My wife turned 36, got a job promotion then totally turned on me.

Forums: Relationships, Loves But Not In Love With Me, Female Midlife Crisis, Marriage, Wife Suddenly Hates Me
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My wife and I have been together for over 18 years and have 3 young boys together ages 9, 7 and 4. We dated and lived together for over 6 years before we got married, to make sure we were right for each other and to cut down on the chances for divorce. I don't believe in divorce, especially when young children are involved.
Our marriage has been pretty good in my opinion with a few ups and downs along the way. I can honestly say that I love her as much today or more than I did early in our relationship. We've had a kind of relationship that we've been kind of codependent on each other and each others best friends for most of the years. The only major problems we've had over the years were do to an injury I had playing hockey (broken neck) during our first 2 years together which introduced me to Opiate Pain Medication Phyisicsl addiction which I unfortunately battled for a few years after. The injury also introduced her into taking care of a patient long term (me) and put her on a very successful career path in nursing.
Although I became physically addicted to pain medication, we knew that it was a possibility when I first got hurt and knew we had no way around it. I wound up having to go through rehab 3 Times but I never spent all of our money on drugs or really affected our lives seriously because of my problem. I just had 2 more serious injuries (torn oblique muscles and kidney stones) which forced me to get back into the pain medication and forced me to go through rehab to get off of them again. It was not a fun time for my wife or I but we got through those tough Times and seemed to be doing alright.
I've been clean for over 4 years and my marriage seemed to be doing alright until the end of 2015 when we had the worst few financial months that we've ever had. It seemed like everything in our house and our cars broke down at the same time. We had to spend all of our savings on different repairs in a matter of 3 months. My wife also went to her OBGYN doctor and they found something on her Ovary that has caused us concern. During this time my wife also earned a huge job promotion at her Hospital and along with this promotion gained a lot of new friends.
At first I thought the job promotion was a great thing for our family but my wife suddenly started spending hours upon hours on Facebook and texting her new work friends, leaving her less and less time with me and the boys. She also started to become very distant from me in particular and stopped wanting to be intimate almost all together. We wound up getting into an argument one day when we were about to be intimate and she dropped the big "I love you but I don't think I'm in love with you anymore". She told me that she just suddenly didn't feel the same way about me and wanted to start spending more time with her younger single friends. She started going out 3 nights a week until 3 or 4am without calling or texting me anything and has cut off all sex with me for over 5 months. She's become secretive with her phone and pretty much cut me and the boys out of her new 20 year old lifestyle.
She pretty much turned into the exact opposite person than she used to be. She started drinking every night, cursing in front of the boys and doing anything she could to spend time away from the family.
We tried couples counseling but by the end of the first session she had the counselor convinced our marriage had no chance and the only answer was for me to move out. I refuse to move out because I don't think this problem is my fault and I'm the one who takes care of our boys.
I've read everything I could about Female Midlife Crisis and everything I've read is exactly what is happening with my wife. She went from telling me she loves me to hating me in a week's time. She acts nothing like the woman I've spent 18 years with and this whole situation has me confused beyond belief. My wife says she just can't forgive me for being addicted to pain medication many years ago and that she never will. I can't talk to her about it because she's convinced that the way she's feeling right now is the way she's always going to feel and there's no way that any of her feelings will ever change again. I can tell by how she acts sometimes that she still loves me but has some outside influence causing her to not allow herself to show feelings for me again. Her best friend that she's admitted to confiding in, is in the middle of divorcing her husband so I also have that negative influence to deal with.
Things seem to be slowly getting better but does our relationship stand a chance in the long run? I don't know but I know divorce is a stupid option with 3 young children involved and the fact that we lived each other before these 3 horrible months happened to our family.

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This is an aside and has close to nothing to do with your plight, but I somewhat get what you mean. A co-worker and I took National Boards in an architecture field. She was a co-worker in the first place because I recommended her. She passed the three days of tests, I missed passing one section, oddly, the field I was best at in all those years of school. The test pass rate was, get this, 9%. Not 90, it was actually 9%. I sailed through the next go round. In the meantime, though, she changed personality, even bossing the boss around, who was smarter than the rest of us put together. It was interesting to see and deal with the changed personality, with the sudden empowerment getting her going.
We eventually, over years' time, talked at length and became friends again.

I'm not clear that may happen with you two, much as both of you may have tried all those years.

People do get extremely tired of each other, despite whatever love was there, and patching it can be unsatisfactory for one or both.

