Husband is emotionally unavailable and I am not sure how much more I can take
My husband (M31) almost shows no emotional support towards me.
The last two years for me have been extremely challenging. I started graduate school and in my first couple semesters, a lot of chaotic things were happening in my family. Long story short, my mental health declined a lot after these stressful events that took place. At first my husband was supportive, patient, and kind towards me during this. But out of no where he turned extremely cold. He became impatient as I was trying to find a therapist for myself and then he started to say a lot of many hurtful things to me. This went on for several months. I was eventually diagnosed with severe ocd a couple of months ago. It took awhile to get this diagnoses and receive the right therapy for my diagnoses, because many therapists in my area do not specialize in ocd or our insurance was not accepted. I have been in therapy now for a couple of months and I am also still in my graduate program and doing well in that.
My husband is still very cold towards me and is extremely critical and hard on me with everything that I do. He can never acknowledge when he is wrong or when he has said something hurtful. He never wants to have hard/deep discussions about issues that need to be discussed, and he dictates when the conversation or argument is over. There have been countless times where I have cried or sobbed during a conversation or argument because of something hurtful he said and he will sit there and stare at me with zero expression or emotion on his face. He will not ask me if I’m okay, or will not check on me hours after to make sure I’m okay. He hates my therapist and thinks what I am working on in therapy is stupid and it’s not enough. Every conversation or argument is a competition to him, it is never a “we are on the same team, let’s come up with a solution together”. If I tell him that he broke my heard by something very hurtful he said, he will follow it up with “well you broke my heart too by your mental health messing you up and our life up”.
He says he is supportive of me because he financially provides for us (he does work very hard, I can only work part time while in school now), and that him still being with me after the mess that my mental health has caused, is a sign of his support. Him not leaving me. Yet, when he is home he is not really home because he is emotionally unavailable.
Lastly, he is a firefighter/paramedic and has been in the field for almost 9 years. We have been together for 10 years. I am not sure if his job has anything to contribute to him being this way. We also tried couples counseling for 5 months (7 sessions) and he decided that he wanted to stop going. I truly don’t know what to do anymore.
Posted Jun 5, 2026, 4:44 AM UTC