Mental/emotional affair

[exiled]

Telling he needs to stop drinking and see a counselor regularly with and without you would be a very reasonable ultimatum.

Trust me, it’s been tried. He goes a handful of times and then stops.

 

[Xantippe]

Trust me, it’s been tried. He goes a handful of times and then stops.

That’s where the ultimatum comes in.

 

[pianistclare]

That’s where the ultimatum comes in.

Yes, preferably with someone important present as witness and for safety reasons in case he can’t handle it.

 

[Xantippe]

Yes, preferably with someone important present as witness and for safety reasons in case he can’t handle it.

Yes!

Don’t do it if you don’t feel safe doing it, of course–but not feeling safe would be an issue all by itself.

 

[BlueEyedLady]

Needs? Let us hope we all know that having sex often enough to get pregnant once every year or two says nothing about the health of a couple’s sex life. Procreative takes a lot less contact and pretty much a lot less of everything else than the unitive aspect. If you want to get to 60 years and laughing together as your grandchildren are toasted at their weddings, you have to find a way to unitive, too. This couple has to find a meeting of the minds over their perpetual problems if they are going to get there. The good news is that finding a ground of understanding and even an affectionate sense of humor about your perpetual problems has this way of being the most unitive thing ever to happen to your sex life.

What I’m saying has nothing to do with “fair.” The first thing you learn when you are from a family with eight or more children (which I am) is that you don’t worry about “fair” until you get to “good.” If you have to choose between unfair and good or fair and bad, you go with good and accept the unfairness of it as the price of admission.

As for the drinking problem, it is almost the rule that drug and alcohol abuse start as self-medication for emotional problems the drinker does not know how to handle and maybe cannot handle without support, affection, and a feeling of security in his own skin. Have you ever heard of someone threatening their spouse into clean and sober? I haven’t, and I’ll bet you haven’t, either. When that ever works, it works right away and before the path has been traveled long. It doesn’t work on a wagon road with deep ruts.

They’ll only get out of this marriage happy and together if they find a way to a trusting friendship. You don’t get there with “you straighten up, then we’ll talk about being friends.” That cannot work. How about, “you clean up, and then maybe you get one female friend, which will be me, the woman who has made herself your warden?”

Again, this has nothing to do with fair. Of course the OP has earned the right to be her husband’s warden. The truth is, though, she can be his wife and best friend or she can be his warden. She cannot be both. She has to choose one and renounce the other. Doing that, however, will require that she and her husband learn how friends go about having fights. If they can’t have real conflicts and still remain friends, their marriage is over, except for their address.

This is contrary to what any addiction specialist would say. She cannot coddle him out of alcoholism, and enabling only makes things worse. What she can do is place firm limits around what she and the children will tolerate when it comes to being around him when he’s drinking and his temper outbursts. She needs to spend some real time and energy determining what her exact limits are and she needs to find a time to calmly articulate what her husband is choosing to give up and miss out on if he continues to drink. Alcoholism is a progressive disease, and it presents real, physical dangers to the drinker’s whole family.

The OP should check out Al-Anon or a similar organization for support and insight. Individual counseling never hurts either.

 

[As_for_my_House]

I am deeply saddened to read about your situation.

This is my advice for what it’s worth.
It may seem hard to extract yourself from taking your husband’s behavior personally but this is what you need to do. This is especially hard for spouses because the natural inclination is for the two to be as one. Hard to be impersonal when we spouses are designed to be one unit. Real hard!

I haven’t read any of your other posts so I don’t know the extent of his anger or drinking problems. I would not even suggest that you are headed for divorce. God please forbid!

Can you live with your husband? Learn how to care for him without hurting yourself? I think that you can. You’ve been doing it, now you must learn how to do it better.

His anger is possibly from his past, not about you. His drinking is probably about anxiety or loneliness. I’m guessing the latter. The feeling of pain caused by loneliness (an emotion that we all experience) is often self-inflicted again not your fault. It is how we deal with that emotion that helps us ( like reaching out) or hurts us ( like using alcohol) .

He needs counselling. He needs a buddy, not a female one, possibly an AA buddy. I honestly think that Priests have so limited time, they can’t handle an issue that will take this much time and effort so please find a good and patient counselor.

For you. Think of your husband as a very sick diseased patient. Care for him but don’t allow him to give you his disease. Check in with him several times a day to see if he is ok. Give him a kiss and a hug when you come together after being apart. Offer to help in ways that will benefit him. Do these things even if you don’t want to. When you want to see his messages, ask -it builds respect and trust. Pray together. Go to Mass and confession together if he’s Catholic. Keep extra stresses to a minimum. I’m not going to offer advice about sex because it is an area that I currently struggle with in my own marriage but I’m older and have different issues. No marriage is perfect. I know mine isn’t.

