After pushing my husband for what was wrong and why he didn't want to improve our marriage earlier today he burst out crying. Saying "he didn't want to have this conversation because that meant our relationship was over."

Apparently he doesn't love me anymore and thinks that he might have never loved me at all - he just loved the idea of being in love.

I'm going to try and find us a marriage counselor this week, he's agreed to go even though he doesn't think it will help.

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Long story -

I met my husband over 2 1/2 years ago and we've been married for about 14 months now. Up until 2 months ago we were both going to school full time (with some classes together) and working - spending most of our time together.

He didn't hang out with friends much and I flew 4000 miles to be with him so needless to say I didn't have many friends either, it was just us hanging out. Bills were very tight but we made it work.

Then his slot for military tech school came up and he begged me to come with his and have a "vacation" while he went to class. Since I didn't want to be apart from him for 4 months I accepted and we took a 3 week long road trip across the USA to see my parents and his daughter. We got terribly sick from a hotel on arrival and spent the next 2 weeks incredibly ill.

After a few weeks down here he started making friends in his classes and hanging out with them after class. I didn't mind, after all he'd never really had many friends that he saw regularly up north.

Then one week ago he starts working out with them 4 hours after class to get "in shape for me" and after being distant me all the time. During the first part of the week I found a book "His Needs, Her Needs" that I wanted to try with him to improve our marriage but I couldn't get him interested.

Earlier today I kept up asking him what was bothering him and why he didn't want to work on our relationship. After about 5 minutes he burst out crying and said that because if he did it would mean our relationship was over. And he wanted to wait til we were both in his home state to tell me that he wanted a divorce to make it "easier on me".

He said that he's not in love with me anymore and he's not sure if he ever was or if he just wanted the feeling of being in love. He said it's not our marriage that's bad, it's that overtime he found out that he wasn't right for me and being down here out with friends brought it to light. He said he just desires to be out alone with his friends and coming back to an empty place each night.

He said he's done everything over the last few months to try and be happy with me, but the just can't see a future with me in it anymore. He still cares for me, but he doesn't want to be married.

He said he's gone through the improvement phase and now just wanted to end it. He always internalizes everything and I asked how he thought he could hope to fix a marriage that has two people in it without letting me know and us doing it together. And he told me that it didn't matter now and he just wanted it over with.

When we first got together this was the man that cried at the airport when saying goodbye to me for the first time. I don't get what's happened between us - I know our marriage was rough before and we couldn't really afford to go out and do many fun things but I thought we were happy together.

He's agreed to try and read the book I wanted and go to marriage counseling with me, but he doesn't think that either will work. He just wants to be single. He also says the book won't do any good because he doesn't "want" anything from me and doesn't want to improve our marriage to be the best ever, he just wants out.

In two weeks we'll be heading back north since his classes are done with. At that point in time I need to decide if I should be trying to make a marriage work with someone who either doesn't want it to work or doesn't think it will.

If I leave I know it'll be over for good. It's embarrassing to stick around when all he wants to do is go out alone, but I keep thinking that when I leave it's over with and I'll never know what would have happened if I stayed for a bit longer.

All in all I'd welcome any advice, even though I'm feeling like it's already over. Our marriage has had our ups and downs, but honestly he seemed happy until this last week.

Have you had any suspicions at all in your gut instinct that he has started an affair with someone in the group of "New Friends" that he is hanging out with?

I feel that any vet who reads your story is going to point that out to you, so you
need to determine if such a short term marriage is worth the extensive fight you will have on your plate.

If you want to try to reconcile, NO counseling will work while he is involved with someone else.

You then need to snoop and discover the truth about what his SSL, Secret Second Life is all about. Read about all of the methods in the Operation Investigate sub-forum.

If you agree, then i suggest you click on the Notify button to request a Forum Moderator to move this Topic Thread into the SAA, Surviving An Affair forum.

LTL

I've been talking on a few forums and a lot of people have pointed out that he's most likely involved in some form of affair, emotional or otherwise. Even though he denies it for now.

