This might be an easy one, or it might be tough. I have read a lot of other posts by people who also fight to keep their marriage and it gives me hope that I am in the right place.

My wife and I have been married for almost 2 years now. We got off to a rocky start and its safe to say that I treated her terribly. We met working together, we dated, I broke up with her (over the phone with some cruel language), we fought, we kept sleeping together but I was distant and aloof. At the time I was a mess (from a previous relationship) and I bought all that baggage onto her. In the end, she made the call for us to stop seeing each other and even that I didnt respond well too.

A few months later I went overseas and had a lot of time to think about who I was and what I did. I knew I missed her, we always connected, but I wasnt sure what to do because I was sure she didnt want to speak with me. Around the end of the year, I felt that I had a "cosmic push" to reach out to her and it started another relationship, this time in a whole new place with both of us elated and happier than we had ever been. We both agreed that the past was past and this is a fresh start.

This went perfect for the first few months, we moved in together into a nice apartment in the suburbs, we got married with just 10 people exactly how we wanted and things were great. I made the monumental mistake of talking to another girl one day on Twitter. My wife and I had an argument in the morning and in that period I spoke to another girl. I wasnt trying to get anything from her, infact I have never met her in person but the language I used was not fitting of a married man. My wife soon found out and accused me of lying and going behind her back. I admitted that I didnt know what my words meant at the time and I apologised and insisted that nothing had happened.

Later on I had a Facebook conversation with a female friend, where I compared myself to a guy she liked, not in an attempt to impress her but just as a joke. My wife saw this conversation on my laptop and accused me again of lying to her and keeping things from her. This time it took a bit longer to take things back to normal. My wife became convinced that something had happened between this girl and I (it hasnt, but I have no proof) and I then made matters worse by not talking to other girl when we were all in each others presence. I thought that ignoring her and attending to my wife was right but I have learned since then that it was wrong and to prove that I wasnt hiding anything, talking to this girl like normal would have been better.

This is only 2 occasions and there are many more stories of how I have hurt my wife, but combined with my lazyness and taking things for granted have meant that all of the memories of the past relationship have come back. Not only has it made my wife remember how I treated her, its convinced her that I dont care about her. This has bred a lot of anger inside her and we have gone from a happy couple to dogs at each others throats. I admit I was not a good person to be in a relationship with, but I have changed myself a lot for the better. Every time we fight I am on the side that we can work this out, and that if we talk to each other calmly we can get this resolved.

My wife is angry and cruel. She wont yell, but she has some hateful remarks and if I try to say "But things are getting better for us", she will automatically default to my lies to which I have no response. If she says something to me that hurts and I act hurt, she will accuse me of being a moody child and pathetic. If I dont react, she will work harder to find another way to hurt me. Sometimes she will tell me that she wont stop until I hurt the same way she does. This has also ended a few times with me sleeping in the car.

We have made a lot of changes lately. For example, we moved to a new apartment in the city because I made her live in a place that was difficult for her to get around before (she does not drive yet) but it seems that no matter what is done, I am always on the backfoot and unable to keep up with what I need to do. I know I need to change the past, but thats impossible.

I know she is hurting. My lies and idiocy have caused some deep wounds to re-open which I am struggling to try and heal. I am looking for some advice on a different approach to fix this. I have tried talking and I still try talking every time we have a bad day. I have changed myself and my actions but none of these are big enough to make an impact on how she feels. She wants a divorce, every time we fight she says she is going to leave which I then have to beg her not to.

I love my wife so much and it breaks my heart to see her hurting like this. I know she does some things that dont help, but I have made things so bad for us that I need another to approach healing our marriage.

Apologies for the accidentally long post. I wish I had found this site a long time ago.

Hi underpressure, welcome to Marriage Builders. Such a turbulent marriage right out of the shoot! The first thing I can see that is wrong is that you have inappropriate boundaries with women. Opposite sex friendships are a disaster to marriages, I would eliminate those asap. Get a new #, delete your Facebook page and start all over without female friends. Dr Harley addresses opposite sex friendships here: here

The other critical issue is your lying and your fighting. It takes 2 people to fight and you just have to make a decision to stop it. You and your wife would greatly benefit from the book Lovebusters, because it describes exactly what is going on here and gives you step by step in instructions on how to make changes. It has lessons at the back of each chapter.

Here are a couple relevant articles you can read in the meantime:

How to Deal with a Quarrelsome and Nagging Wife

How to Create Your Own Plan to Resolve Conflicts and Restore Love to Your Marriage

Thanks for the reply. I will read those links now.

With regards to fighting, I work hard not to fight, even if I am pretty sure that I am right. Fighting does not resolve anything in my opinion, talking and listening does. I usually agree with my wife in the hopes that it will end the argument and I can start with some kind of resolution. The fighting is what I would like to stop.

My friendships and social accounts are gone, but this has caused an issue. My wife is of the belief that because I deleted these accounts and removed the people from my life, I must be hiding something. And I no longer lie about anything. After all of this happened, I gave my wife all of the passwords to anything I still have active to prove that I had nothing to hide, and she then went and read old (really old) emails from ex-girlfriends and now uses these as another example of what I have done wrong.

I hope that these links contain some kind of resolution. Thanks again.

That is great that she read them. That helps her understand the nature of your relationships and helps her gauge your integrity. NOW, you will have to work hard to earn back some trust. That comes from demonstrating trustworthy behavior over time.


Get the book, Lovebusters. You both need to learn to eliminate love busters.