Hi everyone,
My husband and I have been married for 17 years and they’ve been turbulent due to his cheating, flirting and stepping out of the marriage multiple times. I’ve forgiven and taken him back three times but the fourth time I snapped and told him to leave.
While we’ve been separated we haven’t been talking much, but met to catch up yesterday. And the talk was the same it’s been all along for so many years.. that he feels confused, indecisive, and a massive fear of commitment to me. He has always felt he got married too young, and didn’t get the transition period between being a boy and a man, and he cannot accept and process that he will never get it.
I am trying to be understanding and I have told him I’m going to give him time to figure himself out, but I am so mentally exhausted and I truly feel like there’s no hope of him changing long term. I don’t understand how someone can be married for so long but still not feel committed and actually be scared of it.
In the end the entire conversation turned into him and me feeling sorry for the battles he goes through with himself, and all my injury was forgotten. It took me really long to even get to the point of wanting to talk to him, and then it wasn’t even about me at all.
Has anyone been through anything similar? Could it be a mental health problem? He’s torn between wanting freedom but also wanting family, and feels bad for hurting so many people.