In a Bind

I just realized something last week that floored me and I can’t get back up. I realized that I fell in love with my husband because he paid so much attention to me, which made me feel really special and wonderful and pretty. Now that his attention is waning, I find that I don’t like him very much. He’s bossy, arrogant, overweight, lazy, and controlling.

I’m giving serious thought to leaving, but we have kids, so I would be making a very serious decision involving not just my husband and I, but impacting the children as well. Any thoughts or advice?

In a Bind

Dear In a Bind,

Before you do anything, please realize that almost everything in a relationship is a two-way street. Is it possible that his attention is waning because you are no longer as engaging, outgoing, etc. as you used to be? Not to say that it is your responsibility to change his behavior, but it seems that sometimes a husband and wife both react to each other’s faults/tendencies and go into a joint decline. It could be that there are some things about you that are causing him to withdraw. Make sure you’re still someone he wants to be with before assuming it’s totally his fault that he’s not what you want.

Also, for what it is worth, flames can go to a smolder and re-ignite from time to time, which makes growing old together fun and full of surprises. If you honestly think that you are not contributing to the decline in your marriage, and you can’t see any hope of re-ignition, if you don’t think it possible to grow old together happily, do both of you and your kids a favor and approach this problem with thoughtful dignity.

You will need to start weighing bad versus bad, preferably with the help of a really good family therapist, to try to determine the less bad influence on your children: divorce and all attendant emotional and household disruption, versus growing up in a household where the father is bossy, arrogant, controlling and lazy, and a mother who regards their father with disdain.

Since you seem to have lost respect for your husband, and his interest in you is waning, it will be hard to keep up a semblance of a respectful, loving relationship. It’s difficult for kids raised within such marriages, as the interactions of married parents have a lot to do with what kids think of as “normal” long-term relationship behavior.

That said, it’s not right for me to tell unhappily married people that they owe it to their kids to divorce. It’s such a huge, emotional, traumatic thing, and there are so many variables (degree and visibility of unhappiness, maturity of parents, ages of kids, etc.), and so much range in kids’ reactions (some crumple, some thrive) I’d rather have you seek counsel from a professional family therapist, with your husband if at all possible.