Unhappy marriage

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Lillibut

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This is a long story involving multiple posts. Please be patient.

I’m asking for prayers and also using this forum as a way to reflect on my marriage and why I feel so unhappy. I need to find a way to be, if not happy, at least not entirely miserable in this marriage. I love and admire my husband and am devoted to our children. I’m not about to break my vows but neither can I continue like this much longer.

We have been married for nearly 17 years. During that time we have drifted further and further apart with a deterioration of the emotional bond between us to the point where it is becoming increasingly difficult to reconnect. Most of the time I just keep busy with my life, looking after the children and the home, going to work etc but whenever I think about our marriage, I weep. Consequently, I try not to think about it, except when I pray although I receive little consolation from my prayers, it does provide a release from all the repressed emotion.

I have suffered with anxiety and depression for more than 25 years. Following a severe mental breakdown in November last year I made the decision to seek private therapeutic counselling rather than just rely on the medication. I always felt that the meds were a mere sticking plaster/mask and that I really needed to get to the root of my issues but despite changing medical practice/GP at least 9 times in the past 25 years meds were the only thing offered to me as my problems were never deemed severe enough for me to rise up the waiting list of patients or even qualify for help.

Following the breakdown I approached Catholic Marriage Care in the first instance (this being the only Catholic Counselling service I have been able to identify in the UK) but was told that their waiting list for counselling is 12 months and given that I was, at the time, in dire need of expert intervention I felt that this was far too long to wait. Hence, I have no idea whether or not my counsellor is catholic or of any faith as (in the UK) it is against the professional code of conduct for registered psychotherapists to allow personal religious belief to influence or intrude upon the therapy they provide.

I did approach my Parish Priest for help but he felt that in my circumstances he was not best placed to advise although he would be happy to listen to me. He did recommend a spiritual guidance counsellor at a local convent to help me but I have been having trouble contacting her as the convent office seems to be permanently un(wo)manned and we just keep crossing in telephone calls.

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My husband is a scientist. He is dedicated to his work which is highly specialised and he is very highly regarded in the international community within which he works. He is also very much in demand within his company for his expertise. Because of this his work takes him all over the world and in fact he spends approximately 20 days a month away from home visiting laboratories, meeting with other scientists with whom he is collaborating, attending and speaking at international conferences as well as business development meetings within his company. This has long been taking its toll on our marriage as well as his personal physical and mental health. However, HE IS NOT GOING TO CHANGE. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. His work is an identifying factor of WHO he is. I can also see that his work is valuable.

His expertise and dedication to his work has allowed him to develop scientific methods and techniques which have made him instrumental in such things as - identifying drugs being smuggled within aviation fuel; identifying and convicting a nurse who was ‘mercy killing’ patients in a hospital; detecting allergens such as peanuts at the molecular level and discovering how to detect and isolate the actual allergen factor within the molecular structure of known allergens – in other words what is it in the chemical and molecular structure of peanuts that allergy sufferers react negatively to and can we remove/modify that so that they become harmless? This is all valuable and important work. His talents are being put to great use but the prolonged periods of separation are poison to the emotional bonds of our marriage especially as this has been the pattern now for 15 of the 17 years of our marriage.

He has always been a responsible, dutiful person who is passionate about his work but when we married this translated into him staying in the lab until 7-9pm finishing an important experiment because he didn’t want to let the team down (and anyway he just got a buzz out of successfully completing the task). When he did come home he was inevitably tired and I found the difficulties in communicating with him under these conditions annoying but I understood it wasn’t a permanent feature of our lives and I could live with it. I was proud of his achievements and celebrated his successes with him as well as consoled and supported him in his frustrations when things were not going so well.

I often recall a conversation we had a few months before we married about his working late and how whilst I understood why etc, I’d appreciate it if he made an effort to limit these late nights so that we could actually spend time together. He agreed but pointed out that “At least I will come home every night! I’m not a travelling salesman like X (a friend of ours), or an international businessman like your brother or a soldier away for months on tours of duty! Be grateful you’re only marrying a scientist, you’ll always know where I am (in the lab) and you’ll know I will always come home. Of course, we’ll never be rich but at least I’ll come home to you every night.” (This was all said in the spirit of good humoured banter BTW, we were ribbing each other and laughing about it at the time.) I replied that there was a good chance I wouldn’t be marrying him if he was away from home a lot as I couldn’t see me being happy in that kind of relationship. However, I knew what kind of man I was marrying (dedicated, dutiful, responsible and passionate about his work) and yes, I was grateful that his work did not take him away from home for extended periods of time. I walked down the aisle a few months later thinking I had a good idea of what sort of life I walking towards.

