I've been posting here off and on since 2002 because I could feel the emotional connection and communication deteriorating between my husband and myself. At that time, we'd been married 2 years. We have now been married for 15 years and the mystery was finally recently solved.

A few months ago, my husband admitted to me that early in our marriage he made a conscience choice to shut part of himself off, emotionally, from me. Over the years that choice became a habit and now he shuts me out completely.

I spent the last 13 years reading MB books, along with others, coming here for advice and going to independent counseling to work on myself so I could be a better person and wife. I won't say it was for nothing, because I believe I have benefited from all I have learned over the years and am a better and healthier person for it. But I do now feel it was a waste to do it all in hopes for a better marriage. I now know there is nothing I could have done. My husband made his choice, on purpose, regardless of how often I discussed feeling a lack of emotional connection and productive communication or how often I literally begged him, in tears, to talk to me and help me save our marriage.

I am now 3/4 out the door. The only reason I'm still here is because I love him and want to want to save our marriage. But I feel so much resentment, I don't know if I can get over it. My husband knows this because I told him when he came home from work last week. He works in the oil field and is gone half the month. Which is another sore point since he's been promising me for 15 years if I would just be understanding and patient for a year or two, he will be in a position to be home much more. I have finally accepted he will not make that choice. The money is his first priority. He has made that clear with his choices and I believe him. I, nor our relationship, have been his second, third or fourth priority, either. I'm at the bottom of his priority list.

After 15 years of marriage, my husband barely knows who I am and he's not the one I go to when I need support and encouragement because he doesn't leave time for me. Basically, its easier to list what I have in our marriage than what I don't. I have money.

He doesn't want a divorce, loves me and doesn't want anyone else. I love him and probably always will but like I told him, love is not enough. I'm leaning toward divorce more every day, because even though he knows it, he still does not put in any effort to give me more reason to stay then leave. Honestly, I thought he would be relieved when I told him I thought our marriage was over. It would give him the freedom to work and make all the money he wants without guilt or obligations toward a ball and chain at home.

There was no conviction in his voice and he didn't even look at me when he said it but he said he doesn't want to lose me. I don't believe him, though I want to. That's for selfish reasons. I don't want to be so easy to let go of. But the truth is he has been letting me go, in fact, shoving me out the door since the day he made the conscience choice to start shutting me out. It shouldn't matter, but I would really like to understand why someone would ask a person to spend their life with them and then make a choice like that on purpose?! It baffles me and I feel like he lied to me from the day he proposed.

I should probably include that we did go to marriage counseling twice. Once was through MB. Both times, after 2 sessions he started telling me to reschedule and postpone to the point I quit mentioning it. With MB, we prepaid for 5 sessions. My thinking was if he committed ahead of time and we prepaid, he would stick to it to avoid losing the money. I was wrong. When I mentioned the lost money, he said he would work to make more.

Thoughts and discussion welcome.
Thanks
Tama

Does your husband still work out of town? Is he away overnights?

I'm sorry that you've had to come back under these circumstances.

I've had a look back through all your threads, and I can see that you've told the forum that your H works on the oil rigs and is away for two weeks out of every four, but I cannot see a single place where this was discussed in any of the advice given. You even consulted with Steve Harley last year, and I still cannot find any mention of advice from him to end this lifestyle by your H finding a job that enables him to be at home every night.

I'm rather surprised by this absence, because it is standard Harley advice that a married couple should not spend nights apart from each other, and when posters come to the forum with this kind of work arrangement, this is normally the first thing we tackle - and very insistently. We do not let this drop as long as the arrangement continues. We recognise that no real, effective, romantic, integrated, bonded marriage is possible if couples regularly live apart for a substantial proportion of their lives. They cannot get 15 hours of UA time every single week - and it is not effective to overdose on the weeks when they are together (not that you did). Also, and what is probably happening in your case, one or both spouses can easily build a secret second life, in which an affair - indeed an entire second marriage - can be maintained with ease.

I think your H has another life when he is away from you, and the ability to maintain this is what made him decide to detach from you several years ago. Indeed, if he was working on the rigs before he married you, he might well have had another woman in his life right from the start. If he did not have, he does have one now. That is the only thing that makes sense. No wonder he has always refused to find another kind of work. And it is ridiculous; people can work in the oil industry in the USA without being offshore or away from home, ever. He has not made the move to do so in all these years because he does not want to.

You have choices here:

You can ask, one more time, for your H to leave that job. He can hand in his notice today and take any leave he is due.

You can give up on the marriage today, because you know he will not leave.

You can give up on the marriage next week, when you have discussed and negotiated this with him and he will not leave.

Whichever route you take, you must investigate the affair he is undoubtedly having. Even if you give up on the marriage today, you do not want your children to be told that your marriage broke down because the two of you grew apart and became incompatible. You want them to know that their father refused to to live with you all, and to become an active, involved father and husband, because he had another life and another woman, and he refused to give her up.

