everythings falling apart

LegacyUser

i've resisted posting here for so long because i thought i could work things out in my own and i can't get it all straight yet in my head but the longer our situation goes on the sadder it all gets so i'm hoping i can get some constructive advice from you nice people. i'm in complete floods of tears here but i know some of that is my depression.

where do i start? we met each other at really good times for both of us. we started out with this great fun sex life. i have a lot more experience in that field than him, as far as he has told me i'm his first real long term relationship. there were a few obstacles at the start, in that, and i'm just going to say it, he's not very well endowed. this didn't bother me at the time. he also has, i don't know the medical name for it, is it phemosis? he doesn't well, um, retract. at all. as a result it's not the kind of penetrative sex that i'm used to. there's far less, well, feeling for me, and because he has so little sensation at the top, well, he found that moving in a certain way and speed was at times the only thing that worked for him. but it drove me mad. it sometimes hurt, it wasn't always pleasurable. i suggested that we take turns in styles, if you like, but that never happened. i don't know whether he ever actually listened to me or what i needed, or whether he heard me and just chose to ignore me. we just contined to have sex his way and that was that.

he used to really put his foot in it coming out with some real clangers that hurt me but i understood that this was his first grown up relationship, so i walked him through the minefield of dealing with women so to speak and usually things were solved. we had such fun together and had so many life goals in common. same outlook and principles on things like work, marriage, kids, the future, all that grown up stuff. i know he's the guy i want to have kids with.

but. i don't know if it's just a light that's gone on in my head, or whether i was just blind to it or he was hiding these aspects of himself from me or what, i have no idea. i'm lost in that respect. there are some things he just doesn't get. he has quite bad ocd. classic textbook stuff yet refuses to see anyone to get a diagnosis and work on it. he knows that he does need to see someone. but won't. living with him is an absolute misery at times. i'm not allowed to leave any of my stuff lying around, we're usually late for things because he has to clean the house from top to bottom before we leave. this can take hours sometimes. i have to do a military style once over on the house before he comes home from work or he'll not be able to sit down until he goes to bed cleaning and rearranging. he goes into my knicker and sock drawers and folds things. he moves things that i've left in certain places so i'll find them, and i mean anything. i found my keyes in the cooker one day cause he just needed for them not to be on the counter and that was the nearest place to put them. i'm not allowed to pin things to the noticeboard at a funny angle or he'll have to get up off the couch and fix them, i could go on and on and on and on and on. over time i've become depressed, and saw a psychiatrist who referred me to a councellor. i've been seeing her for almost a year now. yet he says things like why would he go and see someone about his ocd, he's not mental, only mental people see shrinks, etc. this hurts. he doesn't get it.

this is only about half of what i wanted to say - there's the honeymoon disaster, the fact that we haven't had sex in over 6 months, the fights over going to see a marriage councellor, the fights over where we live so i can get work, the fact that we never resolve anything, he seems incapable or unwiling to following through on our plans to fix things when we have a problem. he can go weeks without asking me if i'm ok when it would be obvious to a stranger in the street that i'm not. the list goes on. oh god. what's my actual question? maybe how i get someone i love to stop being so self destructive and get help. i love him so much and i want us to work. but i don't know if we can. sorry this is so disjointed, it might not even make much sense but i'm desperate.

Contessa Raven

Hi OP,

That sounds like a really frustrating situation to be in.

You won't like my advice but IMO you can't help someone who doesn't want to be helped and you can't change someone. They have to want to change first.

It seems to me that your man is all talk and no action. You say you've talked to him about sorting through your issues as a couple? If he isn't listening then you need to think long and hard about whether you can live like this.

If the answer is no, then it's ultimatum time. Explain to him that he has hurt you by making hurtful comments and not listening to you about your suggestions (in and outside of the bedroom) and that you can no longer live with somebody who is so unwilling to compromise for the greater good of the relationship.

If you do go down the ultimatum route, then you must follow through with it. If he wakes up and makes some changes, you know he wants to work on it. If he doesn't, then that tells you all you need to know about this guy.