Please pray for me and I’ll pray for you.

 

[pianistclare]

I am deeply saddened to read about your situation.

This is my advice for what it’s worth.
It may seem hard to extract yourself from taking your husband’s behavior personally but this is what you need to do. This is especially hard for spouses because the natural inclination is for the two to be as one. Hard to be impersonal when we spouses are designed to be one unit. Real hard!

I haven’t read any of your other posts so I don’t know the extent of his anger or drinking problems. I would not even suggest that you are headed for divorce. God please forbid!

Can you live with your husband? Learn how to care for him without hurting yourself? I think that you can. You’ve been doing it, now you must learn how to do it better.

His anger is possibly from his past, not about you. His drinking is probably about anxiety or loneliness. I’m guessing the latter. The feeling of pain caused by loneliness (an emotion that we all experience) is often self-inflicted again not your fault. It is how we deal with that emotion that helps us ( like reaching out) or hurts us ( like using alcohol) .

He needs counselling. He needs a buddy, not a female one, possibly an AA buddy. I honestly think that Priests have so limited time, they can’t handle an issue that will take this much time and effort so please find a good and patient counselor.

For you. Think of your husband as a very sick diseased patient. Care for him but don’t allow him to give you his disease. Check in with him several times a day to see if he is ok. Give him a kiss and a hug when you come together after being apart. Offer to help in ways that will benefit him. Do these things even if you don’t want to. When you want to see his messages, ask -it builds respect and trust. Pray together. Go to Mass and confession together if he’s Catholic. Keep extra stresses to a minimum. I’m not going to offer advice about sex because it is an area that I currently struggle with in my own marriage but I’m older and have different issues. No marriage is perfect. I know mine isn’t.

Please pray for me and I’ll pray for you.

yeah. you should probably read her posts.
he’s not a naughty child that needs hugs.
Prayer is good though.

 

[EasterJoy]

This is contrary to what any addiction specialist would say. She cannot coddle him out of alcoholism, and enabling only makes things worse. What she can do is place firm limits around what she and the children will tolerate when it comes to being around him when he’s drinking and his temper outbursts. She needs to spend some real time and energy determining what her exact limits are and she needs to find a time to calmly articulate what her husband is choosing to give up and miss out on if he continues to drink. Alcoholism is a progressive disease, and it presents real, physical dangers to the drinker’s whole family.

The OP should check out Al-Anon or a similar organization for support and insight. Individual counseling never hurts either.

Effective, non-toxic communication of the kind espoused by the Gottmans is not “coddling.” What it does, actually, is to remove the room that the other person has to take a defensive posture. It is direct, it sticks with refusing to accept inappropriate behaviors without making personal attacks, it allows each person to recognize which methods of handling their own emotions and recognizing and responding to their partner’s emotional state will be effective, it allows them to see which choices lead to a constructive conflict and which preclude one, and it gives each person room to be willing to listen to the other party’s complaints because it knows that there will be no “battle of complaints” in which one laundry list of wrongs is allowed to defeat the other, but that every complaint will be heard and dealt with on its own merits.

What I am suggesting is that she and her husband find an place where someone can teach them to carry out their disputes in a non-toxic way that does not kick the can down the road, a way that cleans out the inappropriate behaviors without eradicating the friendship and affection that a marriage must have in order to survive. I’m suggesting a boot camp of lessons that a round of Al-Anon would suggest she needs to learn. A “couple’s boot camp” will help her be certain that her husband will know the future rules of engagement, as well. She will be able to say, “No, we’re not going that route. We’re going to have rules for fighting now, I’m going to stick to my guns, and you are going to have no room to say you don’t know why I’m doing this the way I’m doing it or drawing my boundaries in the way I’m drawing them.”

Some couples have gotten very good results from a Retrovaille weekend, but I suspect that this couple needs something like a Gottman weekend to teach them which strategies for having their conflict–and they absolutely need to go through this conflict rather than avoid it–might lead to a good outcome and a strong viable marriage and which ones won’t.

In other words, I’m only saying they need someone to teach them how a couple can have a fight and stay happily married when it is all over. They have a fight on their hands. If they don’t learn how to have that fight without destroying their friendship in the process, their marriage is almost certain to be destroyed in the process.

Yes, it may be too late. Yes, the husband may be unwilling or unable to learn how to communicate and act in the way he needs to do in order to save their marriage. In that case, though, the wife will have learned how a healthy couple conducts their conflicts. She will have learned healthy ways to complain and she will have learned how to listen to complaints and respond to them in a constructive way. In that case, even if her marriage does not last she will have learned many things she will need to know in order to take good care of a valid marriage she may have later. Otherwise, one of the most likely things in the world is that she will find herself in a different version of this same kind of hell with some other man with whom she later attempts marriage.

