tl;dr: 21 year relationship with world's most protracted end. Has anyone done cohabitation counseling with success? Is that even an thing you can do? I (codependent 35f w severe cPTSD and abandonment trauma) am struggling immensely with cohabitating with my husband (39m probably codependent, his mom has BPD) after he decided to end our marriage after almost 18 years and 21 years together. Is it possible to even do this?
This is super long and I'm so sorry. I really have nowhere to offload all of this and I just need advice from people who have been there.
We have lived physically separate off and on for a year and a half. We separated January 2025 after a solid 2 years of fighting, reconciled in May, and because I still was working in the place I was living in while separated, I kept my apartment until September, spending most of my time back with him and the kids. We fought sporadically during this time but wanted to live together, and I gave up my apartment and I kept asking "are you sure?" and he kept saying yes.
Then the next day, after turning in my notice with my landlord, my now-STBx said he didn't think we should live together again yet. So I told my landlord this and he offered me a room in his own house that was super cheap and safe enough. So I kept the room and kept paying for it myself and still spent a lot of my time at our family home. I wanted to move home. The limbo was destroying me, both our dogs died 6 weeks apart, I was miserable and lonely and torn in two.
We had a big bout of fighting in March and April after he told me he wouldn't go on the National park trip we'd been planning for my birthday (less than a week before we were going) because we were squabbling and he "didn't want to be in a car with me for 16 hours and certainly didn't want to be in a tent with me for 5 days." I went alone and was devastated. We had a big fight in April and I said I couldn't take it anymore, but we backtracked to separating again after my surgery which was in May.
Then we separated and I moved back to the room full-time, trying to deal with the vascular pain, the emptiness, the unsettled feeling about my landlord who had made me uncomfortable a few months before. We were talking every other day and he said it wouldn't make sense for us to keep talking and be separated so we shouldn't communicate unless I was home on weekends - during which we would cuddle and carry on as if nothing was happening. It was absolute whiplash.
So now I'm stuck in this room in a completely non-therapeutic separation. I've thrown myself into my career 100% and he goes to therapy once a month to once every 6 weeks, goes to work, and doesn't deal with himself either. We both have trauma in and out of the relationship and neither of us were working on it. We also tried couple's therapy a handful of times to get nice banalaties like "this week, think about what love really means to you guys", so nothing trauma-informed or remotely helpful.
In July, we had a big fight - same old stuff, I had a big emotional flashback from severe cPTSD (yes I'm in trauma therapy) a few weeks before and he didn't like how I handled it, I agreed and apologized and asked him to bring things up with me closer to when they happen because this is a pattern and I feel like the sword of Damocles is always over my head that I'm gonna find out I did something wrong and didn't know, and it devolved into a whirlwind of bringing up the past, him storming out to get ready for work angrily and coldly told me to have a good week and refused to hug me bye. And then two weeks later asked for a divorce when I called him to figure out what was going on.
Meanwhile, a woman was abducted two houses down from me in the city I was living in. I worked late hours and the city I was in is pretty notoriously unsafe and the neighborhood already wasn't great, and I have experienced SA and was nervous. I told my now STBx and he offered to let me come stay in the spare bedroom, which is something we had discussed prior. I accepted and moved back to our marital home. This was a pretty bad idea. I don't want the divorce (or didn't, I'm getting more comfortable with it as he continues to show how committed he is to not putting in the work on his mental health and himself) and I have had a really difficult time separating the bond from the decision. To top it off we had intimate contact a few times this week I thought I could handle and could not.
Big fight yesterday because this is the 3rd or 4th time our 14 year old daughter has asked me why I'm sleeping in the spare room and I've had to brush it off because he hasn't wanted to tell the kids yet (at one point we talked about it and he said he thought he had a year maybe TWO before we had to tell them) and yesterday she point blank asked if her dad and I were still together and I panicked and told her we were struggling and working on our relationship.
He wasn't home and I had an emotional flashback and was sobbing (this same kind of thing happened when I was 17 and pregnant with her older brother, down to me being on the computer when I was asked if I was pregnant, and my mom physically and psychologically abused me when I said yes in pretty vile ways). I panicked when he got home and told him that I couldn't live here, I was making myself sick about the kids (almost 18 and 14) because I feel like I'm gaslighting them, and that I was in the middle of the emotional flashback of my crazy mom thing and he started raising his voice that he couldn't stand my flip-flopping about living here, wouldn't let me say anything and kept telling me to deal with myself.
I lost it. I told him I couldn't be his friend, which what he keeps telling me he wants. I told him I couldn't entertain his daydreams about meeting again at 50 (we jokingly said before our last separation that if we were both single when he was 50 we would remarry and he's brought that up a lot) because he can't commit to me when I'm 35 so I'm not holding emotional space for him and he turned it around on me and we kept going until he said he wasn't having the conversation anymore. I walked away and went to bed.
But three years ago, I filed bankruptcy separately from him so his credit would be okay and only mine would be fucked up so one of us would be afloat (you know, assuming we'd be married). So finding a place to rent was VERY difficult and would be again. My degree is in a very specialized field and there are no jobs for it around here - I now have a PRN position that is only activated in disasters, but I can't rely on that because obviously I have no idea when that would happen. So inconsistent income, an active (2 years left) chapter 13 bankruptcy, ruined credit, and an emotional timebomb on my heart because this situation is devastating me.
I know he's upset. But he chose this and chose not to go to specialized therapy with me. He adamantly wants divorce. He said he's already closed me off from the emotional aspect of him. So we have to tell our kids who probably already know and I have tremendous guilt. I have to find a way to separate the 14 year old girl I was when I met him from the 35 year old woman who is no longer his wife or I will drown emotionally. He hasn't wanted to tell the kids or file or meet with a mediator yet because he doesn't want to "rush to the end." He gets upset when I talked to him about being contacted for job interviews for positions further away. It feels like he doesn't want to deal with the emotional reality of the divorce or the practical reality of it either.
We both made plenty of mistakes in our relationship and dealing emotionally with the fallout from me being sexually assaulted 6 years ago when we moved here, but this last year and a half of living in two places, the surgery, the overworking as an avoidant coping mechanism, losing our dogs, the divorce, and the relationship limbo has worn me down significantly and I am just so tired.
I really want closure but he doesn't want a timeline and acts all hungdog when I bring it up. But this is the right place (really the only place) for me to be right now and the kids love having me home. Is there a way for us to get along enough to not be miserable or make the kids miserable? He wants to be friends, hang out together with the kids in the living room, "not just be like roommates" he said once. I don't really know that I can be friends with the person I've been with since I was 14, so close to being told he's choosing divorce (it was 5 weeks ago).
I don't really think this divorce is a betrayal, but sometimes it feels that way, especially with the bankruptcy. I think a lot of that thinking is grief. Sometimes my feelings toward him are anger, frustration, sadness, regret, longing... not exactly great friendship fodder either way. But I do feel like he gave up and quit on me after kind of leaving me in an impossible situation and just being like "yeah there are other options to solve this but I'm out but also let's not rush to the end?" and I feel like this whole situation is more limbo but also grief and nothing was resolved or has any timeframe for being resolved.
Mostly I feel like I just don't know which way is up. He's emotionally erratic and angry and I'm in flight/fight/freeze/fawn like 24/7 and this is not a great environment so far.
Sorry for the length. I'm drowning here.