'My husband asked for a divorce, then changed his mind hours later.' Part 1
"My (23F) husband (25M) asked for a divorce, then changed his mind hours later"
ThrowRAIndecisiveHus
Background: we've been together for two years, married for one. We're both in our early twenties. The night of the BS we'd had an argument about the distribution of chores that I think triggered it.
I thought it wasn't fair that I was doing the majority of the housework, on top of being a full time student at university and having a job. He seemed to think the chore distribution was fair and that I was overreacting.
We came to a solution after all the BS I'm about to tell you about occured, but essentially I was feeling overwhelmed and unheard and he was feeling stressed and confused as to why I thought this was a problem.
Later that night we're discussing the situation again, and I express how it feels like he's not listening to me and how distant he's been lately. Then he says there's a reason for the distance and I ask him to tell me why.
He says that he thinks we moved too fast, he doesn't know who he is, and he wants a divorce. He says he cares about me, but doesn't love me. And that he's been feeling this way for a while.
Now, I've promised myself since years ago that I would never try to make someone stay with me if they don't want to. So, as much as this hurt, I said okay. I cried, he cried.
I did ask if he wanted to try couples therapy before divorcing but he said no. We decided to sort out details in the morning, I grabbed some blankets to sleep on the couch and he went upstairs to bed.
In the midst of my sitting on the couch crying and looking up apartments, what felt like hours later, I hear him get up and come to the living room. He sits down next to me and just says "I fed up so bad".
I freeze when I hear this, because I've barely processed the reality of what just happened and I can already see where he's going next. I ask him to elaborate and he says he doesn't want a divorce, that he doesn't know why he said that and he's feeling the most regret he's ever experienced in his life.
He says that he realizes he f up and I don't have to take him back. At this point I've experienced so much emotional whiplash that I've completely numbed out. I'd already cried all the tears I could.
Now was just sitting there next to my sobbing husband and saying I'd take him back even though I'd barely processed the fact that he'd wanted to divorce me. I told him I wanted couples counseling and for him to get individual therapy and he agreed. I've asked him about individual therapy in the past but he never wanted to until now.
It's days later now. I've gone through all the stages of being mad at him, depressed that my marriage almost ended, insecure about myself, accepting the reality, feeling love for him, feeling numb. Cycling through all these emotions over and over again at random.
We're searching for a couples counselor but a lot of them have wait-list right now. So in the meantime I just want to know, if anyone has been in a similar situation: does it get better?
Does the trust ever come back? I feel like I can't trust him at all now. When he touches me I freak out sometimes because that's not the comforting feeling I'm used to when he touches me, it's the feeling like he's suffocating me.
I want to be here for him and help him through whatever mental shit he's going through. But this has been affecting my work and my school, I left my dream school for him. I can't just keep prioritizing him above everything else when he clearly doesn't do the same for me.
And yet until now he was doing the same for me, he's always been so sweet buying me flowers making dinner going out of his way to make time for us. And before you scream abuse please know I've been in abusive relationships before and they felt nothing like this.
He's not like those guys this is the first time he's ever done something like this. I just don't know how we can recover. Any advice about how to get through this would be appreciated.
Here were the top rated comments from readers after the OP's initial post:
pbd1996
Personally, I think you need to be single and work on yourself. If you got married a year into your relationship, that means you were engaged within just a few months of knowing him. Now you’re sobbing over this man and taking him back in the same breath/two hours after he said it was over.
Also, just because he regrets what he said doesn’t mean he didn’t mean it. There was definitely truth behind his statement “we got married too fast.” There seems to be a lot of co-dependency in this relationship on both sides.
The OP responded here:
ThrowRAIndecisiveHus
I think you might be right, it really hurts...
Naive-Selection-7113
My wife and I went through some awful terrible "why don't you guys just split" stuff, but we made a promise to each other with our premarital councilor after he taught us this:
"You never say the D-word unless you mean it because once you say it, you can never really take it back. You will always remember it as an option. You can always run or threaten or taunt with it. The day it becomes a household word, everything you worked for is dead, and one of you needs to leave. Dont say it even once if you don't mean it. "
Now was he being wildly hyperbolic, yes, did it help us get through the worst of things, also yes. I am not saying your marriage is over but the person you pour all you love and care into told you ...
"He says he cares about me but doesn't love me. And that he's been feeling this way for a while."
And I don't see the way past this statement. I had days where I didn't like my wife, but I've never had one in 11 years of marriage where I didn't love her. She is my world and will always be. I wish you nothing but happiness and fulfillment OP. Big 🫂 hugs💙
A year and a half later, the OP returned with an update.