If you don't follow through after giving the ultimatum, then you are sending the message that you will tolerate this behaviour. Therefore giving him no reason to change.

I don't know if this advice helps or not. But this is just what I would do in this situation.

CR

LegacyUser

thanks for you reply. i see what you're saying about the ultimatum.

the problem i have is that he hides behind this excuse and trots it out every time an issue comes up that he doesn''t know how to express his feelings. his family and his mother in particular is a nutjob. i can see exactly and i mean exactly where some bits of his ocd comes from when you look at the way she acts and how she talks to my husband and me. so since we met i've always understood that it is hard for him to talk about feelings. i've always been open and honest with him. i've been there when hes stressed out with work, i've been an open book when it comes to listening to him without judgement, if that makes sense. but he just says he can't. end of. like the councellor. he won't won't and see a councellor to save our marriage because in his words 'you know i find it hard to talk about that stuff. i can't.'

he didn't interact with me for about 3 weeks like hug me or hold me or anything when we came home from our honeymoon because he said he didn't know how to talk to me or what to say. we were like flatmates discussing the dinner, and was there post, and the car needs a hoover all that for nearly a month. wtf? when i ask him is it something i do or did? it's not. i ask him is there anyway he can maybe write how he's feeling down instead, he says he's not very good with words. he's in this perpetual state of not know what to say and i'm in a perpetual state of thinking 'just f***ing say anything'.

can someone that pathalogically incapable of verbalising feelings be shown that feelings are nothing to be scared of and that he's hurting me in the process of what he's doing?

it's nearly half 4 and the thought of getting into bed beside him is the last thing i want to do. yet he'll be angry with me if i sleep in the spare room. :-(

Taltos

OP

sorry but you cannot fix him or even force him to fix himself.

All you can do is look after yourself and right now it seems like you have just been so blown about the place that you have forgotten how to do that.

By all means - sit him down one last time - let him know how upset you are, how much you are now at the end of your tether. If you must just use one or 2 recent examples and focus not so much on it being his fault - but more on how his actions / inaction has made you feel so low. Ask him for his help - not just for him but for you both.

Either he mans up and takes action or you will have your answer.
You then have some tough decisions to make - whether to accept this as your lot in life for the next 40 or 50 yrs or walk away as much as it tears you up.

I cannot tell you the right thing to do here but if a relationship is making you feel so sh1tty then you have to do all you can to change it...

gerryk

Wow... I found that really quite upsetting to read. I'm kinda gobsmacked that someone would be so much in denial as to their issues as to cause you such upset in your life.
Why doesn't he speak to his GP about the phimosis. There are various remedies, ranging from stretching of the foreskin to circumcision.
He also really needs to recognise that (a) the OCD stuff really impacts negatively on you and your relationship with him, (b) it doesn't mean that anyone is nuts or mental, but that they have personality quirks that need to be moderated. In much the same was as being particularly agressive, or overly shy can negatively affect your relationships with people, so can OCD, and this is something he needs to stop hiding from.

If you think this is worth saving, You need to start dealing out some hard goals here i.e. He needs to speak to his GP in the next month. If not, walk, and walk now before this situation really damages you.

LegacyUser

thanks so much to the people that have replied. you don't know what it means to me to know that i'm not just talking into thin air.

after last night's latest row about councelling he rang from work today and he's agreed to go. so that's step one. i'm hoping he's doing it for his own sake and for his own reasons as well, not just because i'm in tears and begging. so now we just have to find someone.

gerryk i'm not sure if you're a guy or not, sorry. i realise how hard it is for guys to talk and deal with all things penile so to speak. the thing is we used to be able to talk about it. when we got together first i mentioned it and breezily said that there were things he could do about it. he asked what so i did some googling and told him. but he just shut down the shutters and said nope, he couldn't talk about it. so we went back to having sex his way and that's one of the reasons our sex life has all but ended. he has such feelings of shame around his body and about sex. as cliched as it is, i can see that a lot of these stem from his mother and her attitude to cleanliness, and catholic shame, and all that other bs. the really really awfull thing that i've let happen, is that he's projected a lot of that negativity back on me. i used to walk round the house naked, be so confident in bed, and i think because he's so uptight and can't relax i've mirrored that and now i can't even change in front of him. we haven't seen each other naked in nearly 6 months. oh god.