 

[exiled]

I am deeply saddened to read about your situation.

This is my advice for what it’s worth.
It may seem hard to extract yourself from taking your husband’s behavior personally but this is what you need to do. This is especially hard for spouses because the natural inclination is for the two to be as one. Hard to be impersonal when we spouses are designed to be one unit. Real hard!

I haven’t read any of your other posts so I don’t know the extent of his anger or drinking problems. I would not even suggest that you are headed for divorce. God please forbid!

Can you live with your husband? Learn how to care for him without hurting yourself? I think that you can. You’ve been doing it, now you must learn how to do it better.

His anger is possibly from his past, not about you. His drinking is probably about anxiety or loneliness. I’m guessing the latter. The feeling of pain caused by loneliness (an emotion that we all experience) is often self-inflicted again not your fault. It is how we deal with that emotion that helps us ( like reaching out) or hurts us ( like using alcohol) .

He needs counselling. He needs a buddy, not a female one, possibly an AA buddy. I honestly think that Priests have so limited time, they can’t handle an issue that will take this much time and effort so please find a good and patient counselor.

For you. Think of your husband as a very sick diseased patient. Care for him but don’t allow him to give you his disease. Check in with him several times a day to see if he is ok. Give him a kiss and a hug when you come together after being apart. Offer to help in ways that will benefit him. Do these things even if you don’t want to. When you want to see his messages, ask -it builds respect and trust. Pray together. Go to Mass and confession together if he’s Catholic. Keep extra stresses to a minimum. I’m not going to offer advice about sex because it is an area that I currently struggle with in my own marriage but I’m older and have different issues. No marriage is perfect. I know mine isn’t.

Please pray for me and I’ll pray for you.

I’m not doctor, but I think his drinking is just a bad habit that he learned from his parents. They are all very functional alcoholics. My husband is a professional man in a tough, technical industry and he’s the VP of his company. So I think this is part of why he doesn’t even recognize his alcoholism.
As for my safety, that many have mentioned, I have never been in danger of being hit. That is not a concern. The safety concern lies in that he will drink and drive. He is not stumbling drunk, but most of us will admit that we are adversely affected by even one drink. He doesn’t see that. So as for safety, that is easy enough for me to control for my immediate family, although I cannot help others if he is out drinking with colleagues or a woman.
Yes, I can live with my husband under these circumstances, as long as he doesn’t expect me to pretend he is my intimate partner. I cannot make him holy, and I cannot fight these demons for him. I will be a kind partner, and I will hide this from my children. If that’s how he wants to live, I can do that. Is it my preference? No.

 

[Xantippe]

I’m not doctor, but I think his drinking is just a bad habit that he learned from his parents. They are all very functional alcoholics. My husband is a professional man in a tough, technical industry and he’s the VP of his company. So I think this is part of why he doesn’t even recognize his alcoholism.
As for my safety, that many have mentioned, I have never been in danger of being hit. That is not a concern. The safety concern lies in that he will drink and drive. He is not stumbling drunk, but most of us will admit that we are adversely affected by even one drink. He doesn’t see that. So as for safety, that is easy enough for me to control for my immediate family, although I cannot help others if he is out drinking with colleagues or a woman.
Yes, I can live with my husband under these circumstances, as long as he doesn’t expect me to pretend he is my intimate partner. I cannot make him holy, and I cannot fight these demons for him. I will be a kind partner, and I will hide this from my children. If that’s how he wants to live, I can do that. Is it my preference? No.

If he’s uncontrollably rage-y, you can’t really hide that from the kids.

 

[Xantippe]

What I am suggesting is that she and her husband find an place where someone can teach them to carry out their disputes in a non-toxic way that does not kick the can down the road, a way that cleans out the inappropriate behaviors without eradicating the friendship and affection that a marriage must have in order to survive. I’m suggesting a boot camp of lessons that a round of Al-Anon would suggest she needs to learn. A “couple’s boot camp” will help her be certain that her husband will know the future rules of engagement, as well. She will be able to say, “No, we’re not going that route. We’re going to have rules for fighting now, I’m going to stick to my guns, and you are going to have no room to say you don’t know why I’m doing this the way I’m doing it or drawing my boundaries in the way I’m drawing them.”

Some couples have gotten very good results from a Retrovaille weekend, but I suspect that this couple needs something like a Gottman weekend to teach them which strategies for having their conflict–and they absolutely need to go through this conflict rather than avoid it–might lead to a good outcome and a strong viable marriage and which ones won’t.

In other words, I’m only saying they need someone to teach them how a couple can have a fight and stay happily married when it is all over. They have a fight on their hands. If they don’t learn how to have that fight without destroying their friendship in the process, their marriage is almost certain to be destroyed in the process.

