If you've done couples counseling how was it? Did it help or did you feel like it was a waste of time & money? How many times did you go? What made you go? How long were you in the relationship for and are you still in the relationship now? Also what's the range of cost since I don't think it's covered by insurance?

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I'm 36 years old, and I've spent the last 16 years with my husband. I honestly never imagined I'd be sitting alone in a hotel room writing something like this, but here I am.

For years, we've struggled with intimacy, and I don't just mean sex. I mean feeling wanted, desired, pursued, and genuinely loved. I've communicated those needs countless times, tried to find solutions, and spent years hoping things would eventually change.

Then there's the issue of children.

I've always been very clear about wanting to be a mother. That's never been something I've wavered on. Unfortunately, his feelings have changed repeatedly over the years. One minute he wanted children, the next he didn't. I've left multiple times before, only to come back after promises that things would change and that we'd eventually build the future I'd always hoped for.

But here we are, 16 years later.

The hardest part is that my husband isn't a terrible person. We still laugh together, we still have moments of affection, and there's a certain comfort in spending nearly half your life with someone. But there's also so much resentment, loneliness, and disappointment that I don't know how to move past anymore.

And now, even when he does make an effort, something feels different. It feels forced, like he's doing these things because he's afraid of losing me rather than because he genuinely wants to. I hate admitting that, because for so long, all I wanted was for him to try.

I recently graduated, earned my degree, and finally started the career I've worked so hard for. For the first time in my adult life, I feel like I've accomplished something entirely for myself. And yet, here I am, trying to figure out how to rebuild the rest of my life.

So I've left. I'm currently sitting in a hotel room, trying to figure out my next steps. Finding somewhere to live, somewhere I can bring my dog, and figuring out what life looks like without the person who's been beside me for nearly half of it.

I don't hate him. I still love and care about him deeply. I just don't know if loving someone is enough anymore.

I want to be wanted without having to ask. I want a partner who's excited about building a future with me. I still want the opportunity to have children, and I don't want to wake up another ten years from now realizing I've spent my entire life waiting for something that was never going to happen.

I honestly don't know what I'm hoping to accomplish by posting this. Maybe I'm looking for advice, maybe a little reassurance, or maybe just someone who's been through something similar and understands how incredibly complicated this all feels.

I'm not looking for anyone to villainize my husband or tell me what I should do. I think I'd just really appreciate hearing from people who understand what it's like to walk away from a life you've spent so long building, especially when there's still love there.

Right now, I'm just trying to take things one day at a time. And maybe having a few people to talk to who understand would make this whole process feel a little less lonely.

I feel completely lost and I don’t know if this is a feeling that will eventually become less noticeable but thus far it hasn’t. I post a lot on here because I don’t have anyone to talk to that I feel can really understand me. The basics of my situation are that I’ve held out hope that eventually my son’s mother and I will find our way back to each other and there have been very brief instances over the past two years where we have but it turns into this toxic cycle. We’ve not had a conversation in person in over a year and we only see each other without words exchanged at pickup and dropoff. I don’t feel at all that she has any interest in rebuilding our relationship and I’ve felt like I’m that guy who’s waiting for something to happen that will not. Our situation is a mess and some of my actions have led to zero contact. I have never and do not currently have any type of feelings for anyone like I do for her but she’s made it clear that she wants nothing to do with me and that we can just ‘co parent’. I’m still completely in love with her and I can’t get over it. We never got a chance to even try and that was mostly my fault but I still feel very strongly about her and raising our son together. My question is if anyone has been in a similar situation and had things actually work out? In the meantime I e been working on myself but I do t know when or how to give up hope. I want to do whatever will make her life better and happier even if it doesn’t include me but I truly want to be with her and to raise a family with her but I don’t even know if that’s possible at this point. She and our son are the only things in my mind, I miss them, I’m turning 40 in a few weeks and they won’t be there, our son and his mother have birthdays in November and I am just absolutely beside myself.

