Can I Love Someone Who Makes Me Miserable?

Initially my marriage felt like a dream, now it’s draining my mental health and depleting my self-esteem

Dear Julia,

I have been married for almost 10 years now.  My husband and I met in grad school and were initially inseparable.  Our relationship was hot, and steamy, but also intellectual.  We spent endless hours talking about our respective research and our future plans.  We had fabulous physical intimacy.  It felt like a dream.  After we graduated, we got married.   

The last several years have been less than wonderful.  I started to see parts of him that hadn’t initially been evident in our first few years together.  He gets angry easily.  He blames me for things that aren’t my fault.  When we fight, he will storm out of the house and normally stay away for hours.  When he gets home, he doesn’t want to talk about it.  I’m left feeling hurt, angry, and betrayed.  As you can imagine, our problems are never solved and continue to repeat themselves.

When I speak to my friends about it, they always encourage me to leave.  I can see their point – my marriage is making me miserable.  But the problem is that I love him – so much.  When we aren’t fighting and he’s not angry, we have such a special relationship.  I feel at such a loss – if we break up, I fear that I will never have a relationship like this again.  I still reminisce about the early days and how wonderful they were, and I often think of how we could get back there.  In the meantime, I worry about the toll that his behavior is taking on my health and self-esteem. 

What do you think I should do?

Dear Reader,

I can only imagine how painful it is for you to have transitioned from a “dream relationship” into misery.  The shock, the loss of your expected future, and the grief that you’re feeling would only compound the reality that your husband is angry, absent, and unwilling to work through conflict. 

I’m curious to know more about what you believe makes this relationship special, and why you were initially inseparable.  I have a hunch that it could be due to a psychological concept called “Repetition Compulsion” (which can also be called a “Trauma Re-Enactment”).    

Repetition Compulsion is when we seek out a relationship that we unconsciously hope will help us heal our childhood wounds.  Of course, we often have no awareness that this is playing out, but it helps to explain the familiarity or, normalcy that we get from this new relationship, person, or situation, or perhaps why this relationship may feel “special” or like a “dream”.   

This familiarity is due to the relationship having similar qualities to what we experienced in childhood.  In your case, it could have been possible that you had a parent or caregiver who was angry, explosive, absent, or critical, which left you feeling confused, betrayed, and hurt as a child.   

One of the ways that we get stuck in repetition compulsion is because it feels like love.  In one way, it is.  It’s often the “love” that we experience with our family of origin. 

However, I write “love” in quotations because how unhealthy, toxic, or abusive families normally behave is not loving.  The “love” you experienced may have been conditional (loving you only if you behave a certain way), parentified (you were expected to care for your parents, and you feared that you would lose their love if you didn’t) or even neglectful (your parents were not in tune with you emotionally). 

However, because this “love” was normal for you, and because society teaches us that families are loving units, we learn that what we had in our family was love, even when it wasn’t. 

This isn’t to say that there can’t be love mixed in with “love”.  There is usually a balance between healthy and unhealthy love, even in the most abusive families. 

An example of this could be that your mother provided a lot of physical comfort but frequently criticized and punished you.  As such, you felt loved by her hugs, but rejected by her behavior.       

Thus, you may have been attracted to your husband because you sensed these unhealthy qualities (and perhaps also some of the healthy qualities) and hoped that this time you would be able to stand up for yourself or get him to change, which you weren’t able to do in childhood with your original abuser. 

If you had been able to get him to change, or stand up for yourself, this could have allowed you to release or complete the trauma by moving yourself through the helplessness, rejection, abandonment, or criticism that you felt as a child. 

As you noted, your husband is not willing to look at his behavior and what is happening between the two of you, which would be retraumatizing to you.  Rather than being able to move through or complete the trauma, you’re stuck in it – again. 

If this is the case, it’s no wonder that you acknowledged your misery but that your love for him makes you question leaving.

While love (no quotations this time!) is a part of most healthy romantic relationships, on its own it is not enough to sustain a relationship. 

What I am hearing from you is that while you may feel love for your husband, you do not have respect (evidenced by him walking out on you and blaming you for things you didn’t do), emotional safety (due to his frequent anger) or commitment (his refusal to work through conflicts) that are essential parts of love. 

We need a healthy, trusting, protective, respectful, comfortable, and committed love for it to be true and genuine.  Without those components, the love you feel is unlikely to be reason enough to stay in a relationship. 

So, what do you do now?

In any relationship, no matter what the topic is (finance, sex, conflict, parenting) our partner must take our suffering or concerns seriously for us to be happy, healthy, and satisfied.   

While he’s calm, you could tell him how much you miss the old parts of your relationship and how much you want to get back there.  You could share with him your desire to be able to talk about what’s bothering him so that you can understand and support him. 

If he seems receptive and stays calm, you could let him know how much the conflict hurts you and that you want to feel close to him again (which would require you two to work through conflict and talk about what’s been causing it -  likely with a skilled therapist).  Be curious about his experience and try not to blame him.   If he feels like you’re comforting and safe, he’s more likely to open up to you. 

However, if he’s unwilling to discuss it (either between the two of you or in couples therapy), you may need to let him know that your marriage is at stake.   It’s difficult if not impossible for a couple to last if they can’t work through the hard stuff together, especially when the hard stuff is making you miserable, and taking a toll on your health and self-esteem.  

Good Luck, and I wish you the very best.

Some related reading that may be beneficial to you is:

How to Know If He’s a Great Catch

How to Set Boundaries In Your Relationship

If you would like to leave a comment, or if a reader would like to ask a new question, head over to my contact page.  

Warmly,

Julia

P.S. Did you enjoy this blog?  Would you like to have more Simple, Healthy Love in your life?  I post new answers to reader questions every Saturday at Noon EST AND have a list of all the books I recommend as a trauma therapist and relationship blogger HERE.