All that changed before the first year of our marriage was out. With the responsibilities of marriage came a desire to make us more financially secure and he was also frustrated by the limitations which the laboratory in which he worked placed on his professional development so he applied for a new position which would give him a higher salary, more responsibility and access to some of the best facilities in the world. Unfortunately, this job also meant both travel for him and that we would need to move out of the country for at least 3 years as his new role was based in mainland Europe. I could see that taking this role was important to him both professionally and personally. By taking it he was securing our new family’s financial future and also allowing his own professional interests and personal development to flourish. It made sense for him to take the job. Anyway, like our new marriage, this was an adventure to be embraced.

I gave up my job as a high school teacher in the UK and was lucky enough to find a role in an international school in our new country. About 2 weeks before I was due to take up my new role we relocated to our new home in a major capital in mainland Europe. Unfortunately, the apartment we had lined up was not going to be available for another month and all our belongings were in transit anyway so we at first moved into temporary accommodation – a small (very cheap) bedsit in the suburbs. We arrived at our little temporary home which seemed to be in the middle of an industrial estate late in the evening. We had no food and very little personal belongings. The following morning at 5am my husband left for a meeting/conference in another country. He was not due to return for 5 days. I had no food, no transport, no telephone and did not speak the language of our host country. I had about £100 in local currency, the address of his company office and a map. I got on with it.

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Even after we moved into our apartment I wasn’t able to communicate with my family back home for over a month as I had no phone and no way to receive mail (that’s another story). Most weeks he would leave in the early hours of the Monday morning and return exhausted and stressed on the Friday. When he wasn’t travelling he would leave early for the lab and return late in the evening. Once I started work I also had lots of responsibility and adjustments to a new curriculum and educational set-up so I too was busy late into the night most evenings. Both of us were too busy, too tired and too stressed to be spend time with one another. We didn’t live like newlyweds, more like roommates.

As I settled down into my new school I made friends and slowly developed a social life. I had a life. It just didn’t include my husband. He felt frustrated both that he wasn’t part of my life and that he had no social connections of his own due to the ridiculously long hours he was putting in. He couldn’t see how to change things though.

We kept reassuring each other that this was temporary, he needed to settle into his new role, prove his value to the company, then he could cut down the travel a little bit, we’d be secure and we could start to build a future together.

In early 2000 a couple who I had become friends with had their first child and we went to visit and welcome their new arrival. There were other young couples there that I had made friends with and the question of “who’s next?” came up. When eyes turned to me I laughed and said “If J came back from his trips and I told him I was pregnant he’d be asking who the father is!!” There was a certain bitterness to my joke as by this stage our sex life had dwindled to once a month (at best) simply due to the physically tiring demands of all the travel and the difficulties of my actually feeling any sort of emotional bond between us when (a)*we hardly spent any time together and (b) he appeared to be permanently busy, tired, unwell or just plain ‘grouchy’.

Perhaps because of this incident I did start to make more of an effort (who knows maybe it was that night!). Anyway, we did enjoy a brief revival and subsequently only a few weeks later he did indeed return from a major company meeting in Budapest to learn that I was expecting our first child. He also came bearing news. He had received a promotion at this meeting to a more senior role, involving less travel and based out of the UK office, so we would be relocating back to the UK. However, he couldn’t leave his current role/contract until the end of November. My due date was 5 December. We therefore decided to postpone him taking up his new contract until the following Spring after the baby was born. The company were very understanding and supportive of this decision and supported our extended stay with him operating a hand-over period of 4 months to his replacement. However, the promised reduction in travel never materialised. In fact his travel, workload and stress increased.

I had come off the meds as soon as found out I was pregnant, spent the whole pregnancy worried about tetragenic effects of the pills I had been taking and also frightened out of my mind that I would relapse into a major post-partum depression. However,God sent me two blessings in the birth of our first child. A beautiful, perfect little boy and the apparent complete remission of my depression.

