I separated from my husband 1.5 months ago. I am 7 months pregnant. We have a 3 year old daughter. We had a lovely marriage, but it started a sharp and steady decline at the begining of this year when he steadily started smoking again.

I feel like no marriage compares when it comes to love busters. We have verbal abuse, emotional abuse, physical abuse, a step-child, an interfering ex, independant behaviour, annoying habbits, and a whole host of unmet needs on my part.

I don't want to get a divorce, I want to raise a solid and happy family. But I just don't love my husband. I have been a good wife, I have met most of his needs well and have only been verbally abusive. I am left not understanding the theory that when your partner is happy and in love he would just want to make you happy and do things that would make you love him. Mine does all the opposite! Deliberately, I suppose, because he knows what upsets me and what my needs are, yet he continues the destruction.

We have both been through all this material, but although he says it all makes sense, there is no interest in POJA. He wants to continue independant behaviour, and nothing I can do can change that. I've been through full circle, mentioning that it upsets me, then requesting respecfully that he discontinue, to becoming critisising, judgemental, then emotionally abusive. So yes, I have my share of blame too - which he reciprocated with the same mirrored behaviours and with physical abuse. He has been physically abusive on a few occasions now. I left the home, and have been trying to date him, but then the damaging behaviour on his part intensified and I have completely lost love for him. I spent a week throwing in 100% effort, then we had another fight and now I have just given up completely.

Last night we went on a lovely date, he really did seem to try and meet some of my needs, but then this morning he visited after he had been smoking, and it's left me feeling like I would rather just get a divorce. But I am so worried about my kids. He told me that he is not really interested in smoking, and at the moment he is just doing it for the ****** of it (i.e. not for the cravings and triggers). I totally detest smoking and totally don't enjoy any kind of intimacy - even a little peck on the lips - when he has been smoking. And his second most important need is sex!

I have been battling with this since January, and it just keeps getting harder. Is all lost - Is there any point carrying on with this - I am so tired of being so unhappy!

If it is time to close the book, how do I get through the separation and nurse myself back to health again? And how do I help my daughter cope ...

"So yes, I have my share of blame too - which he reciprocated with the same mirrored behaviours and with physical abuse. He has been physically abusive on a few occasions now."
This reads to me like you are taking the blame for his physical abuse. When you wrote "reciprocated ... and with physical abuse" red flags went up. Women who are physically abused rationalize the abuse with "if only I hadn't done x, he wouldn't have [hit/shoved/slapped/kicked/elbowed, etc.]

You need serious help to extricate yourself from your marriage, to stay separated. You must not be together unless/until he gets into a program for batterers and completes it.

Meanwhile, take care of yourself. You are carrying precious cargo and mothering a toddler.

Saaash,

You need the kind of help we can't give here. You are being abused. BTW, I don't use that term lightly. I almost never accept when used in context of "emotional" or "verbal" abuse because it dilutes the meaning of the word.

You are being abused. The whole cycle of wonderful dates after the abuse is typical, and doesn't mean your husband will stop harming you.

You posted about how when a spouse is in love they want to meet the needs of the other spouse. Ususally this is true. Except, it isn't true when the spouse has an addiction, a personality disorder, mental illness or is abusive.

In the first two instances, a case can be made that the spouse isn't capable of "being in love," let alone showing care toward their spouse. In the last two instances, the person may feel in love with their spouse but be unable to demonstrate care.

See, the "in love feeling" is just a feeling. It is no guarantee that your husband will care for you in the sense of actively protecting you and meeting your emotional needs.

So, when your spouse says to you, "But I love you. I'm deeply in love with you!" You can say, "Well, of course you do. I've worked very hard to demonstrate care and protection and create an environment in which you can love me. You're being in love with me is not a refection on you, it's a reflection on ME!"

BTW, my STBX didn't believe in POJA either. Told me flat out he disagreed with it even in theory. Eventually, I realized Dr. Harley was right. When a spouse says that to you, they are saying your feelings don't count.

I know that I have been abused, and I don't begin to take the blame for it. We have both been for counceling for this problem, independantly and together. And I will not mask what it is. The first time that my husband hit me it came as a tremendous shock to me, and in the aftermath when we evaluated the way events unfolded, it was quite easy for him to point out how I was to blame and he was merely reacting to my "attacking" him.