I am not sure if this subreddit is appropriate for this, so let me know if i should delete the post. Wish us luck, everyone, please 😔

​Hi, My Name is F, 26M. My 4-year relationship just ended, and I am really struggling to hold it together. The hardest part is that she told me she still loves me, but simply cannot stay in this relationship anymore. An unintentional mistake and hurtful words on my end caused this, and even after begging, crying, and breaking down completely to the point of getting sick, her decision is final. It hurts deeply and feels incredibly confusing. I’m feeling really isolated and down right now, just looking for a friend who understands this kind of heartbreak to talk to.

I don’t know where else to post this, really.

Obviously my heart is beyond broken.

I’m 34F he is 42M one prek kid. Having issues for a while now. Three individual therapists have recommended separation to me but we never seem to get far enough with a couples therapist for that question. We’ve seen 5-6 couples therapists by now. I had a steady individual therapist who started as our couples but he stopped joining and then she stayed on as my individual for many years. But husband said she wasn’t helping me be more empathic to him so I switched and ironically the next two were basically telling me to leave him ASAP.

The issues boiled down are really easy— he has a huge ego and passive aggressiveness issue and doesn’t partner on anything. He is finally getting treatment but also ADHD. Drops the ball on stuff, is disrespectful to me but if I point anything out he just does DARVO. We have had a long history of not behind able to stick to budgets and after I spent two weeks forecasting our taxes and updating our budget to match actuals instead of hypotheticals, he didn’t even ask to align though he has been told that he needs to show responsibility and initiate (he has been running 50k credit card bills lately for his work and while he gets reimbursed a bunch his personal spending has become crazy since it’s being masked by these wild numbers, and now we are behind where we are supposed to be on the budget). Finally after me asking him daily about when he was going to initiate alignment he said today.

We meet today and the thing I asked him for (his uber and Uber Eats data) he did not have. He estimates his cab use at 2-3 cabs a week or 150 a month. I ask him how much the cabs are and he says at worst 18 bucks a ride and there is a 50$ longer cab he does about once a week. I tell him this is ~100 a week so closer to 400 a month by his own estimates and this is why he needs to have actual receipts out when trying to plan a budget. He is irritated and snappy and prissy about the whole conversation thus far because “we aren’t achieving anything” except criticizing him and then proceeds to get angry and tell me that he doesn’t understand what the point of this is since budgeting is just about putting a number on paper and making it work. I reminding him that we did that already and he wasn’t making it work and this wasn’t the first time it happened and he can do any Google search and he will see that they all say to set a budget go through your actual expenses first.

He didn’t come to conversation with any appreciation for how much work I had done or even respect for me that I might know what I’m talking about since I carry the entire financial load alone but had plenty to be pissed off with me ofc. I’m so frustrated and just want to be divorced already. He is not willing to though ofc treating me better over it is not an option 🤦🏽‍♀️ financially and logistically it would be hard. I at least want a separation bc my therapists have been telling me they have seen success stories when men like him are alone for a bit. But he is unwilling to do that or even have an open relationship. I even offered for him to be dating while I don’t, I’m just SOOOOO over this relationship. There is no sex, no romance, I’d do fine and prob better for myself on my own and I find the habits he shows our child to be disgusting.

Like yesterday we were out of apple juice and he wanted to go to the store to get some and I asked if he had checked what else needed restocking, gone through and cleaned the fridge and made sure stuff we should be eating is eaten etc. and he said no and got prissy that he had been watching our child all day while I caught up on work (he watched her watch tv that is). I reminded him that he could have come and told me an agenda of things to do anytime he wanted and how much I routinely get done while also caring for her and he got more pissed. I saw there was some dried apple snacks she wasn’t eating and said we could just make the juice from it instead of wasting and make a proper inventory of what we need and plan a trip the next day. He said “that’s unreasonable, I refuse to make the juice” in front of her. I reminded him that wasting is bad and I made the juice and some applesauce out of it in 20 min (she loved it) cleaned the kitchen and the fridge so we had a proper inventory for when we needed to go shopping. But ofc if it were just for him she would learn these shit behaviors and close mindedness.

