urg...

How much worse does it get? I am either suffering an allergic reaction (due to being smug about not having hayfever?) or I have a 'summer cold'.

I have much explosive sneezing, a blocked and dripping nose, a tickly throat and itchy eyes. Bleh! I thought I was feeling bad before.

Is it alright to complain when you're 8 months pregnant in 21' weather? Tonight I was attempting to make dinner and was trying to do potatoes at the sink - my bump was leaning into the sink and hurting me while my back was killing me from the bending forward. My feet were hot and aching and I just felt so pathetic, sore and depressed. I expressed this and my husband said nothing, and then I followed up with saying 'how am I going to deal with another four weeks of this?'. My husband's response was to snap in that hard-done by, irritable whiney voice 'Alright, I'll do it'. Which wasn't the point at all.

Why is it so hard for men to extend some comfort or sympathy? It's got to the stage where if I complain, express emotion or God forbid, anger, he gets furiously stressed and angry. I feel like I've been crying for a week. I have been. Yes, we are having financial trouble but it's my financial trouble too. Is his stress a reason to make me into part of his problem, the enemy?

He has always countered my complaints about how he acts with warnings about how bad it could be - all the scummy, alcoholic partners and fathers he has seen in his line of work (selling alcohol, not social work!) But I've never seen that as relevant - I wouldn't be with those men in the first place, why bother comparing. From reading Rollercoaster and talking to various people, I'm coming to the conclusion that my husband's 'niceguy' status is no longer cause for celebration. He's no better than the other good guys out there and I think he may be worse than many of them. Or he just doesn't like me any more. I suppose he might be very different if he was with someone else.

Does anyone else have a marriage that exists without emotional support? What do you do instead? So you just live without it? Is that do-able or realistic? I really never want to put myself or my children through a separation, but sometimes the idea of years of loneliness and lack of closeness stretching out ahead of me terrify me - as a colleague once termed it, 'what an appalling vista'. I wonder if there is a way to get what you need from a relationship, from outside that relationship, if you are still in it, if you see what I mean.

A friend suggested she gets great support from friends she has made recently, but she's a case in point - she is busy with her own family and her own responsibilities and is rarely available for casual socialising, let alone real emotional support. Which is how most adults are these days, we're not teenagers anymore, I can't believe anyone really wants a friend to fetch up in tears on their doorstep at 10 pm on a weeknight looking for succour. People have their own lives to live with partners and children to take care of. It's a closed circle, in my experience. Ideas?