Yes, it may be too late. Yes, the husband may be unwilling or unable to learn how to communicate and act in the way he needs to do in order to save their marriage. In that case, though, the wife will have learned how a healthy couple conducts their conflicts. She will have learned healthy ways to complain and she will have learned how to listen to complaints and respond to them in a constructive way. In that case, even if her marriage does not last she will have learned many things she will need to know in order to take good care of a valid marriage she may have later. Otherwise, one of the most likely things in the world is that she will find herself in a different version of this same kind of hell with some other man with whom she later attempts marriage.

That approach probably is worth trying, but the OP’s husband has a well-established pattern of not being able to stick with positive changes.

I see from a previous thread (2011) that he has tended to blame their sex life for problems in their marriage, despite the OP’s efforts. He seems to have a lot of selfishness and a strong feeling of entitlement.

Here’s what the OP said 5 years ago:

“For the first time in my marriage my husband and I have to practice NFP. We’ve got eight children, we (I) homeschool them, and we are spread so thin as it is that another child is out of the question.
Yet, now that the tough stuff begins my husband is fighting NFP. I’m getting squawked at constantly, and the pressure to find another method (aka articificial contraception), and the pressure to have sex is breaking down our marriage.
I am totally convinced of the teaching, but there has got to be some more teaching and active support from priests, etc. so that men are taught that they don’t get to fulfill every desire whenever they have the urge.
I am very accomodating to my husband. At least 2x/week (for the first time in 17 years we are not open to more children) for our entire marriage, but we had to slow down a few months ago as my youngest was weaning and I had no cycle to go on. I’ve been scolded over and over these last few months, and now that the cycle is back and he’s seeing a 12-14 day stretch of abstinence, he’s jumping all over me.”

“Em, on this issue, definitely I am objectified. My husband is great in nearly all areas, but he just can’t seem to control himself, nor is he willing to try. I’ve gone to our priest, and while he respects our priest he refuses to go to him. He thinks we should be able to resolve this ourselves, but to him, resolution means he gets all that he wants.
ahs, I’ll check out those books, but dh will not read them. I hate to say it, but he’s one of those people that pretty much thinks they know everything, and really can’t be told or taught anything.
That being said, until now he has been 100% on board with Catholic stuff. He converted after our marriage and has never tried to limit the number of children (like I said, we have eight). He always (well, unless he was on duty) goes to Mass, although never Confession.”

I feel like the never going to confession is pretty telling.

“I really think I would give more, too, if he would stop badgering me, because when he’s lighthearted and funny (which he can be) then I actually LIKE him and want to be with him. But, as I said before, his mood can’t be counted on, and if day three goes by with no sex for some flukey reason then he gets ugly and starts the tirade.”

“My husband loves to suggest that I am thrilled with the restrictions NFP provides! I would so much rather have sex than listen to him complain I can’t even describe it! There is no peace around here when he doesn’t get the sex he wants!”

“Until now. I just can’t bear to sin, but from a practical standpoint, I just don’t see how I can ever satisfy him. It just never seems to end (there is a lot more history of our marital relations that have pretty much been worked through, but I’m guessing they are affecting both of us in this).
Sex as often as he wants it just seems impossible for anyone but a porn star.”

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=613890

It just goes on and on.

 

[EasterJoy]

There is no doubt our marriage needs help, but it takes two, The fact is, he is the abusive one in this relationship, and for the 22 years I have started fresh again the next morning, on the advice of my spiritual director, and it only continues. I respectfully disagree that I am in any way responsible for this. I’m sure all that you are suggesting would work if both parties in a relationship are striving for holiness, but not when it’s just one of us.

Here is what I am saying: What you deserve to be able to do in a “what’s good for the gander is good for the goose” kind of way won’t save your marriage.

You are feeling forced to use methods to save your marriage that a marriage cannot survive. I don’t fault you for that. I’m saying it won’t work any better than the other ineffective means you’ve tried to confront this problem, with the added problem that you are allowing yourself to resort to inappropriate behaviors yourself, behaviors your children might in turn carry into their own marriages. Do Not Go There.

John Gottman has identified toxic elements in a marriage that he has called “the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.” They are behaviors, usually behaviors that come out first during conflicts, that predictably kill marriages. I mean that he can say that 19 out of 20 marriages that have these signs will not survive.

They are:
#1 Criticism:
Complaint: “I was scared when you were running late and didn’t call me. I thought we had agreed that we would do that for each other.”
Criticism: “You never think about how your behavior is affecting other people. I don’t believe you are that forgetful, you’re just selfish! You never think of others! You never think of me!”

