For the past month or so I’ve been in the middle of a male midlife crisis/nervous breakdown. The husband has been totally irrational. My first clue that there was anything wrong was when I found myself facing an enraged crazy man demanding that I tell him the truth about my affair. Please, like I’m that interesting. (Actually, the night before this happened I was upstairs doing chakra work and the energy in my heart chakra started going beserk. It was spinning in all kinds of directions and I couldn’t get it to calm down and do just one thing. It was making me seasick. I went downstairs to see him and he was really weird. The next day he went off.)
He’s been off the wall strange since then. Distant, moody, picking fights, telling me how I made him sacrifice all his hopes and dreams for his life (news to me). What really started to worry me though was that he started making plans to do some very reckless things with his company. I can handle the emotional stuff and just ride it out but I wasn’t going sit by and let him destroy our livelihood.
Last night and this morning everything blew up. I think it is better now. He is starting to realize that these problems are his and don’t really have anything to do with me. He made a list of three things that he needs to come to terms with and can rationally state that two of the three have nothing to do with me and that the third will affect me but is not my fault. At this moment he can say that shutting down his company is perhaps not the best idea he’s ever had.
He can see that’s he’s creating no-win situations. For example, he would state something that he would like to see me change. If I would attempt to change it, he would accuse me of doing it to manipulate him. See, irrational and crazy.
I think that he is going to try to find a therapist. At least he said that this morning. He did say that he had to find a therapist himself because if I found a therapist for him he’d know that I would have picked someone who was going to try to make him see everything just like I do. Mind you, I never offered to find him a therapist since I don’t know any but his mindset was such he was thinking ahead to how I was going to ruin this for him.
I think what pushed him over the edge was the adoption. He’s always wanted biological kids. He knew from the beginning that I didn’t. But he thought that I would change my mind. When it didn’t happen he freaked. He has minor freak outs about this every few years but this year he hit a new low. The man actually asked me if I would mind if he hired a surrogate to have a child for him. Would I mind???? He’s very offended that I got mad about that. He’s lucky he’s still breathing.
He was able to articulate today that having a child is on his list of life goals. If he can’t check that off his list then he is a failure. I tried to explain that it is fine for goals to change over time. He made this list to guide his life in his teens. He said that none of the goals are changeable. He also set up a no-win situation by saying that if I got pregnant he’d know that I was doing it just to make him happy and that wouldn’t satisfy him. I told him that this point was non-negotiable because there is no middle ground between having a kid and not having a kid. We both want to have a large family but just differ on how to achieve that. I suggested that he modify his goal to be to have a family and then he could still work towards it by adopting. This was one of the points that he realized was a problem that he needed to deal with.
He also doesn’t want to be in our house. He’s got some really weird thing about he can’t stand to be here. He can’t come home and sit and relax. He wants to be doing something somewhere else. He asked me tonight if it would be ok with me if when I go to bed (around 10) if he would go out and find people to talk to until 2 or 3 in the morning.
He left to go to work tonight and asked me if we “were cool.” I told him that I didn’t know because I didn’t know what he was going to be like tomorrow.
If anyone knows any “make a man sane” spells, I’d appreciate it.
Big hugs. Heather, actually yes – spells and meditations would be very helpful in your case. Of course, I’m not the one to give you advice, but a hint – if you’re looking for therapy, maybe Bert Hellinger will be just for you and your husband (child problem). As for the spells – SilverRaven Wolf is fine for such occassions 🙂
Best wishes
no advice can be really given, just be sure to take care of yourself – maybe seeing a therapist to help you through his crisis.
hugs
Oh Heather, I’m so sorry to hear things are nutty. I hope you both will be able to work through whatever is going on. Don’t know any spells for making a man sane (is that possible?), but perhaps you could do something around keeping communication open? Keeping you in my thoughts.
Not sure if this helps or not, but I think some people see having their own biological children as a form of immortality. Even when you die, a piece of you remains living as this child and that child’s children and so on.
We plan to have two biological children for other reasons. We are limiting it to two, though, to replace each of us because of the whole overpopulation thing.
Dang!!! Sounds like a mid-life crises, or something. That’s for sure. Maybe some grounding activities and cleansing for the house???? *shrug* Don’t really know what to suggest, Heather. But I hope the two of you are able to work things out soon.
(((((HUGS)))))
hey, good luck with all this. trying to work out differing feelings about how/when to have kids (or even whether to have them at all) has been one of the hardest things i’ve yet encountered in a relationship that’s lasted over 13 years thus far. we’re smack in the middle of it so i don’t have any great words of wisdom, except that if you’re like us, talking is *always* a good thing. it’s really intense how tied up the havinig chidren thing is to our own childhoods, sense of worth, etc., etc. so, good luck to both of you.
Sending you a {{{{hug!!}}}} Heather!
We’re in the midst of an ‘interesting’ phase here, too, so I know how you’re feeling.
Jeanne 🙁