Sometimes you have the feeling that your marriage is deteriorating, but you hope that maybe you are making things worse. That is until your spouse says something that leaves you in no doubt that you were right. Sometimes your spouse uses extremely hurtful adjectives that can leave you unsure how to respond or where to go from here. Some examples are words like “miserable,” “loveless,” or “dead.”
Someone might say, “I suspected for a long time that my husband wasn’t happy in our marriage lately. Until yesterday, he hadn’t come out or said anything, but he was just depressed and not very affectionate with me anymore. Last night, we had a fight about something that really It didn’t matter. It was something insignificant like housework. I got defensive and told my husband that he had been so distant with me and then he sarcastically replied, ‘Aloof? Well, I’m still here, aren’t I? And this says a lot because honestly our marriage is miserable but we are both stuck in the moment so we just have to put up with it. I was actually very surprised by this. I didn’t think my husband would be happy in our marriage. But his words were very harsh. She made our marriage look like a prison or something and I have no idea why she would say that. because how does it help? How am I supposed to respond to that? How do you come back from something like this? I don’t know if I he would say this because he just wants a divorce and this was his way of shooting. the first shot, or if he really wants me to take action. Maybe he was just trying to hurt me? When he talked about being trapped, he was probably talking about our children. None of us have wanted to break up our family, but that’s no excuse for saying what he did.”
I think if he really wanted to hurt you, maybe he would have taken steps to start some time off. He may have alluded to being “stuck,” but at least he has no plans to leave right away. That gives you some time to assess what you really want and how you want to respond. When you evaluate this, try to do it at a time when you can be more objective. What they said has hurt you, so it would be natural to allow that pain to cloud your decision-making. But it’s important that you try really hard to really ask yourself what you would want if you could let go of the pain. It sounds like they are both committed to their family, so I suspect what they would really want is a happy family where both parents are happy with their marriage.
That might sound a bit silly considering where you are right now, but it’s important to keep your optimal ending in mind. Then ask yourself how you can get from where you are now to where you want to be. I’m living proof that it’s not impossible, even when you have a husband who calls himself “miserable.” (My husband used this word several times.) And now that we’re no longer apart and I have some hindsight, I realize what he was really trying to tell me was that our marriage had changed drastically and he wasn’t happy (at all) with those changes. When you take the message at face value, then you have to ask yourself what is valid about that message.
There are some aspects that they will not be able to change, such as the fact that they both have to spend time with their children and work. But there are other things that you can absolutely change, like making intimacy and connection a priority and trying to improve the way you currently interact with each other.
I know you’re worried about what to do about this or how to respond. As someone who received this kind of hurtful message and then broke up before it finally saved my marriage, here’s my best advice on the matter: I would take the message as a call to action. If I were to do this all over again, I’d read the message as my husband saying, “Hey, I need you to make some changes before we really go off the rails. I want what we used to have.” No, these were not the words he said, but that is what he meant. I wish my reaction had been to take an honest look at myself and my marriage and make the necessary changes right away. Instead, I got angry and defensive. This is a natural reaction, but it doesn’t help (and it didn’t help).
If I were to do it over again, my reaction would have been to calmly ask him what was bothering him the most and what else he wanted to change. That would have served us much better. So you might try something like, “I’m really sorry and it pains me to hear you talk this way. But I want to hear the message of what you’re really saying. I don’t want you to feel trapped. So what’s bothering you?” further? What can we fix together?
Your husband may be surprised that you are having such a direct conversation. Alright. Because you can’t start fixing it until you know what’s really broken with it. I know his words hurt, but he tries to see this as the necessary beginning to make the necessary changes that could make them both happy.