My (23F) husband (25M) asked for a divorce, then changed his mind hours later
Background: we’ve been together for two years, married for one. We’re both in our early twenties.
The night of the bulls-t we’d had an argument about the distribution of chores that I think triggered it. I thought it wasn’t fair that I was doing the majority of the housework, on top of being a full time student at university and having a job.
He seemed to think the chore distribution was fair and that I was overreacting. We came to a solution after all the bulls-t I’m about to tell you about occured, but essentially I was feeling overwhelmed and unheard and he was feeling stressed and confused as to why I thought this was a problem.
Later that night we’re discussing the situation again, and I express how it feels like he’s not listening to me and how distant he’s been lately.
Then he says there’s a reason for the distance and I ask him to tell me why. He says that he thinks we moved too fast, he doesn’t know who he is, and he wants a divorce. He says he cares about me, but doesn’t love me. And that he’s been feeling this way for a while.
Now, I’ve promised myself since years ago that I would never try to make someone stay with me if they don’t want to. So, as much as this hurt, I said okay. I cried, he cried. I did ask if he wanted to try couples therapy before divorcing but he said no. We decided to sort out details in the morning, I grabbed some blankets to sleep on the couch and he went upstairs to bed.
In the midst of my sitting on the couch crying and looking up apartments, what felt like hours later, I hear him get up and come to the living room. He sits down next to me and just says “I messed up so bad”.
I freeze when I hear this, because I’ve barely processed the reality of what just happened and I can already see where he’s going next. I ask him to elaborate and he says he doesn’t want a divorce, that he doesn’t know why he said that and he’s feeling the most regret he’s ever experienced in his life. He says that he realizes he messed up and I don’t have to take him back.
At this point I’ve experienced so much emotional whiplash that I’ve completely numbed out. I’d already cried all the tears I could. Now was just sitting there next to my sobbing husband and saying I’d take him back even though I’d barely processed the fact that he’d wanted to divorce me. I told him I wanted couples counseling and for him to get individual therapy and he agreed. I’ve asked him about individual therapy in the past but he never wanted to until now.
It’s days later now. I’ve gone through all the stages of being mad at him, sad that my marriage almost ended, insecure about myself, accepting the reality, feeling love for him, feeling numb. Cycling through all these emotions over and over again at random. We’re searching for a couples counselor but a lot of them have wait-list right now. So in the meantime I just want to know, if anyone has been in a similar situation: does it get better? Does the trust ever come back? I feel like I can’t trust him at all now. When he touches me I freak out sometimes because that’s not the comforting feeling I’m used to when he touches me, it’s the feeling like he’s suffocating me.
I want to be here for him and help him through whatever mental stuff he’s going through. But this has been affecting my work and my school, I left my dream school for him. I can’t just keep prioritizing him above everything else when he clearly doesn’t do the same for me.
And yet until now he was doing the same for me, he’s always been so sweet buying me flowers making dinner going out of his way to make time for us. And before you scream abuse please know I’ve been in abusive relationships before and they felt nothing like this.
He’s not like those guys this is the first time he’s ever done something like this. I just don’t know how we can recover. Any advice about how to get through this would be appreciated.