Back ground, married 26+ years. Two children, one 24 and married and the other is a senior in HS still living at home. In the past year, I have been absolutely blind-sided about our marriage. Looking back, I can see the warning signs but I did not recognize them for what they were until fairly recently. Right now I do not feel any connection with my wife. It is like she is shutting me out. I have asked to be let back in in every way I can think. We are seeing a marriage counselor together. Several tries with other MC have been either counter-productive or neutral at best. We are also both seeing individual counselors. The jury is still out if either of the individual counselors will be helpful.
I want a happy, strong relationship and marriage. I am fighting for it. I do not know what is going on in my wife's mind so I can't say if she feels she is fighting for our marriage. All I can report is feeling like she is shutting me out and not opening up to me. That scares me.
I have fairly recently been diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Looking back, I have suffered from GAD all my life. My counselor is working with me to get at the root causes. Time will tell. I was placed on Effexor with good results. It was like night and day difference. In addition, I saw a clinical psychologist and did some reading on my own. The clinical psychologist said I had made significant progress and that further treatment would not be needed. After moving, my new family physician changed my medication from Effexor to Prozac. Once again, it was a wonderful new day with a lot less anxiety. In addition, he prescribed Remeron to help me sleep (yes, I know it also helps with the anxiety). By all accounts, my life should have been getting better, instead it went to hell.
My wife of 25+ years was in a very bad place, depression wise. When Robin Williams killed himself, my wife said she felt envy of him. My wife started seeing a counselor about her depression. Our family doc prescribed her Wellbutrion. She stopped taking it after only two weeks due to the side effects. My wife has suffered from depression off and on for our entire marriage. Any time she was ever given medication, she would not never take it longer than two to three weeks before deciding the side effects were too much. In this depressed state, my wife decided I was an alcoholic. She counted 98 beer cans and assumed that I had consumed all of them in eight days. She took this information to her counselor and her counselor brought the concern to our family doctor. When I returned from a business trip I found out. How I found out becomes another problem in all of this. I opened my wife's computer and email accounts. I read what she had written. I was absolutely floored. My wife was attending Al-Anon meetings and had joined the Face Book Al-Anon closed group. The things she wrote about me were absolutely horrible. When I confronted her about it, it blew up that I had been reading her emails and FB posts. She changed all of her passwords. At this point, my anxiety is through the roof. I hold a security clearance for my job. An accusation of alcohol abuse can cause the loss of security clearance. I told my boss about my wife's allegations and did a self-referral to be evaluated for alcohol abuse. The clinical psychologist that performed the evaluation concluded that I was drinking too much but that there was no dependency, either physical or psychological. When presented with a signed letter of that, my wife thought I had pulled the wool over his eyes (she used those exact words on her FB post). I know that is what she said because I had been able to guess her new passwords. My alcohol education program consisted of abstaining from all alcohol for six weeks and attend weekly classes. At the end of the six week program, I was given a clean bill of mental health in regards to alcohol use. I continued to abstain. I knew my wife was still very upset and did not believe I was not an alcoholic and neither did her counselor. Remember, I was still able to read her email and FB posts.
This cat and mouse game continued of her changing her passwords and me figuring them out went on for a few weeks. Finally, I purchased a key stroke logger and installed it on our home desk top computer. I did the research and determined that it was legal as I was the owner of the computer. The rants of my wife were getting more and more extreme and hurtful, she was saying the only reason she did not leave me was because we were living in a foreign country, our youngest daughter was still in school and my wife did not have a job. I could no longer keep my mouth shut and confronted her about what she had written. My wife was livid, absolutely shaking with rage livid that I had read what she wrote. She demanded to know how I managed to read what she wrote. At first, I did not say anything, I stayed quiet. Finally, on her first guess she said "key logger". I confirmed that it was indeed a key logger. She grabbed her car keys and left the house. I immediately uninstalled the key logger.
While I had access to her emails and FB post, I discovered that my wife's counselor was telling my wife things that I had shared with my new counselor. I confronted him about it and he hemmed and hawed and gave non-answers. I told him I was putting him on notice. Not two weeks late, he again violated my confidence and told my wife's counselor stuff, and in turn was told to my wife and I had proof. If I had any faith in the Inspector General system in the DoD or government as a whole I would have filed a complaint. As the agencies involved, being who/what they are, I decided to avoid the proctology exam so to speak.
