My Marriage.

[sani]

I have been married for 10 and up untill a year ago we loved each other deeply. I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and for the 10 years of our marriage my husband has been a carer to me doing nearly everything for me. The illness was starting to put a strain on us and we were both I think getting depressed, we have had no outside help from family or friends and lived pretty isolated from the outside world. My husband works nights and I would often get worried during this time, I started using a chatline to chat to people and connect with the outside world and my husband knew and understood this. I developed a phone relationship with someone who is very understanding of me and my illness and we fell in love with each others minds and voices. My husband found this out by recording my telephone conversations and was very hurt when I told him I loved this person and that I needed to carry on talking to him as he was helping reduce the symptoms of my OCD, improving my otherwise non-existent self-esteem and making me believe I could actually get well.
The last year has been very difficult for us both I have continued to talk to this man and have been to the doctor for the first time about my illness, subsequently I am taking medication that is helping and waiting to see a Phsychologist for Behaviour Therapy. My phone relationship has beome just a close friendship and I love my husband very much indeed and really believe we could be happy together.
To help in my recovery I have with my husbands agreement been staying with my phone friend - his house feels less contaminated to me and I am able to live relatively normally rather that living in one chair and in one room. My husband has been to see me and phones me everyday, I was only supposed to be here for a week to two weeks but now my husband tells me he doesn't want me to go home because 1. He doesn't want to see me return to the way I was with my illness and 2. He says he couldn't look after me anymore at all not even for a couple of days at Christmas. Consequently we spent Christmas day here, and that day he told me he loves me but isn't sure if he is "in love" with me as the last years events and the 10 years of looking after me have taken their toll and affected him. I can understand this but I need to be able to go home and when I told him this he panicked and told me he was going away for a while to think as he needed some space. He's had 2 and a half months of space! I think he's frightened he'll get lumbered with looking after me again, but I am improving all the time and am sure we could be happy if he'd give it a chance, I don't want to lose him but I haven't even known where he was for the last week and his mobiles always switched off, he's also been lying to me about a lot of things. What should I do? Sandra.

[JJ]

Your situation sounds really tough!It's not clear from what you say whether you are well enough to manage at home on your own. If you are, couldn't you move back even if your husband has gone off to get some space? If not, then it sounds as if your husband does need to be sure he is strong enough to have you back.

If you don't think he's telling the truth then why not ask him when he does get back in touch? It must be hard for him having tried to support you for ten years and then someone else comes along and seems to be providing the answers to your problems. If that was me I'd be wondering what I had to offer and feeling pretty small and not at all confident of having what it takes to help you when you came back home. And I wouldn't want to tell you how uncertain I was feeling, incase it knocked you back.

I have a friend who was chronically ill for ages and her husband actually found it harder to adjust and cope when she started to get better than he did when she was ill. He was frightened of the change in their relationship.

I hope you hear from your husband soon and manage to get him to talk to you. Good Luck!

[This message has been edited by JJ (edited 03 January 2001).]

[sani]

JJ Thankyou for your reply, I know you are right, I think at times I've underestimated the damaging effect my phone relationship has had on my husband. I am so sorry for hurting him and if I could take it back I would. I realise now that it was a cry for help, I was very down and never going anywhere or doing anything day in and day out had made me feel useless, I never got any excercise and had put on a lot of weight (thankfully I'm losing that now) so I didn't feel attractive or wanted anymore.
My husband and I were both stuck in a hole and didn't know how to get out of it, it took someone on the outside to shake our world up and get us moving on getting help. I think your right also about my husband being frightened by the change, he admits he's scared.
I haven't got a key to my house! strange I know but I never needed one, I never went anywhere! My husband is back home now and back at work, we have spoken and I'm trying to organise some marriage counselling for us, he has said he will go with me.
I realise that my marriage will not work whilst I'm ill and that has made me even more determined to get well, at the weekend i went to a "Currys" superstore and a "Mcdonalds" I've not done these things for years, but I really want to get well to give me and my husband a chance, I love him with all my heart and miss him terribly. I hope he will give us that chance and let me prove to him that we can be happy and that I can be the "normal" wife that i want to be to him. Sani.