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And so our lives continued in much the same pattern as before – largely separately from one another. Of course now I had the benefit of being located closer to family (albeit 2 hours drive away), so whilst on maternity leave I took advantage that when my husband went on business trips I would often pack up and take the baby with me to stay with my mother for a day or two to break up the loneliness. I made the decision during pregnancy not to return to teaching as I felt that as long as I was going to be alone most of the time with no local family support (the new role did not allow us to relocate near family in the UK) I could not commit to the extended working hours or bringing work home with me that teaching would necessitate. So, I took a part time office job when our son was 2 years old which helped me feel less dependent and less needy and this moved to a full time position a little later.

Periodically, I would make a renewed effort to form a close emotional bond with my husband. This would always end in full physical sexual intimacy, despite neither of us being emotionally ready to have another child. It was obvious that sex was necessary for him to feel that I loved him. Often when I approached him for emotional closeness he would keep his distance because he found any close encounter with me to be sexually arousing and he was frequently sexually frustrated to find that climax or even heightened arousal was not ‘practical’ due to our agreement that we were not ready to extend our family just yet. Inevitably, however one such effort/encounter resulted in our conceiving our 2nd child. At this stage our eldest son was 3 years old.

He was angry and blamed my faithful adherence to church teachings (i.e. refusal to practice abc and determination to be ‘open to life’) for my falling pregnant. He took a few days to adjust to the idea that we were going to have another child and he worried constantly that the demands of his job meant he could not be physically available for our children but that a change of job would mean that he would not be financially able to continue to support our family. By this stage in his career he had been noticed as a valuable commodity to the business he worked for and had been appropriately remunerated but this only meant that I had come to feel that we had both become ‘slaves’ to his job. We needed that job, or something very similar (ie. one involving extended periods away from home) in order to maintain our income and even our locality. If he changed jobs to one less demanding of his time then he would inevitably take a significant pay cut. This would mean us no longer being able to afford the mortgage on our home or any other within the parish to which we now belonged or local to any of the friends I had now made. In short I felt that we were trapped. Neither of us, especially me, wanted to carry on living this way but we were (and continue to be) financially dependent upon doing just that. In effect for the past 13 years I have been a single mother with a visiting partner or even occasional patient as he is regularly ill with exhaustion when he does come home.

This was a difficult pregnancy for me and my emotions ran very high all the way. I found myself constantly reassuring us both that we would be fine financially, that I could manage the household/family budget, that I would be able to return to work in order to help and that I’d cope with another child even with him being rarely around to help. And I did cope. It was hard but one benefit was that because I was so busy juggling everything I had not time to notice that we still weren’t a proper, happily married couple. We were job-sharing the parenting role (approx. 90/10) but we weren’t sharing much else. Especially the marital bed. Very early on my eldest son referred to our bedroom as “Mummy’s room”, one that Daddy occasionally visited but it wasn’t ‘his’ because he didn’t use it all the time or even that often.

During the pregnancy my husband raised the subject of him having a vasectomy to ease the strain on our joint worry about conceiving again and allowing us to have a sex life that wasn’t constrained by the joint clashes of his work schedule and my cycle. I prayed hard about this and God did apparently send his graces and blessings because he never went through with it. However, he did agree that we should attend sessions at the Diocesan Centre with a trained NFP counsellor/teacher to learn more about the symptom-thermal method, charting and making NFP work for us.

It quickly became apparent from my thermal measurements that my cycle really was like clockwork. It came to the stage where I could predict almost to the hour when my cycle would start. I had almost textbook thermal charts and cycles. However, I couldn’t reliably use mucus measurements, my period was relatively long at 5-7 days and this masked early mucus symptoms. Mucus measurements appeared to show that I occasionally had multiple ovulations (this is a genetic thing as my mother is a non-identical twin and I have obviously inherited the capacity to double or even triple ovulate in some cycles). However, I could use the temperature chart to reliably identify phase 3 of each cycle. So we had 6-8 day window each month. Not ideal but manageable. So we were fine.

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Except we weren’t fine. The job again conspired against us so that for 9-10 months of the first 15 months of charting we were lucky to be in the same country, let alone the same bedroom during the infertile window. When we were together neither of us really felt like ‘getting it on’. We were both exhausted. Again, I tried to explore other ways to be close but again came up against a man who unless he was able to climax was uninterested in serving my emotional needs. He apparently doesn’t have any emotional needs, just physical ones. If those are satisfied he’s more than happy and will respond by meeting my emotional needs. If he’s sexually frustrated then he is uninterested in meeting my emotional needs and just considers them a feature of my hormonal/screwed-up/mentally-unstable personality that is my problem to solve and nothing at all to do with him.