Several weeks later, my wife began to tell me that several months back I had been physically rough with her one evening when I had been drinking. The next day, I went into my boss' office and told him word-for-word what my wife said. I recommend my boss have the situation investigated. I also told my wife to tell our family practice doctor that I had been physically rough with her. She declined. Without my wife coming forward to either my boss or our doctor, my boss could not launch an investigation. Things seemed to have settled down and were not so tense – for awhile.
Fast forward a few weeks and my wife was talking to some ladies after church. In the conversation, my wife accused me of isolating her and being emotionally abusive. When I became aware of it, I immediately went to my boss and demanded he request an investigation. One of the ladies that my wife spoke to, also reported it to my boss. An investigation was started. When the licensed social worker contacted my wife, my wife back tracked and said the other person was making the whole thing up. This scared me to the core. My wife and I had been physically intimate that Sunday morning before church, after church my wife made the accusations and then came home and snuggled up to me on the couch to watch TV. What kind of person is capable of going from physically intimate to horrible accusations and back to snuggling in the span of a few hours?
As I said, I was scared. I did not know what my wife would do or say next. I opened a new checking and savings accounts and moved most but not all of my money into the new accounts. I froze one of the credit cards completely, reduced another credit card limit from $22,500 to $1,000 and the last one I shredded it. Needless to say, when my wife find out she was furious. This was the first time she started researching divorce. I transferred $10,000 to her savings account as that is what we had saved for her new car when we returned to the US. Eventually I restored access to all the banking sites.
A few weeks later my wife began to research the Top and Best divorce lawyers in Florida. We were moving in a matter of weeks to Florida. This was not just curiosity, a what's what kind of research, this was extensive pointed research into nine different sites and lawyers. I once again could not control my mouth and confronted her. At first she tried to act like she had not, then got pissed at me for having found out. Once again she wanted to know how I had found out, how had I spied on her. I told her, it was easy, her Google search history. It showed everything she had ever searched, as far back as she had a Google account. Once again she did not express any kind of empathy that I was hurting, she was just pissed that I had found out. For the record, I have stopped trying to find anything, no looking in her history files, in emails, etc. I do not want to know. My wife says such horrible mean things and researches such ugliness. Someone I know pointed out that my wife has been emotionally abusing me for years. So, there is more than enough blame to go around.
We agreed to a cease-fire if you will. We would not try to fix anything in the last few weeks in England as we were likely to break something else. We agreed to start fresh once we got to Florida, to go with a faith based approach. My wife found a marriage counselor, her cridetial was the counselor accepted our insurance – not that it was faith-based. At our first session, my wife whips out an email I had written to her months ago. No warning to me that is what she wanted to talk about. Basically it felt like getting thrown under the bus. To top it off, the counselor gave me the distinct impression that divorce was a viable option. I refused to go back. I did some research and found a faith-based counselor. At our second session, my wife and I talked about the email in question. At the end of the session, the counselor asked my wife if she felt safe going home with me. She hesitated but assured the counselor that she did not fear for her physical safety. The drive back was quiet and we hardly spoke. The counselor had seemed confused about the email and I asked if he wanted to read it, he did. So the next day, I forwarded him a copy. He called us and wanted to get us in as soon as possible. When I met with him, his first question was about our drive home the other evening. I told him that it was quiet and that we did not discuss the session. He seemed surprised because that is exactly what my wife had reported.
I mentioned all of this to my personal counselor. She was curious about "the email". I sent it to her. She said it was obvious that I was in a lot of emotional pain and that I was crying out for help and love.
I have spent the last two weeks away (short weekend between at home) on business. This past week, I had a thought, an insight if you will. I feel I am in deep water, over my head and I am flailing about trying to treat water and stay alive. My wife however does not see the water and only sees me lashing out. I asked her if that made sense, she said maybe. I then asked her to open up to me, that she seems so distant and closed off. What I got was that she was too tired. Two weeks gone on a business trip and I am opening myself back up to her and all she can say is she is tired.
I am sure I have left out a lot. I cannot even begin to try to talk for my wife. I do not know what she is feeling.
All of this has taken a toll on me. My lower back is in so much pain, I take narcotics around the clock. The pain management doctors are talking about burning out some of the nerves in my lower back because the narcotics are not keeping the pain under control. With my back in absolute agony, I have not been able to do cardio workouts. Couple that with stress eating and I have gained an easy 40 pounds. Looking at myself in the mirror, I look ten years older than I did a year ago.
