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Thanks so much for the support... and I don't think I'm perfect or that none of our problems come from me... but I'm the one who is unhappy and he would come back in a heartbeat if I let him.
At first I didn't even have a problem with the drinking, it wasn't as much (quantity per night) as it has been lately. My children are the most important thing in my life. Everything I do I do with their best interests in mind, sometimes I mess up, but for the most part they are turning into happy and productive members of society... not always the little robots who learn to "do as I say" to make the house run smoothly. That is where I really get upset, the parenting stuff & me feeling like I am not even worth sleeping next to...
DH grew up in group homes. He never learned how to parent. He knows his family, he went into foster care because his mom went to jail... drugs? Prostitution? something along those lines...
In a foster home full of boys the most important thing is FOLLOW THE RULES even if they are dumb rules... the foster care situation doesn't have a steller rep for turning out great members of society...
I see him as always being blue collar. Not that there is anything wrong with that... but that is his family background... blue collar, drug addicts & stubbornness. My family (not that they are anywhere even CLOSE to perfect) are more upper middle class... RN's, psychologist, architect, things like that. My mother was actually the family screw up in that generation... she still has a degree.
I don't think this means either of us is better than the other, but I think our background gives us a different set of glasses to look at life through... he grew up in "the system" and I grew up surrounded by family who really loved me, and even though I was dirt poor as a kid (hell, still am) I had that love, and knew it. I feel really bad that he didn't have the same...
I really think he does need more help than I do. I have been going to a theripist for several months... it just wasn't marriage counceling because until I made him leave, he didn't believe me when I told him we had problems... or that something just wasn't right. I told him several times that we never learned how to mesh our styles and parent together... or learned how to be a family... he would always say we were just fine.
I won't go to marriage counciling unless I am open minded about it working out... I guess That is what I'm struggling with... He has agreed to go, but I'm not sure if I want to bother or not. I know that he needs to deal with some personal issues from his childhood... and I have never tried to make it seem like everything was his fault... but I sort of feel like it is. I feel like I have been trying to be his partner, and he shut me out. Now that I gave up, he is willing to try... it just seems like it isn't good enough anymore... and THAT makes me feel guilty.
Ugh! I just get so confused about it...
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