It seems I'm going to have a bit of free time on my hands lately, so I'll definitely check that out.

Thanks LTL.

I encourage you to stay on this forum and follow Dr. Harley's methods for marriage and affairs.

Thanks Jedi Knight.

At this point he doesn't really seem interested in all in fixing the marriage. I'm not sure if he would even put forth the effort to try it with me because in his eyes it's already over with.

I talked to him about coming to marriage counseling, but he seems to think they'll just tell me that it's over with or want him to try and make changes and he pretty much outright refused to do that.

I'll have to see how the counseling goes, but I'm not sure what else I can do besides objecting to the actual divorce itself.

At this point, I encourage you to NOT participate in the marriage counseling and instead snoop and find out if he is having an affair.
In the meantime, be as pleasant as possible.

Welcome. I am sorry for your pain. You have come to the best place for advice.

I encourage you to investigate as well. If he is turning down your overtures to make an emotional connection with him, it is most likely he is involved with another person. You will need to preserve your own emotional resources into strengthening yourself.

Please consider that your husband could be too immature for the commitment you both have made together, and that it's not your fault or your shortcoming, but his fault, no matter what he says. If this is the case, you may have to let go of him, because your efforts to bring him back may cause greater damage to you in the long run, than you can help him.

Thanks everyone for the encouragement. However, since he is so adamant about not working to work on anything and just wanting out. I don't think the time and energy I'd put into finding out if he's actually with someone else would be worth it considering the emotional toll it would take on me during that time.

We still have 2 more weeks down here, 1 week on the road to get back and then 1-2 weeks back north before I leave and never look back. In that time I am definitely going to keep my eyes peeled for what could be going on, but after that I don't think it'll make much difference anyways.

Even if I did find out that he had an affair and he wanted to work through it I don't think I would ever feel the same way. I would always wonder if he would randomly wake up again someday and just do it all over again out of the blue.

Thanks though. I definitely get the desire to know because I do wonder. However at this point I just can't justify wasting more of my life trying to figure out a person who would do something like this to me.



Here's an update of the last 4 days and what's been going on:

After reading on forums and talking to my mom a lot the day after everything happened I have come to the realization that it's not just a horrible nightmare and it will never be the same ever again. So I've attempted to go from just wanting to hit rewind to moving forward by myself.

Overnight from that horrible day I've gone from asking him how it happened, what we could do to change, how to get back to how we were, or trying to come up with that one perfect idea that would make it all get better again. To realizing that at this point the only thing that I can do is to take care of myself.

I've distanced myself from him as much as possible while still being civil with him during conversations we need to have. And starting doing my own thing each evening for dinner and entertainment when he comes back with the car we're sharing down here and has his friends pick him up. As hard as it is I know just sitting around in our resort in a beach town will only make it worse so while I'm still here I may as well do something, anything to try and enjoy myself.

Which has led him to question me about my day and what I've been out doing, since I'm normally back after him, and seem kind of miffed that I appear to not care about him anymore or his day or want to be around him. If I'm out late because I went to dinner and decided to see a movie he texts me to see what I'm doing and if I'm alright. He seems to still want to treat me like he did before, but more as friends and that's totally not alright and probably never will be.

I was lucky enough to get a counseling appointment two days after everything happened. Going in I knew nothing was going to change but I thought being in there would help my understanding of the situation and how it changed so abruptly, but it didn't.

Things that he said over and over again to me the first day like "I just want to be single, I don't know why you can't understand that" or "I don't love you anymore like I should and I'm not sure if I ever did or if I was just in love with being in love" or "we can go to counseling but I won't change anything if they ask me to because I just want to be single" or "this is just how I am, I'm emotionally closed off and don't want to share my feelings and if you don't like it that's just another reason to not be together" he all denied saying them, at least the bold parts.