#2 Contempt (which is the worst of the four)–the expression of disrespect, sarcasm, ridicule, name-calling, mimicking, and/or body language such as eye-rolling. Referring to your husband as “a child who has not impulse control” falls in this category. Gottman’s example is similar to the contemptuous way you’ve started to feel about your husband:

You’re ‘tired?’ Cry me a river. I’ve been with the kids all day, running around like mad to keep this house going and all you do when you come home from work is flop down on that sofa like a child and play those idiotic computer games. I don’t have time to deal with another kid – try to be more pathetic…”

Again–I’m not saying he has done nothing to earn your contempt. I mean that if you hold him in contempt, your marriage will die of that enduring emotional state. And yes, you’d be fair in saying that dismissing your complaints and trying to dismiss them as a character flaw in you is also a form of contempt. Of course it is. I’m only saying that you’re now both pushing in the direction that will put your relationship over a cliff. *If you’re trying to save your marriage, you’re pushing in the wrong direction.
*

#3 Defensiveness --which your husband seems to be using. It is fielding complaints with excuses and counter-complaints rather than really trying to find a solution or make amends.

As Gottman put it: *Our excuses just tell our partner that we don’t take them seriously, trying to get them to buy something that they don’t believe, that we are blowing them off.

She: “Did you call Betty and Ralph to let them know that we’re not coming tonight as you promised this morning?”
He: “I was just too darn busy today. As a matter of fact you know just how busy my schedule was. Why didn’t you just do it?”
He not only responds defensively, but turns the table and makes it her fault. A non-defensive response would have been:

“Oops, I forgot. I should have asked you this morning to do it because I knew my day would be packed. Let me call them right now.” *

In your husband’s case, look at it this way: If he puts the reason first and the apology second that will sound like an apology. If he puts the apology first and the mitigating circumstance second, that will very fairly sound like he’s not apologizing at all:

Apology: I yelled because I was so upset. Being upset isn’t an excuse and it wasn’t OK. I’m sorry.
Excuse: I shouldn’t have yelled at you. I’m sorry, but I was really upset.

Do you see? Even before the apology has stopped echoing in your ears, he’s taken it back by giving himself an excuse, just by how he words it. Even if he means his apology as a real apology, it isn’t realistic to ever expect you’d take it that way. It might help to have someone else explain that to him. He might get it.

#4 Stonewalling – when one person in the conflict shuts down and cuts off the interaction unilaterally. This is a very understandable response, but it is also indicative of a relationship that suffers from emotional damage because of conflicts but never does anything to resolve the conflict.

Do you see what I’m getting at? You and your husband are having fights that always inflict more damage on your friendship and each of you–even to the point that you now suffer in advance from his outbursts of anger without ever going through the motions of having him raise his voice at you in person!!–but you two never accomplish anything else.

If you want to save your marriage, you have to learn to have conflicts that help you find a solution and also allow a way for the two of you to repair any unintentional emotional damage right away. Otherwise, your marriage cannot survive.

Even if you don’t save your marriage by learning these things, you will personally learn how to have conflicts with your children in ways that they will carry profitably into their own marriages. You will learn how to identify men with whom you might later have a valid marriage and whether or not they have the capacity for healthy conflict. You’ll learn what a healthy relationship feels like. That is emotional work and skill-building that is well worth doing, even if it does not save your marriage.

 

[EasterJoy]

That approach probably is worth trying, but the OP’s husband has a well-established pattern of not being able to stick with positive changes.

I see from a previous thread (2011) that he has tended to blame their sex life for problems in their marriage, despite the OP’s efforts. He seems to have a lot of selfishness and a strong feeling of entitlement.

Here’s what the OP said 5 years ago:

“For the first time in my marriage my husband and I have to practice NFP. We’ve got eight children, we (I) homeschool them, and we are spread so thin as it is that another child is out of the question.
Yet, now that the tough stuff begins my husband is fighting NFP. I’m getting squawked at constantly, and the pressure to find another method (aka articificial contraception), and the pressure to have sex is breaking down our marriage.
I am totally convinced of the teaching, but there has got to be some more teaching and active support from priests, etc. so that men are taught that they don’t get to fulfill every desire whenever they have the urge.
I am very accomodating to my husband. At least 2x/week (for the first time in 17 years we are not open to more children) for our entire marriage, but we had to slow down a few months ago as my youngest was weaning and I had no cycle to go on. I’ve been scolded over and over these last few months, and now that the cycle is back and he’s seeing a 12-14 day stretch of abstinence, he’s jumping all over me.”

