Expert: David Simonsen - 2/27/2010

Question
For the past year, I have been working up the confidence to leave my marriage because my husband has been verbally and emotionally abusive. I kept telling myself that the next blowout would be the last. Finally, a little over a month ago I told him I was done. He was devastated and promised to go to counseling and change. He actually made real changes this time and claims that now he understands why he acted the way he did. So his behavior is definitely better but I have told him that I still don't trust him. For a while, he was sleeping in the basement. As things got better, I told him he could sleep upstairs but that I was not ready to have sex. He said that was fine and that he could live like that for a year if that is how long it took for me to heal and be ready to be intimate. He travels for work so we have only really been living under these most recent conditions continuously for the past week. Things are better and I feel better though I am still depressed and taking medicine for that. Well, last night he said he couldn't wait another month or two to have sex, that he was worried because for the first time, he is thinking about having sex with someone else and is kind of fine with it. He refuses to masturbate and I am still not ready. So my question is, what is a reasonable amount of time for someone like me to heal and be ready to be intimate? My husband and I have been together for eleven years and he was verbally and emotionally abusive for all of them up until the end of January this year.

Answer
Suzy,
I don't know how long it's going to take you to heal. If you haven't been seeing a counselor with your husband then you need to start now. You have pain that will not go away unless it is worked through. Until you work through it, you won't want to hang with your husband I would imagine. So the sooner you and he start seeing a counselor the better for the both of you.
David
www.help4life.net