I posted yesterday. It has been a 15 year verbally/emotionally abusive marriage. I have not gotten into details yet but being almost constantly criticized, yelled at and dealing w/ angry outbursts I become uncomfortable even being around my husband. Not to mention times of real emotional abuse (leaving me in the hospital to have a DNC after a miscarraige because he had something to do and could not make the time to be there) Anyway over the years I shut down more and more and began to spend less time w/ him. We have 2 children 1 autistic which is another thing he left me alone w/. Now our marraige has fallen apart. I begged him for years to come to counseling and he refused. Now I tell him I am not in love w/ him anymore and now he wants to try. I can not let my guard down or feel safe enough emotionally w/ this man to try. I am pushing for a separation period just to heal a little and get my emotional strength back to maybe want to work on this marriage. I need some time of not cringing when I hear his key in the door. If anyone can understand that. Anyway he is angry telling me that there is no reason why he should have to leave his house or his kid(he only has a relationship w/ our younger non autistic son)Part of me wants to back down becuase I am afraid a separation may just lead to divorce and because he is making me feel guilty. Then I remember why we fell apart and I feel confident in this decision to separate. I keep going back and forth. I just know I don't want to stay in this marriage for the rest of my life if it is going to be the way it was. Anyone been there?

At the very least he's guilty of "neglect"... he hasn't been interested in your concerns from what you are saying. He hasn't listened to you and you've been lonely in your own home. Some would call even neglect abuse, and from a Christian stand point a man is to cherish his wife and support her. Certainly there seems to be a lack of this, if you read through posts on this site - your situation isn't unusual. Typically it is the wife that leaves the marriage and files for divorce. In your other post I put some ideas of books and sources for you there, do you like to read? Can you find a counselor? Many have been where you are because there are some books out there for people in limbo, one is the book on controlled separation the other is Too Bad to Stay, Too Good to Leave for those trying to figure out if they should stay or go. It's a decision only you can make. You can do a list of pros and cons, even here online, let us know what is good and bad about your marriage. If you haven't gone to counseling you might owe it to your marriage to try - maybe now that you are "serious" your husband will go with you. Does he know you are serious about this, or is his attitude that he's heard it before? And you won't leave him? You could always do the technique the next time there is a huge argument of Tough Love even for a weekend. Go to someone's house, stay overnight, or even a few nights. Leave him home alone and let him know how serious you are about this. See if that doesn't wake him up. Do you have friends and family you can talk to or stay with? There are many options for you, but true being in limbo is very painful. There are many, ,many stories of people turning their marriages around though - go to the emotional part of this site, post about the pros and cons of your marriage there. See if anyone can help you. Read through the info on this site, this is good stuff so long as there isn't serious abuse in your marriage and you aren't in danger... see if anyone has been able to reconcile in your situation and what they did to deal with what you are going through. You are on the divorce part of this site, most of us are going down divorce road or already have. We aren't as hopeful... best wishes.

Thank you for your reply. I have read Too Good to Leave Too Bad to Stay. Unfortunately 25 out of 36 questions indicated I should leave. In the past I only begged him to go to conseling and never really made him think I would leave. Since June he knows I am not just threatening I have told him calmly and quietly that I don't feel any love anymore. I feel compassion and care about him because he is the father of my children but at this point there is not enough love to stay married. We did try a marriage counselor( I gave him an ultimatum counseling or he moves out). He chose counseling and after 2 visits he said we did not need it and he was only going because I was unhappy and that we could try to work on it. That comment made me realize that he did not understand that it was mostly all the hurt he caused and his anger and neglect that brought us to the counselor. I am going to check on the emotional posts on the site. Thank you for that advice. I do feel strongly that if we are going to try and save this we need to be separated to really work at it. In my heart I feel that even a separation and more counseling may not save it still. I just feel so shut down and can't imagine finding feelings anymore but I will exhaust all possibilities first. Thank you

Find that book on Controlled Separation then, it has very good ideas. Most separations do lead to divorce, the odds aren't in your favor but the shrink who wrote this book says that if you control it - have it outlined what will happen, who lives where, money, kids, dates, etc - that theres a higher chance that separation can lead to reconciliation.

You can ask your husband if he would like to try a new counselor. Sometimes people just don't click with certain counselors - personally I think half of these people with master's degrees or phd's with so called wisdom are nuts themselves. Your husband could think the shrink didn't have answers, and he could be right, some really aren't all there - and they can make things worse not better. Men don't like to really address issues, it appears that it's the "job" of us women, men often don't even see the issues we see. We are more emotional and perhaps they tune us out, it's a guy thing partially. What's not just "guy stuff" is that he's disregarding your feelings and seriousness on this. I've seen men over and over post on this site - most didn't take their wives seriously until they left, filed for divorce, you name it. I don't know why this is, but that's where Tough Love comes in if you really want to exercise it.

There's another book while you are reading. Dr. Dobson's Tough Love. He says there's too much divorce today, which let's all agree there is. Divorce isn't in the best interest of most children - his goal is to keep families together. He blames most marriage problems on men, saying women get taken advantage of because we are sensitive and natural hurturers. After separation or divorce, men tend to just move on. Women don't. But it doesn't mean we have to "take it." Women aren't meant to be door mats for men and unfortunately it's happening way too much. But we as women need to also look at ourselves and how we are responding to men in our life - look at any issues we might have (and of course if your husband won't go to counseling you can go explore your own issues as well as we all have them). Anyways Dobson is the one who suggests "trying" the leaving for a weekend thing. He even says to hide his book, don't let your husband see it. Next big argument or what you perceive as abuse, pack the kids, go to your mom's house and stay away for a few days, a week, whatever and see if you can knock some sense into your husband - ie, get him to "wake up" without having to leave him permanently or separate - separation as you know is hard, someone has to leave the house, there's furniture, few short term rentals and all sorts of logistical problems... You can find the Tough Love book at a bookstore, but it's controversial - parts of it - especially the part where he claims women bring on some of the abuse.

As for being a "victim" of abuse, you need some help here. Counseling on your own if you want. Because either you need healing or you need to see what if anything you are contributing to the situation. I think we as women - or even men like to cry abuse these days and yes there's an awful lot of it going on too. I had it in my marriage. Some "abuse" is about control and power, and some of what goes on in homes is simply "stress..." When we are under stress we often go back to reacting like we did as chiildren. Perhaps your husband as a child learned to deny his emotions, to be cold, to not be sensitive - and thus he's behaving the same way in your marriage. And what you learned - how you react emotionally is something that's helpful in understanding what's going on in your marriage. Certainly if you have a handicapped kid that alone puts a lot of stress on you and your marriage. You are likely quite tired from working with your child.

I'd post on the emotional part of this site, maybe not about separation or divorce, but about how your husband is reacting and what you can do. How you are reacting to him. There's some book out there about how you can save a marriage even if you are the only one working on it. There's also the Divorce Busters books. Many people have worked through marriages issues, many have used the techniques on this site - read some of the posts, you'll read men chatting about how they "woke up" and realized that their marriage was on the verge of ending - and at that point they made the effort to listen to their wives. This isn't uncommon at all. I think half of the divorces filed don't wind up actually getting divorces ok? That's why, leaving, separating, filing for a divorce makes one realize, wow this is real. Your husband doesn't appear to realize this yet...

Best wishes.