“Em, on this issue, definitely I am objectified. My husband is great in nearly all areas, but he just can’t seem to control himself, nor is he willing to try. I’ve gone to our priest, and while he respects our priest he refuses to go to him. He thinks we should be able to resolve this ourselves, but to him, resolution means he gets all that he wants.
ahs, I’ll check out those books, but dh will not read them. I hate to say it, but he’s one of those people that pretty much thinks they know everything, and really can’t be told or taught anything.
That being said, until now he has been 100% on board with Catholic stuff. He converted after our marriage and has never tried to limit the number of children (like I said, we have eight). He always (well, unless he was on duty) goes to Mass, although never Confession.”

I feel like the never going to confession is pretty telling.

“I really think I would give more, too, if he would stop badgering me, because when he’s lighthearted and funny (which he can be) then I actually LIKE him and want to be with him. But, as I said before, his mood can’t be counted on, and if day three goes by with no sex for some flukey reason then he gets ugly and starts the tirade.”

“My husband loves to suggest that I am thrilled with the restrictions NFP provides! I would so much rather have sex than listen to him complain I can’t even describe it! There is no peace around here when he doesn’t get the sex he wants!”

“Until now. I just can’t bear to sin, but from a practical standpoint, I just don’t see how I can ever satisfy him. It just never seems to end (there is a lot more history of our marital relations that have pretty much been worked through, but I’m guessing they are affecting both of us in this).
Sex as often as he wants it just seems impossible for anyone but a porn star.”

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=613890

It just goes on and on.

It seems unfortunately likely that her husband is not going to turn this around. It is very possible that she will need to separate with the bond remaining before he does turn it around. I am NOT saying that she should not use any ultimatuums. I’m saying that the wrong ultimatuum or the right one issued in the wrong way will be a bullet between the eyes of this marriage. This is a marriage in its death throes. It needs an ICU.

I’m not saying she will never have to draw a line in the sand with her husband. I am saying that if she doesn’t draw it in a way that leaves a realistic path for repair of the relationship, she may as well save everyone a lot of drama and just call it quits.

She would do well to learn what the Gottmans have to teach about what specific aspects of a toxic marriage have to change in order for it to survive. I don’t think she knows what those things are. What she doesn’t know could not only kill her marriage but could also teach her children very dangerous falsehoods about how marriage ought to work.

In other words, it is not just her marriage that is on the line, here. It is the marriages of her children, who are picking up the kind of dialogue and strategies that they will be most apt to use when their own marriages go through periods of conflict. She ought to learn how healthy people handle conflict for their sake and use only those methods for their sake, even if she doesn’t resurrect her own failing marriage.

If her marriage is going to survive, though, learning the most toxic potholes that they have to dig out of and how to do it is absolutely vital. If she doesn’t do that, she’s almost certainly conducting fire drills on the Titanic. It feels like “doing something,” but it only gets in the way of the things that will actually save some lives before the whole thing goes down.

 

[EasterJoy]

…Yes, I can live with my husband under these circumstances, as long as he doesn’t expect me to pretend he is my intimate partner. I cannot make him holy, and I cannot fight these demons for him. I will be a kind partner, and I will hide this from my children. If that’s how he wants to live, I can do that. Is it my preference? No.

Your children may appreciate it very much that you spare them direct exposure to your husband’s rage and refrain from constantly reminding them that you and their father are married in name only, but they aren’t going to be fooled by a sham show of a marriage that is not a marriage. As for kindness, as St. John Paul II, there is no love without truth and there is no truth without love. One without the other becomes a destructive lie.

If you aren’t his intimate partner in actuality with the expectation that this is a permanent state of affairs, you have emotionally divorced. Your children will be living in the same house with divorced parents. You won’t fool them about that.

You are fully entitled to refrain from sexual relations if your husband has been unfaithful or you reasonably believe he has, but it is a separation with the bond remaining. When a couple is refraining from sexual relations for more than a short period of time for a specific and agreed-upon purpose, that is a very serious matter. That cannot go on indefinitely, not if it is a unilateral thing. The marriage won’t survive it, even if the couple stay together at the same address.

In any event, keep in mind, too, that your children are still living with an alcoholic, too, That is a danger to them all on its own. It will not help them later in life that their spouses in their failing marriages would be able to say they came by their alcoholism honestly, taught by the example of their dad.

 

[chevalier]

Deciding whether or not she is going to go through a divorce is not entirely up to her. She needs to be ready

Definitely ready in case something pops up, but I can’t agree divorce is entirely up to the person deciding, in the sense that Catholic teaching on divorce is not optional. Separation is discretionary for a cheated spous, but (1) this means basically proof actual cheating, not well-grounded suspicion of emotional infidelity, and (2) divorce, even with the understanding that one is not implying it has canonical significance, is a whole different thing than separation. Civil divorce is not available for cheating but as the last resort to protect the rights of oneself or the children.

