Maybe there is something SHE is seeing that I'm not seeing? I do not believe that for one thin second. In fact, that you might actually believe that is almost funny if it weren't such a frightening testimony to your current state of mind.
Even I fall down sometimes. So you are convinced she is not seeing anything clearly then. Frank, I am convinced that your wife is an airhead and I want to thank Sara for putting into words what I didn't have the heart to.
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I'm not beating you up Don't care if you were. I can take it. , I'm just looking for answers They're not going to be found on this board unless you open your eyes and get off the pity pot, positioning yourself as a man of war instead of a loser whose always a day late and a dollar short.
Ok, ok. I said I've been knocked way down for months now but not asked for help, except from my wife who cannot help. Yes, I'm 'smart enough' to know what is going on but right now I'm in emotion, not logic.
And most importantly, I've been living in the fear that if I didn't do 'the right things' she'd leave, and she did.
So help me. I know I can help ANYONE else but I'm stuck right now helping myself. That is arrogance talking. You can't help anyone when you are a wreck yourself.
I'm already having a hard time being weak when I know a lot of people have relied on me being strong for them. I don't ask for help much in my life. I think it's that you don't take help when it is offered because it interferes with your belief that you are the smartest person you know.
I spent a couple hours on the phone with 'blyndfaith' who has been great helping me get a perspective. I'm mad, and hurt because I know I gave 'my all' 2 years ago to save her from that a-hole predator and her own destructive self. I KNOW I was clear to her about a year ago that I was slipping into anxiety and as little as 2-3 months ago I almost begged her to help me get out of the cycle I was in and she didn't do anything but 'talk' about 'idea's' that might work.
She never called a friend and said 'please come over, frank's a wreck and needs help' or even my best friend who lives on the east coast and TOLD her after we reconciled that she should call him if we ever needed help. she called him ONCE, we chatted, I told hi I was down, I felt better. She never did anything else of substance.
But that doesn't matter now.
I need to get out of my emotional mind and into my logical mind. I need to make a list of what needs to be done to get my financial and emotional self in order. I need to get some 'wins' under my belt so my self esteem can be rebuilt. Most importantly, I need to regain my INTEGRITY and VALUES
What else?
How do I 'live' with her right now? I don't even want to talk to her because I am so angry. Blyndfaith says 'detach - now'. I agree.
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I know that's harsh but I think harsh is called for in dealing with you right now. You are a very intelligent man but Frank, your street smarts SUCK.
'street smarts'? What does that have to do with this? You have no survival skills outside of your book smarts and they are not of much use in this situation.
You keep saying that you need to work on yourself, but you keep talking about your wife and what she is doing and how what your is doing is affecting her.
So, when exactly are you going to stop worrying and actually work on yourself, without regard for what it does to your wife?
Here is the problem, your like this war-hero, who forgot everything he did. If you chnaged your name and posted in Newcomers, no one would know it was you. You talk about knowing what you need to do...but your are not implementing it.
Again, which one is more important to you. Not Failing or the Next Win? One of those paths is living in fear, the other is living for the future.
Experience is a brutal teacher, but you learn. My God, do you learn. - C.S. Lewis
Life is usually all about how you handle Plan B. - Jack3Beans
Listen without defending; Speak without offending - FaithinAK
She sounds like she uses all this spiritual stuff as an excuse to move on and doesn't say what it's really about, like you aren't supporting the family in a financially secure way etc.
Yeah, I can see that. Being 'direct' has never been a strong trait of her personality.
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Open your eyes, you have so much going for you. Stop reacting to your W's every nuance and little comment - it's driving you down and stopping your progress. Also, stop dwelling on the past. You have realised your mistakes; now learn and move on. Stop harping on about what has been and look to the future.
That's my number one priority - get back in gear and heal completely, not just 'fix' things.
Originally Posted By: Amyc
So help me. I know I can help ANYONE else but I'm stuck right now helping myself. That is arrogance talking. You can't help anyone when you are a wreck yourself.
