is he working on it by… not saying he’s working on it?

it feels impossible to tell this as a short story, so this is going to be long.

we’ve been together for seven years, married for two. In the early days, we got through truly hard stuff: my father passing in the beginning of our relationship, me working a solid day job while balancing an arts career at night, us creating art together. Four years ago, after saving up $30k on my own, I quit my day job, trying to get into grad school and make it in my profession. During this time, he got fired, we supported each other, got engaged, and moved closer to both our families. I got into a great grad program, and he got a new job that involved being away 2 weeks out of every month. Despite the distance, we were doing our best when the pandemic hit, and when he stopped traveling so much, it was a relief. In many ways, I always saw us as complementary – I was very patient, a little disorganized at times, highly creative, very extroverted, and constantly discovering new things for us to do and explore in our city. He was consistent, introverted, highly organized and routine oriented, and felt like he would ground me when I took on too many projects or social commitments. I felt like I could soothe him when his anxiety hit a high point. I encouraged his artistic side, and for years it felt like a case of true love.

A year and a half ago, a month after graduating from grad school, I got a big opportunity on the other side of the country that would change our lives financially and professionally. It was, in my profession, the shot. We both agreed I had to take it as I nailed the interview. It came at a stressful time; my grandfather had died in another country and I was having to fly back to that country to resolve his affairs as one of the older siblings. Our wedding was two months out. The wedding we’d planned, which I’d asked not to be just a restaurant and a ceremony, was stressing us both out. We’d rented a venue and having 100ish guests. It was a lot of extra work, and I could see how his original request — that we use the money for a down payment on a house or something more important — was reasonable. But now it was too late. We had the venue and had everything planned, with the pandemic dragging it out an extra year. And now, all of a sudden, we had to plan a cross-country move. He decided to stay and not move with me across the country. And there, all of our problems began. The wedding was stressful. The distance was painful. We both were struggling — me with depression and anxiety, and him probably with similar things.

He became even more of a workaholic than usual. Nothing could interrupt his work, and he didn’t feel that he could show up as his best managing a team on a different coast when staying with me. I felt frustrated. I was paying a lot more in rent for a housing situation that specifically had a home office for him. We were both paying double rent, so I felt I couldn’t do all the saving I needed to. I was succeeding in a cutthroat, competitive artistic situation, and my husband was on the other side of the country, visiting me once a month for a week, unable to share in my success.

As the contract wore on (11 months), he started visiting less. We started having sex a lot less. And I started really thinking about my bisexuality in a new way as I wasn’t being satisfied by him. It didn’t help that I had someone in my industry really hit on me a lot and try to make a move on me. She was really kind, especially while I was struggling with understanding why my husband only wanted to see me for two days out of the month, and was unkind a lot of those two days. But I told her I couldn’t do anything and needed more time with my husband. I had feelings for her, but stepped back. In the meantime, he constantly shut down my conversations where I addressed my chaotic work environment or my family. When I finally moved back home after the contract ended, he wanted to spend so much time with him, and not with my family or other artistic opportunities I’d set up. I wondered if I would get more understanding and compassion from somebody else. I began to dream of an open marriage and if that would solve our sex issues. After I moved home, I asked for one, so we could sleep with other people.