Forgive me for being a little flippant here, but this doesn’t leave much room for regional or ethnic variance, such as for example Catholics hailing from nations putting more emphasis on personal space and personal sovereignty than most other nations or have a stronger notion of individual rights and indivduality in general, or Catholics belonging to nations that have inculturated a Protestant or secular way of looking at certain things. And there are certainly no explicit dispensations of this kind while there are very explicit statements on the general availability or non-availability of divorce or separation. If Catholic tolerance of civil divorce were supposed to include ‘or cheating’, then ‘or cheating’ would have been included in the Cathesim, Code of Canon Law etc. and probably popped up in a couple of papal documents.

And for the record, divorce being necessary to protect rights means no step lesser, milder than divorce will suffice (such as living apart or separation, terminating parental rights, cancelling community property without divorcing etc.). The right to go away and live apart because of abusive behaviours, for example, does not translate to a right to pursue civil divorce. And again, the comfort of civil divorce is specifically off-limits, in the sense of being a comforting illusion of something that isn’t true (that would be end of marriage). Men not putting asunder what God put together very much applies here.

 

[EasterJoy]

Definitely ready in case something pops up, but I can’t agree divorce is entirely up to the person deciding, in the sense that Catholic teaching on divorce is not optional. Separation is discretionary for a cheated spous, but (1) this means basically proof actual cheating, not well-grounded suspicion of emotional infidelity, and (2) divorce, even with the understanding that one is not implying it has canonical significance, is a whole different thing than separation. Civil divorce is not available for cheating but as the last resort to protect the rights of oneself or the children.

Forgive me for being a little flippant here, but this doesn’t leave much room for regional or ethnic variance, such as for example Catholics hailing from nations putting more emphasis on personal space and personal sovereignty than most other nations or have a stronger notion of individual rights and indivduality in general, or Catholics belonging to nations that have inculturated a Protestant or secular way of looking at certain things. And there are certainly no explicit dispensations of this kind while there are very explicit statements on the general availability or non-availability of divorce or separation. If Catholic tolerance of civil divorce were supposed to include ‘or cheating’, then ‘or cheating’ would have been included in the Cathesim, Code of Canon Law etc. and probably popped up in a couple of papal documents.

And for the record, divorce being necessary to protect rights means no step lesser, milder than divorce will suffice (such as living apart or separation, terminating parental rights, cancelling community property without divorcing etc.). The right to go away and live apart because of abusive behaviours, for example, does not translate to a right to pursue civil divorce. And again, the comfort of civil divorce is specifically off-limits, in the sense of being a comforting illusion of something that isn’t true (that would be end of marriage). Men not putting asunder what God put together very much applies here.

I was only referring to the unfortunate reality of no-fault divorce.

If the OP were to discern in all correctness that she is the victim of a sinful spouse in a valid marriage or if she were to decide she is bound and determined that she is never ever going to give up on her marriage for any reason whatsoever, that does not give her the power to prevent her husband from walking out on her. If he does, it would not be unusual for him to take steps to take far more of their common belongings with him than the courts would have allowed if they knew what he had done.

That’s what I mean by being ready for a hurricane. A spouse who is utterly unprepared for a unilateral divorce can suffer unjust financial devastation on top of the other injustice connected with being abandoned in a valid marriage by a sinful spouse.

As you know, an attorney might advise her, for instance, to make copies of all the evidence she can find concerning their current marital assets, her husband’s earning capacity, and so on. If he decides to take out a big chunk of their assets behind her back and then claim that the assets never existed, she will need proof of what he’s been up to.

I do not know what is nastier than an unwanted divorce, but it is far nastier for the trusting and the naive than on those who were wise enough to be ready for it. Alcoholics lie, cheaters lie, and people going through mid-life insanity have been known to lie. What defense is there, except to be ready with hard evidence of the truth? (Oh, and isn’t it likely that her husband knows everything about their money and leaves running the house and the home schooling to her?)

Hope for the best, pray for the best, work for the best, but be ready for the worst, too.

 

[chevalier]

I’m sorry. I actually didn’t see the ‘not’ in ‘not entirely up to her’. Not seeing a negation (and sometimes something else, but usually it’s negation) when reading or omitting to write it down when writing is something that happens when I’m very, very tired. It probably relates to dyslexia, which I’ve otherwise overcome for everyday purposes, and it means I really, literally look at the thing but don’t see it or sometimes possibly see it when it’s not actually there. I apologise profusely for this stupid mistake. It probably would have been prevented if I had been more attentive to begin with.