So after not having a chance to talk to my wife in two weeks, I get a curt response of "I am tired". Well, so am I. I am tired of being emotionally abused. While my current career is winding down, I do not need any scandals that could affect my security clearance or ability to do my job. I have been very up front and above board with my new boss so that he can watch for any warning signs if my performance slips.
Break//break, several days later. So, today I came home for lunch, 28 Sep, my wife is nearly in tears about how our youngest child wants to get as far away from us as possible. We had always told our kids we would help them in college but we were NOT going to pay for it. If they lived at home, we would continue to provide room and board. My wife weeping said that our youngest wants to get away from us. She does not want to lose her baby. On the drive back to work, I thought it over and said (internally okay, we can cover room and board if she goes away to school). I emailed my wife that. Did I get any kind of acknowledgement? Nope. When I got home and asked if she had gotten the email, my wife gave me a half-hearted answer about reading it on the go. Nothing indicating she thought it was a good idea. Then a little later in the evening, my wife in passing mentioned that her school work had dredged up some bad memories that she discussed with her counselor today. A little while later, I sat down and tried to talk with my wife. I asked her if she thought things between us was getting better. Her answer was, no, well sometimes but then other times no, things were just as bad. She could not provide any specifics of things that had gotten better or worse or stayed the same. She then said that she tells me about her day and that I then say she is not opening up. Well, she is not telling me her thoughts, she is telling me her reactions to others – not what she is feeling about us. She teared up and said "this is why I can't talk to you" implying that I am causing her to be upset. I sat there kind of stunned. How do I respond to that? I have not complained about anything in days and days (a horrible habit I picked up from my mother and I am working VERY hard to break). I have been helpful around the house, asking how I can help more, what could I do. I constantly praise her, tell her she is doing well, she is smart enough, she will get through her program, etc. What do I get in the return, she saying she can't talk to me. She said she is tired and had to go to bed right then.
So once again, she refuses to talk to me about us. I thought I saw things as getting better, she does not. She implies that our children want nothing to do with us, or more accurately me. So, end of the day, my assessment and prediction is my wife is planning her bail out as soon as our youngest is out of high school. Nothing I have done this past year has been good enough for her. If things are not exactly 100% her way, she gets upset and makes everyone around her miserable. My mother is the same in that regard but my mother goes about it differently. So I guess it is true that men end up marrying their mothers (metaphorically). All my wife seems to care about what I can provide, stuff that is…vehicles, house, money, etc. It is becoming more and more obvious she does not care about my wellbeing. I have screens shots (back when I was reading her emails and FB posts) of her saying she did not care about my health but rather she only cared that if I would be able to label her a ***** or a nag. What happened to in sickness and in health, for better or worse? I guess that is alive only as long as she can get something from me. Once I give her that, she is gone. The "that" is getting our youngest through high school. My wife raises a point often, as recently as yesterday to people we barely know that her parents divorced when she was our daughter's age and a senior, just like our daughter. That was one of the first things out of my wife's mouth when we met the first marriage counselor here in our new area – the reason for marriage counseling was she did not want her daughter to go through the same things she had to endure for her senior year. So my wife's motivation is not to fix the marriage and have a loving, mutually supportive relationship, it is so our daughter can finish high school with her parents still married (I know I am not supposed to assign value to other's actions but not sure how I can't in this case).
I am at a loss as to what I can do. I have made major changes in my life – I stopped drinking every day. I occasionally have one or two beers on a weekend. I smoke the occasional cigar, but my wife still complains about the vape stick. I am going to individual counseling for my anxiety, on better meds for it – and no positive reaction from my wife. I stopped snooping completely – but she says she can't trust me and can't tell me what it would take on my part. She wanted to go back to school to get her teaching credentials – I paid the tuition in cash, books – cash, testing fee – cash, fingerprint fees – cash, background check – cash. Multiple trips all over the south Florida area on toll roads – automatic refill for the SunPass. Not once did she have to ask how we would pay for it. I took care of it. I have fully funded her IRA for all these years she has not worked outside the home. Any thanks? Nope. Brand new car she picked out, paid – yep, you guessed it – CASH. For her, the relationship is all about what she can get materially from me. Not love or support. She does not provide it and recoils when I try to provide it to her, unless it is on her terms. I get the distinct impression that my wife thinks and blames all of our problems on me. I am getting to the end of my tolerance. She can't/won't tell me what right looks like. She can't or won't tell me how we get there, all she can do is blame me for her problems and run away crying. And I have kept going after her. Well, I am stopping pursuing COMPLETELY as of right this minute. A clinical psychologist said the other day that individual counseling alone with couples in trouble without couples counseling dooms the relationship. My wife has been adamant that she only wanted us to do individual counseling and at some time in the future do couples therapy. I have been insisting on couple's therapy for years now. My wife has dragged her feet and mopped along, counselor after counselor for five years now. So, where does this leave me? In a lot of physical pain and even more emotional pain.
