Hello, Queenie, I need advice regarding my husband. We have been married for 2 years, however together for five years. We have a 3 year old child also. Up to last year, things were pretty tense for us, and we questioned whether or not we should call it quits.
I had somewhat of a rebellious past and loved to go out with my friends, sometimes too much. I knew that he did not like that and I made every effort to change. My husband is a very unemotional man, and very rarely showed me affection. We saw a therapist, who made us recognize our differences, and put us on the right path.
The past year for us has been wonderful. The sex has been better and more abundant, we are respectful to each other, and we can actually say that we are MARRIED and happy with that. We now look at each other and know that we love each other deeply.
Now my husband has found a group of less than reputable friends who are not yet in that phase. Most of them, if not all of them, are single, with very few responsibilities. They are able to come and go as they please. My issue is that my husband is now wanting to do more and more with these “friends”, and putting our marriage at risk for this.
He states that he wants to hang out with his buddies at a party for a girl he doesn’t know. Now in his own narrow-minded way, he feels that I am trying to hold him back from his friends, and throws in my face that I used to go out with my friends all of the time (I always asked him to go, and haven’t been out in a long time..).
If he asked any of his married friends, they would tell him that they would never go to a party as such without their wives. His new found freedom and independence is confusing to me, since he was never much of a social person to begin with. We rarely go out alone, and when we do it usually ends up being a dinner date, or something of the sort.
The last time we went out with a group of his friends and co-workers, I might as well have been a crack on the wall. He stated after that he didn’t want to appear “clingy,” although acknowledgement is very far from clingy.
We have come so far, so I cannot figure out why he would do something that he knows is going to offend and upset me to the point of not speaking for 3 days. I love this man dearly, and am very proud of the family we have created, but I don’t know if I can be with someone who knows how I feel, but thinks so little of my feelings. It makes me wonder what is really important to him, and why he wouldn’t save the argument and just ask me to go to the party with him.
I’ve really come to the conclusion that he was caught in a lie, really had something else planned for that evening, and doesn’t know how to worm his way out of the lie. Please give me your advice on this issue. Thank you. — Julie
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Julie, the two of you need to go see the therapist again. Your husband apparently doesn’t see that what he’s doing is going to damage the marriage to a point of being irrepairable. So what if you used to spend time with your single friends? That was a problem then, and it has been corrected. Spending time with his single friends — without you — is a problem now.
Was it your decision not to speak about this for 3 days? If so, that’s the wrong way to deal with problems. Not facing them head on won’t make them go away. Not speaking with him won’t resolve the problem.
If therapy worked before, hopefully it will work again. That’s my recommendation. Take it for what it’s worth. — Queenie