I am ignoring the inevitable

[dugaresa]

I have loved my husband for our entire marriage. We have had our ups and downs like any couple. However the one issue that has been a frustration has been his job(s) and his workaholic behavior.

There has also been another issue, his business friendship with a person he felt was his best friend.

This friend from my perspective had used my husband many times and many years ago, I asked him to stop his relationship with this friend because it was causing us problems in our relationship.

So, the kids grow up a bit more, we grow in our relationship and I thought we were getting along pretty well and we mutually decided to buy the house of our dreams. The one thing I kept worrying about was my husband's job satisfaction because he hasn't ever been with any company more than 4-5 years and he seemed yet unhappy again with his job and to be honest changing jobs and moving into a new house is a recipe for stress. So I begged him when we moved to the new house to give me one year of adjustment before he did anything else.

3 weeks later he tells me that he had been in negotiations with his "friend" and that he wanted to quit his secure job to join in with this friend. I was totally against it. We had just moved, it seemed like such a bad move. His employer liked him, he was getting where he wanted to be with his job to a degree but he felt he still wasn't getting his due.
He was so angry with me for not being complicit at first. But I loved him and realized that I needed to just go along with it in order to not have marital problems with him. I love him very much.

So just after he gets some good feedback from his existing job, he quits and hurts the feelings of his ex-boss and moves on to the new "boss/friend".

He showed up for the first day and his friend isn't there. He shows up for the second day and his friend confesses to him that he has mental health problems and who knows what else. My husband basically feels like he has stepped into a minefield.

The problem is that he kept all of this a secret from me. I was under the impression the entire time that things were going along swimmingly. I was working at my job, and at home trying to make our new home more comfy.

After 4 months of working with his friend, he finds out his friend has bankrupted the company and his friend's wife is leaning on him for support. He keeps flying to his friend's house to try and make things better but it doesn't help. Then things change with us. He has been keeping all these secrets and one day KABOOM! He tells me that he doesn't feel the same way about me anymore. The love is gone. He is thinking divorce.

I was blindsided. Here I thought he had the house he had always wanted, the job he wanted and I had no clue. Now around the time this was all falling apart, things were crazy for me at work and to a degree good things were happening for me and so we did have our stressful moments but nothing to clue me into what was going on.

Eventually he lost the job with his friend because there was no money and yet he keeps blaming himself when in reality he was trying to hold everything together while his friend was tearing it all apart. So we had a new home with a bigger mortgage and only my salary and his unemployment.

Now he is still home many months later and we are going to counseling but he doesn't want me to touch him, he keeps telling me that he has to focus on securing another job. He likes being with the family, he doesn't think he wants a divorce now but he is so standoffish with me I am just lost and it is affecting my job and my mental health.

In a way I feel like he has put me on probation, like I have to try out for my role as his wife. It seems so cruel and because I love him I keep hoping for the best but am I kidding myself?

I never expected to be in this position a year ago, I thought things were getting better and it all imploded.