Over time, this story has gotten old, and I have learned very clearly, the difference between self-preservation and abuse. He has admitted to being abusive, and noted that he doesn't feel proud of it (this doesn't change that he insists I also admit to being abusive - in Dr Harley's definition I certainly am, and if it helps my husband start to take responsibility, I'll gladly say "Ok, yes I am also abusive" ... If I don't get what I want, first I ask, then plead, then lecture, insult, and ultimately alienate. Why did my husband attack me shortly before I moved out - easy, 'cos I was about to walk out of the house and leave him alone to continue with something I did not approve of ... and I'll agree to sort out my patterns, and he agrees to sort out his own. But he still insists his only exist in reaction to mine - still parking it with me!

No - that does NOT justify his attack! He was wrong - and I think he is slowly getting the message. He doesn't want to talk about it, and I told him that we will discuss it regularly at length, because in the past we never did and it seems to have condoned the behaviour. The behaviour is entirely unacceptable, and after having read some of Dr Harleys material on the matter I have made a point of starting to make his family, friends, and colleagues aware of what is happening on the other side of the proverbial curtain.

Needless to say, they are shocked, and he is becomming increasingly aware of how at fault he is. Apparently, if anything can change his behaviour, this should be it - social pressure - which, incidentally, he bends to quite readily! No, sorry, no more councelling for this couple. We know what we need to do, it's just that we never get around to ACTUALLY doing it!

We are still separated, and it will be a 6 month separation, at LEAST. There is alot of behaviour that needs to be re-trained, and alot of bad wood has crept in which needs to be cleaned up and tossed out. This will take time.

Right now his mother thinks I am a dogs rear-end. Being physically abusive herself she thinks I am making too big a deal out of it all - oh, and ofcourse I am the one with the problem, and I am not good for him, and I bring this out in his personality ... that sounds way familiar ... abusive parents breed abusive kids, and I can see how. They teach their kids that it's ok, if you can show that you were provoked.

Bellevue - my husband has finally given an attempt at POJA. I told him I was unhappy about the smoking and there was no way forward without some kind of an agreement. I gave a few examples of things I considered with POJA, but that I couldn't find something that I was enthusiastic about. I asked him to stop, and he said he'd think about it. I asked for a dead-line, and he said a day. Then he came up with a solution where he gets sexual rewards (ones he values and has been missing out on lately) in exchange for accumulated tokens from non-smoking days. If he smokes, he gets penalised. I love the idea, and it seems to be working.

?? Do you think this is progress? It feels like progress ...

SAASH, I'm very concerned that you're not going to counseling any more. Counseling, marriage or otherwise, is not just about giving information. Most people who end up in counseling know what they need to do before they even get there. The problem is they just can't seem to do it. Counseling helps overcome the blocks getting in the way of doing what you need to do.

While you yourself may not need counseling, your husband certainly does. He has learned behaviors from childhood if his mother was abusive. He also probably has some wounds that he needs to heal.

I'm glad you are exposing his abuse because it will give him an incentive to control himself.

Did a counselor say it would be a good idea for you to say you were abusive too? This is why I HATE using the word abuse for anything other than egregious behavior. By you admitting you were "abusive" to him, you've given him an out. You admitted you were just as bad as him. You started it. If you ever nag again, or do anything else he doesn't like, you are being abusive and he therefore has the right to be abusive back.

I know that's untrue, but that's how an abusive person is going to process it.

The POJA could be progress. Let's see how long it lasts.

We have agreed to get a divorce, and I am very upset. He feels he has been living a life with me that is not "who he is". I feel that we both made compromises so that we could be happy together and it worked well for a long time - physical abuse aside. Now, neither of us are willing to make any compromises, we both want what we want in totality.

I keep remembering all the good things we have been through together, and I just cry and cry. I hate that we have landed here. I feel he is very selfish to want his lifestyle so badly that we must give up our family to have it.

I keep wanting to phone him, and tell him I'll do whatever it takes, he can have whatever, to just keep our family together - but I know that I will feel used and abused and will not be happy and will eventually throw it in his face that I am doing that. But still, every 5 minutes I just want to phone.

I am finding it all very hard to understand. He wants an independant marriage. He wants to be able to come and go as and when he pleases, not have to answer to me, and to do things he wants to do even if they make me unhappy (oh, I must change my expectations, and stop letting these things make me feel unhappy).

I feel he is on the wrong side of the fence, and just want him to come and be with me, and for us to be happy together. What can I do to get through this time? I don't want to submit myself to satisfy him with everything he wants while I sacrafice and be miserable.