desperate for help

iVillage Member
Registered: 10-11-2004
desperate for help
1
Mon, 10-11-2004 - 1:44am
I have been married to my husband for 10 years and things were great until about 2 1/2 years ago. I lost my job due to death of boss, then hubby was laid off and was without work for 6 weeks then I was diagnosed with breast cancer 2 months later. I have taken treatments and have beat the breast cnacer but have not yet returned to work because i still do not have my energy back. My husbans is very resentful of the fact that I have not been able to go back to work. He continually complains about things i do or do not do. If he can find a negative he will surely point it out, no matter how many positives he passes before the negative the positives are always pusjhed aside for the negatives. i feel like all he does is tell me everything ui do is wrong. i am getting more and more depressed and feel worse and worse about myself. Then he will get angry saying i never want to have sex with him, but i just feel so low that sex is the last thing i feel like having. I feel like he will only complain about it. And he has, even then he pooints out what i am doing "wrong" as he see it. We have a daughter that is 7 years old and i do not want her to go through any more pain than what she has already seen. But I just do not know how much more of this i can take. I try to talk to my husband about it and he just says I do not know what i am talking about that he does not do these things or that is not the way it is or sometimes he says I am worthless and he is trying to get me to do things the right way,. I just do not understand how all of the sudden everything i do became wrong. i have not changed the way i do things. He says our house is a mess all the time and that is not true as a moatter of fact friends often comement on how nice it liiks but to him it is a pig pen.

I need soemone to talk to and if i go to a friends house he calls ema over and over or accusses me of having an affair. I am desperate to know what to do. I am slowly losing it and i can not keep hanging on much longer.

Please offer some advise to me so I can amybe think clearer than i am now. Thank you so very much for your help
iVillage Member
Registered: 09-26-2004
Mon, 10-11-2004 - 2:29am
I have seen a very similar situation and I am going to talk straight; almost brutally honest. A friend had cancer and her husband did the same thing. Not until she tricked him into a marriage councelor did it come out that he was terrified that she would die. The only way he was able to cope with the possibility that he may end up alone was to drive her away and distance himself from her by being as mean as possible. He wanted her to hate him and tell him so. Loosing an enemy was something he could handle. Loosing someone he loved would kill him. It was self defense in a way so he could handle the worst. Lots of men find it impossible to handle a wife with cancer. They crumble emotionally. They have an affair or become viciously nasty or start drinking or run away. Just when a woman needs a strong shoulder to lean on! Your story is not unusual. All I can say is you have to decide if you can stand his panic. Maybe tell him that you have no intention of dying. Deffinately get into a support group of women! They will help and maybe have real insites on how to handle him as it did'nt happen to me so I don't know the end results.