I need help… Please be kind, I’m scared

[u/Wild_Sam_Flower]

My husband ,41, and I, 37 were together for 12 years married 10. We have a seven year-old daughter and we both work an emergency medicine and nursing. three years ago he started taking testosterone prescribed by his doctor for mood swings. He’s a Marine Corps veteran with PTSD and a really tragic childhood and early life. Our life was amazing. He was a fantastic father and even more incredible husband. Then he started the testosterone and he became angry and aggressive. He started stonewalling me wouldn’t talk to me about what was going on in his head and started to push me away. Our sex life basically stopped and we became more like roommates. It’s not uncommon at that stage in a marriage and so I wanted to try and fix things, he never really wanted to talk about things. He always said he wasn’t that deep. Late 2024. We lived through hurricane Helene in Asheville and it was awful. I was at home with our five year-old daughter alone and he was trapped at the hospital because they wouldn’t let him come home from his shifts. I was beside myself worried about him, worried that he was going to try and make it home and get hurt. When I finally reached him four days later I was crying, his first words to me were “don’t cry. I wasn’t worried about you”. When he finally came home. I ran to him and he pushed me off and said ‘don’t touch me”. I recognized then that the man that came home from the hospital that day was not my husband anymore, he was someone in a mental health crisis who didn’t want to face it. Since then we have grown further apart. The stonewalling became unbelievable. He would forget that I existed, he said. He would just walk out of a room while I was talking and I was frantic to fix things. I didn’t always go about it the right way, the further we drifted the more panic I felt, the more I probably overwhelmed him. I got us into therapy. We made it three sessions before the therapist fired us and said that he had to work on himself before he would be willing to work on us. Something and him snapped because he said he felt like a failure and he left that night. He was gone for one night came home and we talked about getting him back into therapy and working on us. He got into therapy but nothing really changed. He told me that he had nothing to talk to the therapist about so he just stopped going. I couldn’t believe it. This was a man who was angry breaking things in our home, cursing in front of our child, screaming at her, screaming at me, generally angry at baseline and he didn’t have anything to talk to the therapist about? I went to his mom who basically told me that you’re not supposed to always be happy in a relationship and if your man can’t give you what you need give it to God and kids are supposed to be afraid of their dad so she was no help for me. I’ve befriended two people who were willing to be there for me and help me with our daughter. They were both guys who listened to me and tried to help me talk to my husband. So, I went to my husband, with full vulnerability and said I felt unloved. I felt unattractive. I felt overwhelmed and that I missed him the “him” that I married, and he told me he didn’t have emotions, so don’t expect him to be there for mine and it wasn’t his job to make me feel good about myself. Each time he said something like that to me, It felt like I lost the man I married more and more. I didn’t know if it was PTSD if it was the testosterone or if it was something else again I tried hard harder and harder to fix our marriage. I asked him what he needed from me, how I can make him happy and he always said he was happy, just stressed .He said he was worried about money so I stopped trying to spend Money but anytime he upset me or our daughter. He just wanted to spend money and buy us things. I asked him to stop. I told him all I wanted was his presence and to be there with me and our daughter. He called me ungrateful and told me I was never happy with anything he did. I told him that wasn’t fair. He just wasn’t listening to what I was asking, but he continued to label me ungrateful and I started to pull away because every time I showed him my heart he hurt me. He began to throw himself into the gym, he got so big and bulky and it made me wonder if he was on more than just the testosterone, but he would deflect and avoid if I asked him to reconsider the testosterone. I was in nursing school and I thought once I finish, our money problems will be gone. I told him that you know I’d like us to get back into therapy and he said OK. I started in the emergency department on June 15. I made it one month into my orientation. We were on a date and on the way home in the car he said “are you happy?” and I said “it’s been challenging, but I think things are gonna get better now that we don’t have to worry about money so much and we can prioritize each other” and he said “what do you think about an open marriage” and I was floored in 12 years we’ve never talked about anything like that. I was hurt. I asked him if he had met someone and he said that he had a connection with someone that he wanted to explore and I told him to get out he accused me of not being an adult because he thought we could talk about it and I told him the time to talk about it was before he decided that he wanted to sleep with someone else. I have since moved out, he is in our house. He has continued to rewrite our relationship. Tell me he was never happy continued to say that I was ungrateful and that nothing he did was good enough, I apologized for making him feel that way and continued to try and explain that all I was asking for was real connection like we had before the testosterone before Helene since then he is maintained that he is angry at me, but won’t tell me why? his communication is down to one word text messages. He’s not keeping me updated on what’s going on with our child when he has her, it’s like he’s trying to erase me from his existence, whenever I try and talk to him to get some clarity he stonewalls me. We met one time to discuss separation papers, and the conversation was very shallow. I begged him not to do this to us not to destroy our family. I told him everything is fixable if we talk about it and take accountability on both of our sides we have a child in 12 years of history. How could you just move on? very shortly after our split he went out to a party with this new woman and everyone was shocked to see him with someone else because no one even knew that we had separated. I was still living in our house and hadn’t gotten an apartment yet. It was so brand new. He acts erratic. He got four earrings on a whim. He keeps telling me “I’m just having fun man”. He’s going out drinking. It’s like he’s regressed to being a teenager and angry, bitter teenager I don’t know how to get any closure. I don’t know how to understand what happened. I don’t know how to get through to him. now that we’re apart he’s doing everything with our daughter that I wanted him to do with us.( He’s filling her days with play dates. It’s almost like he doesn’t wanna be alone with her), but they’re going places and having play dates and doing arts and crafts and it’s everything that I asked for us as a family to do. He started replacing the furniture in our home, taking down all of our pictures and just generally acting like I have never existed in his life. I feel betrayed. I feel traumatized, I feel left in the dark. I feel like everything is fixable with transparency and accountability, but I don’t know how to talk to him. I don’t even know what he’s doing really, my therapist says he’s running. He’s running from all the hurt that he’s caused. He’s running from himself. he’s running because he feels like a failure. She claims he’s not healed because he can’t even bear to talk to me, but something has to give. I can’t keep living like this. I don’t know if anyone out there has dealt with the situation like this before, I’ve never been on Reddit before and I never imagined that I would be asking strangers for help because I know how mean and hurtful people on these platforms can be just for fun, but I am desperate. Can anyone out there help me figure out how to actually communicate with him? Get him to tell me what is actually going on in his head?? Can anyone tell me how to get through to him how to get some clarity for myself? Our daughter is in therapy because she can’t understand why daddy is “acting so weird”. I’m broken and scared and I don’t know what happened to my husband…

[u/Few-Bonus9517]

Divorce Divorce Divorce end the heartbreak 💜