After 3 years I talked him into coming to couples counselling with Relate. I can’t remember when or why we stopped going but I know that I didn’t feel we had really resolved anything.

A few months later after a calender error I was pregnant again. I was terrified to tell my husband. I anticipated, correctly, that my he would be livid with me and my faith for burdening us with another child. It was weeks before he could bring himself to talk civilly to me and months before he fully accepted that we were actually blessed to be having another little one. I spent those months walking on eggshells, frightened and sad. I seriously considered running away, leaving him, aborting the baby, abandoning my other children, even suicide. I didn’t want to be pregnant. I hated myself for not immediately wanting and loving this child but I saw him/her as another burden on an already creaking structure.

Ironically, this was the easiest of my 3 pregnancies. I had a great job with a small company and a really supportive boss who allowed me to work flexibly to allow for childcare and from home if I was just too run down to make the trip in to the office but intellectually up to putting in some hours. If it wasn’t for the deterioration in our personal relationship with each other this would have been the happiest of times.

I slowly slid into depression so that 6 months after the birth our third child I was diagnosed with ppd and put back on medication for the first time in 10 years. I tried to explain to my GP and my husband what was at the root of my anxiety and depression but both considered it my insoluble problem that I just had to learn to live with and the meds would help me to do that.

Then, when I was due to return to work, the recession had taken hold and my small firm was struggling to get by. Having coped without me there for 9 months they decided that my role was redundant and therefore so was I. There followed a protracted battle for my employment rights which I allowed to get totally out of hand. I destroyed the previously good relationship with my former boss and burned a lot of bridges. I also had a nervous breakdown and was finally referred for counselling by my GP. I received 9 sessions with a therapeutic counsellor who recommended that I be referred for long-term therapy. Unfortunately such therapy was limited in availability and I never did get the actual referral as my case was not considered either urgent or suitable for the services my local NHS mental health team had available. I was left in limbo.

Last November I just snapped. I ran away early one morning as we were all getting ready to go to work and school. Literally turning and running out of the house without a word. I had no idea where I was going or what I wanted to do. I just fled. My husband was (understandably) furious. He left me a message on my mobile phone saying that unless I was prepared to “behave like a normal human being” he wasn’t interested in even talking to me.

Eventually, very late that night I realised that I had nowhere else to go so I came back with my tail between my legs. I agreed to go back to my GP to ask for help again even though I knew none would be forthcoming apart from increasing my meds. I was right, my GP was not interested in referring me or actually discussing anything other than my symptoms. I became very ill. I spent weeks in bed and crying. After 6 weeks I managed to arrange to see my current private therapist who costs me around a third of my paypacket. She has helped me to get things in perspective and to realise that I’m neither selfish or crazy. I’m just desperately unhappy in my marriage. I love my husband and our children very much but I’m lonely and overwhelmed by the responsibilities that I carry largely (no scratch that – entirely) on my own. No one really expects me to be superwoman except me and the practical realities of my being essentially a lone parent. I shouldn’t be a lone parent though. I am married - to a wonderful, responsible, dutiful man but one who is permanently exhausted and busy whether at home or at work.

I feel that being married to me is a burden on him. Another job that needs doing. He doesn’t seem to want to be with me and this is indicated by his lack of interest in doing anything with me without the children other than having sex. If there is no possibility of having sex because it’s the wrong time of the month then he doesn’t even want to talk to me or touch me. If it is ‘the right time’ he still pays no attention to me until having been complaining about how tired and ill he is feeling all day and evening he gets into bed and expects me to be in the mood immediately. If I don’t respond by being ravenous for his body then he feels that I’m rejecting him and he turns away from me. I try to please him. I try to be the good wife and give him myself, trying to feel what it used to be like in the very beginning but even though I ultimately do enjoy the physical act of making love with him I am left feeling emotionally empty and alone.
 
You’ve done the work of writing this up–how about sharing this material with your husband? Maybe by email? (I may your information about his work may have been too identifying.)

Also, have you had any success with making dates with each other when he’s in town? It should be possible to have lunch together or a walk occasionally, and you can do that even with a baby in tow.

It sounds like quite the rat race you’re living. He needs to have this big job so he can pay for the house that he never spends much time in–that doesn’t make a lot of sense. I understand that you have a lot of connections in your area, but perhaps he should consider a university research job in a less expensive area instead (if he’s working for a corporation)? Whatever the virtues of your current area, it doesn’t sound like it’s making you happy.