Today, that is true. I've been a 'wreck' on and off for the past 6 months or so and I've helped a lot of people. I've even helped you. But I have not been able to help myself break the anxiety / depression / fear cycle. That's my point. Did anyone have any idea how much I was hurting inside? No because I didn't share that and my natural tendency to help others pulls me out of it for a while.
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I'm already having a hard time being weak when I know a lot of people have relied on me being strong for them. I don't ask for help much in my life. I think it's that you don't take help when it is offered because it interferes with your belief that you are the smartest person you know.
Well I'll help you with that one. When I was a kid living with my Grandmother who was a crippled angry old lady, she was abusive to me. MY Uncles / Dad / Grandfather would not say anything to her about her anger or her general mean spiritedness towards me because THEY WERE AFRAID SHE WOULD DIE. Sometimes they would tell ME that I needed to 'not make her angry' because she might die and it would be my fault. How did I make her angry? By not reading her mind all the time. By not jumping when she said jump. By being a scared quiet kid. As my counselors have said in the past: "You couldn't follow the 'rules' because the rules CHANGED every day". Nobody ever stuck up for me so I have come to expect that to be 'normal'.
Anyway, I understand where everyone is coming from. After listening to various people I've called and all the posts I think I 'get it' that my wife has been emotionally immature for a long time. I mistakenly thought she was 'healed' after the last thing, when she had the 'breakthrough' in counseling that she was unable to tell men what she needed during to the sexual abuse as a child.
I thought I could rely on her but she went back to her old fears and inability to deal with the tough situations, instead 'waiting' for me to 'get through my stuff, my MLC' and when I didn't or when it got hard she 'was done, had enough, didn't want to be a a wife any more'. Left me hanging, again.
Sara is right. I didn't want to face it I guess but I DO deserve a wife like Sara, like Amy, like Saffie, like Spitfire or all the others who would NOT Have let me stay where I was or when it became 'too hard', decided it was time to 'move on' so they could make their own life happy.
So, I'm detaching. I just don't want her the way she is, because it keeps me the way I am. I don't like being the way I am, my life has been a lot better in the past. Like FaithIsBelieving says "you have to let the marriage die, mourn it's death, and build a life for yourself. Only then can a new one be created, but on new terms. Healthy terms."
And if not, well then I will eventually find someone who is already healthy and who I won't have the fear of them leaving me if I have a 'bad time' hit me.
So yeah, I'm letting her go.
Oddly, this morning I didn't feel like getting up early like I have been and being 'present' while she gets the kids going to school, and other stuff. We would talk and of course I was putting my 'positive self' forward. I stayed in bed and wondered if she would come and 'wake me up' like she usually did to get me going, start my day.
She came into the room a few times, to get dressed or other things and didn't approach me. Then she comes in after she has gone and taken D12 to school and shakes me and says 'Hey'. So I turn over and look at her and say 'what?'. She tells me that she's going for a walk and wanted me to know where she'll be. Then asks if I can pick up D12 from school because she can't due to having a massage scheduled then. I just look at her and say 'sure, I don't have any meetings then so I'm good'.
She says 'ok, well I'm going for a walk now and leaves'.
I think, 'what is that all about, she could have told me this after her walk because I would have been up by then anyway.'
Anyway, she's back now and hasn't come into my office to say anything and I'm just not feeling like talking to her anyway. I really just want my life to be mine, not a 'reaction' to hers.
Hey Frank, looks like you're getting lots of much needed support. My prayers are with you!
Wanted to ask if you saw a Dr. about your depression, or to get a medical opinion on the anxiety, etc? If not, are you planning to? I still think you have a medical issue to deal with and the self help route might not be the entire answer this time. Think about it.. you seem so confused and out of focus at times and that's not like you! Huggs.
I've been bothered by the 'find your spiritual path' stuff and how it seems to tell you that if you are in a relationship with someone who is stuck then it's 'ok' to leave.
