Dear Roe,I’m a woman in my 40s, living with my partner and our young daughter. From the outside, our life looks fine, but inside it has worn me down. I do most of the thinking, planning, organising and emotional holding. When I take initiative I’m called controlling. When I step back, I’m told I’m ignoring him. We cannot discuss anything difficult without it becoming a row, and I’m worried about what our daughter absorbs. My partner has childhood and attachment issues. He is emotionally intelligent, which drew me to him, but over time I’ve found him emotionally unavailable. He also struggles with boundaries with women, and has an unusually intense attachment to his family of origin and the place he grew up, which seems bound up with the same issues. What I’m really struggling with is his therapy. He had a male therapist for years and it seemed functional and productive. He said he had reached the end with him and wanted to explore his relationships with women through a female therapist, to understand me better. The irony is the opposite has happened. He’s been seeing her weekly for nearly two years. I make every effort to give him privacy, but I can still hear him laughing loudly during sessions through closed doors. It sounds warm and emotionally intimate in a way he rarely is with me. When I mention this, he says I am invading his privacy by overhearing. I see no meaningful change in him. If anything, he seems more defended and certain he is right. It feels as if therapy is absorbing the emotional intimacy that should be in our relationship. I’ve told him I will leave if things don’t change. He doesn’t take me seriously. Am I being unreasonable?It sounds like you feel emotionally lonely in your marriage, and like the bulk of the emotional work of the relationship has fallen to you, putting you in the “emotional manager” role that many women in straight relationships are pushed into. It also sounds like over the past two years, you have started to feel less understood, connected and respected, and like your conflict has escalated. Feeling anxious and upset about that isn’t unreasonable at all. It all sounds very difficult, and like it needs real attention and support. However, I would like to warn you off projecting these issues on to your partner’s relationship with his therapist, because you not only risk misplacing myriad issues on to one simple, external answer instead of addressing the dynamic between you, but also alienating your husband further by criticising him and trying to control the one space that’s meant to be – and indeed should be – safe and private for him.You say your husband has accused you of invading his privacy by listening to his therapy, and I want you to be very honest with yourself if you have indeed been lingering, eavesdropping or trying to listen. If you have, that needs to stop immediately. Therapy needs to be private and safe, and he deserves that. It also sounds like whatever way you have been overhearing him is amplifying your anxiety, as you’re reading into his laughter and feeling more lonely because of it. What you can listen to is the feelings that the laughter he shares with his therapist brings up in you.When you hear your husband laughing or speaking warmly with his therapist, it sounds like you feel lonely, jealous, sad, hurt, vulnerable and like you are desperately longing for the warmth and emotional intimacy you feel you have lost. It also sounds like, compared with the defensive and conflict-ridden interactions you have with him, you also miss the sense of both feeling welcomed into his emotional world, and being met with the warmth and curiosity that you’re imagining he expresses in his sessions. I’m not sure what you mean when you say your partner “struggles with boundaries with women”, but it could also be that your partner sometimes tries to impress or charm other women and you feel like he may be doing this with his therapist, while not trying to understand or communicate kindly with you. Again, these feelings are difficult and upsetting – but it’s important to note that absolutely none of that is actually about his therapist. It’s about you missing your husband. And that feels like an important place to start talking to him from.Organise a quiet time to come together and talk, no kids, no phones. Start from a place of vulnerability and focus on your own feelings. Tell him you love him; that you have been missing feeling the warmth and intimate connection you used to share; that you feel like your conflicts and communication have gone downhill over the past two years; and that it’s important for you that this get addressed. Then wait. See what he says. If you feel like he starts to get critical or attacking or snide, gently interrupt him and ask can you both start from a place of openness and expressing emotion, not blame. What you’re trying to do is upend the dynamic you both seem to be stuck in, where you blame each other instead of being vulnerable.[ ‘My husband says he just wants to live together as friends’Opens in new window ]Express to him that when he was seeing your old therapist, you feel your communication was better (or whatever specifics you can include). Recently you’ve noticed your conflicts escalating. Ask him what he thinks about that. Listen to the answer. Tell him you understand the importance of him having a safe space to process his emotions, but you feel that at the moment, your relationship needs some external support, too. Ask if he would attend couples counselling – and if he agrees, ask him to arrange it, so you don’t feel like you’re the manager.Also ask if he would engage in a standing monthly date with you so that you can check in with each other, checking in on how any conflicts were managed, any places either of you needs support, anything you did for each other that deserves a “thank you” that never arrived. Again, you’re trying to disrupt your shared pattern by both engaging in emotional work, not letting any resentments build and opting into calmer, more open communication. Is he, like you, willing to engage in the work of building more intimacy between you? If he brushes you off, remain calm but clear. Do not focus on monitoring his therapy but name the conditions needed for you to stay: couples counselling, practical redistribution of emotional labour, clearer conflict rules, sharded commitment to better communication, and observable change over time. Invite him into that work, and see if he joins you – if he makes the appointment, shows up differently, if he commits to making your home calmer for your daughter.That’s the information you need. Therapy may be helping him, or it may be giving him a place to feel understood without requiring him to practise that understanding with you. But the future of your relationship depends on what happens between you. Start turning up for it, and seeing if he joins you there.