Here in the US, we live in a college town in an inexpensive area and one of my best friends is the wife of a scientist. They bought a small house near campus for $140k and did another $55k or so in renovations and it’s really nice (but a little small)–the bigger houses in our neighborhood might go for $250k or more, but they are quite large. My friend’s husband works long, long hours but he’s able to walk to work and he’s always popping into the house for lunch or something. My friend’s husband is very similar to your husband with regard to work ethic and drive, but it makes an incredible difference that work and home are so close together and that it’s an inexpensive area.

There are many, many major US universities in relatively inexpensive areas. I hesitate to suggest that you uproot yourself from your support network, but if your husband is largely motivated by the need to support your family in an expensive area, cutting your housing costs could enable your husband to cut back a bit. Even just within the UK, finding a less expensive home base could help a lot.

I think there are things that you and your husband can do to improve your marriage, as it sounds like you still respect him and there’s a lot that’s good in both of you. It’s also a very good thing that you’ve found a good therapist, even though she’s expensive.

By the way, within North America, it is not common for psychologists or therapists to offer Christian or Catholic counseling. One of my relatives offers that as one of her services. People often want counseling from within a particular religious tradition. More and more, I’m hearing of counselors working over Skype. That might be a reasonable solution for you at some point, if you specifically need Christian counseling and can’t get it in the UK.

Best wishes!
 
I’m so sorry it’s been so hard for you and your family. I wish I knew something to suggest, but I am at a loss.

Praying.
 
I agree that you should share this with your husband. You have stated the issues in a very loving and non-judgmental way. I think this would be a great first step. Then, reassure him that you love him and that you need to feel closer to him. You want your marriage to work!

Perhaps you should consult with a psychiatrist who will work with you on your medications. It is definitely not bad to be on meds when they are necessary. ( Just be sure that your doctor knows that you are able to become pregnant.) A specialist is needed with more expertise than your own regular doctor might have.

Continue to pray. I will be praying for you. Things can get better!
 
If you were to get pregnant again, adoption is one option you always have. I say this because you said in the past when you were pregnant, it caused intense stress in your relationship to the point you were considering suicide. Rather than commit suicide or have a nervous breakdown, I am putting this as another option on the table.

Please consider it in that light.
 
Your husband looks like he’s married to his job. The position he accepted is simply not compatible with raising a young family. I’ve taken a look at some of your other posts from a few years back, and I get the sense that your husband doesn’t respect nor has consideration for you. Is he at least minimally interested in the kids? I’m sorry about all this. If he could change his career plan and become a university teacher, I think it could do wonders for everyone involved. Less stress, less fatigue, no more multiple days at a time away from home. I’ll give your husband the benefit of the doubt, but some of the things you describe I find concerning. Has he ever been good with intimacy (not talking about sex here)? He does look like a workaholic, consumed by his work, who is essentially incapable of love. Just my impression. Hopefully I’m wrong.
 
This sounds very hard and you must be very strong to have done so well for so long. I know marriage is very difficult from personal experience. I continue to hold out hope that things will improve for every marriage. I know we cant control how our spouse responds to us and that we (both partners) can feel very lonely. A few years ago, I had an experience where my husband and I were arguing and I was upstairs by myself. I asked the Lord exasperated, “How much can I take?!” I very clearly heard, “Your life is not your own.” I at first thought that because I had consecrated myself to Mary the summer before maybe that was what the message meant. Then two weeks later in mass I heard the Gospel reading, 1 Corinthians 6:19 “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? 20 For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body.” I almost fell over. Perhaps, you could turn all this suffering into a beautiful sacrifice to our Lord and offer it up for your husband’s conversion or some other intention you hold dear? I noticed a few years ago that many of my wonderful devout Catholic mom friends all wanted prayer for marriages and we began a small biweekly prayer group. We would collect intentions, pray the Rosary, nine Memorare, St. Michael. We would lift each other up. We then stopped after 2 years. We let a year go by and then I was contacted again by the few ladies who said they never felt better then when we had our prayer meetings. You might really benefit from a strong(er?) interior life. Let the Lord become your beloved. You might become a happier, peaceful woman. I will pray for you. I am sorry that you have suffered so much. I think the mission you are fulfilling faithfully is the most important of your life. God is with you. Try surrounding yourself with the saints! Put on EWTN, Catholic Radio, maybe escape to Eucharistic Adoration, go to daily mass. I realize you have some more serious mental health issues but maybe they will be alleviated somewhat when you are happier with your interior life?
 