He works 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off a little over an hour away. He has to live on location when he's at work.

I am astonished that this was missed by so many of us over the years! Since this is the basic problem in your marriage that prevented anything else from working. This living arrangement would never sustain a marriage, not even a great marriage.

Was this fact ever brought up to you over the years? I know I missed it myself in 2010.

This is the inevitable result when a couple does not live together every day. They grow apart emotionally and create completely independent lives.

Thank you for taking the time to look back through my threads. I am surprised you didn't find any where my husband's time away was discussed. I remember having a couple of discussions about it here. Steve Harley did discuss his need for a job change with us in one of our sessions. My husband would say he would see what else was available and consider it. But he never looked. I did it for him and found what I thought were some promising options. A mutual friend even offered him what I thought was a honey of a job working Monday - Friday 8-5, off weekends. But he rejected them all because they didn't pay what he makes now.



He does have another life, though not with another woman or family. I was suspicious of that possibility several times over the years and did a lot of snooping and dropping in on him without warning. I went so far as to ask him to download an app on his phone that would allow me to pinpoint his location at all times. I was open about my suspicions with him. It didn't seem to bother him at all. He gave me his phone to check his messages and call logs, gave me his email passwords, let me look through his laptop. All I ever found was work contacts and work related stuff. He was always at the rig when he said he was and when he left the rig, he came straight home. When he left home, he went straight to the rig.

Work is his other life. He lives, breathes, eats and sleeps work. Its all he talks and thinks about even at home. Its an entire world that I am not a part of, though he has tried to a point, to involve me. I have met most of his work buddies and he tells me all about them.....all the time. I feel I know them better than I know my husband sometimes.

You nailed it. He does not want to make the change. Truth be told, I think it would be easier to accept if he was having an affair. Him choosing to shut me out would at least make sense and it would have been easier to spot the problem. I would have cut and bailed long ago and had a chance to find someone who actually wanted to be with me.


Ironically, now that I'm at the point of seriously considering divorce, my husband asked me if I thought it would help if he found a job where he was home every night and weekend. I nearly emphatically agreed, but after thinking about it, I realized if he is not 100% committed to our relationship and continues to shut me out emotionally, it wouldn't matter if he was home 24/7. That's what I told him. I also said I thought the only chance we had was marriage counseling because I don't believe we are able to get where we would need to be on our own. He said he's willing to go and asked me to make an appointment for when he comes home. I agreed with the understanding that if he tried to reschedule or cancel the session, I will take it to mean he is not 100% committed and I will be done.

Problem I'm having is that I may have talked myself into a situation I'm not sure I want after all. He went back to work the day after that discussion and almost immediately, I felt like my life was back to normal and I could breath and sleep better. It feels off kilter when he is home. I have to change my daily routine to accommodate him. I have to catch him up on what's been happening and coming up, because he doesn't pay attention when I tell him over the phone so doesn't remember when he gets home. Its exhausting and frustrating.

I am so deep in withdrawal, I don't even like talking to him on the phone any more. I prefer texting so I don't have to drop what I'm doing to give him my time. I resent giving him my time and attention because of all the years he chose not to give me his. I can't remember the last time we had sex and I don't even care about it any more. I always had the higher libido and did everything under the sun to get his attention and seduce him, including having fat transferred to my breasts to make them larger. I now have no libido at all. I don't even want affection from him any more. I resent it every time he tries to be affectionate because all I can think about are all the times I begged for just a scrap of affection and was rejected.



We have 3 girls, 2 are married with a child and the 3rd is getting married this Saturday. 2 of them are not close to my husband, though they love him. The one getting married this weekend is very close to him, but aware of how bad things are and has told me repeatedly that I deserve better and need to do what is best for me. I haven't told the other 2 but don't think it will impact them much since the only reason they have a relationship with him at all is because of me.

It was brought up, though more as a side note. Crazy thing is he had the same schedule, only 3000 miles away, when we dated. Yet we had an amazing emotional connection and great communication. He was completely open to me then. It was shortly after we got married, he started distancing himself. He said it was to avoid confrontation, which makes no sense to me since we didn't have any UNTIL he started shutting himself off.

That's exactly what has happened. We do have independent lives. We can't even have dinner together without him on his phone, texting or on facebook. He's worse than a teenager about watching all the facebook videos. So I get on my phone and play games and check my facebook notifications too. So we're on a dinner date, sitting across from each other, not talking, not paying any attention to each other, on our phones. Its pathetic!!

But, living apart only works for so long and then the relationship falls apart unless the couple lives together. It won't work forever, as you have discovered in your own marriage.

This is WHY your marriage has fallen apart and never recovered. Your lifestyles promote emotional detachment and can't possibly sustain a marriage.


He will be much less likely to shut you out if you live together and actually follow this program. He has shut you out because you live completely separate lives.