When I have opened up and told my wife what was bothering me or what she did that hurt me, to my face it was apologetic but to our oldest child she ridiculed me. Behind my back, she has called me a bloated toad among other things.
I stop here, I stop now. I will not pursue her, I will not ask. It is apparently time to make like a turtle and hide in my shell until my wife decides to do whatever she is going to do, maybe get up the guts to call it quits or whatever. Now I know why I was drinking so much, dealing with a bitter unhappy person that seems to take sadistic pleasure in causing me more emotional pain. The emotional pain has been channeled into my lower back. The only thing the pain management docs say they can do is basically burn out the nerves in my lower back. I can't keep taking pain killers. I am probably on the verge of being hooked on pain meds to control my very real back pain. Burning out the nerves in my back might help, I don't know. It could come back in another location. The real pain, the deep pain is the unreturned love of my wife of 26 plus years. I truly believe God brought us together. Long term marriages have ups and downs, they have problems that have to be addressed and solved. What I am facing is a wife that is blaming me for all her problems and pain and refuses to share with me. I do not want this to end in a divorce. No one wins in a divorce, everyone loses and loses more than they know. But it can't be just one of us fighting for the marriage, we both have to work on our marriage and ourselves. My wife is appearing to me to be very selfish.
I have to focus on my health or I will be dead of a heart attack or stroke in a short period of time. I have to stop allowing her to cause me so much angst that my back spasms and that I am in tears due to the pain in my back with the only relief is from narcotics. I am back to eating tums by the handful. I have gained 40 pounds and visibly aged 10 years in just the past 365 days. What can I do?
I want a happy, strong relationship and marriage. I am fighting for it. I do not know what is going on in my wife's mind so I can't say if she feels she is fighting for our marriage. All I can report is feeling like she is shutting me out and not opening up to me. That scares me.
I have fairly recently been diagnosed with General Anxiety Disorder (GAD). Looking back, I have suffered from GAD all my life. My counselor is working with me to get at the root causes. Time will tell. I was placed on Effexor with good results. It was like night and day difference. In addition, I saw a clinical psychologist and did some reading on my own. The clinical psychologist said I had made significant progress and that further treatment would not be needed. After moving, my new family physician changed my medication from Effexor to Prozac. Once again, it was a wonderful new day with a lot less anxiety. In addition, he prescribed Remeron to help me sleep (yes, I know it also helps with the anxiety). By all accounts, my life should have been getting better, instead it went to hell.
My wife of 25+ years was in a very bad place, depression wise. When Robin Williams killed himself, my wife said she felt envy of him. My wife started seeing a counselor about her depression. Our family doc prescribed her Wellbutrion. She stopped taking it after only two weeks due to the side effects. My wife has suffered from depression off and on for our entire marriage. Any time she was ever given medication, she would not never take it longer than two to three weeks before deciding the side effects were too much. In this depressed state, my wife decided I was an alcoholic. She counted 98 beer cans and assumed that I had consumed all of them in eight days. She took this information to her counselor and her counselor brought the concern to our family doctor. When I returned from a business trip I found out. How I found out becomes another problem in all of this. I opened my wife's computer and email accounts. I read what she had written. I was absolutely floored. My wife was attending Al-Anon meetings and had joined the Face Book Al-Anon closed group. The things she wrote about me were absolutely horrible. When I confronted her about it, it blew up that I had been reading her emails and FB posts. She changed all of her passwords. At this point, my anxiety is through the roof. I hold a security clearance for my job. An accusation of alcohol abuse can cause the loss of security clearance. I told my boss about my wife's allegations and did a self-referral to be evaluated for alcohol abuse. The clinical psychologist that performed the evaluation concluded that I was drinking too much but that there was no dependency, either physical or psychological. When presented with a signed letter of that, my wife thought I had pulled the wool over his eyes (she used those exact words on her FB post). I know that is what she said because I had been able to guess her new passwords. My alcohol education program consisted of abstaining from all alcohol for six weeks and attend weekly classes. At the end of the six week program, I was given a clean bill of mental health in regards to alcohol use. I continued to abstain. I knew my wife was still very upset and did not believe I was not an alcoholic and neither did her counselor. Remember, I was still able to read her email and FB posts.