I wish you well, but think you will be facing changes. In time, you may benefit from changes, though it doesn't seem like it now.

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@ossobuco,

ossobuco, Thank you very much for your response. I think your example is very close to mine. My wife really went through a female midlife crisis though and all of these new much younger single friends just exacerbated the situation. Surprisingly my wife seems to be coming around already, by that I mean that she's returning back to her normal self, slowly but I can see it happening. She is showing no more hate for me anymore and is even trying to spend time with me. She's also returning my texts and calling me often just to let me know what she's up to and when she's coming home. All of that stopped during this 5 to 6 month horrible period. I'm not going to jump the gun and say everything is suddenly fine but I can finally see that she has love in her heart for me again. I saw that love for 18 of the 18 years we've been together, it was just gone during the last 5 to 6 months. I'm going to continue to focus on myself and our children and hope she still desires to keep our family together.
I wouldn't say we have gotten tired of each other over the last 18 years, we just kind of got stuck in a rut for a little while. I may have become a little lazy in the marriage and forgot sometimes to show the love that I have for my wife openly and not just in bed. This situation has completely woken me up and made me realize just how strong my feelings still are for the one and only woman I want to spend the rest of my life with. I hope in a way that her intentions during these last 6 months were to wake me up and give our marriage a little wake up call. I won't ever take her or our marriage for granted again. I also won't allow myself to ever become lazy in our marriage either. My wife will always know how I feel about her from now on. She's one hell of a great wife, inside and out and it doesn't hurt that she's also the most beautiful woman I've honestly ever laid eyes on. Hopefully we can move on from this horrible period of time and she realizes that my mistakes from the past are exactly that, mistakes in the past. She's given me every reason in the world to stay clean and enjoy life without the help of any pain medication. I have no pain now so I don't see any reason to ever go back to taking them again. I have a million reasons not to though.

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@ossobuco,

Actually, I did jump the gun. Everything's back to the horrible way it was again. We have a good week followed by a bad week. I don't know how much longer I can hold on.

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@Missmywife,

Have you considered counselling purely for yourself? There are many reasons to do this:
- you get 3rd party thoughts, just like you are doing here
- they can help you work through some of your confusion through back & forth interaction (much more effectively than here) to help you make sense of what is confusing you
- help you clarify what is important to you, what your priorities are
- help you clarify what you can control (yourself usually), what you can't (others usually)
- explain the difference between contributing circumstances, and personal responsibility (this is at the heart of stopping the blame cycle, which never works, and taking responsility for your life)
- give you some coping mechanisms / conflict management strategies / assertiveness tips etc

As a guess for some things you described:

- your wife has held on to hurt she experienced during your addiction. There can be many reasons for this.l

- she's seeing someone else at the moment (search any of the many websites for 'signs of cheating' - she appears to tick so many of the boxes)

- your marriage may not have been as happy from her perspective, as it was from yours. Many people think the feeling of love is enough, while most want to be loved in the way they need to be loved (ie in a way that makes them happy, and wanted). The feeling of love on one parties behalf, and the feeling of what it means to be loved on the other parties behalf - isn't always the same.

I don't know that anyone can give you any reassurrance that your wife will come around to trying to make it work again, but there is always hope.

Work towards it with open eyes. Best of Luck.

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@Missmywife,

There are a few things unclear to me. First of all, you going through withdrawal and rehab several times and years of repetition is anything but strenuous on any marriage. Of course, from your side it seems that all went well, since most of the time you weren't really there a) due to being addicted and in a stupor and b) being away at rehab.

I gather you don't really work. You've had many injuries and spent time in rehab - that means your career is non existent. You probably don't know how your wife coped with 3 kids, a house and lots of invoices while you were away.
The strain from this alone must have been horrendous and despite the added work load and financial duress, your wife had a full time job she cared about and got promoted rightfully so. While you probably stayed home and felt sorry for yourself.

I am sorry, but you're no price and just because you think that divorce is not an option for you, doesn't mean it won't happen. Now that you are hopefully sober and able to work and/or care for the children, your wife wants some free time to herself and why not?

She cared for you and your sorry ass for 18 years, now let her have some fun! She'll return when she realized that going out with her single friends isn't the rad either, but until then I suggest you stop feeling sorry for yourself and pick up the plate where your wife left off.

If you don't play your cards right, you will lose her. So stop whining and get your act together.

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My wife turned 36, got a job promotion then totally turned on me.

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