would you advise to bring the phemosis up seperately now, or wait till we're in councelling?

encore1

OP, im delighted for you that he's agreed to counselling - whatever reasons he's doing it for, it's still a step in the right direction...

as for the phemosis thing, I'd wait til the counselling, you don't want to put him under too much pressure all at once for fear that he may buck and use that as an excuse not to go... i'm sure it will come up in a session - let the counsellor "be the bad guy" and bring it up so that he can't use that to push you away...

best of luck

Ickle Magoo

I don't know what is more worrying, him treating you like a doormat or you merrily putting up with it. How does it happen that you must go to bed in case he's angry with you? Or must have lousy sex you don't like or even hurts you because he says so? At what stage did that become okay? :eek:

It sounds like a horrendously unhealthy relationship and I wouldn't be surprised if the fanatically controlling aspect he has that you have been blithely going along with has stripped you of all self-confidence and self-worth.

To be perfectly honest, I think the best thing for you is to get out of there until he has conquered his demons and can offer you the kind of life a loving, supportive spouse should...and also to help him and motivate him to get help - because you seem to be enabling many of his issues by not having any kind of boundaries or consequences for his extreme and abnormal behaviours. Definitely keep going to your counsellor too, these issues should have been brought to a head a long time ago and I wonder at the toll constantly living with such behaviours has taken on you.

All the best

Taltos

Ickle Magoo wrote: »

To be perfectly honest, I think the best thing for you is to get out of there until he has conquered his demons and can offer you the kind of life a loving, supportive spouse should...and also to help him and motivate him to get help - because you seem to be enabling many of his issues by not having any kind of boundaries or consequences for his extreme and abnormal behaviours. Definitely keep going to your counsellor too, these issues should have been brought to a head a long time ago and I wonder at the toll constantly living with such behaviours has taken on you.

I hate to say it and I know you don't want to "abandon" him - but I 100% agree with the above sentiment, what I most especially clicked on was the enabling aspect. Don't get me wrong - I am not saying any of this is your fault - I am sure that it has all be self-conscious - but each time he got his own way for whatever reason he has become more entrenched in this unhealthy life.

Would you also consider getting help separately for your own bashed self-confidence? And at the same time seek pointers on how to behave/react when he re-offends. (I am not using that word lightly by the way)...

LegacyUser

thanks again for the replies. i feel much better about the whole thing today, mainly because i was able to get some of all my crap out through this thread. i don't have anyone i can talk to about this, so please accept my thanks for listening.

i suppose my depression is what's stopping me walking away or getting some time away from each other. i moved to this area to be with him and i can't get work here, can't make friends here, so i suppose i myself have hit rock bottom. what i mean is, i don't have the confidence to leave. i don't have the confidence to ring up my sister and go up the coutry to visit her because i'll miss him, and i'm not just able to be around people at the moment. i cry too much.

as for getting help for myself, i used to see my councellor every two weeks. she'd ususally text the day before to give me an appt. time, but the last time i saw her was the end of december. i'm not even sure she's doing me any good. it feels like more of a casual chat really. nothing concrete or pro-active. i mentioned this to the psych. early on but he must have told her. the next appt. i had she was a bit offhand and mentioned what he had said. i asked her if i could get on a list for cbt as i think that would suit me better, but she said i have to ask the psych for it. that was months and months ago. i haven't heard from him since.

and yes, i realise on some levels i am enabling him. but i love him. how can i be a bitch and make him do things all the time? i hate nagging. i don't want to be looking down at myself from a height and seeing some nagging woman who nags to her husband all the time. i want him to see that he needs to do these things for himself. obviously i need to stop doing that!