Thank you, Skan, Heartache101 & Selkiescot for your prompt and empathetic replies. Skan, your reply has a lot for me to digest. The mirror you hold up to me is not easy to look at. Heartache101, I am not in any position to make a decision one way or another now. I don’t have the same support systems that most people in this society have. Yes, my American friends would be supportive but they’re distant. Among my family and other friends who are spread out around the world, they love me to bits but divorce is uncommon and I would need to get a proper handle on this situation and on all my options before I can even hint that there is something wrong. I'd need to assure them that my life will be fine and that I am holding my head up. They just wouldn’t know how to respond otherwise and I can’t risk losing them on top of not having a job, no kids, no husband, and very little savings. My mother was my main support in my first year of marriage and I remember her giving me good advice and telling me to just refuse to talk to my in-laws and focus on my husband because it was he I’d married, not them. That was huge coming from her; in her society, a marriage is between two families but she’s always been comparatively progressive. In our second year, I actually left him and went back to live with my parents (I was just out of grad school – no job, no money) but she made it very clear that she would not support me emotionally. Part of it was because of where she was in life at that time. My husband and I ended up reconciling in part because he realized he had taken the wrong tack with me by following his parents’ lead and we really did see potential in our relationship at that time. I had also had a one-year break from my in-laws by then. Anyway, I can only make a decision when I feel empowered to go in one direction or the other. Right now I am not. I am still in the information-gathering stage and the "trying to get a grip" stage.
I have been going to a therapist, the same one who was our couples’ therapist 6 years ago, but she is on the verge of retirement and is kind of phoning it in now. She was upfront about that at the start, that she is on her way out and is less invested, but I needed someone so desperately then that I thought it best to go talk to her. At my request two days ago, she sent a couple of references for continuing my personal counseling with someone else (I figure now is the time to switch) and for couples therapy too. My husband has been acting contrite enough that I insisted that if he wants couples therapy then he needs to initiate it. It’s been slow going though—wrong phone numbers, people not taking new clients, etc. That’s why I turned to you today. You’re right, I do need someone I can see at least twice a week. Once a week is not enough. He is seeing a psychologist, the same one he saw for individual therapy 6 years ago and it seems like it is constructive. But I think a couples therapist is who can help us sort out our mutual issues and help us figure out, in light of all of that, as long and complicated as our history is, what path to take.
I just had a long phone conversation with my husband. Although he is being very, very contrite and responsible, I told him that it is not in his place to try and make me feel better, but my own with the help of a psychologist. We need to have a conversation in the presence of a psychologist about why all this has been happening. He doesn't acknowledge the full impact of his parents' abusiveness (and his) and I told him that I need a full acknowledgement and apology in order to move forward.
[This message edited by AffairAgain at 8:22 PM, September 11th (Wednesday)]