I got married 6 years ago. A week after our honeymoon my husband texts me and tells me that he has a porn problem. I was really upset because I didn’t know the extent of the problem and why he hid it from me for two years. After talking to him about it, I decided to work with him but I think he was expecting me to divorce him, which is weird. Once he saw I was staying he became very distant. We barely talked, he started working late, he didn’t have sex with me. I scheduled us for counseling but he walked out after session 3.
Fast forward five years. My husband still watches porn and prefers to pleasure himself. He stopped sleeping in the same bed as me and he stopped having sex with me. I would literally have to throw myself at him to have sex. He verbally abused me throughout the years. He would make jabs at my natural hair. He would often compare me to white women, putting them of a pedestal. He gets upset because I make more money than him. Granted I didn’t always, I went back to school because I was so unhappy and now I have a better quality of life but he’s expressed that he didn’t want me to surpass him because that’s the man’s role but he wouldn’t get off his butt and do anything.
I want to start a family but I can seem to bring myself to start that journey with him. After so much pain and frustration we get into a pointless argument in which he tells me he’s unhappy in our marriage but he doesn’t know if he wants to stay or leave. So I went to a divorce lawyers and asked my husband could we get an uncontested divorce since he’s so unhappy. He agrees. But as soon as I get the paper work for us he comes back and tells me that he doesn’t want a divorce and that if I want one I’ll have to fight him for one.
Instead he put himself in counseling and is trying to show me that he’s willing to change. However I think it’s only temporary. He’s explained to me that he has self confidence issues. He hates that he’s short. He is balding and wants a hair transplant. But he was balding before we got married and it didn’t bother me. He doesn’t like his job and wants to be a writer but that’s really stressful financially. Instead of trying to figure out what to do he just gets frustrated and uses me as his emotional punching bag. He also gained a lot of weight over the years where it’s uncomfortable to even think about having sex with him.
But I’m looking through this forum for some advice and answers but I’m starting to see that no matter if I choose to stay or go I lose.
At this point I only want to stay to have someone share the burden of bills, to not have to sell my house, and to have someone I can hang out with often. But this sounds like more of a roommate situation thAn a marriage.
> I’m starting to see that no matter if I choose to stay or go I lose.
That may be true in the short run, but if you go out 5 years, the picture is very different. If you stay, it's highly likely you'll be in the same "lose" scenario. But if you go, there's a chance you could be in a much better situation, because you'll be in charge of your own destiny again.
Your husband has a lot of problems and you have to assess for yourself if he's actually working on them or just trying to get you to stay. Real change is hard and takes dedication and work.
Either way, you need to do your own work around boundaries and codependence, because you wouldn't have put up with this for so long if you didn't have some of your own issues IMHO.