Family holiday looms as our marriage is in crisis
Dear Coleen
My wife and I had a huge argument recently after months of not getting on. We have two kids, aged eight and five, and we’ve been together for 10 years.
To be honest, we’ve been drifting apart for a couple of years now – not communicating properly, going out with different groups of friends, and sex is nonexistent – but I suppose we’ve carried on because we have young children.
Then a couple of weeks ago I found out my wife had been hanging around with a guy she knows – he’s a dad at my daughter’s school who’s divorced and has his kids to stay half of the time, so he’s around a lot.
When I asked her about him, she told me I was stupid and to get my facts straight, but she didn’t actually deny there was anything going on between them. Since then, we’ve barely spoken to each other.
Now we have to go abroad on holiday with our kids and I can’t stand the sight of her. How can we do this?
We have to manage for their sake and somehow try to postpone the showdown. What do you suggest?
Coleen says
There’s always the option of one of you dropping out and the other taking a friend instead.
But if you don’t want to do that, then you just have to be incredibly grown up, sensible and calm for two weeks and agree beforehand not to discuss your relationship while you’re there and to focus on giving the kids a fantastic time.
It won’t be easy, so don’t do it if you think you’ll row for a fortnight because those are the memories your kids will be left with.
But you can’t keep postponing facing up to your marriage crisis and that’s really what you’ve been doing for the past couple of years.
So when you’re back, you have to deal with it but, maybe before you throw in the towel, have some relationship therapy. It could be that you’ve just lost each other, and have forgotten how to be a couple.