This cat and mouse game continued of her changing her passwords and me figuring them out went on for a few weeks. Finally, I purchased a key stroke logger and installed it on our home desk top computer. I did the research and determined that it was legal as I was the owner of the computer. The rants of my wife were getting more and more extreme and hurtful, she was saying the only reason she did not leave me was because we were living in a foreign country, our youngest daughter was still in school and my wife did not have a job. I could no longer keep my mouth shut and confronted her about what she had written. My wife was livid, absolutely shaking with rage livid that I had read what she wrote. She demanded to know how I managed to read what she wrote. At first, I did not say anything, I stayed quiet. Finally, on her first guess she said "key logger". I confirmed that it was indeed a key logger. She grabbed her car keys and left the house. I immediately uninstalled the key logger.
While I had access to her emails and FB post, I discovered that my wife's counselor was telling my wife things that I had shared with my new counselor. I confronted him about it and he hemmed and hawed and gave non-answers. I told him I was putting him on notice. Not two weeks late, he again violated my confidence and told my wife's counselor stuff, and in turn was told to my wife and I had proof. If I had any faith in the Inspector General system in the DoD or government as a whole I would have filed a complaint. As the agencies involved, being who/what they are, I decided to avoid the proctology exam so to speak.
Several weeks later, my wife began to tell me that several months back I had been physically rough with her one evening when I had been drinking. The next day, I went into my boss' office and told him word-for-word what my wife said. I recommend my boss have the situation investigated. I also told my wife to tell our family practice doctor that I had been physically rough with her. She declined. Without my wife coming forward to either my boss or our doctor, my boss could not launch an investigation. Things seemed to have settled down and were not so tense – for awhile.
Fast forward a few weeks and my wife was talking to some ladies after church. In the conversation, my wife accused me of isolating her and being emotionally abusive. When I became aware of it, I immediately went to my boss and demanded he request an investigation. One of the ladies that my wife spoke to, also reported it to my boss. An investigation was started. When the licensed social worker contacted my wife, my wife back tracked and said the other person was making the whole thing up. This scared me to the core. My wife and I had been physically intimate that Sunday morning before church, after church my wife made the accusations and then came home and snuggled up to me on the couch to watch TV. What kind of person is capable of going from physically intimate to horrible accusations and back to snuggling in the span of a few hours?
As I said, I was scared. I did not know what my wife would do or say next. I opened a new checking and savings accounts and moved most but not all of my money into the new accounts. I froze one of the credit cards completely, reduced another credit card limit from $22,500 to $1,000 and the last one I shredded it. Needless to say, when my wife find out she was furious. This was the first time she started researching divorce. I transferred $10,000 to her savings account as that is what we had saved for her new car when we returned to the US. Eventually I restored access to all the banking sites.
A few weeks later my wife began to research the Top and Best divorce lawyers in Florida. We were moving in a matter of weeks to Florida. This was not just curiosity, a what's what kind of research, this was extensive pointed research into nine different sites and lawyers. I once again could not control my mouth and confronted her. At first she tried to act like she had not, then got pissed at me for having found out. Once again she wanted to know how I had found out, how had I spied on her. I told her, it was easy, her Google search history. It showed everything she had ever searched, as far back as she had a Google account. Once again she did not express any kind of empathy that I was hurting, she was just pissed that I had found out. For the record, I have stopped trying to find anything, no looking in her history files, in emails, etc. I do not want to know. My wife says such horrible mean things and researches such ugliness. Someone I know pointed out that my wife has been emotionally abusing me for years. So, there is more than enough blame to go around.
