Sometimes you have the feeling that your marriage is deteriorating, but you hope that it may be making things worse. That is until your spouse says something that leaves you in no doubt that they were right. Sometimes your spouse uses extremely hurtful adjectives that can leave you unsure how to respond or where to go from here. Some examples are words like “miserable”, “without love” or “dead”.

Someone might say, “For a long time I suspected that my husband was not happy in our marriage lately. Until yesterday, he hadn’t come out and said anything, but he was just depressed and was no longer very loving to me. Last night, we had a fight over something that really it didn’t matter. It was something insignificant like housework. I got defensive and told my husband that he had been very distant with me and then he sarcastically replied, ‘Distant? Well, I’m still here, right? And this says a lot because honestly our marriage is miserable, but we’re both stuck in it right now, so we have to put up with it. ‘In fact, I was very shocked by this. I didn’t think my husband would be happy in our marriage. But his words They were really harsh. It made our marriage sound like a prison or something and I have no idea why he would say that. Because how does it help? How am I supposed to respond? How do you even get back from something like this? I don’t know if give it to me he would go because he just wants a divorce and this was his way of firing the first shot, or if he really wants me to act. Maybe he was just trying to hurt me? When he talked about being trapped, he was probably talking about our children. Neither of us has ever wanted to break up our family, but that’s no excuse to say what he did. “

I think if I really wanted to hurt you, maybe I would have taken steps to start some time off. He may have alluded to being “stuck,” but at least he has no plans to leave right away. That gives you some time to assess what you really want and how you want to respond. When evaluating this, try to do so at a time when it can be more objective. What he said has hurt you, so it would be natural to allow that pain to cloud your decision making. But it’s important that you work really hard to really ask yourself what you would want if you could put the pain aside. It seems they are both committed to their family, so I suspect what they really want is a happy family where both parents are happy with their marriage.

That may sound a bit silly considering where you are now, but it’s important to keep your optimal ending in mind. Then ask yourself how you can get from where you are now to where you want to be. I am living proof that it is not impossible, even when you have a husband who claims to be “miserable”. (My husband used this word several times). And now that we are no longer apart and I have some hindsight, I realize that what he was really trying to tell me was that our marriage had changed drastically and that he was not happy (at all) with those changes. When you take the message at face value, you must ask yourself what is valid about that message.

There are some things you can’t change, like the fact that you both have to spend time with your kids and jobs. But there are other things that you absolutely can change, like making intimacy and connection a priority and trying to improve the way you currently interact with each other.

I know you are concerned about what to make of this or how to respond. As someone who has received this kind of hurtful message and then separated before I finally saved my marriage, here is my best advice on the matter: I would take the message as a call to action. If I were to do all of this again, I would read the message as my husband saying, “Hey, I need you to make some changes before we go off the rails. I want what we used to have.” No, these were not the words he said, but that is what he meant. I wish my reaction had been to look at myself and my marriage honestly and make the necessary changes immediately. Instead, I got angry and defensive. This is a natural reaction, but it doesn’t help (and it didn’t).

If I had to do it again, my reaction would have been to calmly ask him what bothered him the most and what he wanted to change the most. That would have served us much better. So you can try something like “I’m so sorry and it hurts me so much to hear you speak this way. But I want to hear the message of what you are really saying. I don’t want you to feel trapped. Are you the one who can? solve together? “

Your husband may be surprised that you have such a direct conversation. It’s fine. Because you can’t start fixing it until you know what’s really broken with it. I know your words hurt, but try to see that this is the necessary start to making the necessary changes that could make you both happier.

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