It bothers me because Gary Zukov, the author of the book 'Soul Stories' is an Ex Marine and I have had a lot of trouble thinking he would suggest that you should 'leave behind' a husband or wife who was stuck in extreme hurt and hopelessness.
So, I called one of the practitioners at the spiritual church we go to to have a meeting to talk about my situation, and also with the intention of asking about this 'finding your path' stuff.
I met with her (Dee) and told her my story, what was going on now, what the past 17 years have been like with W and stuff. She had some great insights into me, and basically observed a couple things which echo what others have said here:
1) As a child, I was put into a situation where I became hyper sensitive to my environment. I was required to keep things 'safe', and to fix whomever was broken. As an adult I do the same thing - I focus on other peoples needs, I fix, I protect.
2) When I needed support and 'fixing' my W couldn't do it - because SHE had never been given the tools in life to cope with difficult situations. Neither of her parents really dealt with their negative issues - the ignored them or let them build up till they ended up divorced.
Dee, like everyone here, said I need to just stop fixing ANYONE else and put all the energy I would have used into myself. As she put it, "your Wife needs to be put outside your circle and has to deal with her issues on her own now. You don't know how that will play out and you don't need to know because regardless, you can't be happy until you are whole again."
She didn't say "oh and if you do this she'll be attracted back to you" she just said that "when you change yourself to where you are whole again and where you no longer are hyper sensitive to 'saving' others, people will be attracted to you in a different way" "Maybe she will walk away on some 'journey' trying to discover her strengths, and if she returns to you, you'll be in a different place where you'll decide whether or not she works for you any more".
But it will come from a place where you don't just 'react and fix' but instead you CHOOSE what you will do. Before it was 'I have to do this'. Now it's "Is this really what I want to do?".
That's a difficult behavior to break, but I can see how it's consuming me and draining my life power.
So I asked her the 'big question'. "What about the 'Soul Stories' books (which they sell in their bookstore) and how Zukav seems to say that if one of the people in a relationship is stuck in negativity and the other wants to 'break free' of that and 'grow' he seems to imply that it's ok to end the relationship and move on.
She shook her head and said 'Yeah, that New Age stuff sometimes is misinterpreted by people who really don't know what the author meant." She gave an example of her husband and how they were growing apart and that she realized that it was because the communication was closed for a long time. Once they opened it and she began to find out how to discover her own spiritual comfort they changed their relationship but it took a long time.
She doesn't think my wife is doing the right thing from a 'spiritual perspective' but is running towards something that she thinks holds 'happiness' instead of looking inside.
I said that she's hurt and we know she doesn't know what to do to fix this so she's looking for happiness elsewhere. Dee said that she has to figure that out and there isn't anything I can do about it, nor should I. Instead I need to break my own patterns and allow myself to feel that I'm good enough and deserving of happiness on my own.
I mentioned that I thought most of her 'new age' spiritual were dysfunctional and that it seems like some people go far into that stuff to avoid the hard parts of their lives and she agreed with me.
I was surprised, I was expecting validation for my wifes actions but instead got the opposite, and was counseled to just let her go and fix my own stuff.
My W just came into my office and was telling me that her 2 friends and she were going to have a massage night tomorrow and she was very happy.
As she talked about various things I responded with a smile, and short sentences because I really don't want to talk to her. Then she says to me "Are you all right? you are not saying much and using short, curt responses like you are mad at me".
I said "I'm fine, I don't have much to say given the situation. It's nice that you're doing these things, I just don't have anything to add".
So she in her 'happy' voice "well, ok, I understand!". And left to go to the grocery store.
She is so happy. Happy Happy Happy.
Damn. I was feeling so strong and now I feel the rejection and hurt again. Of course she's going to be 'happy', she's free of the burden of our marriage. Everything is going her way.
I'm still carrying the financial burdens and the emotional hurt. She's happy.
It's amazing how they can shut it all off, like closing a door. I have never been able to do that.
I keep forgetting to live knowing that it's over and she's going to do things that will hurt me if I let them. I'm starting to hate her and I don't want to.