"I feel trapped in my marriage and I can't tell anyone"
ThrowRAIndecisiveHus
Eight months ago my (23F) husband (25M) asked for a divorce, then changed his mind hours later. We went to couples therapy and individual therapy (though he quit his individual therapy after just a couple sessions claiming he'd look for a new therapist and never did).
We've worked through a lot of our issues, we've become better partners to each other.
But despite all our improvements my mind keeps going back to that moment.
I find myself constantly monitoring his emotions, looking into his eyes to try to see if he's still in there or if they're vacant like they were that day. I completely shut down around his friends because I saw the text conversation he had with his best friend the day of and how they talked poorly about me.
My husband swears his best friend doesn't hate me but I don't believe him. I live my life in constant fear that today is going to be the day he changes his mind again and leaves me.
I've become obsessive about saving money in my personal account so that if he does leave I'll be okay. I find myself apologizing for everything, making myself small. I hate this version of myself. I feel like a coward.
Last night we had a fight about it because I asked for reassurance and he got upset. He said he's been trying so hard but that no matter what he does it feels like it will never be good enough. And honestly, he might be right.
He really has been trying so hard and has been such a good partner these past few months, but I can't get what he did out of my head. I've tried to explain so many times in so many ways how much what he did hurt me and how it's going to take time to heal.
His response last night, "good people make mistakes, get over it". So I decided that the pain of bringing it up again and again and hurting him in the process wasn't worth it. I told him I'd stop talking about it and try to forgive him. I feel like I've just made the ultimate betrayal to myself.
I stopped individual therapy a bit ago to save money, but the combination of last night plus the fact that I feel compelled to post on reddit about this probably means I should go back. I fantasize about going back to my dream school, running away, just leaving all of this behind.
I hate that I gave up my dream life for a man who maybe doesn't even want me and that I'm stuck playing the part of the good quiet wife who shuts up for the sake of protecting his image. I hate what I've become. It's hard to see a way out.
Here were the top rated comments from readers:
DrunkenSnorlax
So, what I'm reading here, is that though your husband has done so much work and improved so much for his marriage... He cannot consider your side of.. The marriage. Because a marriage is between two people, two partners, it takes more than just one side.
It doesn't sound like he's improved as much as he thinks he has. If he cannot be assed to have a conversation with you about it, that's where the bar is for your marriage. Especially after he instigated this crater in the road and has 'worked to fix it.'
The OP responded here:
ThrowRAIndecisiveHus
To be fair to him, it's probably hard for him to feel like he can't fix what he did. I'm not the only one hurting in this. I keep trying to talk about it with him to try to work on fixing it, but it just seems to make him upset and he says it doesn't help anything.
WanderGoldfinch
That's because there is no fixing it. We can't fix hurt we've caused... It's happened, it's been experienced, it's valid, and it has changed things. Doing the mental/emotional/spiritual work is moving towards acknowledging that this hurt has been caused.
Accepting that there is no real "fixing" it, and actively doing/saying/putting energy into things that honor the relationship, strengthen what remains, and fortifies each partner individually so that this change in the dynamic (because of this hurt) doesn't end the partnership.
Eight months later, the OP again returned.
"UPDATE: My (23F) husband (25M) asked for a divorce, then changed his mind hours later?"
ThrowRAIndecisiveHus
One year ago I (24F) made a post asking for advice on how to continue with my relationship after my (now-ex) husband (26M) betrayed my trust by telling me he wanted a divorce out of the blue and then changing his mind just a couple hours later.
As stated above, he is now my ex. Those of you who said that he would repeat the same behavior again, you were right. On New Years Day 2024 he said he wanted a divorce, packed a bag and left to a motel, then came back hours later.
I'll admit, I was a wreck that day. I asked him if this was just going to be like last time and he said no. I asked him if he felt mentally okay and he said he felt fine. I got on my knees and begged this man to stay (not my proudest moment) and he looked at me with empty, vacant eyes and just left.
I was in tears for a couple hours, but then I opened this app to try to distract myself and saw he had made a (now-deleted please don't go looking for his account) post on the divorce subreddit about how he left me and felt bad but didn't regret it.
Then I went from depressed to furious. I called my landlord and told him that I was getting a divorce and needed his help in changing the locks. My landlord was very understanding and helped me do so.
A few hours later I heard a knock on the door and when I opened it my ex-husband was standing there, I didn't even get a chance to tell him to leave because he immediately collapsed into my arms sobbing.
