Wow, you have a lot of issues built up over years.
You’ve given me many details and I hope readers of my responses read your situation first.
There’s little to be gained in going over mistakes from your first date and through the earlier part of your marriage. Let’s go over your situation as it exists most recently and continuing forward.
Regarding the influence on your children: if they experience your sniping at each other and arguing within their sight or hearing, or you and your wife acting angry or disrespectful, then yes, there will probably be a negative impact on your children. If, however, they have seen these negative energies and behaviors between you and then you turn your relationship around to be loving and adoring, imagine what messages that could send your children about people, relationships, and marriage.
But, that’s not your situation or you wouldn’t be writing to me.
I understand you are frustrated and distraught at the very least and probably feeling hopeless that anything can or will change. Yours is a tough situation, but not PTSD. It is “normal,” but not the only pattern, for a troubled marriage to experience frequent struggles and arguments including yelling and put-downs.
Even with all your details, I still have only the “tip of the iceberg” of your thoughts and actions. If there is hope for you to have a happy marriage again, you have to examine and learn to manage your thinking. Your thinking is your best chance for changing your feelings. This includes creating a re-attraction to your wife.
Some of the changes in thinking would probably require you to be trained because some of these changes are counter-intuitive and it is easy to talk yourself into the problem thinking again without a trainer coaching you through the difficult parts. You would also need this professional therapist to be committed to saving your marriage because therapists are people, too, and, without sufficient experience in saving difficult relationships, they too can get discouraged.
Trust is a different matter. You will never again have a pristine relationship. With that as a given, if you both are authentically doing the “work” of putting your relationship together, trust will most likely return for most of the time and stronger than you could probably imagine at this point in time. I say, “most of the time” because even then you will probably have occasional reminders that could precipitate a temporary relapse.
I wish you all the best in whichever choice you make.
Frank Gunzburg, Ph.D.