We agreed to a cease-fire if you will. We would not try to fix anything in the last few weeks in England as we were likely to break something else. We agreed to start fresh once we got to Florida, to go with a faith based approach. My wife found a marriage counselor, her cridetial was the counselor accepted our insurance – not that it was faith-based. At our first session, my wife whips out an email I had written to her months ago. No warning to me that is what she wanted to talk about. Basically it felt like getting thrown under the bus. To top it off, the counselor gave me the distinct impression that divorce was a viable option. I refused to go back. I did some research and found a faith-based counselor. At our second session, my wife and I talked about the email in question. At the end of the session, the counselor asked my wife if she felt safe going home with me. She hesitated but assured the counselor that she did not fear for her physical safety. The drive back was quiet and we hardly spoke. The counselor had seemed confused about the email and I asked if he wanted to read it, he did. So the next day, I forwarded him a copy. He called us and wanted to get us in as soon as possible. When I met with him, his first question was about our drive home the other evening. I told him that it was quiet and that we did not discuss the session. He seemed surprised because that is exactly what my wife had reported.
I mentioned all of this to my personal counselor. She was curious about "the email". I sent it to her. She said it was obvious that I was in a lot of emotional pain and that I was crying out for help and love.
I have spent the last two weeks away (short weekend between at home) on business. This past week, I had a thought, an insight if you will. I feel I am in deep water, over my head and I am flailing about trying to treat water and stay alive. My wife however does not see the water and only sees me lashing out. I asked her if that made sense, she said maybe. I then asked her to open up to me, that she seems so distant and closed off. What I got was that she was too tired. Two weeks gone on a business trip and I am opening myself back up to her and all she can say is she is tired.
I am sure I have left out a lot. I cannot even begin to try to talk for my wife. I do not know what she is feeling.
All of this has taken a toll on me. My lower back is in so much pain, I take narcotics around the clock. The pain management doctors are talking about burning out some of the nerves in my lower back because the narcotics are not keeping the pain under control. With my back in absolute agony, I have not been able to do cardio workouts. Couple that with stress eating and I have gained an easy 40 pounds. Looking at myself in the mirror, I look ten years older than I did a year ago.
So after not having a chance to talk to my wife in two weeks, I get a curt response of "I am tired". Well, so am I. I am tired of being emotionally abused. While my current career is winding down, I do not need any scandals that could affect my security clearance or ability to do my job. I have been very up front and above board with my new boss so that he can watch for any warning signs if my performance slips.
Break//break, several days later. So, today I came home for lunch, 28 Sep, my wife is nearly in tears about how our youngest child wants to get as far away from us as possible. We had always told our kids we would help them in college but we were NOT going to pay for it. If they lived at home, we would continue to provide room and board. My wife weeping said that our youngest wants to get away from us. She does not want to lose her baby. On the drive back to work, I thought it over and said (internally okay, we can cover room and board if she goes away to school). I emailed my wife that. Did I get any kind of acknowledgement? Nope. When I got home and asked if she had gotten the email, my wife gave me a half-hearted answer about reading it on the go. Nothing indicating she thought it was a good idea. Then a little later in the evening, my wife in passing mentioned that her school work had dredged up some bad memories that she discussed with her counselor today. A little while later, I sat down and tried to talk with my wife. I asked her if she thought things between us was getting better. Her answer was, no, well sometimes but then other times no, things were just as bad. She could not provide any specifics of things that had gotten better or worse or stayed the same. She then said that she tells me about her day and that I then say she is not opening up. Well, she is not telling me her thoughts, she is telling me her reactions to others – not what she is feeling about us. She teared up and said "this is why I can't talk to you" implying that I am causing her to be upset. I sat there kind of stunned. How do I respond to that? I have not complained about anything in days and days (a horrible habit I picked up from my mother and I am working VERY hard to break). I have been helpful around the house, asking how I can help more, what could I do. I constantly praise her, tell her she is doing well, she is smart enough, she will get through her program, etc. What do I get in the return, she saying she can't talk to me. She said she is tired and had to go to bed right then.
