Spiraling

TheFireTheft
Thu, 24 Apr 2025 14:27:19 +0000

Preface:

Beware: long, scattered post incoming.

I'm not having suicidal thoughts. No matter what happens, life is still worth living.

I'm spiraling right now. I'm so confused and lost that I need to just put this out there, somewhere, anywhere. Here goes:

I've been happily married for coming up on 8 years next week. Our relationship has always been strong, we've always considered each other best friends, and I've always felt that our love was built on a rock-solid foundation.

Lately, my wife has been acting very distant. Enough so that it started ringing some alarm bells in my head. I took a personal inventory of several of the "disconnected" events and sat down with her last week to ask if we were okay. Her response was indifference. After a bit of a pause, I asked her if she still loved me, to which she responded "I don't know." Of course a lot more was said, but the summary is that I was completely floored and she was emotionless and indifferent.

I asked one thing: that we would set up marriage counseling sessions. She agreed. Our initial individual sessions start next week.

Since then, I've spent every single moment trying to examine myself and my flaws, where I've damaged our relationship in the past, and what I can do in the future to be a better person for her.

On Monday, I actually had some massive discoveries about myself, and blindspots in my emotional maturity. I discovered one little thing, which led to two or three more. By the end of this very exciting and motivating self-reflection session, I was PUMPED UP! For once in years, I felt like I've discovered this whole new region of growth in my brain.

I also had a session with my therapist that same day, in which I shared the recent events and my bout of epiphanies. She mentioned that "sometimes it takes a major life event to get people out of a rut and start a growth journey." I left the session feeling really good, really motivated, like there is a whole new and great future ahead of me and us.

I also came to a realizations about how I've hurt her in the past. The long and the short of it is that I'm terrible about empathizing and listening to feelings, and my insecurities put me into a defensive mode rather than a supportive, listening, partner mode.

A week later, and I'm still buzzing, reflecting, discovering more emotional epiphanies, and REALLY looking forward to marriage counseling. However, I've also forced myself to keep all of this to myself and just start showing that I am growing by taking actions. It hasn't been the time to share any of this with her, especially because I've said a lot of words in the past about changing that never seemed to materialize. I knew that the right time would come.

And then, last night happened.

"I had a session with my therapist today. I've made the decision that we need to divorce."

Commence spiraling.

The first thing I said was: "Please, I'm begging you, go through the marriage counseling sessions with me."

She said "I will go to marriage counseling, but I'm only doing this for you."

I then decided to share with her all of the personal discoveries I've made and the growth journey I'm embarking on, how I've realized that I hurt her in the past when she needed me most, and how I'm committed to growing and working on myself and our relationship because I love her and I made that vow to her when we married. I told her that I realized finally what this heavy feeling in my heart is: it is the physical manifestation of love, and I know that because it hurts so much, and if it wouldn't hurt if there wasn't love.

She said she went through a similar process of pain and grieving last year (there's some really deep and heavy stuff that went down, in short, she discovered that her father was not her biological father; she started the journey of meeting her new family and my response at the time came from insecurity and jealousy). She said that she was done processing those emotions and that she has moved on and is focusing on herself and our 3 year old son.

She said that she loves me and cares about me, she even held me and hugged me. But that made it hurt even more. I feel like I am being led on.

I went for a walk to clear my head, and when I got home, she asked if I was okay, and I said "No. But I'm treating this as a challenge. Your love has always come easy and I've never had to fight for it. For the first time, I am going to actually fight to earn your love."

I didn't sleep last night. I decided to go into the office this morning to knock some stuff out early so I could take a personal day. On the way out the door, I asked her to promise something to me: I said "when we go to marriage counseling, please don't do it for me. Please do it for us. We've gone through so much together, we made vows to each other when we married that we would stick together through the good and the bad. Please, let's just give it one last ditch effort." She said "Okay."

This morning, some questions have started popping into my head, uninvited: "how will custody of our 3 year old work?" "Will I be removed from his life?" "Who's going to get the house?" -- and I'm really trying to remove those thoughts from my mind right now because I don't want to even entertain the possibility at this point. These are questions I never in a million years I thought I would be asking myself.

Now I'm at a coffee shop, typing this message. I have an emergency appointment with my therapist in a few hours, although I'm not sure what that will solve at this point.

I am questioning the very core, foundational things I thought I knew about myself. I am confused and lost and heartbroken.

I'm also not really sure why I'm sharing this message with you all. Perhaps because it is therapeutic to type all of this out, and perhaps I trust this community.

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