To my surprise, he was open to it, but once again only if I slept with women. We didn’t do a lot of the discussions or the reading or the couples counseling we should have done before opening our marriage. We both went on a couple of dates separately that were duds. I thought we’d called off the open marriage thing because it felt like things were better. And then, he met someone on our anniversary after refusing to visit me and come to an artistic event. They hooked up in our bed. He told me the full truth of it within two days, but I was so hurt. I asked that we stop, that I was not actually able to do this thing I’d asked for. It hurt specifically because she was in my industry and made way more than both of us, at a time where I was struggling to find a new job. She knew a lot of people I knew, and had worked with some of my coworkers. But once I asked him to shut things down with her, all his cruelty came out in full force. He gave me the silent treatment and raged at me. He called me controlling. He had better sex with me better than I’d experienced in a year or more, and was really revved up. He begged me to pursue a romantic relationship with this woman. All the while, something felt weird to me. I asked about her marriage, and he told me she was happily married. They kept hanging out, supposedly as friends, but he kept pressuring me to let it be more. He told me he resented the wedding and its cost. He resented how much of the domestic work he did around the house (this, to me, is the most valid and very real complaint as my ADHD is no joke). He resented my artistic career and it did not allow him to put a down payment down on a house or travel as much as he would like. He told me that he supported me financially (he doesn’t – we have always been a pre-nup couple that splits everything down the middle). And to cap it off, he felt my family was an albatross around his neck. My family has always been chaotic – I have an overbearing and sometimes narcissistic mother who is highly critical — and has been critical of him in the past. My brother is an addict, and my sister has severe mental health issues. I love them deeply but was grateful in some ways that we lived 5 hours from them, and that I stopped being sucked into their lives. It often made me sad that my husband didn’t like being around them, and that I was often expected to do stuff with his family more often — his family is far wealthier than mine and more stable in a lot of ways. But this felt directly hurtful. He didn’t want to deal with ANY of my problems, my emotions or very human things.

Two weeks after his first date with this woman, he kicked me out because my anxiety meant I often left the bed at night. At one point, he told me that if I didn’t let him pursue this woman, maybe we should separate and divorce. For three weeks, I slept on couches and shared with friends what was going on, all while obscuring it from my family. I kept trying to see the problem in a different way, but couldn’t. I even met with her twice at his request; she hit on me and I realized she herself was going through a divorce. Finally, after the second or third time he had promised me he’d stopped talking to her but then scheduled a date anyway, I packed two suitcases. It had been a month of this drama with her. They were clearly obsessed with each other. I stopped believing what he said about the fact that their first date was the only time something physical happened. My own husband wouldn’t kiss me and kept saying he felt pressured when I asked him for a kiss or sex. It was agony. That was the end of October.

As time went on, he continued to berate me for being sad when we shared space. He berated me for the moments I was optimistic that things might work out when we finally got a couples counselor we liked. He said I was perhaps delusional for thinking things might work out between us. He disinvited me from his family’s thanksgiving and I sobbed and sobbed. He told me, when he returned, that he was done working on the marriage. That he no longer wanted to do the work – it was both surprising and unsurprising. It felt, in retrospect, like he’d been slowly showing up less and less for us since he met this woman in September, and possibly before then. Afterward, he shared that the other woman he’d met had her divorce go through. I wondered how much his decision not to work on us had to do with her, since I know they had told one another that they loved each other somewhere in between all of this. I know sometimes people find the person their actual soulmate while being married to another person, but all this feels cruel. He wanted me to pay him for using small things, like syrup for breakfast in the mornings. (I already cover all my own groceries and expenses). He is constantly angry if I ask him a question while he’s working.

Then this week and last, my individual therapist got real with me and told me a lot of his behavior is emotional abuse. It weighed heavily on me. I don’t know how long this has been going on for anymore. I don’t know if I should plan an exit plan, and I’m really depressed – sleeping 12-13 hours a night all week. My birthday is this weekend and we have plans that he made for us that I am actually looking forward to. We do sometimes share laughs. He wants us to stay friends and I think that’s the only reason he’s in couples’ counseling with me. He says he feels fairly certain that we need to uncouple (not every day, but most days). However, he is willing to evaluate the decision and make sure it’s the right one. But I am taking breadcrumbs. I have our shared sheltered space with all its good memories; sometimes they comfort me and sometimes they haunt me. He cuddles me in the mornings and kisses me on the cheek, but avoids kissing me on the lips. We feel like different people now. Gone are the days where I don’t realize that I am scared to be my full self in front of him. It’s become clear to me that I more often give the answers he wants than the ones that are on my heart. I am tired of dressing and acting in ways he finds attractive, as he’s spent years expressing his approval or disapproval. I am tired of not being able to acknowledge when I am depressed or downtrodden for fear that he will see me as less-than. I can’t unsee some of the ways he tries to control me and invalidate me. And he can’t unsee me as a person he believes he’s supported while being unhappy. I’m running out of savings. Should I just move out? Or should I continue the counseling, continue believing?