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My wife and I have been married for 14 years. She is my high school sweetheart. We have 2 kids. The second one was born 7 months ago. She is a great wife and a great mother. 2 years ago I stated to work on my Masters on a weekend program that has brought me a great amount of stress. During this time we have had our 2 kids and at the same time we both work full time. Recently I took off from school to allow her to have some time with the baby after birth. We spent time together and everything was ok. We had our disagreements here and there. Once I came back from school she decided to go out with her friends for fun. She started buying dresses and was going out while leaving me home with the kids.

One night she returned around 6 am swearing that she was with her girlfriends. I got suspicious and installed a gps app on her phone. One night she ask me to stay with the kids while she went over to her friend’s. I activated the app and found her going the opposite way. I got someone to stay with the kids and went over to where she was. I found her parked in the street talking to another guy. He had his car parked behind her and there was another person in the car. I decided not to confront her there (my mistake) and went home and waited for her.

When she got home I asked her how was her friend, she replied fine and kept going about her. Then I asked her what she was doing with another guy in the car and told her that I followed her and found her. Her jaw dropped and couldn’t talk. I kept asking her about it and she would deny it.

Then I lost it and smacked her. I knew i did it it, but I don’t remember actually hitting her. After this we had a huge argument. She called the police and had me arrested. According to her the police tricked her into giving her information, because she didn’t want me to get arrested, but they did anyways. I turned my self in the next day.

Now I have been thinking and I realized that I should have never hit her. She has alway been good to me. I don’t know where I went wrong or what I did to have her look for another guy. Now Im living with my parents and she lives back in our apt. She has allowed me to see my kids anytime I want. I want to work things out and try to understand what happened, but now she does not want to talk at all. I have repeatedly attempted to talk and she does not want to. Can she fall out of love this quick? we were fine a few weeks ago. Everything was great and no worries. She avoids me and when I go see the kids she leaves.

How can I approach the situation and begin to at least talk to her. Her brother says she is not ready and that I should give her time. 3 weeks have passed by and she hasn’t said a word to me. I want to get back to my old life, but I don’t know how to go about it? How much time should I give her? I dont want to lose her. Please help.

Thank you for writing. As you already know, your marriage is in serious trouble. Things were not fine a few weeks ago. They haven’t been fine for some time. You’ve both been doing far too much and your relationship has suffered as a result. I know you’ve both been working to support the family. I understand that you went to school to try to position yourself for a better job. The two of you brought two children into the world out of love and optimism for a good family life. But there is only so much energy to go around. You’ve been trying to be a provider, a student, a husband and dad. She’s been essentially single-parenting while at the same time also being a provider and wife. Yikes! Where has there been time to nurture your relationship with your spouse?

I don’t know if your wife has ever tried to talk to you about how lonely and overloaded she has felt. I don’t know if you had serious conversations about the sacrifices the two of you were making and whether you could really handle it. Clearly you couldn’t. The pressure kept building until she looked for some fun and affirmation elsewhere and you lost it and hit her.

If you want your wife to talk to you, you’ll first have to acknowledge her loneliness and pain. You can’t make excuses for getting physical, no matter how hurt, frustrated, and angry you were. You could have left. You could have cried. You could have quetly told her how scared and hurt you were. Instead, you resorted to violence. That’s never, ever okay.

I suggest you do two things. First, write her a letter with a heartfelt apology. Tell her how much she means to you and how much you want to save your family. Offer to go to couples counseling to try to untangle all the hurt feelings and to rekindle the love. Second, make an appointment with that couples therapist and go. Go even if she won’t go with you. She may need to see you are serious about it before she is willing to be vulnerable to you. At the very least, you’ll get some guidance about how to handle your situation. With time, she may join you in the project.

I wish you well.
Dr. Marie

My boyfriend proposed to me last year and I said yes, but I felt anxious about the idea of a wedding – I hate the idea of being the centre of attention, I don’t like wearing dresses anyway and it’s such a huge amount of money to pay for one day that I want to be sure I’ll enjoy it and not worry that I’ll flip out on the day and (worse case scenario) decide not to go through with it. My other worry is whether we should get married at all because our sex life is practically non-existent at the moment – my boyfriend doesn’t seem to be interested in sex and as a result I feel really unattractive and have low self esteem. I wonder whether he just asked me to marry him as we’ve been together so long (10 years) and it’s the next logical step.
I find it hard to talk to him about this as he always tells me I’m being silly and says he loves me and then we both say we’ll try harder to make time for sex, but ultimately nothing changes. If anything, it seems to have become worse lately.

