My issue is what I see as growing apart from my husband. For two years I have felt myself moving forward and him not coming with me. I think he is still hurt and trying to recover from failing out of two grad programs but I also feel that I have given everything I could in that time to help and all I have gotten is negativity back. I have nothing else to give that he hasn't shot down.
Since then I have decided to concentrate on myself.....my kids are old enough that they don't need me as much so I went back to school. I love learning again and being a part of something. I have for 18years thrown myself into being mom and dutiful wife as I thought I should be. Now that those positions seem to be fading i am having to refind myself.
I have been telling my husband for two years that we have been growing apart and got nothing but shrugs and oks. It wasn't until last mothers days when a male friend of mine sent me a mothers day card and my husband found out and he had gotten me nothing as usual that he has seemed to wake up. The problem with that now is that I do not know what to do with it. All of a sudden he is trying to be attentive and loving and inject himself in everything I do so that we are doing things together. I'm feeling very claustrophobic!
I started walking to have some time to myself, I did this for a year before his wake up and was loving it. All of a sudden he wants to do this together because he wants to get healthy to. I tried to visit friends this summer and got the third degree for going on these mini-vacations without him and the kids and that he would want to go to. I found my friends online to make connections again that I had lost and now he wants to know my friends also. He never cared for any of my friends before. He wants to watch the same movies as me because its us doing things together, even though he has never cared to watch these things before. I joined an online chat group and now he tells me he wants to join too because he feels there is a side of me he doesn't know and he wants to know more. How much is to much? I have nothing in my life that is just for me. I am either doing something with him or the kids.
I tell him we are growing apart and now I feel like he is attached to my hip. I don't feel like he is being his own person and have told him so only to get in response that these things are him and he is enjoying doing the same things I like. He says that he is trying and I am not. He says that I am changing into someone he does not know anymore. He thinks that I am making changes to myself to purposely push him away.
I'm confused, I don't know what to do anymore. I am trying to follow this pull I feel to do things that I like, to be happy for myself instead of through others but am I wrong like he says? Should I fall back in line and be all about my family.....that family is more important? I just don't know what to do and its tearing me apart. I'm so confused.