All he has to do is commit to this program and follow the basic concepts. Doing that will change everything. And it will happen fast.

All these years your efforts have been wasted because you didn't live together.

I don't know if he is having an affair or not, but nothing here would serve to detect it if he were, other than dropping in on him. Snooping can only be effective if the target is not aware of it. If the person is hiding something, they can easily find ways around it if they know you are snooping.

Let me put it another way, long distance communication might sustain a dating relationship for a short time, but it won't sustain a more serious relationship. Divorce and infidelity are epidemic in marriages where one is in the military or other traveling jobs.

Those discussions must have taken place before 2010, when you had a different user name. I have not found those threads.

From your threads since 2010, I can see that you pointed out your H's lifestyle, but these are the only posts that directly addressed it, that I can find:

I cannot find any post giving you Harley advice, about the need for your H to change jobs, otherwise the marriage is not a marriage. That surprises me.

This was your account, on 8th May 2014, of your discussion with Steve:

If you discussed a change of job with Steve, you did not tell us about it.

If the job situation had been tackled vigorously since 2010 (even if we leave aside the fact that you have been here, on and off, since 2002), you would not have been starting this thread today.

This jumped out at me because my ex H was very closed off to me because he was concealing a SSL - this created a HUGE barrier between us. That is very TYPICAL for a person who is living a double life.

The fact that he spends so much time away from you will in and of itself create a lack of intimacy/connectedness between you, but it also opens a HUGE door for your H to have a SSL.

I have been really na�ve. All these years, I wanted to believe him being gone so much would mean he would miss me and be affectionate and the intimacy would be great when he came home. That has not been the case. We fit the statistic like you stated. He didn't want to be home. I know that now. I accept it. I hate it. There is nothing I can do about it.

Its possible those discussions were before 2010. When I came back in 2010 I had to create a new user name. I have discussed it so many times with my close RL friends, its possible I've gotten confused on that time line.



Steve Harley did address the issue with us during one of our phone consults, however, it was not the main focus. The things I listed were the main focus. His job was a side note. As I remember it, Steve mentioned it was something my husband was going to have to be willing to consider changing at some point for us to succeed at improving our marriage. That must be why I didn't mention it at the time. I thought I did, I apologize for my bad recollection.




This is a good point and most probably true.

The potential is most definitely there. Maybe I'm na�ve in thinking its not the case. At this point, I don't know that it would matter except that it would be easier for me to make the choice to be 100% done.

I understand why it would seem to any looking in from the outside to wonder about my husband have an affair or another life. I honestly do not believe it to be the case. It might if money wasn't his first love. But money is his first love and I am the one who has control of our accounts and deposits into those accounts. One thing my husband is is generous. If he was having an affair, he wouldn't be able to help himself from lavishing her with stuff. I know every dime he spends.....literally.

I found out today my husband betrayed my confidence and trust in a big way. My father passed away this past February. I shared a confidence early in our marriage about my father. I spent the day with our middle daughter today and she told me my husband told her the secret I confided in him. When I told him, I was very clear that he was not to tell another soul ever and most especially not our girls. I am so angry I'm glad he does not come home till Thursday because though I am not a violent person, I believe it would be a struggle to resist the urge to hit him. He not only betrayed me, he tainted the memory of my Dad. She said his reasoning for sharing the information was to help her deal with her grief of losing her grandfather. There is NO WAY that information could have done that. I don't understand why he did it. He wanted to explain and I would not allow it. I don't care why he did it. Its a betrayal of the worst kind and I don't care to hear any excuses for it. How can he claim to love and respect me and betray me like that?!! He may very well have sealed the end of marriage with that betrayal. I don't know that I can ever get passed it.

How could anybody come on the Marriage Builder's Forum and claim that at broken promise of a spouse to keep a secret is "a betrayal of the worst kind"? How completely insensitive! Do you not know who you are talking to? I hope you never actually experience a true "betrayal of the worst kind". But, quite frankly, you are leading a lifestyle that is just asking for it.

It is time to pull your head out of the sand and stop drawing lines in it. If you were in love with your husband, a broken confidence would not end it all. But when you are looking for excuses because you don't want to do any heavy lifting, then it might. Don't look for validation of excuses here. The real thing that is breaking up your marriage is your mutually agreed to independent behavior due to your husband's job. If you can't find the courage to deal with that, then get a divorce. But don't come here looking for validation for your red herring excuses.

You say it's not the case and then you go on to tell us this:


This IS a sign that your H has a SSL apart from you - what exactly is in that second life, I am not sure. Perhaps you are correct that there is no affair but be certain that he most definitely does have a SSL.

And before you again deny it, I can assure you that I have spoken to Dr Harley about this exact topic (finding out something that my husband had not told me, small details about his life that did not involve an affair) and he basically told me that my H had not given up his SSL yet.

You really need to stop being so quick to dismiss the advice you are getting in this thread and start embracing and learning about MB or nobody is going to be able to help you.