Lillibut, to me it sounds like you might be going through a mid-life crisis of sorts. It is a special kind of sacrifice to be married to someone who has a very public vocation. I know from my mothers experience the difficulties you face. (My maiden name is the name of a famous old US president and everyone used to call my father President … because apart from his public service job, he was on every board and committee around. President of most of them). It is a very difficult role as the wife of such a person.

This is the time in your life to make time for your relationship with the Lord. You are a hero in a sense in the way that Martha was a quiet hero.

My suggestion, (because I turned to this myself) is to seek out an Ignatian spiritual director and try and discern if the spiritual exercises would be helpful to you at this moment.

I get that you want your husband to WAKE UP AND CHANGE. However the preciousness of love is in receiving it freely given. Someone who is just trying to ‘tick boxes’ to please you is pathetic. However, it is important that he knows how you feel at this time. Then just let go and pursue your relationship with the Lord.

So sorry for your plight. An unhappy marriage is such a spiritual desolation and one of the greatest of all sacrifices in this life.

God bless.
 
Thank you everyone for your responses so far. I can feel the comfort of your prayers today.

It is times like this which make me so strongly aware of the wider Church and the unity of souls within her. We are one body in Christ and that which harms one part of the body hurts it all whilst that which comforts and supports one part provides comfort to the whole body.

I will respond further to specific posts later. Thank you again.
God bless xx
 
I would just be grateful he is healthy and able to work. seriously, you could be homeless and without children.

I would think of it this way:

you are a powerful Godly wife. He comes home and you are: lovely, dressed up, relaxed, confident, attentive, attractive.

Do whatever it takes to get to this point in your life. Get a manicure maybe? A day with the girls before he comes home?? anything. seriously.

You are LONELY that’s the problem.

So, get some girl friends girl. And enjoy life!!! Go out to pizza with your kids. Do something crazy like get a new outfit. I don’t know. Join a sculpture class and make art all over your house. Whatever it takes Girl.

When he gets home you are: relaxed, pretty, and fun. That’s IT. No more science ****. That’s HIS job. You don’t need to know all the bull **** about how hard things are at his gig. It’s not your job. It’s your job to be: relaxed, fun, and HAPPY. He wants sex, give him the best sex he will want, because you had a GREAT day. He asks: what’d you do today honey? You SAY: "oh, it was great, I went out with the girls, our kids went to the zoo/etc. That’s it. CUT THE **** out. No more complaining.
 
lily22 said:
I would just be grateful he is healthy and able to work. seriously, you could be homeless and without children.

I would think of it this way:

you are a powerful Godly wife. He comes home and you are: lovely, dressed up, relaxed, confident, attentive, attractive.

Do whatever it takes to get to this point in your life. Get a manicure maybe? A day with the girls before he comes home?? anything. seriously.

You are LONELY that’s the problem.

So, get some girl friends girl. And enjoy life!!! Go out to pizza with your kids. Do something crazy like get a new outfit. I don’t know. Join a sculpture class and make art all over your house. Whatever it takes Girl.

When he gets home you are: relaxed, pretty, and fun. That’s IT. No more science ****. That’s HIS job. You don’t need to know all the bull **** about how hard things are at his gig. It’s not your job. It’s your job to be: relaxed, fun, and HAPPY. He wants sex, give him the best sex he will want, because you had a GREAT day. He asks: what’d you do today honey? You SAY: "oh, it was great, I went out with the girls, our kids went to the zoo/etc. That’s it. CUT THE **** out. No more complaining.
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This is an excellent reply,,,, Enjoy your life, go to the movies, and discus with him that when he arrives home,, he is no longer the scientist,,
 
lily22 said:
I would just be grateful he is healthy and able to work. seriously, you could be homeless and without children.

I would think of it this way:

you are a powerful Godly wife. He comes home and you are: lovely, dressed up, relaxed, confident, attentive, attractive.

Do whatever it takes to get to this point in your life. Get a manicure maybe? A day with the girls before he comes home?? anything. seriously.

You are LONELY that’s the problem.

So, get some girl friends girl. And enjoy life!!! Go out to pizza with your kids. Do something crazy like get a new outfit. I don’t know. Join a sculpture class and make art all over your house. Whatever it takes Girl.

