physical symptoms like headaches during those periods. Apparently those symptoms improved after marriage, but in the ChatGPT conversations he said they’ve started coming back again recently.
He doesn’t believe in therapy/counselling. He the type to say “I will tell Allah my problems”
It made me wonder whether I mistook emotional avoidance for not caring.
Now I feel conflicted. Part of me feels compassion for him, but another part of me feels like I shouldn’t care and sort of “that’s his problem now not mine” as I have tried to emotionally connect with him for years only to feel rejected and invalidated.
Has anyone else experienced this with a partner? If so how did you overcome it or is there no overcoming unless he’s able to recognise his own issues?