Am I going mad, or is he chosing her over me?
My husband & I have been together for 8 years, married for 4. His sister died unexpectedly 5 years ago, he's still just coping and not moving on.
About 18 months ago an old female friend of his (let's call her Trish) - who he's known since she was born & used to babysit - had a crisis where her husband tried to commit suicide and failed. Since then her husband has been threatening to take their son away from her and generally being a nasty piece of work, and making her miserable.
Trish now lives with her parents and has a sister that she is very close to. Unfortunately for me, she seems to rely on my husband to help her with her husband & all the related problems. At first I was OK with this, I've know her & her family for almost as long as I've known my husband so was happy to help in any way possible. It's now been going on for over a year and nothing has changed in her situation, she's not doing anything to help herself and she only goes to my husband for help, not her parents, not her sister.
In the meantime, my husband has been pulling away from me for quite a while. I have been very concerned & felt like it's been getting worse with his relationship with Trish - he stopped kissing me properly, just little pecks. On quite a few occasions over the last 6-8 months I told him that I felt like I was losing him to Trish - he told me that I’m not losing him, especially not to Trish as she’s like a sister to him.
About 2 months ago he told me he wasn't happy in our marriage and felt like we were just good friends living together and sharing a bed. I reminded him about my concerns over the past few months about losing him to Trish and he said that I was losing him to him, not Trish.
We've talked a lot about the problems and found that a lot of them are just little things that annoy him that could be worked out. But we also both noticed that the intimacy has gone out of our marriage which is not good and needs sorting out.
The problem is, I can't be intimate with him due to his relationship with Trish; the relationship is making me very uncomfortable. He's changed since Trish came back into his life, he’s started hiding his phone at night when he used to just leave it hanging around, he sometimes leaves the room very quickly when he gets a phone call & hides who it’s from. I’m getting very suspicious.
When I told him that his relationship is making me uncomfortable his response is either “She’s like a sister to me, nothing is going on”, or he gets angry and tells me I’m being ridiculous.
His relationship with her is making me very unhappy, I can’t get past the feeling that she is coming between us, when she needs him he’s there straight away. And it’s not just dealing with her husband, it’s things like taking her shopping around a gardening centre as she doesn’t know what she needs – can’t she get her family to take her??
My husband can see how upset it’s making me, but when I asked him to stop the relationship for just 2 weeks so we can concentrate on our marriage without her he said “No”. He got really angry and said that she needed him and he wasn’t going to let her down.
I feel like he’s chosen her over me. Is he trying to replace the loss of his sister with his woman?
What can I do now? I can’t live like this anymore, sometimes I just want out.