It's incredibly frustrating that he feels the need to lie in front of a woman that's there to help who he's never going to see again. Although it made me realize even more so that this is who he is now. Whether it be embarrassment over the things he said or how abruptly it came about, this is what he considers "ok" to do to me. And though I have a hard time seeing it right now, I know that I do deserve better.

Everyone who I've talked to has said the entire thing sounds completely bizarre. And while the counselor didn't go that far she said our case is very, very unusual and she from listening to him that he sounded confused and that his version of the story and reasons varied a lot. However, it helped, once again, to get the reinforcement that this isn't normal. She also said while he seems very calm and collected emotionally right now, she thinks eventually his emotions will explode and he'll need to get counseling then. However, I should continue seeing someone right now and I'm going to while I'm near a base and it's free.

While I don't expect to save our marriage and I realize that our marriage is over. The thing I wanted to get from counseling that still didn't happen is why it's over and how it got to that point, but I probably never will at this rate. The only reasons he gave were of him trying to work on our marriage by himself or things he asked me to change and he had no examples of what he ever specifically tried to do.

At this point the only people he's talked to about the divorce are his friends down here. And the big change I saw in him around me I know came after he talked to one of his friends originally about our relationship. To me it's weird that he doesn't want to talk to anyone in his family about us getting a divorce at all, but at this point there's no making him do anything.

In about three weeks we'll be back in his hometown and I'll have to go pack up and things I had stored at his parents. It'll be interesting if I'm the first one telling them after one month that he wants a divorce, especially if he doesn't come with me that day. Though it looks like that's becoming a real possibility.

We talked last night for a bit and he asked if I would agree to an uncontested divorce and I told him that as long as he does everything financially that he's promised I will sign the papers either way, but only after that's all done. He wanted to put any promises he couldn't fulfill by the time I'd left as just a stipulation in the divorce papers, but I told him I wanted everything completed and then and only then I would sign. Since it seems like he wants to move very fast on this, I figure I'll have more success with him keeping his promises this way, My other thought was having him draw up the papers stipulating what is to be / would be done and have him sign, but then not signing until he actually took those actions. Either way then I would have it in writing. I'll have to check state laws though to see if I can sign them after leaving, because I do not want to fly back and see him again after I'm gone. If anyone has any experience with any of this let me know.

It's surreal that in 4 days we'd gone from married to married and dividing up finances for a divorce, but at this point there isn't much to hang on to so I don't see the point of drawing it out further. Now I'm just attempting to make sure I get taken care of with what we should have at the beginning of May.

My entire family is very anxious that as soon as we get back north he'll change his mind and ask me to stay and work on it and that I'd agree. However, even though I see the marriage very emotionally at times I can see it very logically. I know if it was this easy for him to do to me I should get out now even if he changes his mind. Since he could just as easily do it 3, 5, 10, 20 years down the road again and I will have only invested more time into someone who's shown me they are not capable of working on a marriage long term.

Also, I've also always considered my family a decent judge of character and they now either hate him, desire to cause him bodily harm if he ever shows up on my doorstep, or both. In these first few crazy days they've been my support system to guide me through and go "no, he's an immature idiot and you're better then that, this may be a crazy and terrible situation but this isn't your fault, you shouldn't blame yourself or feel foolish for trusting him or that he wants to end it now, you'll find someone better who won't run off on a whim and is better then he ever was or will be." I can't fathom not having them around to help me through this and feel completely lucky that I do because I know that's not always the case.

Sorry for the novel. It's been a rough few days, but I feel like it's been a year emotionally. Thank you to everyone who has replied up til now. Even if it's short you've given me something to read and some outsider insight into what's happening.

I still encourage you to snoop and see if he is having an affair.

Yes, AMc, I agree with JediKnight: Please do check that out: Investigate your WH's phone/email/unaccounted-for-time, even though you know you are going to be fine on your own without WH. Evidence is important in the event of litigation to end your marriage.

What a strong and serene person you are, AMc. I read your whole post. You are blessed to have a wonderful Mom and your family to support you emotionally.