My WAW has had very low self esteem since childhood/adolescence despite being a brilliant and beautiful woman in so many ways. She just never believed she would do well on the exam (of course she got an A), or the food for the party would be good (people loved it) or the people at the party would have a good time (they enjoyed it immensely), etc. Her working assumption was always the negative/worst case scenario, and that she was never good enough. That came from her relations with her parents, who loved her in many ways but held the bar of success so high that she always felt she could never clear that hurdle. I truly don't think she loved herself, and I, due in part to my failures, couldn't fill her void. Granted, no one can ever fill your void, but I do feel I contributed mightily to her unhappiness with a lack of emotional connection and romantic validation. I took her and the marriage for granted for too long.
She's made great strides in that area in the past year. I'm truly happy for her whether the M survives or not. I'd believe we're both on the way to being better people in fixing our respective holes; the question is whether we can take those transformations into a better marriage.
