I Lost the Feeling of Love for my Husband

Unknown has left a new comment on your post "My Husband is Mean and Yells at Me. I'm being Bull...":

Hi,,, I am 10 years married now to my husband, and it's starting to get really hard for me to endure my husband's attitude,, I have left my family behind to be with him, and now after 7 years of not seeing them is getting to me.. Anything that I try to do in a good way for him never satisfies him, instead its always mean words do degrade me and call me names while screaming so loud the neighbors hear him.. when he does yell at me he spits because he is talking so loud.. I forgive him for the way he does things but now I think I am falling in depression,,

We never do anything any more and I have lost the feeling of making love, it’s like I am dead inside... tears are starting to build up in my eyes talking about it.. I don't know what to do, I am afraid alone,, no help... it is hard I just feel like leaving, but my heart still clings to him... I just don't know what to do,, I give him everything and anything he wants but it’s not enough. His aggression is horrible!!!

Dear Friend,

You are living in a constant state of fear. But that is not your husband’s fault. At least in this country you can count on your personal freedom so if your husband is physically abusive, you can call 911. Meanwhile you are totally responsible once you reach adulthood to take care of yourself, physically, mentally and spiritually.

One clue is that blaming others is the way we avoid the pain of our own fear. Your husband has the same problem. His own fear is causing him to blame you for whatever is going wrong or whatever failure he senses about his own life.

 One of you has to wake up to the fact that no one is here on earth to take care of you and everyone on the planet is doing the best that he can at the moment. There is always the possibility of redemption. You are supposed to take care of yourself and share your life with others.

Most of us suffer from repressed fear left over from our childhood. Fear is painful. To avoid the pain of our own fear we, instead, focus our attention on what others are doing wrong. And we can always find it in the people around us. Especially in our own family.

Anything you do out of fear is not going to be inappropriate to your own life in some way. So all our action should be, as much as possible, out of love. Since you love your husband you are probably confusing the issue by thinking that if you give in to him, it is an act of love when it may, instead, be an act of fear and therefore have a totally inappropriate outcome.

Anything you do out of love is bound to be appropriate to your life in some way. So you must take care of yourself in these adverse situations with your husband out of your love of doing the right. you won’t be able to do that unless you can call upon your courage by acknowledging your fear first. I had the same problem many years ago and my marriage at that time was very unhappy. I finally got the message and when he would raise his voice to bully me, or silence me, or criticize me I would say to myself “How can I take care of myself in this adverse situation.”  My typical response had been to slink away and get depressed.

After a while when my husband could no longer bully me because I was no longer impressed with the inappropriate way he handled his own fear, he was left with his own outrageous and bullying behavior and I could either walk away, perfectly happy with myself, or point out to him that I was not impressed that he was so out of control.

It is hard work to be a human being sometimes. But we can’t blame others for our failure to take care of ourselves. And you can visit your family whenever you want.

A lot of information on this topic is on my depression website or on my blog (you are not the only one  who is struggling) or in my book DEPRESSION IS A CHOICE.

I’ll be glad answer any other questions you have.  A. B. Curtiss