LoneWlf, thanks for getting the point across. I'll do my best to keep remembering that.
Maika, it's interesting to hear you and some other men on this forum talk about confidence. In general when someone is laughing, smiling, having fun, and enjoying life that is more attractive than even the most attractive person looking miserable so I can see how that works. Also I can see how you'd go for someone that believes in themself and has qualities you admire. I personally don't think I could consider a relationship as more than friends with even the most confident man if I didn't feel a physical attraction although attraction is different for each person. You probably notice many beautiful and confident women but there are reasons why you'd choose certain ones over others right? Currently it feels irrelevant to me whether how I feel or act is attractive to men because I'm not looking to date and my interactions with my husband are too limited for him to really notice if I'm confident or not (although it would likely appear to him that I'm doing fine on my own). I mainly wish I could adapt to my current appearance and not mourn the loss of being younger. I know there's nothing I can do about age. We all have no choice about that. I just have to find some way to not feel so hurt that my husband can simply trade me for a 26 year old and say he's no longer attracted to me as his initial reason for walking away. When the person you love and care about most in the world says that it's difficult to not feel hurt. I'll try to be the best I can be at this time in my life though. When my finances improve I'll try to focus more on hair, wardrobe, etc.. to feel happier as well. I'll try to re-gain confidence but it'll have to be a new kind of confidence that's right for this age and for someone who's been discarded by their husband just after having a child. Maybe more like a survivor type confidence...we'll see.
Arsh, my husband hasn't found a job yet. He says he'll still pay his monthly amount at the end of this month but I'm not sure about what will happen after that. Next week I'm supposed to talk to one of my employers about a full-time position. I'll try asking if they offer 30 - 35 hours per week. I also hope my husband will find a job but this time around he doesn't have me helping him so he's probably making a lot of mistakes in what he says to recruiters and typos on his cover letters.
Kiro, thanks for taking the time to write! I'll try to read your updates more closely. Before I came to this forum I thought a lot of my husband's behavior had to do with him being Middle Eastern but here I see that it happens everywhere. I also thought only men can do this kind of thing but apparently not! There may be some immigration-related issues unique to my situation and my husband may be more immature due to living with his parents up until we married, but yeah, it's not just his culture or place of origin. I agree my husband doesn't deserve a loyal and loving wife after what he's done. I also did a lot of bad things and became a mean and spiteful person in my husband's presence but I never cheated or stopped my responsibilities as a wife. I also treated my husband like a king before we had our daughter. I'd make him elaborate meals, wrap his feet in hot towels and massage them with peppermint oil, surprise him with tickets to his favorite sports teams, co-sign on the cars he wanted, fill out his big family's complicated immigration forms, and the list goes on. Even after we had our daughter I'd still cook for him before myself, only took two weeks of maternity leave so I could keep contributing to my share of the bills, etc.. And I may make it sound like I'm really unattractive here but I wasn't that bad either, so yeah, he probably didn't deserve all that. Especially because when we met he wasn't even successful as a refugee when he tried to leave his country so he literally had nothing and could have died at any time in an attack like many of his friends but I admired who he was as a person and sponsored him to come to the US without even knowing for sure if we'd marry. His response after all that is "I never asked you for any of that." It's not true because he asked for many things but I guess that's what they call re-writing history when there's a fun 26 year old nurse with whom you work who just wants to have a good time without any commitment or responsibilities. I feel like I did let my husband go already. It's just in my mind I wish this isn't really who he is, and I wish he'd wake-up, and we're still married legally, and we still have a daughter, so it's not black-and-white. Perhaps I'm supposed to reach a point where I don't ever want him back but I committed to him as his wife before God and if he passed this time in his life and was truly sorry to the point where he'd do anything I asked him to do to try again, and he proved it over time, then I'd still give him another chance. We were great together before this happened. It was my husband who called me every 30 minutes when we weren't together, who told me I was the best wife in the world, and said how lucky he was, and said how all his friends envied him. This concept of waking up one day and becoming a different person is still difficult to grasp!
Cadet, thanks. I'm trying to keep moving forward even amidst the uncertainty. If we get divorced I'm thinking to take my daughter to Europe next summer and travel around for the whole summer and then maybe stay a few extra months for her to try a kindergarten in our favorite Scandinavian country. Then we'll come back here and I'll start working full-time regardless of my circumstances, get an Au Pair, and start the next chapter of our lives.