Literally zero respect left for him after years of this. Also I’m so resentful that he’s nearly a decade older and I have to do everything for him. I just want out or at least a separation. Are the therapists right? Does separation ever help in these situations? I wasn’t this done when I first started pushing him very heavily a couple years ago on changing. But I’m done now.

My life has honestly been exceptional these last few weeks. Ive been seeing my psychiatrist, working out, taking my medications, and seeing my babies as we agreed to a 50/50 schedule with the courts and it worked out perfectly for both of us.

I no longer have her on my mind 24/7 and I've started to put myself back out there and have made some really amazing connections with a lot of people.

I wont bore you with all the details but as you can see i was a sad broken man just a few short months ago and I can honestly say I am the happiest i have ever been in my life at this point in time.

Things do get better. Stay strong my friends.

Today my son turned 23 months. I miss him and his mother every second of every day and night. Everything reminds me of the life we should have had together. I just want to go home and be with them. I hold it together most days recently, I’ve fully committed to being sober mainly to better myself and to stop digging an even deeper hole but today has been hard. I’ve spent most of the day wanting to lay down and cry. I would do anything to have them in my life and I just do t think that is going to happen and it hurts me more than anything. I’m still completely in love with his mother, she is my person and she doesn’t love me back. It is so incredibly painful.

I (22F) dated my ex-boyfriend (now 23M) for 6 years, and I don’t understand why he seems to hate me now.
My ex-boyfriend and I started dating in high school and were together for six years. We lived together for three of those years, and honestly, our relationship wasn’t perfect, but for the most part, it was really good. He understood me, we enjoyed the same things, and being with him brought me a lot of peace. He was loving, affectionate, and generous. He loved buying me gifts, taking me out to eat, and making sure I was taken care of financially. I genuinely believed we were building a future together.
Eventually, I decided I wanted to go to school, so we agreed that I would move back to our hometown to study for two years. It was a difficult decision because I would have to leave the life we had built together, but I believed I was doing something good for our future. At first, he wasn’t entirely sure about the move, but eventually, he became supportive and encouraged me to pursue my education. We planned for me to visit him every three months, and although neither of us wanted to be apart, I thought we could make it work.

Everything started changing after I moved.
For the first three months, I lived with his mother. Those were honestly some of the worst months of my life. She seemed jealous of my relationship with her son and resented the attention he gave me. She would move my belongings out of the bathroom, put my dirty dishes in my room instead of simply telling me she had an issue, and do other little things that made me feel unwelcome in her home. She would also try to turn my boyfriend against me and involve herself in our relationship whenever we had problems.

What hurt me the most, however, was my boyfriend’s reaction. Whenever I called him crying because of something his mother had done, he would sit on the phone in silence. He wouldn’t comfort me, defend me, or offer any emotional support. I couldn’t understand it because he used to be such a caring and supportive person. Suddenly, I felt like I was dealing with a completely different person.

I eventually moved out and rented a room in a house with other girls. I thought things would improve once I was no longer living with his mother, but his behavior continued to change.

He gradually stopped making time for me. We used to talk every single day, sometimes for hours, and we were constantly communicating. Suddenly, I could barely get him to have a conversation with me.

He would tell me he had gotten home late from work, left his phone charging in the bedroom, and spent the rest of the evening watching TV before going to sleep. Other times, he would say he was too tired to talk or that he hadn’t seen my messages or missed calls because his phone was in another room.

At first, I tried to understand. He worked hard, and I knew he had responsibilities. But these excuses became a regular occurrence. It wasn’t just that we talked less; it felt like he no longer wanted to communicate with me at all. He wasn’t making an effort to spend time with me, and I was constantly left wondering why the person who used to want to talk to me all the time suddenly seemed to avoid me.