The first coherent words to come out of his mouth were "you're not gonna take me back are you?" I would love to say that I rejected him right then, but I didn't. Even after all of this I was still hooked into his web of manipulation.
So instead I sat down with him and had a long discussion about how much he hurt me, how in the middle of working to rebuild the trust that had been broken between us he completely destroyed any progress that had been made and found a way to make that distrust even worse.
I don't remember the details of what he said, but he always knew what to say to get me to feel sorry for him. The night ended with me saying I would take him back. He was smiling, saying he'd never felt so hopeful, he wrote me a love poem that night for the first time in years.
Meanwhile I had never felt so broken, and I told him that after he said he felt so hopeful. He shrugged it off and said I'd feel better in the morning. I did not, in fact, feel better in the morning.
During the next few days while I was trying to pick myself back up, study for finals, and continue going to work as if nothing was wrong, he went back and forth every day on whether or not he loved me, whether or not he wanted to be married to me. He said he thought he loved the idea of being a husband more than he loved me.
My last straw was when I reached out to one of his childhood friends, who I had interacted with a few times and though I could trust to be honest with me, and asked him if he had ever noticed any red flags in my ex-husband's behavior in his past relationships or behavior towards women in general.
This friend assured me that he had never noticed anything of the sort. I thanked him and asked if he could please not tell ex-husband I asked that since I was afraid of what he might do. When my ex-husband came home from work that day I could immediately tell he knew.
He opened the front door so forcefully. He sat down on the couch next to me, told me he knew, and said in a low and almost growling tone of voice "But I know you didn't mean any harm by it".
I was frozen in fear and couldn't say anything, but then he grabbed my face and turned my head to look at him and his eyes looked so cold, and he said again "You didn't mean any harm by it right?".
I nodded and forced myself to answer "right". And I knew in that moment this man would come for me if I didn't find a way out of this relationship, if I didn't do it myself first with how bad my mental health was getting after dealing with him insulting and belittling me day after day. I was genuinely starting to spiral into a dark place I hadn't been to in years.
The next day while he was at work I packed a bag, wrote a note telling him I'm leaving and that I want his stuff out of the house when I get back, left the note on the counter with my ring and spent the night at my mom's. It is an uncontested divorce, filing by mail, and should be finalized in April. I started the paperwork at my mom's house that first night of separation.
Since ending my relationship I have gone to therapy and realized just how abusive and manipulative my ex-husband was. I also understand how broken he is, but being mentally unwell is not an excuse for abusive behavior. What he did to me was abuse and I'm not afraid to say that anymore.
I have reconnected with old friends and made new ones. I have started doing things that I love again, things he never wanted me to do like wearing red lipstick or eating mint-flavored things and going to concerts. I've realized I never want to be married again.
I've discovered my polyamorous identity and have begun to explore this side of myself. I have plans to move out of my hated hometown that he had dragged me back to.
I feel so much more joy, freedom, and self-love than I ever did when I was in a relationship with my ex-husband. I won't be using this account anymore after this, as I have no need to.
But I want to thank this community and the other reddit subs that I've participated in. If I had never made my original post I don't think I would have realized just how awfully my ex-husband treated me. Thanks to the support of hundreds of voices telling me I deserved better, I realized how true that statement was.
I deserve better, and now I have better. I also want this update to be a beacon of hope to anyone who has found themselves in a similarly emotionally/verbally abusive situation: life is so much better when you leave. There is hope, there is light on the other side of the pain. Thank you again Reddit. I am finally free.
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's post:
indiajeweljax
That friend of his a fucking low-down dirty scoundrel. I’m so glad you’re out of this situation. And how exhausting is your ex? It’s so weak and pathetic, breaking up and getting back together day after day. I wish him the life he deserves.
Material-Paint6281
Damn, it looks like you've joined the "He's not abusive" to "Update: He is abusive" club.
I'm glad you're free now. Hope you have a great life.
Material-Paint6281
If you're ready for a relationship, here's a list of Rules for a Relationship, created by a survivor of an abusive relation.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BestofRedditorUpdates/comments/z9tbol/comment/iytonld/
The OP again responded:
ThrowRAIndecisiveHus
Thank you, I love this list. I am definitely being a lot more cautious about my approach to relationships now.
softbrownsugar
I can't help but think he was trying to sabotage your education with all his bs. I'm glad he's an ex, well done for making it out of this and I wish you all the happiness in the world 🩵