So once again, she refuses to talk to me about us. I thought I saw things as getting better, she does not. She implies that our children want nothing to do with us, or more accurately me. So, end of the day, my assessment and prediction is my wife is planning her bail out as soon as our youngest is out of high school. Nothing I have done this past year has been good enough for her. If things are not exactly 100% her way, she gets upset and makes everyone around her miserable. My mother is the same in that regard but my mother goes about it differently. So I guess it is true that men end up marrying their mothers (metaphorically). All my wife seems to care about what I can provide, stuff that is…vehicles, house, money, etc. It is becoming more and more obvious she does not care about my wellbeing. I have screens shots (back when I was reading her emails and FB posts) of her saying she did not care about my health but rather she only cared that if I would be able to label her a ***** or a nag. What happened to in sickness and in health, for better or worse? I guess that is alive only as long as she can get something from me. Once I give her that, she is gone. The "that" is getting our youngest through high school. My wife raises a point often, as recently as yesterday to people we barely know that her parents divorced when she was our daughter's age and a senior, just like our daughter. That was one of the first things out of my wife's mouth when we met the first marriage counselor here in our new area – the reason for marriage counseling was she did not want her daughter to go through the same things she had to endure for her senior year. So my wife's motivation is not to fix the marriage and have a loving, mutually supportive relationship, it is so our daughter can finish high school with her parents still married (I know I am not supposed to assign value to other's actions but not sure how I can't in this case).
I am at a loss as to what I can do. I have made major changes in my life – I stopped drinking every day. I occasionally have one or two beers on a weekend. I smoke the occasional cigar, but my wife still complains about the vape stick. I am going to individual counseling for my anxiety, on better meds for it – and no positive reaction from my wife. I stopped snooping completely – but she says she can't trust me and can't tell me what it would take on my part. She wanted to go back to school to get her teaching credentials – I paid the tuition in cash, books – cash, testing fee – cash, fingerprint fees – cash, background check – cash. Multiple trips all over the south Florida area on toll roads – automatic refill for the SunPass. Not once did she have to ask how we would pay for it. I took care of it. I have fully funded her IRA for all these years she has not worked outside the home. Any thanks? Nope. Brand new car she picked out, paid – yep, you guessed it – CASH. For her, the relationship is all about what she can get materially from me. Not love or support. She does not provide it and recoils when I try to provide it to her, unless it is on her terms. I get the distinct impression that my wife thinks and blames all of our problems on me. I am getting to the end of my tolerance. She can't/won't tell me what right looks like. She can't or won't tell me how we get there, all she can do is blame me for her problems and run away crying. And I have kept going after her. Well, I am stopping pursuing COMPLETELY as of right this minute. A clinical psychologist said the other day that individual counseling alone with couples in trouble without couples counseling dooms the relationship. My wife has been adamant that she only wanted us to do individual counseling and at some time in the future do couples therapy. I have been insisting on couple's therapy for years now. My wife has dragged her feet and mopped along, counselor after counselor for five years now. So, where does this leave me? In a lot of physical pain and even more emotional pain.
When I have opened up and told my wife what was bothering me or what she did that hurt me, to my face it was apologetic but to our oldest child she ridiculed me. Behind my back, she has called me a bloated toad among other things.
I stop here, I stop now. I will not pursue her, I will not ask. It is apparently time to make like a turtle and hide in my shell until my wife decides to do whatever she is going to do, maybe get up the guts to call it quits or whatever. Now I know why I was drinking so much, dealing with a bitter unhappy person that seems to take sadistic pleasure in causing me more emotional pain. The emotional pain has been channeled into my lower back. The only thing the pain management docs say they can do is basically burn out the nerves in my lower back. I can't keep taking pain killers. I am probably on the verge of being hooked on pain meds to control my very real back pain. Burning out the nerves in my back might help, I don't know. It could come back in another location. The real pain, the deep pain is the unreturned love of my wife of 26 plus years. I truly believe God brought us together. Long term marriages have ups and downs, they have problems that have to be addressed and solved. What I am facing is a wife that is blaming me for all her problems and pain and refuses to share with me. I do not want this to end in a divorce. No one wins in a divorce, everyone loses and loses more than they know. But it can't be just one of us fighting for the marriage, we both have to work on our marriage and ourselves. My wife is appearing to me to be very selfish.
I have to focus on my health or I will be dead of a heart attack or stroke in a short period of time. I have to stop allowing her to cause me so much angst that my back spasms and that I am in tears due to the pain in my back with the only relief is from narcotics. I am back to eating tums by the handful. I have gained 40 pounds and visibly aged 10 years in just the past 365 days. What can I do?
Put the internet to work for you.
No comments:
Post a Comment