I have been married to my husband for 5 years. Shortly after we were married he went to "go talk to some Air Force and Navy recruiters". Well, he came home that night signed up to join the Army. I wasn’t really happy with the first 2 options, but I figured letting him check it out was okay. I wasn’t prepared for him to actually go through with it, especially a branch we hadn’t even discussed. It took some serious thought, but I decided to stay. Mind you, and I Buddhist- very passive, loving, passionate, and very very anti-war. Knowing I was sending my husband off to a war I didn’t believe in didn’t exactly sit right with me. BUT, I loved him. Just over a year later, right after moving away from the only home I ever knew, he deployed for the first time. It was awful for me (and our children), but at least he was in a safe areas with a safe job. He came home, and was much (to my surprise) the same man that I loved and married, even though he was a little less affectionate and didn’t communicate quite as well as he used to. Fast-forward another year, and he deployed again. This time to a less safe place, but still with a relatively safe job. I now had 3 children to care for alone. Thanks to military paying nothing (3 G’s a month is not much for a family of 5) I can’t even afford to work, because more than half of my pay would go to daycare, I also (thanks to the awesome Southern U.S.) ended up with Lyme disease and was just short of being crippled for most of the deployment. As soon as rounds of antibiotics and detoxing was over, he came home injured a couple months early. The doctors have pretty much taken care of it. In the mean time, he is distant. All he does is work, come home, play video games, watch TV….and mess the house. His side of the bedroom, his office area, the basement- all closely resemble something out of an episode of Hoarders. I will clean his things, and I have tried to organize everything for him, but he just undoes it all in a few short days. I have an entire house to clean and 3 kids to care for, because he now does zero cleaning or parenting. We almost never have sex anymore, and when we finally do every couple of months, it is not great and lasts seconds or minutes at most. He has gained over 40 pounds, 20 something of it in the last 3-ish months. I don’t really care from a physical standpoint, but his health is deteriorating. He eats like crap, doesn’t exercise (I mean, he’s in the ARMY…he’s supposed to be fit). I keep myself healthy, and do extra to make myself look good for him. No one ever believes I’ve had one child, let alone 3. Like I said, outside of health, it’s all for him. I go above and beyond for him in and out of the bedroom, and it’s like none of it is enough, or at least just not of any interest to him. We’ve had talks, many talks. It gets better for a day or 2, and then it goes right back to the way it is. I have to basically force him just to kiss me goodbye or goodnight. My kids think he hates them. Of course, I dispel this immediately and just tell them daddy doesn’t feel good. Yes, they think he’s been sick for 6+ months. Basically, it comes down to this: I am spending my life taking care of his house, his kids, his dog and him. I get nothing in return. No love, no affection (which is all I want). I’m not a bitch, I don’t nag, I don’t yell… I do everything he asks and then some. All of this I do for someone who does only what he wants. From his career that I dislike, to his habits, etc. I would never set out to change someone, but he is so far from the man I married 5 years ago that it is unreal to me. We’ve known each other for 14 years. We were best friends for most of that, and dated on and off through high school and college. He’s not that man anymore. All of our morals, beliefs and life goals have gone out the window for him. I appreciate what he does for a living, even if I disagree with it. I send him off to wars that I hate. I stayed for both deployments in a neighborhood where there were more break-ins and rapes than anywhere I had ever even visited before. All of this I did so that he could do what he wanted. Now what? Is it all for nothing? What would you do?
Also, he has been to post-deployment counseling and they don’t seem to think he is depressed or that he has PTSD or anything. He doesn’t think there is a problem at all. He blames a couple prescriptions he is on for the weight gain, not the overeating and lack of exercise. Before I started raising my kids I was a fitness instructor and a massage therapist. Health is my life’s work, so it hurts that he is doing so little to be healthy. I’d like him to be healthy, for the kids’ sake at the very least. Everything has piled up and I don’t know what to do. Divorce isn’t really something I want to consider, but I can’t and won’t force him to change. Is it as hopeless as it seems?