All these worries are going round and round in my head and making me feel really depressed.

I have friends who have recently got engaged and they’re so excited and happy and I look at them and wonder why I can’t feel like that. I really wish that I could be happy about getting married like a ‘normal’ person but I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to feel that way. Should I just cut my losses and cancel the wedding now? or do I stick it out in the hope that things will improve?

From reading your letter I get the impression that the main issue is a lack of self-esteem and self-confidence. You seem to be looking to external sources, your boyfriend for instance, for evidence of self-worth. You also mentioned that you do not want to be the center of attention. People with self-esteem problems oftentimes do not want to be the center of attention. They are afraid of the scrutiny or what people will think of them. This is one indication of a lack of self-esteem.

You also mention the lack of sex between you and your boyfriend. At no time do you mention that you have a high sex drive or that you are not being satisfied sexually. Your complaint is that not having sex may indicate that your boyfriend does not find you attractive. Once again, this is evidence that you seem to be looking to an external source for self-esteem (i.e. to determine whether or not you are attractive, lovable, etc.).

It’s important to keep in mind, as you mentioned in your letter, that you and he are busy. The fact that you are both sometimes too busy to have sex does not mean he is not interested in having sex. It means simply that you both lead busy lives. That is the nature of mature adult lives. Many people are busy and this gets in the way of having sex. Also keep in mind that in the beginning of relationships, sex seems to be very important and the biological sex drive is high. Later, in the relationship, the sex drive declines for virtually everyone. Your sex life might be completely normal. You may be having the right amount of sex for the both of you, given your sex drive and how busy you both are.

Nowhere in your letter do you mention your boyfriend really loving you or your loving him. The idea of “cutting your losses and leaving” should be based on love. If you do not love him or he doesn’t love you then the relationship should be over. You know what you feel but you cannot attempt to know what he feels based on how often you and he have sex.

You worry that your boyfriend only asked you to marry him because you have been together for so long. He’s known you for 10 years. After 10 years, he knows whether or not he wants to be with you. He knows if he wants a big commitment like marriage. Suggesting that he doesn’t really want to marry you and that he is just doing it because it’s “logical” is another sign of low self-esteem. In reality, it’s logical to break up if you are not happy with someone. It is also logical to want to marry someone you’re happy with. He could have left you but he didn’t. Instead he asked you to marry him.

You make a mistake when you believe that all ‘normal’ people get excited about the possibility of marriage. Marriage is a legal term. You have been with your boyfriend for 10 years. In essence, you have been married. For the people who are excited about being married, should they be? If you are in a committed relationship and are married in every way but legally, why would it be a big event? It’s a legal event. Not all people are overly excited about being married.

You are correct; it is a lot of money for a one-day party. Today, unlike centuries past, marriage is most often not a lifelong commitment. It is very common for people to be divorced three or four times. Some people spend $30,000 or $40,000 on a wedding and the marriage lasts six months. Marriage isn’t about the size of the reception or the number of people at the church.

In summary, I suspect that you may have a self-esteem problem. Counseling could help with this. Though you are finding it difficult to talk to your boyfriend, doing this in a counseling environment with an objective third party would tell you if you are being irrational or illogical. It seems as though your boyfriend has done nothing to give the indication that he doesn’t want to marry you, yet you continue to hold the idea that he really doesn’t want to marry you. You believe it is something that he is just going to do because he’s been with you for 10 years yet he has said otherwise and even laughs when you ask him about it. Perhaps this is why you find it a difficult matter to discuss. You won’t accept what he has to say; you negate it. It is almost as if you refuse to believe that he could possibly be correct because he has such a high opinion of you. These are signs of low self esteem and are very common symptoms. I have tried to answer your letter and provide you some possibilities. I don’t have enough information to provide an accurate diagnosis and I never attempt to provide one without an in person evaluation. Click on the find help tab to locate a therapist in your community.

Please take care. I wish you well.

Kristina Randle

Dresses

My wife will not talk to me

Should I Cancel My Wedding Due To Anxiety and Depression?