Thank you both for your responses. bpforever1, I am not going to give up. I am just in a real low right now. We did try marriage counseling and it was helping for a while, but my husband doesn’t think it is useful at this time so we put it on pause.

Rive I am sorry I’m afraid I was unclear, it wasn’t my saying “no” that hurt my husband, it was me getting lost in my depression and fear for so long. He told me that if we never perused the change that it was ok and he would love me no matter what. But then, he spent so much time reassuring me of that point over & over that he grew upset and depressed himself. I heard his words, and intellectually I had no reason to doubt him, but it’s like I just couldn’t make his words stick on an emotional level…. That’s where I failed and blew up both our lives. He feels that he couldn’t have done anything differently. I don’t disagree with him. I feel that I SHOULD have handled things differently but was incapable of doing so.

I want him to forgive me, and I want to forgive myself.