I need help

Carebear

Well. Let me see. When I sold the horses, I found another outlet. Singing. And he wasn't happy with that. I sang once a week in a choir. He is an introvert. He doesn't DO anything.  So it may not have been solely the horses (although they were a huge time commitment. More so than singing). It's as if having any solo hobby is a problem. 

I'm confused here because now I do nothing (because everything creates a problem by taking me away from him) and I'm being told I need to do things I enjoy because it makes me more whole.  

Part of his his description of not caring about him is that I didn't spend time with him. 
He wants me to sit. I cannot just sit in my house. There's a billion things that need my attention. He won't go DO anything with me,  and honestly just sitting has as much appeal as watching cement dry. 

JellyBean

never_again said:

Perspective-wise it's like you had an affair, but maybe worse. 

^^^This is a blameshifting, victim-blaming mindfuck. Don't say this hurtful, irrelevant shit. 

She didn't do anything even remotely comparable to having an affair. 

stillasamountain

JellyBean said:

She didn't do anything even remotely comparable to having an affair. 

Not to mention we have no idea how much of a time sink the horses actually were. Too much? Maybe, maybe not. What is pretty clear, though, is that he's a needy vampire who doesn't want her to have any kind of individual outside life. As such, from his perspective I'm sure it was too much and now we have the whole abandonment gunny-sacking / DARVO accusations showing up.

HildaCorners

Carebear said:

I'm confused here because now I do nothing (because everything creates a problem by taking me away from him) and I'm being told I need to do things I enjoy because it makes me more whole.  

Part of his his description of not caring about him is that I didn't spend time with him. 
He wants me to sit. I cannot just sit in my house. There's a billion things that need my attention. He won't go DO anything with me,  and honestly just sitting has as much appeal as watching cement dry. 

Have you read the MAP book? If not, do so.

You need to get out and do things because nobody is attracted to a lump. Even though your husband says he wants you to be a lump, he isn't attracted to lumps. This is a case where you need to look beneath the words ... what have you *done* recently that increased his attraction to you? I bet it wasn't sitting next to him, doing nothing.

[He's being a lump too, and that lowers your attraction to him. But he isn't here looking for help, so in order to get hi to stop being a lump, you can only improve yourself and hope that motivates him.]

Also, we have a saying here, The Stay Plan is the Go Plan. What would you be doing differently today if you were planning to leave him? How would your life be different if you were single? The things you would need to improve to have an awesome single life are things you can and should work on now (monogamous things, of course).

Blackwulf

I grew up around horses and they are either a huge time sink or money sink.  There is a lot of energy that goes into taking care of them.  They are large animals and need to be well maintained with exercise, clean stalls, etc.    

I have seen them destroy marriages too.   It works fine if as a couple you are into horses, but as soon as one person isn't it will hurt the marriage.    

I don't think this is the problem here.   

There is reasonable personal time and having your own interests, but you are dealing with a lazy bear introvert who doesn't have anything else.  Your husband's old doctor is right he needs to get a life and some fitness.  You can't make him get off his ass except by working on you, and maybe he will follow.   

Crashaxe

JellyBean said:

never_again said:

Perspective-wise it's like you had an affair, but maybe worse. 

^^^This is a blameshifting, victim-blaming mindfuck. Don't say this hurtful, irrelevant shit. 

She didn't do anything even remotely comparable to having an affair. 

I agree that it isn't as bad as an affair, but from my perspective, I agree with much of what @never_again said in his post. 

@Carebear, what your husband did was just wrong. That said, what never_again said about you having created a critical moment of neglect that your husband might have a hard time getting over is true, in regards to having told him that him getting a girlfriend would be doing you a favor.

Both incidents are in the past, neither can be changed. You have to decide from here what you are going to do about your relationship. I just wanted to share with you one possible perspective on things that your husband might have. I know I got a similar line from my wife, and it still stands out as a major damaging factor in my marriage ever since. Said a long time ago, but never forgotten.

@JellyBean I understand that you disagree with never_again, and maybe what he said is a trigger to you, but really?? He is as entitled to express his opinion as anyone else, and cherry picking one thing from his post and swearing at him is far from keeping this forum positive and productive.  

We all screw up with what we say here from time to time, and assuming that there is a hurtful motivation behind people's mis-speaks instead of assuming a mistake in wording isn't a good way to approach life. Hanlon's razor works well for me.

I have always enjoyed your posts here, but what you just did isn't your normal behavior on this forum, and I am disappointed in your actions today.

never_again

@Carebear said "However, he holds huge resentment for me not caring about him over ten years ago. I may as well tell you, the taken advantage of him above in my triage: I was out with my horses. I discovered this was a big problem and I couldn't balance horses and my husband and I sold them in 2006." 

By her own admission she took advantage of him and couldn't balance the horses and her husband.  Luckily she recognized it and took the appropriate route - her responsibility to the marriage.  My ex actually said that she chose the horses because "they were a responsibility".  Presumably me and our marriage were not.  Those are not the words of someone in a marriage-friendly frame of mind.

@Blackwulf confirms that horses are dangerous to marriages (and I was into the horses too, but not at the expense of my relationship with my wife).  Maybe Carebear wants to expand on just how much of a drain they were on her marriage.

