I haven't heard anything to make me think favorably of your father-in-law. Yet, on this matter, I think your father-in-law was within his rights. I'm glad you went to the pastor. I'm glad he expressed shock over the treatment you are getting. However, he had no business trying to contact either your husband or your father-in-law. No clergyman has a right to go tracking people down to give them counseling that they haven't asked for. He should certainly have been supportive of you, and it sounds like he was . . . . but I don't get what he thought he was going to accomplish by contacting your husband. Maybe he was going to reproach him, or offer to mediate. Either would have been out of line. Different, if you and your husband had jointly gone to see this pastor. And calling the father-in-law makes little sense. I don't care how close a friend of the family he may be.

So it's good you made a stab at talking with the pastor. (I would say, as I said above, talk to anyone you can find. You do seem to need input from objective parties.) But make a mental note that this pastor will not be a source of intelligent help. As pastors go, he's not a man of wisdom. TBH, I think he's an idiot. If I sound overly forceful, in coming to a conclusion like that, here's why: This is not a complicated situation with a lot of subtleties to figure out. This is not one of those marital breakdowns with a tangled history and things to consider on both sides. Your average 7th grader, told what we've been told, should be able to sort this out in 5 minutes.

A person in the middle of a forest only sees the immediately surrounding trees. So your confusion maybe somewhat understandable. No young woman wants to think that she has invested 6+ years into a bad relationship and to think she may need to disassemble the entire thing, especially when she is part of a couple that has managed to get a house, 3 dogs, etc. I guess you were feeling like you had built the foundation of your life and would, now, build upon that foundation. Very sad to find out that the foundation is completely eaten through with termites and is beyond what an exterminator can fix. Even at 24, no one wants to start over, like the last 6 years of their life didn't happen. I'm sorry this is happening to you.

I can't tell you what you should do. Here's a little more food for thought that may help you to have a better understanding of what the normal expectations in a marriage should be: You have nice parents and have grown up in the security of their support. May it be a long, long way into the future, but someday they will be gone. What siblings you may have will their own spouses and children as their priority. Someday, your husband will be the main person you have to rely on outside of yourself. We never know what the future will bring. I hope you have a richly blessed life, but hardship comes to all of us. Someday you may get very sick. Is this a man whom you can have faith in to be your "rock" when times get tough? He's not seeming to care whether you succeed in your graduate program. How would he be to have around, if you were going through chemotherapy? And suppose that, tomorrow, he was involved in a car accident that left him paralyzed. Is he deserving of having you around to share the experience of that with him?

After 7 years of him coming home bouncing-off-the-walls drunk, I left the man I was in love with and living with. A few years later, he had a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. I was so glad that I had left when I had. I still cared about him and helped him to recover. But I could do as much, or as little, as I wanted. No one could say I dumped him because he got sick. I had no guilt.

The first week after I moved out from the place we shared, I thought I was going to die of heartbreak. By the second week, I was so glad I had finally done what I had been considering for years. I didn't know how good it would feel to not have someone stumbling through the door and mistreating me, until I arranged that for myself. Soon I was just thrilled with my little apartment in a low-rent neighborhood that was all mine, where no one could come through the door and start picking on me. Since you married so young, you've never had that experience of totally running your own show. I highly recommend it.

Just some food for thought.