 

[EasterJoy]

I’m sorry. I actually didn’t see the ‘not’ in ‘not entirely up to her’. Not seeing a negation (and sometimes something else, but usually it’s negation) when reading or omitting to write it down when writing is something that happens when I’m very, very tired. It probably relates to dyslexia, which I’ve otherwise overcome for everyday purposes, and it means I really, literally look at the thing but don’t see it or sometimes possibly see it when it’s not actually there. I apologise profusely for this stupid mistake. It probably would have been prevented if I had been more attentive to begin with.

She is describing grounds for separation with the bond remaining and possibly (I do not know) evidence of an invalid marriage. She is describing some really terrible stuff as par for the course she’s been playing. If he can’t learn to recognize it when he starts flooding emotionally and can’t learn to respond to that recognition in a way that allows him to keep mastery of himself, I don’t know what their chances could be. I certainly would not reassure her that he’ll never get violent. The mixture of an explosive anger and alcohol abuse is a barn full of powder kegs. I wouldn’t be so sure it could never go off in a deadly fashion just because it hasn’t done so yet. His outbursts of rage could easily count as “too difficult” (*) It would not strain belief to find she and her husband made an invalid attempt at marriage, even though it was in good faith on both sides.

My point, though, is that as much as people disparage divorce attorneys, seeing one before you need one is pennies on the dollar to seeing one after you find you needed one. They don’t want you to get divorced, but they also don’t want to see you taken to the cleaners if you do.

The OP’s husband might have some very fine qualities. They may find a way to save their marriage. If they do, it will almost certainly be better than ever, to the point that they hardly recognize themselves and their new relationship. Learning to put away toxic ways that had become a habit has been known to work wonders. Putting away toxicity will also make the possibility of getting clean and sober much better (and yes, vice versa).

Substance abuse and the temptation to cheat on your spouse, however, have this way of killing a person’s character. People do things in those states that absolutely astonish those who knew them while under the influence of better angels.

Therefore, don’t say, “my husband could never do such a thing.” We’re all capable of evil and deceit that we could never admit to ourselves. When it comes to divorce, it all plays out in court, not in “real life.” Don’t rely on common sense when you’re facing a divorce, then. Get an attorney and listen to what you are told.

(*) Can. 1153 §1. If either of the spouses causes grave mental or physical danger to the other spouse or to the offspring or otherwise renders common life too difficult, that spouse gives the other a legitimate cause for leaving, either by decree of the local ordinary or even on his or her own authority if there is danger in delay.

 

[exiled]

If he’s uncontrollably rage-y, you can’t really hide that from the kids.

I actually meant that I would hide the other things from them. I won’t tell them he may be unfaithful. I will not share his faults with them, but try to build him up. My older children see things, and they’ve come to conclusions without me having to disparage their dad.

 

[chevalier]

(…)

Not disputing anything. I simply saw:

Deciding whether or not she is going to go through a divorce is entirely up to her.

Instead of: Deciding whether or not she is going to go through a divorce is not entirely up to her.

And the rest followed from the dumb mistake, so please just ignore.

Re: can. 1153.1, though, it doesn’t talk about divorce, merely not living together. For divorce, look to canons 2383 and 2384 in the Catechism (emph. added):

2383 The separation of spouses while maintaining the marriage bond can be legitimate in certain cases provided for by canon law. [And that’s can. 1153.1 in the CCCC]
If civil divorce remains the only possible way of ensuring certain legal rights, the care of the children, or the protection of inheritance, it can be tolerated and does not constitute a moral offense.

2384 Divorce is a grave offense against the natural law. It claims to break the contract, to which the spouses freely consented, to live with each other till death. (…)

In short: ensuring means ensuring, not just getting a chance. It means we can go for full certainty. But only way also means only way, so it can’t be a bonus or overkill or added symbolic relief, it has to be the minimum to ensure the rights. And here we get to another thing: precisely the claim to break the contract is what’s wrong with civil divorce, so a Catholic can’t grab a civil divorce for the reason of finding some comfort in feeling no longer married to the abuser. This is because it’s not only about living together, it’s also that: ‘Divorce does injury to the covenant of salvation, of which sacramental marriage is the sign,’ (next sentence in 2284) so there’s basically more at stake. Married is married, and a Catholic does not get to on some level not be married. This is not to say that removing the ring, reverting to the previous surname (for someone who changed) etc. is automatically bad for the sole reason that it brings some relief, but it basically means we can’t fall for the temptation of ‘unmarrying’, especially not by acting like a JP say-so has any effect on the continued existence of marriage between two sacramentally married Catholics.

Then there’s can. 1153.2 CCCC:

In all cases, when the cause for the separation ceases, conjugal living must be restored unless ecclesiastical authority has established otherwise.

So basically in order to forever disappear from the radar for someone who was abusive but didn’t cheat*, the diocese has to okay it.

(* There are some exceptions for cheaters, e.g. already forgiven.)