AFA likening it to an affair, consider the time commitment and dopamine rush that comes with it.  She even went so far as to miss important family and children events because of her commitment to the horses.  And my ex readily admitted that she had her first orgasm while riding a horse and there wasn't a man in sight.  Any bets that it never happened again?

You might disagree with the analogy, but there's no disagreeing that horses can create significant barriers to the emotional, physical and financial well-being of a marriage.

Maybe Carebear's husband's current behaviour is leftover from the horse time and it's how he learned to cope with it.  I can tell you my personality changed - not for the better, during the bad times.  I'm not saying he's right and I'm not victim-blaming.  I'm saying there's an elephant that got them to where they are.

Angeline

Maybe @never_again projected a bit, maybe @Jellybean overreacted a bit. Let's move on, please.

Maria

 ANYTHING  can take the place of a spouse, from rock-climbing to working out a lot or publishing books. It's about balance and priorities. Horses are not special.

One can't fail to notice that right now @Carebear is in exactly the opposite situation: She has no life apart from her husband, is making her husband her focus, internalising his emotions and doing everything so that he need not experience a negative emotion.

I find it hard to imagine that years ago a woman with this psychological profile would have totally neglected her husband.

I don't doubt that he felt abandoned. We are however in no position to tell whether he really was or he couldn't deal with not being the center of her attention. I have the very strong feeling that if @Carebear found and pursued something she was passionate about now,  he would feel neglected again.

Carebear

HildaCorners said:

Have you read the MAP book? If not, do so.
Yes, I have the MAP book and I'm re reading it now. 

You need to get out and do things because nobody is attracted to a lump. Even though your husband says he wants you to be a lump, he isn't attracted to lumps. This is a case where you need to look beneath the words ... what have you *done* recently that increased his attraction to you? I bet it wasn't sitting next to him, doing nothing
Agreed. He seems most attracted when I'm just happy-go-lucky. Maybe I'm upset that no one helped clear the table, but I overlook that and just move on and do it. He's attracted to that girl. Not the one that gets all upset and angry because I'm doing it all by myself.

Also, we have a saying here, The Stay Plan is the Go Plan. What would you be doing differently today if you were planning to leave him? How would your life be different if you were single? The things you would need to improve to have an awesome single life are things you can and should work on now (monogamous things, of course). This is tough because I'm not thinking in terms of leaving. I just want US to be better. But I understand why this is asked. I don't have a great answer. 
I think my plan would be to get back into my trade skill.  If I were single today, I would probably be doing more activity than I do. A tiny different thing would be as simple as walking after dinner. DH rarely wants to, so I don't. I see an easy map win right there.  I would not give a flip about what anyone thought, so I'd decorate in rustic/country/down home feel that I like. DH hates that look, btw. We have no knick knacks, no big furniture pieces, no wall decor, nothing. He hates that we've been married so long and have nothing. I cannot decorate how he likes (mostly because he can't articulate what he likes) so therefore there's no decor. Now, if I had several thousand and could get everything done in one day while he's working, I'd do it my way and tell him to suck it up. If I were single, I'd entertain as well. Have friends over. Normal stuff. 

Crashaxe said:

JellyBean said:

never_again said:

Perspective-wise it's like you had an affair, but maybe worse. 

^^^This is a blameshifting, victim-blaming mindfuck. Don't say this hurtful, irrelevant shit. 

She didn't do anything even remotely comparable to having an affair. 

I agree that it isn't as bad as an affair, but from my perspective, I agree with much of what @never_again said in his post. 
I agree with this. Also, I do see where @never_again is coming from via his perspective.  It certainly helps to get a raw thought process going.  However, I'll agree with Jellybean that it is not worse than an affair. What's more, he knew going in that I'd be gone from 8am until 8pm on a Saturday and his nice guy self said 'ok' it wasn't a problem until it was a problem. As for the time I spent. Every Saturday. All day.
One reason it may have been such a big deal neglect-wise is that during that time
we worked opposite shifts. We didn't see each other.
Plenty of times I did not go to the barn because we had something going on. But if my choice was sit at home and stare at each other or go DO something, I chose 'go' with or without him.
I'm high stimulation, I guess. We used to do stuff all the time. Hiking, fishing, spelunking, walking, going to amusement parks, (he won't even ride a roller coaster now-he would practically go bungee jumping when we were dating). My idea of fun is not surfing Reddit. I don't think his is either, I think the ssri's take a lot of umph out of life. 

Carebear

FWIW, I've never had an orgasm from a horse. Never heard of it, although I'm not saying it probably couldn't be true. 
This really isn't about horses, though. Like Maria (I think) said, it could be anything. It sometimes is just going grocery shopping and leaving the kids home with him that causes him to need to 'chill out'. 
Where we live, a trip to buy groceries can take four hours. It can take up to an hour to get to the nearest store, depending on traffic. So any little hobby or thing anyone in the family does outside of hiking, fishing or shooting is a huge time drain. I can't find a cooking class and be gone a total of an hour and a half. It could literally take half a day to go do one thing. He already hates the extracurriculars and the time involved because of travel is one of the reasons. This is one reason we need to move. We could so easily move to the suburbs and be 15 minutes from things. It's sometimes infuriating. 

stillasamountain

I suspected as much. One day a week? Doing something you love and have done all your life and that he knew about before hand?

Assuming you were a present and fully engaged partner the rest of the week... I'll reiterate my need vampire stance. If this isn't all just after the fact DARVO ass covering. Or a combination of both.