I have been married 29 years and the issues of my spouse are coming to a head. I'm in therapy and getting healthier. We met and married quickly - both just not wanting to be alone.

Husband is a successful engineer, good income, everyone at work loves him but he has 2 distinctly different personalities - the one he takes to work - confident, outgoing, well-liked and the one he has for his family - distant, aloof, really only "loves" me, has no need or affection for our now grown sons, husband never knows what emotion he has so he chooses "happy" each morning. If I ever have a problem, am unhappy, sad, etc. husband cannot handle it. Will ignore it all the way to meltdown - depends on how hard I try to discuss it. He takes meds for anxiety. These personalities do not "switch", I would say there are no alters.....he just is either at work and confident with low anxiety, or he is not at work, full of anxiety, using me as his personal Xanax it seems.

1. His father attacked me once because I would not listen to his verbal abuse. While his dad came at me screaming, appearing to want to grab me by the throat and I fought him off, I looked and saw husband hiding under his mother's arm, completely relaxed. No fear, not defending me, perhaps now it was another trance. Sadly I stayed after that. Mother in law said, "Honey this is how Joe shows love." Uh, NO.

2. Hospitalized after an ER visit, hospital almost killed me while husband stared out a window in a trance. While I lay begging hysterically for my life for 6+ hours and for him to demand someone help me, he didn't answer me, stared out a window. When administrators. head nurses, etc. came running in my room, I was in massive distress and that turned in to a 12-day stay. Nurse thought I was "crazy" since my husband was so calmly uninvolved with my hysteria. I almost died while he was frozen.

3. While in the hospital, no family (all out of state) nor the boys came to see me and when I later asked since I almost died, why they didn't come, they said every time they talked to husband, he told them I was fine. I was most certainly not.

4. My only choice is to remain "china doll wife" - pretend to be happy so he pays attention to me and doesn't detach. One day, driving in the country, he pulled over and said, "Do you matter?? IS this what I've been missing all along?" I'm still trying to put that somewhere mentally.

5. New therapist now. After one month, husband asks me to visit "to share background for the therapist' because he "never knows what to say". Within 20 minutes, therapist asks me at what age I came in to the children's lives (26, 23). Ummmm, I am their mother??? Somehow, in an entire month, husband was so vague or whatever he did say, therapist thought I was the new wife. Husband has NO idea what he ever could have said to create that situation.

6. While his parents were still alive, husband would go in to "trances' when we visited and if I wanted to vent/gripe on the way home, he had NO clue what really happened, as if he was not there. After he got in to therapy, it got worse. Now that husband had some idea how awful his parents were to attack me/our children/husband's siblings, etc. he would sit in a chair and just "go away mentally".

7. After 15 years of marriage and I was at the end of my rope, we went to a marriage seminar for hurting marriages (Retrouvaille) where after various topics, spouses were separated to write down their thoughts, then get back together and read them. I have NO WORDS for what was written by "my husband". It was as if someone completely different wrote those words. Not only was that not my husband, I have never seen "that person" again, although it touched my heart incredibly. New therapist asked husband if he would be willing to learn how to get "get those emotions out again as a gift to wife" and husband said NO emphatically 3 times. Sadly, he has no access to his emotions.

8. After 18 years of marriage, husband came to see his job was over. Not sure why he wasn't let go immediately, but they literally took his duties away and he sat in his office. He basically stayed frozen, did not look for another job, and when one day he was let go....he came home, sat in a chair, and could only repeat "I am so relieved, I am so relieved" while I worried over all our debt and what would we do?? He had no concept of the dire straits and was extremely detached. Scared me to death.

So....this is just a smattering of the issues.....does this sound like dissociation? Depersonalization? Derealization? Something else?? Any help would be most appreciated as husband has no clue and couldn't answer if he were paid a million bucks. He just says he loves me more than life itself and is incredibly happy. Even when there is no possible way that could be true. (It is a blessing he chooses "happy" instead of miserable, but it is difficult to never have a spouse aware of the real issues.)

I've read that depersonalization or derealization are not dangerous but I now can never go to the hospital without another AWARE person coming along in fear of the trances husband might go in again and NOT make the best decisions for my care. I would greatly appreciate any advice or direction.