My silence and lack of connection is killing my marriage

[FelixC]

Hello all, 

I was hoping this discussion can reach someone who is experiencing or have experienced my problem hoping I can get some support here.

First of all, I am married to my wife for 18 years (together 24 years) with 2 kids and we been together since high school, and I am 5 years older. She's always been the full of ideas, energy and optimistic person that brings joy and laugh to people and she's a great cook. I love her very much and still am and no doubt about it.

In the last 4-5 years things have been very edgy between us where we have moved city, raising our young children on our own without family and friends nearby/support and working full time. About 5 years ago my wife had an affair with one of our mutual close friends and I felt the world is crushing down on me, we separated and she continue with her other relationship. Due to financial reason and me wanting to be with my kids I stayed at the family house. One year passed and just before covid I finally moved out but within the area then about 4 months later I moved back because of covid and lockdown. Not long after I moved back her other relationship have ceased and we had many discussions about reconciliation, but I have a lot of leaving/staying dilemma going of which did not help in our situation and she have been let down and heart broken many times.
In the last 3 years the road was and still am quite bumpy for us and we have learnt so much about what happened that leads to the affair and we take ownership of our wrongdoing. One of my biggest weakness is connection/communications where I can go on with the day without talking much to my wife and children. This have been the constant poison in my relationship/marriage and she complain many times over the course of the last 10-15 years and started brewing resentment towards me. I say this have always been the problem in our relationship that I don't talk to her enough and just do the day to day necessity chores (eg: Happily doing the dishes without asking help) and because I don't talk a lot she would complain to her family and friends but gets the blamed for not appreciating and I am always the nice guy.

In the last 2 years I have been diagnosed with depression and been on meds since but that still didn't help connecting with my wife. I struggle to understand why I am still doing this to hurt her. Is it because of what happened between us, my upbringing or do I not love her? I just can't figure it out why I don't have the initiative to change.

[white knight]

Hi, welcome

I can see the dilemma but I think there is some areas that you aren't being fair to yourself.

When you dated/lived together 6 years prior to marriage, your wife had plenty of time to assess the character and personality of the man she eventually married. She knew you were quiet compared to other guys and that quietness is part of that personality and therefore not negotiable, it's your nature.

We should at all times embrace our nature for if we dont we become critical of part of us that is set in concrete. Also, "quietness" is not a criminal offence, it doesnt harm others and it's mostly better than being rowdy. Quiet people are admirable unless their quietness is due to sneaky means. You are a willing partner with a sound attitude and have help become a team and raising children so unless there is areas that you have fallen down in your responsibilities like- socialising away from home or sexual deficiency (as examples) I cant see why your wife would look elsewhere for an affair or accept advances even then betrayal is wrong. If there is sexual incompatibility a GP can take care of that nowadays and besides, those topics should have been discussed at the time of her concern.

Depression and associated illnesses in my experience can come about not only from inherited means but also dissatisfaction of ones self. Your criticism of yourself and from her is harsh and largely unwarranted judging from your post whereas your wifes actions is far more deplorable. Yet she focusses on your "quietness" as to her reason for having an affair and the problems of the marriage. The problem here IMO is that being the quiet type also comes with vulnerability. If you are told that your quietness and maybe lack of satisfying her is the reason she had an affair then that is not right. Then you return to the home to try to make things work out and you have fears with making it work and focus on yourself. Your wife should have far more work to do to convince you an affair wont occur again.

If your wife wasnt fulfilled or was unhappy there is avenues like counselling and a GP to try to fix that rather than the action she took.

Due to your depression I think therapy would benefit you greatly because if there is one thing that needs to be addressed is your perspective on this situation and the excessive self criticism that should not be there as much as it is.

"To get too involved with focussing on your faults you lose sight of the elephant in the room"

I hope that helps.

Below is a post on "ones nature" I hope it helps. Repost anytime

https://forums.beyondblue.org.au/t5/staying-well/accepting-yourself-the-frog-and-the-scorpion/td-p/1...

TonyWK

[therising]

Hi FelixC

You ask a lot of good questions. Some of them come down to nature or nurture. As Tony mentions, certain traits can be in our nature and it pays to better understand and even celebrate our nature at times. The nurture side of things is something you question in the way of upbringing or certain influences in the marriage. Perhaps it involves a bit of both, with a whole mixture of factors involved.

There are so many different forms of communication and different levels when it comes to those individual forms. We can be a high or low level emotional communicator, a highly efficient or inefficient communicator in the way of small talk, a high or low level wonderer or philosophiser who likes to communicate and share our sense of wonder or philosophy (a real sharer) or not, a great or not so great communicator in the way of vision or goals (an imaginative communicator), someone who's more about body language than spoken language and the list goes on. Just about all forms of communication come with skills or abilities. I think sometimes it can be about the different forms we want to develop or enjoy developing our self through and the best people for the job when it comes to raising us to a sense of achievement.

I'm wondering if your wife has ever led you to discover a number of ways in which you may enjoy expressing yourself or if it's been more about her observing you when it comes to a lot of the ways in which you don't or can't communicate.  

I've met many people in my life who've faced blocks when it comes to communication: People with emotional or mental health challenges or traumas, people across the autism spectrum who have their own preferred ways of communicating, non verbal adults with intellectual challenges, people who prefer small talk over deeper conversations, those who don't have much to say based on preferring quality of words in a conversation over quantity, deeply emotional highly expressive people, shy people or those lacking confidence etc etc. The reason for why we communicate in the ways we do can be plentiful. There's always a reason. I've found it pays to wonder, rather than ask 'What's wrong with me?' (which can be a depressing question). A healthy sense of wonder can get us so much further in the way of much needed revelations.