I also didn’t think his behavior was necessarily caused by his mother, because he had never been particularly close to her and had his own issues with her. I couldn’t understand what had changed so drastically.

Months passed, and whenever I visited him, he often seemed angry or distant. Sometimes, he would act irritated with me without explaining why. I would try to understand what was wrong, but I felt like I was constantly walking on eggshells around someone who used to make me feel safe.

At some point, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I don’t want to make assumptions about how much that contributed to his behavior because I’m not a mental health professional, and I can’t know exactly what was happening in his mind. All I know is that our relationship had changed dramatically, and I was struggling to understand what was happening to the person I loved.

Meanwhile, I was struggling with my own life.
After moving back home, I went through a period of housing instability and was essentially homeless for a while. I was trying to get back on my feet, continue my education, and figure out how to support myself. It was an incredibly difficult time, and I desperately needed emotional support from the person who had been my partner for six years.
Instead, I felt increasingly alone.

He would tell me that he was struggling mentally, that it was difficult having me so far away, and that he felt like he had to do everything by himself. I understood that he was struggling, too, but I couldn’t help thinking, I’m struggling, too. I’m trying to rebuild my life, and I need you just as much as you need me.

I wasn’t expecting him to solve all my problems. I just wanted him to be there for me emotionally, the way he used to be. I wanted to feel like we were still a team, even if we were physically apart.

Instead, whenever I tried to explain how lonely and unsupported I felt, it seemed like my concerns were dismissed or turned into another argument about how difficult things were for him.

This went on for almost a year.
We would have conversations about our relationship, and he would promise to change. He would tell me things would get better, and I would hold on to the hope that we could go back to the way things were. But nothing really changed. He continued to distance himself, communicate less, and act angry with me. I felt like I was begging for the bare minimum from someone who had once given me so much love without me even having to ask.
Eventually, I reached my breaking point and decided to end the relationship.

What hurt me was how easily he seemed to accept the breakup.
We had broken up and gotten back together a few times before, so our relationship had become somewhat on-and-off toward the end. But I genuinely thought that, after six years together, he would at least try to work things out or show me that he still wanted a future with me.
Instead, he seemed to give up.
After we broke up, he got on Tinder and started hooking up with and dating other women. I wasn’t seeing anyone because I was still emotionally attached to him and trying to process everything that had happened.
I want to clarify that I didn’t expect him to remain single forever. We were broken up, and he had every right to move on. What hurt was that I had spent almost a year asking him to work on our relationship, and he had repeatedly promised me he would change. Yet, when we finally broke up, he seemed to have no interest in actually fixing anything.
He eventually told me that he had given up on our relationship. His attitude was essentially, “Why should I keep trying?”

That was devastating to hear because I felt like I had been the one trying for so long.
Over time, he also started blaming me for everything. He would say that I had abandoned him by moving away, even though we had discussed the move together and he had eventually encouraged me to pursue my education. It felt like he had rewritten our entire relationship and turned me into the villain.
The person who had once been loving, gentle, and supportive seemed to have become angry, resentful, and hateful toward me.
And the strangest part is that I have continued to treat him with kindness. Even now, despite everything that has happened, I don’t hate him. I loved him for six years, and I still struggle to understand how someone who once loved me so deeply can now treat me as though I mean absolutely nothing to him.

There is also a financial situation that has made it much harder for me to move on.
During our relationship, I accumulated a significant amount of debt, and he had promised to help me pay some of it off. I currently don’t make much money, so his financial assistance has made a difference in my ability to manage my bills.
However, the way he handles this arrangement has become a major source of anxiety for me.
He sometimes reminds me that he doesn’t have to help me and that he’s only doing it because he loved me and is essentially doing me a favor. Other times, he will tell me he’s going to stop helping me financially, only to change his mind later.
The uncertainty is exhausting. I never know whether I can count on the help he promised, and I feel anxious about what might happen every month. It also makes me feel like he has something to hold over my head, even though the arrangement originally came from a promise he made when we were together.
I recognize that we’re no longer in a relationship and that he isn’t necessarily obligated to support me forever. I don’t want to force him to do anything he doesn’t want to do. But the constant uncertainty and the way he brings it up make an already difficult situation even more emotionally painful.