When he gets home you are: relaxed, pretty, and fun. That’s IT. No more science ****. That’s HIS job. You don’t need to know all the bull **** about how hard things are at his gig. It’s not your job. It’s your job to be: relaxed, fun, and HAPPY. He wants sex, give him the best sex he will want, because you had a GREAT day. He asks: what’d you do today honey? You SAY: "oh, it was great, I went out with the girls, our kids went to the zoo/etc. That’s it. CUT THE **** out. No more complaining.
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Lillibut, I think you have every right to your feelings and to be able speak about your feelings to someone. Pretending they don’t exist, sweeping them under the rug and denying them probably will not be helpful.

Too bad you didn’t have more support.
 
Lord, have mercy on Lillibut and her husband, please grant these souls many graces and angelic help in the face of every challenge. Permit these souls the fullness of your choicest blessings in keeping with your Holy Will. Shine your divine light into this darkened pilgrimage, that these souls be emboldened by the warmth of your radiance and strive for holy obedience, now, unto the eternal garden of joy. Cultivate in these souls the virtues of peace, joy, faith, hope, and love. Our Lady, angels, and saints, pray with us. Amen.

†

Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. Amen.

†

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen.

†
 
I must admit whilst reading through your hardships, that there are many women who would love to be in your position. A loving loyal, hard working expert professional in his field, who cannot be in two places at once. Loneliness is a terrible thing and has to be discussed with your husband, not on a public thread.
Only you two can find a balanced resolution that may get your depression under control and off your meds. He may have to cut back on his work to take responsibility more as a husband than as a medical savior. May Our Lord assist in finding this much needed balance.
 
One thing that jumped out at me that no one else has mentioned is you said he needs to reach sexual climax or else he doesn’t want to talk to you or meet your emotional needs. I really would not deem him a “loving husband,” or “wonderful man” knowing this. The way he treated you when you were pregnant the second and third time is terrible. And telling you to “act like a normal human being” or else he wouldn’t talk to you when you were obviously deeply hurting? I think you may be experiencing emotional abuse from him. It is very possible that 15 years of this sort of emotional abuse from him has led to your depression.
 
Lillibut,
How does your husband feel about the way things are? Does he feel the lack of family life or does he seem ok with the fact that his home is just a landing space from which his wonderful career is launched? Is he unhappy about your “marital life” because he wants to re-establish intimacy between you two, or because he feels it is “owed” to him, or what? And consider that men seem a lot different in that respect, for them in a good marriage it seems like the marital act sort of solidifies in his mind that he is loved; it is more foundational than it is for women, if you see what I mean.

What I’m thinking is that he *may *be just as unhappy as you are with the situation. He too may feel enslaved to this horrible situation in which he must be away from his family almost all the time in order to keep the family going. He may not feel that way, but if he is, I would suggest that you consider how you would feel about downsizing your life and possibly moving in order to improve you marriage, and then after “re-establishing intimacy” with him, letting him know that you love him more than what his current work provides for your family and you would like to consider with him the idea of his changing his line of work so that you can all be together as a family.

If you think that this is not a conversation you could have with him now, or ever, then i would suggest that you accept that this is life (temporarily or permanently), even tho it’s not what you expected, and learn to live this life that you have with joy. For example, do you have to work? If not, stop–then you will have more time for yourself and your children. Streamline the necessary parts of your life, and use the free time to have fun with your children. They need to see at least one parent who is happy around them. Even if you don’t feel happy, act happy around them.

And the other thing that I would suggest is that you consider the fact that bad thoughts are like temptations. Your feelings well up inside and you think about them and that is very depressing. While you may have clinical depression, you also have medication for it, so cooperate with the medication and every time a negative thought enters your mind, ease it out. Replace that thought with a positive thought. If you start feeling lonely in the evening, say, well, my husband will be home next week for a couple of days; other women’s husbands never come home, I am grateful that my husband is coming home next week, and I am grateful for (two other things).

And if the negative thoughts start flying at you (remember that they are used to having their way with you), start praying! Ask Christ, Mary, and St Michael the archangel, your guardian angel, your patron saint(s), for protection against these thoughts. Even when the thoughts start sneaking back in, just pray again. This is something I had to do and I had to persevere in it. And what I noticed was that after I did this, a few weeks later I started having different negative thoughts and really messed up by not recognizing I had to apply the same remedy to them :o So now I am more careful and do that for *any *negative thoughts.
 
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