I’m struggling to process the end of my marriage and wanted outside perspectives because I keep going back and forth between understanding his side and feeling really hurt by how things ended.
My husband and I had issues for a while. I know I wasn’t perfect — I could be emotional/moody when I felt hurt or disconnected and I can admit I didn’t always handle my feelings in the best way. He said over time he felt like I “chiselled away at him” emotionally. I take accountability for my part in things.
But at the same time, I often felt emotionally dismissed and struggled to get proper connection or communication from him. A lot of the time I felt like I had to almost “schedule” conversations to get his full attention. Sometimes when we did properly talk I felt really happy because I felt heard, but most of the time I didn’t feel emotionally connected to him.
A few weeks ago he suddenly went cold on me. When I suggested marriage counselling he seemed unsure/uninterested and later said he wanted a divorce. Around the same time he told me he was going on a trip to Canada with online friends and another girl was paying for part of it. I wasn’t invited and when I got upset he basically said other people are allowed to do what they want.
After mentioning divorce he went to stay at his mum’s and didn’t want to come back to the flat while I was there because he didn’t want us talking things through if things were just going to go back to how they were. He also put a camera in his room “to watch his stuff,” which really upset me because I’d never damaged his things and it made me feel like he didn’t trust me.
He says he still loves and cares about me and wishes it hadn’t come to this, but I’m struggling to understand how someone can say that while handling things the way he did at the end. I also don’t know whether I was unintentionally pressuring him because I panicked when I felt like I was losing him and kept wanting reassurance and answers.
I think I’m just struggling with whether:
this was two people who loved each other but became unhealthy together
whether he emotionally checked out a long time ago
or whether I really was more emotionally draining than I realised.