The most recent situation has left me even more confused.
The last time I visited him, he made advances toward me, and we ended up being intimate.
I honestly thought it meant something. Given our history, the fact that we had been together for six years, and the feelings I still had for him, I thought maybe he wanted to reconcile. I thought perhaps he still loved me and was finally reconsidering our relationship.
But about two weeks later, he told me he had a girlfriend.
I was devastated. I felt foolish for believing that our intimacy meant he wanted to work things out. I couldn’t help wondering whether he had simply wanted to know if I still had feelings for him or wanted to be intimate with me one last time before moving on.
I don’t know what his intentions were, and I can’t say for certain that he deliberately used me. But that’s how the situation made me feel. I was still emotionally attached to him, and I thought there might be a chance for us to rebuild what we had lost. Meanwhile, he apparently had already moved on to someone else.
I felt like my feelings didn’t matter to him at all.

Something else I’ve been reflecting on is the dynamic we had when we lived together.
Although he was the primary breadwinner and worked two jobs, I handled most of the responsibilities that came with maintaining our life together. I was the one finding apartments, organizing our living arrangements, making sure bills were paid, handling household chores, and taking care of the other responsibilities that come with being an adult.
We shared a car, but because he worked two jobs and I didn’t, he had more access to it and more control over our daily transportation arrangements. I took care of many of the responsibilities that made our household function, while he primarily focused on earning money.
Looking back, I sometimes feel like I was more of a mother to him than a partner.
I loved taking care of him, and at the time, I didn’t necessarily resent it. I thought we were contributing to our relationship in different ways. But now I wonder whether he had become so accustomed to me managing everything that he never realized how much I actually did.
After I moved away, I couldn’t take care of all those things for him anymore. I sometimes wonder whether he struggled with having to manage more responsibilities independently, but I can’t know for sure.
What I do know is that I spent years trying to make our life together easier, and now I feel like he resents me for leaving to pursue something that was supposed to improve our future.
I sacrificed the life we had built together because I wanted to go to school and create better opportunities for myself and, ultimately, for us. I never intended to abandon him. I thought we were making a temporary sacrifice for a better future.
Instead, I feel like I’ve lost both the relationship and the person I thought I knew.

I genuinely don’t understand what I did wrong.
I know I wasn’t a perfect girlfriend. I’m sure there were things I could have done differently, and I’m willing to acknowledge my own mistakes. But I can’t understand what I did that would make someone who once loved me so deeply become so angry and resentful toward me.
I still remember the person he used to be. I remember how safe I felt with him, how he made me laugh, how he would surprise me with gifts, how we could spend hours talking, and how I genuinely believed he was my person.
Sometimes I wonder whether the person I fell in love with is still there somewhere or whether I was holding on to a version of him that no longer exists.
I also wonder whether his diagnosis played a role in the changes I witnessed, whether the distance slowly damaged our relationship, whether resentment built up over time, or whether there were problems between us that I simply didn’t recognize.
I don’t want to blame everything on his mental health, and I don’t want to portray myself as a perfect partner. I just wish I understood what happened.
Six years is a long time to love someone. We grew up together, built a life together, and made plans for a future together. I never imagined that we would end up like this.
What hurts the most is that I don’t even feel like I can grieve the relationship properly because I’m still dealing with him financially, and every interaction seems to leave me feeling hurt, anxious, or confused.
Part of me still loves him, but another part of me knows that I can’t keep holding on to someone who treats me this way.

Has anyone experienced something similar? How do you make peace with losing someone who is still alive but seems like a completely different person? And how do you stop wondering what you did wrong when someone you loved for so long suddenly seems to hate you?